Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 193

OTTO BRUNFELS (1489-1534) Theses seu communes loci, totius rei medicae. Excudebat Georgius Ulricher 1532 [10] 232 ll. 14.4 cm.

Brunfels, a German botanist, became a Carthusian monk in his early twenties, a short time after completing his education at Mainz. He abandoned the monastery in 1521 when he became a convert to the Protestant faith and spent several years at various towns in southwest Germany as an evangelical minister and theological writer. Brunfels returned to Strasbourg in 1524 where he established a school and directed his interests to the study of botany and medicine. He is most often remembered for his classic work in botany, Herbarum vivae icones (1530-1536), a work which marked the beginning of modern taxonomy. He received a medical degree at Basel in 1532 or 1533 and, after a short period in private practice in Strasbourg, was appointed town physician at Bern in 1533. He died only a year later, probably of diphtheria. This little-known work of Brunfels, edited by Johannes Munterus (fl. 1513-1532), is a treatise on the pharmacological approach to a wide variety of diseases. Included with it are Alessandro Benedetti's (ca. 1450-1512) Sententiae medicinales and Arnaldus de Villanova's Sententiarum medicinalium morborum curationibus as well as several other short tracts by Villanova.

Cited references: Krivatsy 29; Wellcome 1105

Gift of John Martin, M.D.