Garsault's plants were drawn from their natural state, except for exotic specimens, for which he relied on "very famous gardens" such as the Jardin du Roi in Paris. The same author, clearly versatile, also wrote about cavalry practice, carriage design, beard shaping, haircutting, and "the construction of wigs for ladies & gentlemen." The "Monsieur Geoffroy medicin" noted in the title was Etienne-François Geoffroy (1672-1731), who combined the botanical and the chemical in his Materia medica, published posthumously in 1741.

Fuchs, court physician and later professor of medicine at the University of Tübingen, is considered one of the three German "fathers of botany." Printed text in this volume consists primarily of plant names in Latin and German; the woodcuts are downsized versions of the magnificent illustrations in Fuchs' De historia stirpium, published by Isingrin three years earlier. White space has been amply filled with comments from other texts and, perhaps, notes from the field.

The market potential of Fuchs' Neue Kreuterbuch, issued both in German and Latin editions in 1542, each with the same large illustrations, gave rise to more compact editions, such as this one, also published by Isingrin (but in Dutch). The illustrations, obviously smaller and simplified, were packed more closely together to keep the price down. In other editions, some pirated, the illustrations disappeared altogether.

Fuchs' text brings together descriptions of medicinal plants from the great sources of antiquity - Dioscorides, Pliny, and Galen - along with more modern discoveries. The latter included maize, ironically identified as "Turkish corn." Practical considerations of producing the impressive, and expensive, woodcuts were honored by inclusion of portraits of the illustrators and the block cutter as well as that of the author.

Trained in botany at Montpellier by Magnol, Tournefort, physician and professor of botany at the Jardin du Roi, is perhaps best known for his Relation d'un voyage du Levant, undertaken at royal order in 1701-1702. Others among his works, often reprinted and translated, noted the medicinal potential of plants. About chocolate, for example: "Chocolate is a sort of liquor that is very grateful and delicious both to the Palate and Stomach, nourishing the Parts, strengthening, restoring and recruiting the Spirits, and provoking Venery."

The copy cited here, based on Tournefort's Elémens de botanique (1694), includes the results of active botanizing: a dry leaf, not related botanically to the pages between which it was pressed.   [Latin translation]