Behold the Kräuterbuch, a Lavishly Illustrated Information to Crops and Herbs from 1462

When Kon­rad von Megen­berg pub­lished his Buch der Natur within the mid-four­teenth cen­tu­ry, he gained the dis­tinc­tion of hav­ing assem­bled the very first nat­ur­al his­to­ry in Ger­man. Greater than half a mil­len­ni­um lat­er, the ebook nonetheless fas­ci­nates — not least for its depic­tions of cats, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured right here on Open Cul­ture. Even the works derived from it have charms of their very own: take the Kräuter­buch (or “E book of Herbs”) from 1462, during which Duke Albrecht III of Bavari­a’s per­son­al physi­cian Johannes Hartlieb adapts a sec­tion of the Buch der Natur with its personal full com­ple­ment of 160 illus­tra­tions.

“Hartlieb’s sub­ject is vegetation, most­ly herbs, and their med­ical makes use of,” says the Library of Con­gress, on whose web site you possibly can view and down­load the ebook. “What makes the Kräuterbuch spe­cial is the side-by-side pre­sen­ta­tion of textual content and pictures. The excessive price of such a wealthy­ly dec­o­rat­ed ebook makes it not like­ly that it was actu­al­ly utilized by doc­tors or phar­ma­cists of the time.”

However even when they lack a cer­tain sci­en­tif­ic prac­ti­cal­i­ty, these botan­i­cal pre­sen­ta­tions have a brilliant, sim­ple daring­ness that, in some respect, fits our visu­al aes­thet­ics right here within the ear­ly twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry; you could possibly name it a renais­sance equiv­a­lent of flat design.

“Every chap­ter of the Kräuter­buch fol­lows a tra­di­tion­al sys­tem of botan­i­cal clas­si­fi­ca­tion derived from the Greek philoso­pher Theophras­tus,” writes Hunter Dukes on the Pub­lic Area Overview, which additionally provides a gallery of the ebook’s illus­tra­tions. “Ani­mals are por­trayed as phar­ma­co­log­i­cal­ly knowl­edge­in a position, comparable to in an account of deer rub­bing them­selves on pep­per­weed (Lep­id­i­um lat­i­foli­um) to take away hunters’ arrows”; anoth­er sec­tion holds that “lifeless­ly automotive­rots (Thap­sia) help beg­gars of their decep­tions — rubbed on the face, they may professional­duce indicators of lep­rosy, which will also be cured with vine­gar.” Dis­cussing the poi­so­nous man­drake (see picture imme­di­ate­ly above), Hartlieb automotive­ries for­ward von Megen­berg’s sug­ges­tion “that its magazine­i­cal prop­er­ties must be stored secret from com­mon­ers,” who, nat­u­ral­ly, would nev­er be in pos­ses­sion of such a lav­ish tome. Now all of us can entry the Kräuter­buch — and most of us know that we’d be wager­ter off not mess­ing round with man­drake in any respect.

through the Pub­lic Area Overview

Relat­ed con­tent:

The New Natural: A Mas­ter­piece of Renais­sance Botan­i­cal Illus­tra­tions Will get Repub­lished in a Beau­ti­ful 900-Web page E book

Hor­tus Eystet­ten­sis: The Beau­ti­ful­ly Illus­trat­ed E book of Crops That Modified Botan­i­cal Artwork In a single day (1613)

A Curi­ous Natural: 500 Beau­ti­ful Illus­tra­tions of Med­i­c­i­nal Crops Drawn by Eliz­a­beth Black­effectively in 1737 (to Save Her Fam­i­ly from Finan­cial Wreck)

Behold a Fifteenth-Cen­tu­ry Ital­ian Man­u­script Fea­tur­ing Med­i­c­i­nal Crops with Fan­tas­ti­cal Human Faces

The Sur­pris­ing Map of Crops: A New Ani­ma­tion Exhibits How All of the Dif­fer­ent Crops Relate to Every Oth­er

Based mostly in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His initiatives embrace the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the ebook The State­much less Metropolis: a Stroll by way of Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­ebook.