This 1462 Kräuterbuch (“Book of Herbs”) by Johannes Hartlieb enfolds, verbatim, much of Konrad von Megenberg’s Buch der Natur, published a century earlier and considered by scholars to be the first natural history written in German. (The Buch der Natur itself reworked herbals by Thomas of Cantimpré and Albert Magnus, who, in turn, borrowed heavily from Arabic botanical handbooks.) Unlike its predecessors, however, Harlieb’s volume features 160 illustrations abreast textual descriptions of the plants’ medicinal uses, and is thought to be the only fully illustrated herbal from the incunabula period of German history. In addition to reproducing the Buch der Nature, Hartlieb’s Kräuterbuch includes additional chapters from an unknown source on drugs, derived from both plants and animals. The cost of producing such an ornate book in this period makes it unlikely that these images were actually employed in a pharmacological setting — and, though beautiful, the floral illustrations’ crude style would have made it difficult to correctly identify various species in nature based on their likeness. Instead, Library of Congress curators suggest, the book was created mainly as a feat of visual representation.

Each chapter of the Kräuterbuch follows a traditional system of botanical classification derived from the Greek philosopher Theophrastus. First the plant is named and then information is given about its location and the necessary conditions to safely store it for consumption. These details are followed by descriptions of its effect on the body and recipes for preparation. Much of the medicine corresponds to medieval humorism and its doctrine of antithesis. Cabbage, as Irmgard Müller and Michael Martin detail, is prescribed for headaches because it is cool and moist and headaches run hot and dry. Elsewhere, pain is fought with pain, as in the case of Hartlieb’s suggestion that toothaches should be rubbed with stinging nettle. Animals are portrayed as pharmacologically knowledgeable, such as in an account of deer rubbing themselves on pepperweed (Lepidium latifolium) to remove hunters’ arrows. Wild rue (Peganum harmala) can be disguised in wheat and fed to birds, who will subsequently fall out of the sky in a confused state; a shot of vinegar will quickly restore them to flight. Deadly carrots (Thapsia) aid beggars in their deceptions — rubbed on the face, they will produce signs of leprosy, which can also be cured with vinegar. The magic of medicine occasionally inspires hermetic instincts in the Kräuterbuch. Discussing the mandrake, a root thought to be potentially fatal to its harvester, Konrad von Megenberg had suggested that its magical properties should be kept secret from commoners. Hartlieb, a figure that the scholar Albrecht Classen calls “one of the most important authors on magic in the late Middle Ages”, takes this imperative even further during his discourse on verbena, writing that “whoever is cognizant of its secrets and divulges the virtues of vervain will incur God’s wrath”.

Born at the beginning of the fifteenth century in Neuburg an der Donau, Hartlieb served in the court of Duke Albrecht III, later taking up the role of personal physician to Duke Sigmund of Bavaria-Munich. His interest in the occult sciences extended outward into other scholarly ventures: a book on the art of enhanced recollection; a treatise on lunar divination; an inquiry into the power of names; a supposed eyewitness account of the burning of sorceress Finnicella, and his pièce de résistance, the 1456 Buch aller verbotenen Kunst (Book of All Forbidden Arts), which promises to discuss ninety dark arts but only outlines seven: necromancy, geometry, hydromancy, aeromancy, pyromancy, chiromancy, and spatulamancy. (The last is sadly not the culinary magic of spatula use, but a divination technique using animal shoulder blades.) He also composed and translated literary works, writing his own version of the Alexander romance and creating a German edition of Andreas Capellanus’ magnum opus of courtly love.