Item #085436 THE GARDEN OF HEALTH. c.1499 Shaffer's The Garden of Health.
THE GARDEN OF HEALTH.
THE GARDEN OF HEALTH.
THE GARDEN OF HEALTH.

THE GARDEN OF HEALTH.

An account of two herbals, the 'Gart de Gesundheit' and the 'Hortus Sanitatis'. By Ellen Shaffer. Pp. [viii]+42(last blank), frontispiece, numerous text illustrations (some full page), title page vignette printed in khaki, the title and headings printed in red, list of works consulted, checklist of editions printed before 1550; f'cap. folio; cloth backed pictorial dull red papered boards; uncut; bookplate on upper free endpaper; printed by Lawton Kennedy for the Book Club of California, [San Francisco], 1957. Edition limited to 300 copies, each with an incunable leaf loosely inserted after the title page. Hamel 116. *Leaf book. The Hortus Sanitatis, or Garden of Health, printed by Johann Pruss in Strassburg in c. 1499, was an important early botanical and medical reference. Each chapter (capitulum) opened with a woodcut of a particular herb or animal, followed by its operationes - in which the uses of the item were listed, each being assigned an individual letter of the alphabet in the adjoining margin. This was an innovation which made immediate reference to a definite form of treatment possible. The leaf in this copy is from the section on herbs, printed in double column, with one side including two large woodcut illustrations, one of lavender. The capitulum describes the properties of lavender, and there is a small annotation in an early hand translating the Latin lavendula to the English form of the word. The operationes lists five uses for lavender. The reverse (unillustrated) side describes numerous uses for the opiate laudanum. Loosely inserted in this copy is the original illustrated prospectus for this volume, lightly creased from folding. Item #085436

Price: $950.00