n] 



The Garden of Health ' 



25 



5. The Hortus Sanitatis. 



The third of the fundamental botanical works, produced 

 at Mainz towards the close of the fifteenth century, was the 

 'Hortus,' or as it is more commonly called 'Ortus Sanitatis,' 

 printed by Jacob Meydenbach in 1491. It is in part a 

 modified Latin translation of the German Herbarius, but it 

 is not merely this, for it contains treatises on animals, birds, 

 fishes and stones, which are almost unrepresented in the 

 Herbarius. Nearly one-third of the figures of herbs are 

 new. The rest are copied on a reduced scale from the 

 German Herbarius, and the drawing, which is by no means 



Text-fig. 8. "Leopardus" [Ortus vSanitatis, 

 Mainz, 1491J. 



improved, often shows that the copyist did not fully under- 

 stand the nature of the object he was attempting to portray. 

 As an example of a wood-cut, which has lost much of its 

 character in copying, we may take the Dodder (cf. Text- 

 figs. 80 and 77). 



The Ortus Sanitatis is very rich in pictures. The first 

 edition opens with a full-page wood-cut, modified from that 

 at the beginning of the German Herbarius, and representing 

 a group of figures, who appear to be engaged in discussing 

 some medical or botanical problem. Before the treatise on 



