Jacob Meydenbach, Ortus sanitatis: de herbis et plantis, de animalibus et reptilibus Strasbourg: Reinhard Beck, anno 1491
The Hortus sanitatis or the Ortus sanitatis (the Garden of Health or the Origin of Health), is a herbarium and animalibus in one full of actual and make-believe information on hundreds of plant species and their medicinal properties and all kinds of animalia. The author of this book is unknown, but it is generally believed that its original printer, Jacob Meydenbach compiled the book together based on an earlier Latin work.
Hortus sanitatis was first printed in 1491 in Mainz and is the last major medical work to cover medicines only from the Old World. This compendium is also a bestiary in the medieval tradition including a section on animals, fish, birds, reptiles and minerals. The qualities of each animal are shown with a woodcut illustration and vivid written description from centaurs, merpeople, basiliks to monkfish and dogfish (the latter with the heads of monks and dogs on fish bodies). It also includes ’standard’ medieval bestiary entries such as the story of the phoenix or how bear cubs are licked into shape by their parents. The images of animals also alive in our world today are not all that accurate because although the engraver was a skilled craftman, he did not always understand the picture copy he was copying from — the biological details thus got lost or transformed in translation.
These Hortus sanitatis woodcuts of unusual looking snails and example of how illustrations of specimens were modified in translation