CHAPTER V 

 OTHO BRUNFELSIUS, 1464-1534 



First in point of time among the German botanical reformers of 

 the sixteenth century, Brunfels is also easily first in rank respecting 

 those educational and literary qualifications which go to the making 

 of what one calls a scholarly book. In this particular his one 

 botanical treatise, the Herbarum Vivce Icones, is peerless among 

 the several books of botany that appeared in middle Europe within 

 the first half of the sixteenth century. Others produced more 

 and better botany ; but there are marks of a dignified and conserv- 

 ative erudition that are characteristically Brunfels' own. 



Life. His career was a long one, at least^for a consumptive,' 

 and was singularly varied. One need not here analyze the motive 

 of that countryman of Brunfels who pretended that the man's 

 professional life might be summed up in one sentjnce like the 

 following: "At first a schoolmaster at Strassburg, then a physician 

 at Berne." 2 This would be good language in which to epitomize the 

 professional life of one who had been at the early outset a school- 

 master, after that a university graduate in medicine, and then a 

 practitioner. Such would be the natural interpretation of a sentence 

 like that quoted; and the trouble with this pretended epitome is, 

 that it leaves completely out of view Brunfels' occupations during 

 the first fifty years of his life, revealing only the last twenty; 

 for certain it seems to be, that when in default of other means of a 

 livelihood he opened at Strassburg a school for boys, he was well 

 past fifty years of age; also that when at the University of Basle he 

 won the degree of Doctor of Medicine, he was sixty-five. 



In the history of botany Brunfels will hold in the future, as he 

 has done in the past, a somewhat distinguished place among the 

 notabilities belonging to his century; and we must review, as well 



' Brunfels died of consumption at Berne, Switzerland, probably at the age 

 of about seventy years. 



» Sprengel, Hist. Ret Herb., vol. i, p. 311. 



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