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1542

FUCHS, LEONHART. De historia stiripium commentarii... Basileae: Inofficina Isingriniana, 1542.

Leonhart Fuchs (1501-1566), born in Wemding, Bavaria, contributed significantly to much needed reforms in German medicine and pharmacy by producing the most beautiful and famous herbal, De Historia Stiripium (1542). His dedicatory letter states that hardly one in a hundred physicians had knowledge of more than a dozen plants and that doctors were dependent upon largely illiterate apothecaries who in turn were dependant upon illiterate farmers to gather roots and herbs for use in treatment. His herbal includes classical descriptions by Dioscorides, Pliny, and Galen and is accompanied by clearly delineated figures accurately portraying the plants. This first edition published some forty years after the voyage of Columbus included over 100 New World plants. One of these is Indian maize (misnamed Turkish). Its beautiful illustration shows detailed kernels of yellow, purple, red, and white on a single cob (page 285). Only a limited number of this edition were colored. The German-language edition of 1543, which incorporates the same plates, was issued uncolored in facsimile (1983)

Agnes Arber's authoritative book, Herbals, states "...in the opinion of the present writer, the illustrations to Fuchs' herbals represent the high-water mark of that type of botanical drawing..." His woodblocks were used by other herbalists and they were widely copied for decades - definitely as late as 1774 and 1776.

Another extraordinary feature of Fuchs' Historia is that he generously recognized his indebtedness to his co-workers, draftsman Albrecht Meyer, engraver Veit Rudolph Speckleand, and block-cutter Heinrich Fullmaurer, and delightfully honored all three at the end of the book by including their portraits at work.

Fuchs was forty years of age when this remarkably learned work was first published in 1542. At twelve years of age he had matriculated at the University of Erfurt where he distinguished himself in Greek and Latin studies. He went to Ingolstadt in 1519, took a doctorate in 1524, and began to practice medicine in Munich. Later he taught medicine at Ingolstadt in 1526, became court physician to the Margrave Georg von Brandenburg in 1528, and professor of medicine at the new Protestant University of Tubingen in 1535. Among other medical works, he was internationally known for his successful treatment of an outbreak of sweating sickness.