Gart der Gesundheit, Mainz 1485. Titlepage

The Gart der Gesundheit (Early German for Latin hortus sanitatis) was edited in 1485. It was written by Johann Wonnecke von Kaub and was one of the first printed herbals in German. It was often reprinted until the 18th century. The Gart der Gesundheit is an important late medieval work concerning the knowledge of natural history, especially that of medicinal plants. In 435 chapters 382 plants, 25 drugs from the animal kingdom and 28 minerals are described and illustrated. The book was edited by Peter Schöffer in Mainz. Together with the Latin Herbarius moguntinus (Peter Schöffer 1484) and the Latin Hortus sanitatis (Jacob Meydenbach in Mainz 1491), the Gart der Gesundheit belongs to the "group of Mainz herbal incunabula".[1]

Text

The text is a collection of earlier texts in German and in Latin on drugs from the herbal, animal, and mineral kingdoms. The reader cannot rely on the names the author gives to his citations. Sometimes he gives no name, for example for the citations he took from the Physica of Hildegard of Bingen. More often, he even gives incorrect names to his citations.[2]

Illustrations

About 100 of the 379 illustrations in the Gart der Gesundheit are of high standard quality. Erhard Reuwich is supposed to be the creator of these woodcuts, who depict the character of plants in clear lines. Opposing to some modern authors, who called these illustrations "primitive" in a bad sense, Arnold C. Klebs stated in 1925:

"We who today in our aesthetic demands are drawing away more and more from the slavish copying of nature and demand that a work of art expresses type and character, can better appreciate the didactic value of these simple drawings than the previous generation to whom the photographic appealed as the highest form of truthful representation."[3][4][5]

Editions

Notes

  1. ↑ Arber, Agnes. Herbals. Their origin and evolution. A chapter in the history of botany 1470–1670. University Press, Cambridge 1912, pp. 18– 24 (Digitalisat)
  2. ↑ Peter Riethe. Hildegards von Bingen >Liber simplicis medicinae< im Mainzer >Gart der Gesundheit<. In: Sudhoffs Archiv. Vol 89, issue 1, 2005, p. 96–119.
  3. ↑ Wilhelm Ludwig Schreiber. Die Kräuterbücher des XV. und XVI. Jahrhunderts. Munich 1924. (As Appendix of the reprint of Gart der Gesundheit, Mainz 1485, p. I–LXII, here XII–XIII)
  4. ↑ Arnold C. Klebs: Herbal facts and thoughts. Introduction of the Catalogue of Early Harbals from the Library of Dr. Karl Becher, Karlsbad, p. IX, l'art ancien S. A., Lugano 1925.
  5. ↑ Julius Schuster: Secreta Salernitana und Gart der Gesundheit. In: Mittelalterliche Handschriften. Festgabe zum 60. Geburtstag von Hermann Degering. Leipzig 1926, p. 203–237, here: p. 220.
  6. ↑ Arnold C. Klebs. Incunabula scientifica et medica. The Saint Catherine Press Ltd., 1938, p. 171f. (Digitalisat)

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