Page transcription
ON A FRENCH VERSION
OF THE
HERBAL OF LEONARD FUCHS.
THE great and beautiful folio herbal of
Leonhard Fuchs—De Historia Stirpium,
published at Basle in 1542—was the source of
a series of English and French, and degraded
French versions. A number of these are
dismissed collectively by Pritzel (Theaurus
Literarum Germanicarum, 1871) as
"libelli miserrimi," but although the types
are mostly poor and crude copies of Fuchs's
admirable wood engravings, the texts and
their provenance might repay a thorough
comparative study. In the present note I
propose to consider only a single example of
these little books, namely, "Livre des plantes et herbes avec leur propriete par M.
Leonard Fuchs," printed in 1580. "A Rouen.
Da l'Imprimerie de Robert Willart, de Lordega à la grand Nef". The British Museum possesses two undated books which are both copies of this later version of this work. One of them (catalogued "1700") is from the press of another Rosen printer, "Jean de la Vigne, dit le Doyenier, au Chap-
peau Rouge." The other is at Troyes; it is catalogued as "1620". I have before me a copy of the former, the 1580 edition
which was formerly in the library of Dr. Edmond Bonnet and then in that of Miss Guillemot. I am indebted to Miss Guillemot for help in its study. This copy has been somewhat cut down; the pages now measure about
115 cm. in height and 7.7 cms. in width.
On the title-page is the following charming disarming little poem, addressed by the printer to the reader, who is referred to elsewhere in the book as "mon cher ami":
Ce jourd'hui l'est, ce livre presente,
En beas françoys proprement translate;
Aupres de vous, mon cher ami, ensemble
[Et guerison, et plaisir tout ensemble]
Car il n'y a de mal aucune espece,
Qui n'ait un remede,
Par ce moyen connoistre le desir,
Tant que vous voudrez bien lire,
Dent recevras un profit incroyable.
Etes c'est une verite a les yeux admirable.
This copy of the book is illustrated by wood-
cuts and text relating to seventy-one herbs.
Interpersed among which are a few descrip-
tions of plants not mentioned in the main part
of the book occupies 150 pages, and is followed
by a short section (five pages) treating of
Toilette. It is clear that we have here one of the
little volume which can strictly be called an
herbal, but there still remain about a hundred
recipes, mostly medical recipes, beginning with plague remedies.
Such botanical interest as the herbal pos-
sesses, lies chiefly in the descriptions of the
plants employed in medicine. However,
are often curiously sketchy. Cow Parsley
(Poissil), for instance, receives no description
beyond the statement that in the month of
May the places where it grows are almost
entirely white with its flowers; this, though
true enough, is not very helpful for purposes of identification. But occasionally
something more in the modern manner is achieved. Thus, for instance, our trans-
lator adds the information that it is to be
found in abundance in the forest of Orleans.
The description of the same plant continues
that
It has Try leaves of purplish colour, and
mottled storie and below by white blotches,
the stem four fingers long, naked and leafless,
in which places are found in the leaves of
purplish colour: the root is black, like to the
Purpure.
In the sixteenth century the way in which the phenomena of sex extend to the plant
world is well illustrated by the use of the words
"male" and "female" were used in senses
that now sound strange to our ears. In our
very own time we find survivals of the old belief that the scarlet and blue varieties
of the Pimpernel are respectively masculine
and feminine, a belief of which there finds ex-
pression in the English works of Henry Lyte
and William Turner. The record runs as follows:
Il y a male et femelle, qui ne diffèrent en
aucune chose fors en couleur de fleur: le male
porte des fleurs de couleur de rose, la femelle
de couleur d'azur.
A large portion of the herbal is taken up with
an account of the "virtues" of the plants;
some of the medicines recommended, such as
Mandrake, are for the most part obsolete to
the present day. And it is rather a pleasure
to find that the practice of giving Chickweed
to children to make them grow tall is still typi-
cal, indeed, as might, indeed, be guessed from the English name. We read that "les petits oiseaux se delaisent sur le chichweel, lequel est nomme Har-
laine, (chickweel). Les oisellers donnent de
ladite herbe a manger aux petits oisillons en
cage, pour qu'ils grandissent plus haut et man-
ger."
Another of these survivals is man-
kind's appreciation of Asparagus: we are
told that "pour l'apporter en fleur, les direc-
tions given, it is "une grande viande et un
des principaux mees des grands seigneurs."
In the matter of the treatment of baldness,
one is struck by the frequency of the remedies for
loss of hair—the Nettle, Vine, Cyclamen.
We find that two of these remedies are each
in turn offered for this purpose; it seems to sug-
gest that baldness may have been particularly
rife in the sixteenth century. Some of the
objects for which medicaments are proposed
are, happily, out of date to-day: we are, for
instance, told how to make a poultice of
Vervain, the third node is to be collected for
tertian fevers, and the fourth for quartan
fevers. The poultice of Verbena should consist
should be made of a three-stalked plant for
tertian, and a four-stalked for quartan fevers.
Various plants are credited with remarkable
protective qualities. Wild Angelica, for
example, has power "contre encorcellement,"
or encantement, as it is on the Continent, "et"
Tanary is particularly valuable, as it protects
him who carries it from poisons and wild
beasts and from witchcraft and from feeling any
fatigues in travelling. Wild
