Making an Herbal with German Leonhart Fuchs (1501-1566)

Leonhart Fuchs, De Historia Stirpium, Basel 1542, Sp Coll Hunterian L.1.13, Glasgow University Library Detail of Illustrators at Work from page 897

The author of the Historia Stirpium, Leonhart Fuchs (1501-1566), is known as the 3rd of the German fathers of Botany.  The Three German fathers of Botany are: theologian & botanist Otto Brunfels(c 1489-1534); botanist, physician, & Lutheran minister Hieronymus Bock(1498-1554); &  physician Leonhart Fuchs (1501-1566). Brunfels authored Herbarum vivae eicones, with his own descriptions & 135 images directly from nature. Bock published Kreütterbuch darin unterscheidt Nammen und Würckung der Kreütter (Herbal) in 1539 with images added later. 

Fuchs published his De historia stirpium commentarii insignes in Basel in 1542, which he illustrated 10 years later with woodcuts.  Fuchs work was inspired by the Herbarum vivae icones (1530-6) of Brunfels. Fuchs' herbal, however, was conceived on a larger scale than the books of his immediate predecessors. His goal was to reproduce each plant from life, as he stated in his dedication "a picture expresses things more surely & fixes them more deeply in the mind than the bare words of the text...we have not allowed the craftsmen so to indulge their whims as to cause the drawing not to correspond accurately to the truth."  

Leonhart Fuchs (1501 - 10 May 1566) is best known for the development and publication of one of the very important early Herbals in 1543. Fuchs wrote, "There is nothing in this life pleasanter and more delightful than to wander over woods, mountains, plains, garlanded and adorned with flowerlets and plants of various sorts, and most elegant to boot, and to gaze intently on them. But it increases that pleasure and delight not a little, if there be added an acquaintance with the virtues and powers of these same plants"

Timeline
He was born in Bavaria in Germany in 1501 at the height of the German Renaissance.
1513; Enrolled at the the University of Erfurt
1514: He was a serious student and matriculated at at the age of fourteen. He developed his knowledge of classic and Latin and then took a medical degree.  He was able to read the ancient medical texts with ease because of his knowledge of Greek.
 ​He subsequently became both a physician and a botanist and is now regarded as one of the three German fathers of botany
1524: He started to practice medicine in Munich
1526: He became a Professor of Medicine at Ingolstadt
1528: became the physician of Margrave George of Brandenburg.
1529: became well known for successful treatment of plague victims in Prague
1535: He was appointed to the Chair of Medicine at Tübingen. He continued in this position for the remainder of his life - and created one of the first botanical gardens in the world.

Leonhart Fuchs, De Historia Stirpium, Basel 1542, Sp Coll Hunterian L.1.13, Glasgow University Library Page 441 Crocus sativus (Saffron) Portrait of Leonart Fuchs By Heinrich Fllmaurer (c. 1530-40)

Publications:
With the publication of The New Herbal he also became a noted and important author .
Prior to Fuch's Great Herbal, the illustrations used in the early Herbals were quite crude and of limited use from the perspective of finding and selecting the correct plant for medicinal use.
1542: De Historia Stirpium was published
1543: a German translation was published
smaller picture only versions were published.
versions for use by those involved in botany were also published.

​His primary purpose was the rediscovery of the ancient sources of information about medicine. Fuchs's name is commemorated in the naming of the Fuchsia.  In total, he wrote more than 50 books and polemics.

Leonhart Fuchs, De Historia Stirpium, Basel 1542, Frontispiece portrait of Fuchs