Materia medica—books describing plants, animals, minerals, and the medicines that can be obtained from these sources—form an interesting subset of the Rare Book Division’s holdings of natural history materials. One of the most notable of these works is a relatively recent addition to the collections, the 1487 Ulm edition of Gart der Gesundheit, translated as Garden of Health.

Gart der Gesundheit was one of the most popular and influential materia medica of the late Middle Ages, spanning 14 editions between 1485 and 1501. The text itself, compiled by a Frankfurt physician named Johann Wonnecke, is largely derived from classical works by Pliny the Elder, Dioscorides, and Galen, as well as contemporary 15th-century references. 

In some 500 pages, the volume sets out the pharmacological uses of more than 400 plants and minerals, and includes a chapter on uroscopy, the ancient practice of diagnosing illnesses by examining a patient’s blood or urine.

The work provides listings of ailments and their associated healing compounds, pointing to the places in the text where they can be located. This is one of the earliest appearances of an index within a printed work, an element of book design that would not become common until well into the 16th century.

While the information contained in Gart der Gesundheit is, by current standards, of dubious scientific value, the enduring quality of its many charming hand-colored woodcuts is beyond question. Nearly every plant and animal detailed is accorded its own illustration.  Many of these depictions are seemingly copied directly from nature such as the white lily, shown here. 

Other images are of a more fanciful sort, such as this representation of the mandrake, which references the plant’s human-like appearance and its supposed fertility-enhancing properties.  

The present example of Gart der Gesundheit—a beautiful, fresh copy bound in a contemporary, tooled pigskin binding, featuring the original clasps—is extremely rare: only three other integral copies of this edition are recorded. It is also the only complete copy in an American library. 

Accordingly, The New York Public Library is delighted to hold this work in trust for individuals conducting research in the fields of printing history, Early Modern Europe, and the history of science and medicine, among other areas.