Leonhart Fuchs. The New Herbal

(Hardback)

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Description

Leonhart Fuchs (1501-1566,) was a founding father of modern botany, honored to this day in the vivid flower, and corresponding color, Fuchsia. In 1543, Fuchs combined his masterful botanical knowledge with groundbreaking medical research in his New Herbal, a catalog of some 500 types of plants and their healing properties.

While a dependable scientific reference, The New Herbal won fame above all with the detail and quality of its illustrations. Alongside essays describing the plants' features, origins, and medicinal powers, Fuchs presented each plant with meticulous woodcut illustrations, refining the ability for swift species identification and setting new standards for accuracy and quality in botanical publications. From the age of great exploration, The New Herbal also documented plant types from the recently discovered New World, offering the first visual record of tobacco, maize, kidney bean, and cactus.

This edition is based on Fuchs's personal, hand-colored copy, which has miraculously survived four-and-a-half centuries in pristine condition. Fascinating for historians of medicine and art, gardeners, and anyone interested in herbal medicine, the volume features over 500 splendid illustrations, and an essay exploring the history of healing herbs.

Reviews

An astonishingly in-depth and comprehensive reference work. A veritable bible for botany enthusiasts. * EnVols (Air France) *
These delicately detailed representations of plants by a founding figure of modern botany are given a new lease of life. * New Scientist *
An enduring intellectual history. * Apollo *
...an ode to Fuch's research and the field of Renaissance botany. * thisiscolossal.com *
One of the greatest books on botany. * Casa y campo *

Author Bio

Werner Dressendrfer is a pharmaceutical historian, academic librarian, and former honorary Professor at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. His particular spheres of interest are the history of the Early Modern herbal, the cultural history of useful and medicinal plants, and plant symbolism in art. He has written extensively on pharmaceutical and botanical history, and is the author of many of TASCHENs botanical publications.