32 TREATMENT OF THE SUBJECT-MATTER. 
Conrad Gesner. Cordus, in his annotations to Dioscorides and 
in the “Historie Stirpium (s. Plantarum),” in opposition to 
those of his predecessors who were involved in the study of an- 
tiquity, recorded good individual observations, and described 
the drugs much more carefully, particularly according to his 
personal inspection; thus, for example, Vuz vomica, Cocculus 
Indicus, and Lignum Guaiaci Cordus has rendered valuable 
service to practical pharmacy by the compilation of a dispensa- 
tory* in the years 1542 and 1543, by request of the authorities 
of the city of Nuremberg. - 
Under the title of « Horti Germanix,” Gesner, in the year 
1560, gave interesting accounts of medicinal and useful plants, 
or otherwise noteworthy species, which he or his friends, mostly 
apothecaries,* cultivated in Germany. Gesner permitted this 
publication to appear as an appendix to that of his friend 
Cordus. 
At a still earlier period, the flora of the surroundin g country 
had been brought into requisition, but without much critical dis- 
crimination, as was the case with the widely diffused, popular 
book, ‘‘ Hortus Sanitatis.” The same degree of consideration was 
accorded to the curious work on distillation by the surgeon 
Hieronymus Brunschwig, of Strassburg, first published there in” 
the year 1500, and which gave the crudest instruction relating 
1 A still earlier monographic publication relating to Lignum Guaiaci, 
which, for those times, is very worthy of notice, and written in excel- 
lent Latin, likewise emanates from the pen of a prominent German, the 
Knight Ulrich von Hatten: “ Virichi de Hutten Eq. de Guaiaci medi- 
cina et morbo gallico liber vnus,” 4to, 26 chapters, unpaged. The first 
of the numerous editions, printed in the year 1519 in Schaffer’s house at 
Mayence, bears at the end of the work a woodcut likeness of the author. s 
This publication, by its accuracy and instructiveness, excels most of 
its contemporaries in the description of new medicinal substances. 
Hutten describes the habitus of the tree, the wood, bark, and resin, and 
lastly the applications. ; 
* Flickiger, ‘ Pharmakognosie,” p. 994. 
* Among foreign apothecaries Gesner mentions also the meritorious _ 
Peter Coudenberg, of Antwerp (Flickiger, loc. cit., p. 458); also — 
 Follietus, of Vevey, on Lake Geneva, Switzerland. 
