Leonhart Fuchs: The New Herbal of 1543

Potent plants. Mother Nature's lovely medicine cabinet In 1543, Leonhart Fuchs, physician and pioneer of modern botany, published a groundbreaking medical research book: a comprehensive study of herbs. Cataloguing more than 500 types of plants, many of which originated in the recently discovered New World, the New Kreüterbuch, or New Herbal, brought together masterly, detailed woodcuts of the plants with essays describing their features, origins, and medicinal powers. Fuchs's revolutionary book is still, 500 years after his birth, a model for botanical illustration and research. TASCHEN's new publication, whose reproductions are drawn from Fuchs's personal, hand-colored copy, which has miraculously survived four-and-a-half centuries in pristine condition, includes over 500 splendid illustrations, excerpted facsimiles of Fuchs's original text, and an essay comparing the use of healing herbs then and now. Both an important reference book and a superbly illustrated work, the New Herbal is, as Fuchs himself described it, "a merry book to look at."