January 30, 2025
Behold the Kräuterbuch, a Lavishly Illustrated Guide to Plants and Herbs from 1462

When Kon­rad von Megen­berg pub­lished his Buch der Natur within the mid-four­teenth cen­tu­ry, he received the dis­tinc­tion of hav­ing assem­bled the first actual nat­ur­al his­to­ry in Ger­guy. Greater than part a mil­len­ni­um lat­er, the e-book nonetheless fas­ci­nates — now 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, wherein Duke Albrecht III of Bavari­a’s in keeping with­son­al physi­cian Johannes Hartlieb adapts a sec­tion of the Buch der Natur with its personal complete com­ple­ment of 160 illus­tra­tions.

“Hartlieb’s sub­ject is crops, maximum­ly herbs, and their med­ical makes use of,” says the Library of Con­gress, on whose web site you’ll be able to view and down­load the e-book. “What makes the Kräuterbuch spe­cial is the side-by-side pre­sen­ta­tion of textual content and pictures. The top value of this sort of wealthy­ly dec­o­rat­ed e-book makes it in contrast to­ly that it was once actu­al­ly utilized by document­tors or phar­ma­cists of the time.”

However even supposing they lack a cer­tain sci­en­tif­ic prac­ti­cal­i­ty, those botan­i­cal pre­sen­ta­tions have a vibrant, sim­ple daring­ness that, in some admire, fits our visu­al aes­thet­ics right here within the ear­ly twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry; it’s worthwhile to 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 Evaluation, which additionally gives a gallery of the e-book’s illus­tra­tions. “Ani­mals are por­trayed as phar­ma­co­log­i­cal­ly knowl­edge­ready, reminiscent of in an account of deer rub­bing them­selves on pep­in keeping with­weed (Lep­identity­i­um lat­i­foli­um) to take away hunters’ arrows”; anoth­er sec­tion holds that “lifeless­ly automotive­rots (Thap­sia) help beg­gars of their decep­tions — rubbed at the face, they’ll professional­duce indicators of lep­rosy, which may also be cured with vine­gar.” Dis­cussing the poi­so­nous guy­drake (see symbol 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 this sort of lav­ish tome. Now all people can get right of entry to the Kräuter­buch — and maximum people know that we’d be guess­ter off now not mess­ing round with guy­drake in any respect.

by the use of the Pub­lic Area Evaluation

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 way of Eliz­a­beth Black­smartly in 1737 (to Save Her Fam­i­ly from Finan­cial Destroy)

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

The Sur­pris­ing Map of Crops: A New Ani­ma­tion Displays How The entire Dif­fer­ent Crops Relate to Every Oth­er

Based totally in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and extensive­casts on towns, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His tasks come with the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Towns and the e-book The State­much less Town: a Stroll via Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­e-book.


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