I have selected New Kreuterbuch (1543) or The New Herbal by Leonard Fuchs. I was most intrigued by its detail, content, and influence on later botanical literature. Its shift in approach, influenced by the scientific revolution, is intriguing.

The author, Fuchs, was a German physician, humanist and botanist. The first edition of New Kreuterbuch was first published in Latin, in 1542, and has approximately 500 plant-portraits drawn from observation in Fuchs’s garden at Tübingen by Albert Meyer.  These drawings were advancements in the realm of botanical literature. Although drawings had been used before (i.e. Herbarius Latinus), Fuch’s book transformed the page with carved relief woodblock carvings. The visual collaboration we see in New Kreuterbuch shows added technical delicacy and complexity alongside text. These medicinal plants come to life in the woodblock drawings, and the in-depth descriptions of the 400 German and 100 foreign plants is impressive. From the thin lines, to the figures’ three-dimensional nature, they certainly have a more scientific quality, more so than we see in the more stylized, thickly drawn plants in Herbarius Latinus. 

The detailed drawings were transferred to woodblocks by Heinrich Füllmaurer, and cut into wood by Viet Rudolph Speckle. Portraits of all three artists are included in the work. This was groundbreaking. Typically, the author would feature himself, but not other contributors. New Kreuterbuch does not include biographical information about the illustrators and carver, but it does give faces to the hands behind the imagery.

Like many books of its kind, New Kreuterbuch was used for medicinal purposes. Each page lists which ailments the plant cures. This was medicine. Herbal remedies. In our current scientific world, how would we portray our remedies in book form? Can you imagine, woodblocks of mass-produced pills? It’s interesting to look at the context of this literature, and how it is represented in book form, especially in a society that does not value medicinal herbal remedies as highly esteemed as it did centuries before.