Leonhart Fuchs (17 January 1501 – 10 May 1566), sometimes spelled
Leonhard Fuchs, was a
GermanGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
physicianA physician — also known as medical practitioner, doctor of medicine, medical doctor, or simply doctor — practices the ancient profession of medicine, which is concerned with maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease or injury...
and one of the three founding fathers of
botanyBotany, plant science, phytology, or plant biology is a branch of biology and is the scientific study of plant life and development...
, along with
Otto BrunfelsOtto Brunfels was a German theologian and botanist...
and
Hieronymus BockHieronymus Bock , also seen as "Boch", also known under his latinised name Hieronymus Tragus, was a German botanist, physician, and Lutheran minister who began the transition from medieval botany to the modern scientific worldview by arranging plants by their relation or resemblance...
(also called Hieronymus Tragus).
Biography
Fuchs was born in
WemdingWemding is a municipality in the Donau-Ries district of Bavaria, Germany. Botanist Leonhart Fuchs was born here in 1501....
in the Duchy of Bavaria. After visiting a school in
HeilbronnHeilbronn is a city in northern Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is completely surrounded by Heilbronn County and with approximately 121.989 residents, it is the sixth-largest city in the state....
, Fuchs went to the Marienschule in
ErfurtErfurt is the capital city of Thuringia and is the main city nearest to the geographical centre of Germany, located 100 km SW of Leipzig, 150 km N of Nürnberg and 180 km SE of Hannover. Erfurt Airport can be reached by plane via Munich. It lies in the southern part of the Thuringian...
,
ThuringiaThe Free State of Thuringia is located in central Germany. It has an area of and 2.29 million inhabitants, making it the sixth smallest by area and the fifth smallest by population of Germany's sixteen
Bundesländer...
at the age of twelve, and graduated as
Baccalaureus artium. In 1524 he became Magister Artium in
IngolstadtIngolstadt is a city in the Free State of Bavaria, Germany. It is located along the banks of the Danube River, in the center of Bavaria. As of December 31, 2005, Ingolstadt had 121,801 residents. It is part of the Munich Metropolitan Area with a population of more than 5 million.Ingolstadt is...
, and was received
doctor of medicineThe Doctor of Medicine is a doctoral degree for physicians...
in the same year.
From 1524-1526 he practiced as a doctor in
MunichMunich is the capital city of Bavaria, Germany. It is located on the River Isar north of the Bavarian Alps. Munich is the third largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Hamburg...
, until he received a chair of medicine at
IngolstadtIngolstadt is a city in the Free State of Bavaria, Germany. It is located along the banks of the Danube River, in the center of Bavaria. As of December 31, 2005, Ingolstadt had 121,801 residents. It is part of the Munich Metropolitan Area with a population of more than 5 million.Ingolstadt is...
in 1526. From 1528-1531 he was the personal physician of Georg, Margrave of Brandenburg in
AnsbachAnspach may refer to:In places:* Neu-Anspach, Hesse, Germany* The former name of Ansbach, Bavaria, GermanyIn people:* Henri Anspach , Belgian épée and foil fencer* Paul Anspach , Belgian épée and foil fencer...
.
Fuchs was called to
TübingenTübingen, a traditional university town in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, is situated 30 km southwest of Stuttgart, on a ridge between the Neckar and Ammer rivers.-History:...
by
Ulrich, Duke of WürttembergHerzog Ulrich von Württemberg succeeded his kinsman Eberhard II as Duke of Württemberg in 1498, being declared of age in 1503.-Early life:...
in 1533 to help in reforming the university in the spirit of
humanismHumanism is a perspective common to a wide range of ethical stances that attaches importance to human dignity, concerns, and capabilities, particularly rationality. Although the word has many senses, its meaning comes into focus when contrasted to the supernatural or to appeals to authority...
. He created its first medicinal garden in 1535 and served as chancellor seven times, spending the last thirty-one years of his life as professor of medicine. Fuchs died in Tübingen in 1566.
Scientific views
Like his
medieval predecessorsMedieval medicine in Western Europe was a mixture of existing ideas from antiquity, spiritual influences and what Claude Lévi-Strauss identifies as the "shamanistic complex" and "social consensus." In this era, there was no tradition of scientific medicine, and observations went hand-in-hand with...
and his contemporaries, Fuchs was heavily influenced by the three Greek and Roman writers on medicine and
materia medicaMateria medica is a Latin medical term for the body of collected knowledge about the therapeutic properties of any substance used for healing . In Latin, the term literally means "medical material/substance"...
, Dioscorides,
HippocratesHippocrates of Cos or Hippokrates of Kos - Greek: ; Hippokrátēs was an ancient Greek physician of the Age of Pericles, and was considered one of the most outstanding figures in the history of medicine...
, and
GalenAelius Galenus or Claudius Galenus , better known as Galen of Pergamum , was a prominent Greek physician and philosopher and probably the most accomplished medical researcher of the Roman period. His theories dominated and influenced Western medical science for well over a millennium...
. He wanted to fight the Arab hegemony in medicine, as it had been transmitted by the medical school of
SalernoSalerno is a small city in Campania and is the capital of the province of the same name. It is located on the Gulf of Salerno on the Tyrrhenian Sea....
, and to "return" to the Greek authors. But he saw the importance of practical experience as well and offered botanical field days for the students, where he demonstrated the medicinal plants
in situ. He founded one of the first German
botanical gardenBotanical gardens grow a wide variety of plants primarily to categorize and document for scientific purposes. Botanists and horticulturalists tend the flora and maintain the garden's library and herbarium of dried and documented plant material. Botanical gardens may also serve to entertain and...
s.
Eponymy
Fuchs' name is preserved by the plant
FuchsiaFuchsia is a genus of flowering plants, mostly shrubs, and can grow long shoots, which were identified by Charles Plumier in the late-17th century, and named by Plumier in 1703 after the German botanist Leonhart Fuchs . The English name fuchsias is frequently misspelled "fuschias".- Description...
, discovered on
Santo DomingoSanto Domingo, is the capital and largest city in the Dominican Republic. Its metropolitan population was 2,084,852 in 2003, estimated at 2,253,437 in 2006. The city is located on the Caribbean Sea, at the mouth of the Ozama River...
in the Caribbean in 1696/97 by the French scientist Dom
Charles PlumierCharles Plumier was a French botanist, after whom the genus Plumeria, or Frangipani is named.-Biography:Born in Marseille, at the age of sixteen he entered the religious order of the Minims...
, who published the first description of "
Fuchsia triphylla, flore coccineo" in 1703. The color
fuchsiaFuchsia is a pinkish-purple color named after the flower of the fuchsia plant. Fuchsia is used as an alias for electric magenta.There is also a somewhat redder and slightly less saturated hue termed fashion fuchsia that is used in women's fashion .The first recorded use of fuchsia as a color name...
is also named for him, describing the purplish-red of the shrub's flowers.
Publications
- Errata recentiorum medicorum ("Errors of recent doctors") (Hagenau, 1530), his first publication, in which he argued for the use of "simples" (herb
A herb is a plant that is valued for flavor, scent, or other qualities. Herbs are used in cooking, as medicines, and for spiritual purposes....
s) rather than the noxious "compounds" of arcane ingredients concocted in medieval medicine.
- De historia stirpium commentarii insignes ("Notable commentaries on the history of plants", Basel
Basel is Switzerland's third most populous city . With 830000 inhabitants in the tri-national metropolitan area , Basel is Switzerland's second-largest urban area....
, 1542), his great herbalA[n] herbal is a book, often illustrated, that describes the appearance, medicinal properties, and other characteristics of plants used in herbal medicine...
, which was offered, with varying degrees of fidelity to his text, as "New Kreüterbuch" in a German translation (1543), "New HerbalA[n] herbal is a book, often illustrated, that describes the appearance, medicinal properties, and other characteristics of plants used in herbal medicine...
" in English, "Den nieuwen Herbarius, dat is dat boeck van den cruyden" (1543) in Dutch.
Fuchs tried to identify the plants described by the classical authors. The book contains the description of about 400 wild and more than 100 domesticated plant species and their medical uses ("Krafft und Würckung") in alphabetical order: Fuchs made no attempt at presenting them in a natural system of classification. The first reports of
Zea mays and of chilli peppers were among the exotic new species The text is mainly based on Dioscorides.
The book contains 512 pictures of plants, largely growing locally, in woodcuts. The illustrators were Heinrich Füllmauer and Albert Meyer, the
woodcutWoodcut — formally known as xylography — is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with gouges...
ter Veit Rudolph Speckle, portraits of whom are contained in the volume. It was printed at the famous shop of Michael Isengrin in Basel.
- Eyn Newes hochnutzlichs Büchlin/und Anothomi eynes auffgethonen augs/auch seiner erklärung bewerten purgation/Pflaster/Tollirien/Sälblin pulvern unnd wassern/wie mans machen und brauchen sol (A new, very useful book and anatomy of the open eye/also an explanation of useful purgatives/plasters/poultices/salves, powders and waters/how one should make and use them), 1539.
- Alle Kranckheyt der Augen (All diseases of the eye), 1539.
Fuchs's books on the anatomy of the eye and its diseases were among the standard references on this subject during this period.
- All in all, Leonhart Fuchs wrote more than 50 books and polemics.
External links
Historical editions
Modern editions
- Klaus Dobat/Werner Dressendorfer (eds.) Leonhart Fuchs: The New Herbal of 1543 (Taschen 2001).
- Frederick Meyer/Emily Trueblood/John Heller (eds.) The Great Herbal of Leonhart Fuchs: De Historia Stirpium Commentarii Insignes, 1542: Vol 1 & 2. (Stanford University Press 1999).
Leonhart Fuchs (17 January 1501 – 10 May 1566), sometimes spelled
Leonhard Fuchs, was a
GermanGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
physicianA physician — also known as medical practitioner, doctor of medicine, medical doctor, or simply doctor — practices the ancient profession of medicine, which is concerned with maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease or injury...
and one of the three founding fathers of
botanyBotany, plant science, phytology, or plant biology is a branch of biology and is the scientific study of plant life and development...
, along with
Otto BrunfelsOtto Brunfels was a German theologian and botanist...
and
Hieronymus BockHieronymus Bock , also seen as "Boch", also known under his latinised name Hieronymus Tragus, was a German botanist, physician, and Lutheran minister who began the transition from medieval botany to the modern scientific worldview by arranging plants by their relation or resemblance...
(also called Hieronymus Tragus).
Biography
Fuchs was born in
WemdingWemding is a municipality in the Donau-Ries district of Bavaria, Germany. Botanist Leonhart Fuchs was born here in 1501....
in the Duchy of Bavaria. After visiting a school in
HeilbronnHeilbronn is a city in northern Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is completely surrounded by Heilbronn County and with approximately 121.989 residents, it is the sixth-largest city in the state....
, Fuchs went to the Marienschule in
ErfurtErfurt is the capital city of Thuringia and is the main city nearest to the geographical centre of Germany, located 100 km SW of Leipzig, 150 km N of Nürnberg and 180 km SE of Hannover. Erfurt Airport can be reached by plane via Munich. It lies in the southern part of the Thuringian...
,
ThuringiaThe Free State of Thuringia is located in central Germany. It has an area of and 2.29 million inhabitants, making it the sixth smallest by area and the fifth smallest by population of Germany's sixteen
Bundesländer...
at the age of twelve, and graduated as
Baccalaureus artium. In 1524 he became Magister Artium in
IngolstadtIngolstadt is a city in the Free State of Bavaria, Germany. It is located along the banks of the Danube River, in the center of Bavaria. As of December 31, 2005, Ingolstadt had 121,801 residents. It is part of the Munich Metropolitan Area with a population of more than 5 million.Ingolstadt is...
, and was received
doctor of medicineThe Doctor of Medicine is a doctoral degree for physicians...
in the same year.
From 1524-1526 he practiced as a doctor in
MunichMunich is the capital city of Bavaria, Germany. It is located on the River Isar north of the Bavarian Alps. Munich is the third largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Hamburg...
, until he received a chair of medicine at
IngolstadtIngolstadt is a city in the Free State of Bavaria, Germany. It is located along the banks of the Danube River, in the center of Bavaria. As of December 31, 2005, Ingolstadt had 121,801 residents. It is part of the Munich Metropolitan Area with a population of more than 5 million.Ingolstadt is...
in 1526. From 1528-1531 he was the personal physician of Georg, Margrave of Brandenburg in
AnsbachAnspach may refer to:In places:* Neu-Anspach, Hesse, Germany* The former name of Ansbach, Bavaria, GermanyIn people:* Henri Anspach , Belgian épée and foil fencer* Paul Anspach , Belgian épée and foil fencer...
.
Fuchs was called to
TübingenTübingen, a traditional university town in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, is situated 30 km southwest of Stuttgart, on a ridge between the Neckar and Ammer rivers.-History:...
by
Ulrich, Duke of WürttembergHerzog Ulrich von Württemberg succeeded his kinsman Eberhard II as Duke of Württemberg in 1498, being declared of age in 1503.-Early life:...
in 1533 to help in reforming the university in the spirit of
humanismHumanism is a perspective common to a wide range of ethical stances that attaches importance to human dignity, concerns, and capabilities, particularly rationality. Although the word has many senses, its meaning comes into focus when contrasted to the supernatural or to appeals to authority...
. He created its first medicinal garden in 1535 and served as chancellor seven times, spending the last thirty-one years of his life as professor of medicine. Fuchs died in Tübingen in 1566.
Scientific views
Like his
medieval predecessorsMedieval medicine in Western Europe was a mixture of existing ideas from antiquity, spiritual influences and what Claude Lévi-Strauss identifies as the "shamanistic complex" and "social consensus." In this era, there was no tradition of scientific medicine, and observations went hand-in-hand with...
and his contemporaries, Fuchs was heavily influenced by the three Greek and Roman writers on medicine and
materia medicaMateria medica is a Latin medical term for the body of collected knowledge about the therapeutic properties of any substance used for healing . In Latin, the term literally means "medical material/substance"...
, Dioscorides,
HippocratesHippocrates of Cos or Hippokrates of Kos - Greek: ; Hippokrátēs was an ancient Greek physician of the Age of Pericles, and was considered one of the most outstanding figures in the history of medicine...
, and
GalenAelius Galenus or Claudius Galenus , better known as Galen of Pergamum , was a prominent Greek physician and philosopher and probably the most accomplished medical researcher of the Roman period. His theories dominated and influenced Western medical science for well over a millennium...
. He wanted to fight the Arab hegemony in medicine, as it had been transmitted by the medical school of
SalernoSalerno is a small city in Campania and is the capital of the province of the same name. It is located on the Gulf of Salerno on the Tyrrhenian Sea....
, and to "return" to the Greek authors. But he saw the importance of practical experience as well and offered botanical field days for the students, where he demonstrated the medicinal plants
in situ. He founded one of the first German
botanical gardenBotanical gardens grow a wide variety of plants primarily to categorize and document for scientific purposes. Botanists and horticulturalists tend the flora and maintain the garden's library and herbarium of dried and documented plant material. Botanical gardens may also serve to entertain and...
s.
Eponymy
Fuchs' name is preserved by the plant
FuchsiaFuchsia is a genus of flowering plants, mostly shrubs, and can grow long shoots, which were identified by Charles Plumier in the late-17th century, and named by Plumier in 1703 after the German botanist Leonhart Fuchs . The English name fuchsias is frequently misspelled "fuschias".- Description...
, discovered on
Santo DomingoSanto Domingo, is the capital and largest city in the Dominican Republic. Its metropolitan population was 2,084,852 in 2003, estimated at 2,253,437 in 2006. The city is located on the Caribbean Sea, at the mouth of the Ozama River...
in the Caribbean in 1696/97 by the French scientist Dom
Charles PlumierCharles Plumier was a French botanist, after whom the genus Plumeria, or Frangipani is named.-Biography:Born in Marseille, at the age of sixteen he entered the religious order of the Minims...
, who published the first description of "
Fuchsia triphylla, flore coccineo" in 1703. The color
fuchsiaFuchsia is a pinkish-purple color named after the flower of the fuchsia plant. Fuchsia is used as an alias for electric magenta.There is also a somewhat redder and slightly less saturated hue termed fashion fuchsia that is used in women's fashion .The first recorded use of fuchsia as a color name...
is also named for him, describing the purplish-red of the shrub's flowers.
Publications
- Errata recentiorum medicorum ("Errors of recent doctors") (Hagenau, 1530), his first publication, in which he argued for the use of "simples" (herb
A herb is a plant that is valued for flavor, scent, or other qualities. Herbs are used in cooking, as medicines, and for spiritual purposes....
s) rather than the noxious "compounds" of arcane ingredients concocted in medieval medicine.
- De historia stirpium commentarii insignes ("Notable commentaries on the history of plants", Basel
Basel is Switzerland's third most populous city . With 830000 inhabitants in the tri-national metropolitan area , Basel is Switzerland's second-largest urban area....
, 1542), his great herbalA[n] herbal is a book, often illustrated, that describes the appearance, medicinal properties, and other characteristics of plants used in herbal medicine...
, which was offered, with varying degrees of fidelity to his text, as "New Kreüterbuch" in a German translation (1543), "New HerbalA[n] herbal is a book, often illustrated, that describes the appearance, medicinal properties, and other characteristics of plants used in herbal medicine...
" in English, "Den nieuwen Herbarius, dat is dat boeck van den cruyden" (1543) in Dutch.
Fuchs tried to identify the plants described by the classical authors. The book contains the description of about 400 wild and more than 100 domesticated plant species and their medical uses ("Krafft und Würckung") in alphabetical order: Fuchs made no attempt at presenting them in a natural system of classification. The first reports of
Zea mays and of chilli peppers were among the exotic new species The text is mainly based on Dioscorides.
The book contains 512 pictures of plants, largely growing locally, in woodcuts. The illustrators were Heinrich Füllmauer and Albert Meyer, the
woodcutWoodcut — formally known as xylography — is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with gouges...
ter Veit Rudolph Speckle, portraits of whom are contained in the volume. It was printed at the famous shop of Michael Isengrin in Basel.
- Eyn Newes hochnutzlichs Büchlin/und Anothomi eynes auffgethonen augs/auch seiner erklärung bewerten purgation/Pflaster/Tollirien/Sälblin pulvern unnd wassern/wie mans machen und brauchen sol (A new, very useful book and anatomy of the open eye/also an explanation of useful purgatives/plasters/poultices/salves, powders and waters/how one should make and use them), 1539.
- Alle Kranckheyt der Augen (All diseases of the eye), 1539.
Fuchs's books on the anatomy of the eye and its diseases were among the standard references on this subject during this period.
- All in all, Leonhart Fuchs wrote more than 50 books and polemics.
External links
Historical editions
Modern editions
- Klaus Dobat/Werner Dressendorfer (eds.) Leonhart Fuchs: The New Herbal of 1543 (Taschen 2001).
- Frederick Meyer/Emily Trueblood/John Heller (eds.) The Great Herbal of Leonhart Fuchs: De Historia Stirpium Commentarii Insignes, 1542: Vol 1 & 2. (Stanford University Press 1999).
Leonhart Fuchs (17 January 1501 – 10 May 1566), sometimes spelled
Leonhard Fuchs, was a
GermanGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
physicianA physician — also known as medical practitioner, doctor of medicine, medical doctor, or simply doctor — practices the ancient profession of medicine, which is concerned with maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease or injury...
and one of the three founding fathers of
botanyBotany, plant science, phytology, or plant biology is a branch of biology and is the scientific study of plant life and development...
, along with
Otto BrunfelsOtto Brunfels was a German theologian and botanist...
and
Hieronymus BockHieronymus Bock , also seen as "Boch", also known under his latinised name Hieronymus Tragus, was a German botanist, physician, and Lutheran minister who began the transition from medieval botany to the modern scientific worldview by arranging plants by their relation or resemblance...
(also called Hieronymus Tragus).
Biography
Fuchs was born in
WemdingWemding is a municipality in the Donau-Ries district of Bavaria, Germany. Botanist Leonhart Fuchs was born here in 1501....
in the Duchy of Bavaria. After visiting a school in
HeilbronnHeilbronn is a city in northern Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is completely surrounded by Heilbronn County and with approximately 121.989 residents, it is the sixth-largest city in the state....
, Fuchs went to the Marienschule in
ErfurtErfurt is the capital city of Thuringia and is the main city nearest to the geographical centre of Germany, located 100 km SW of Leipzig, 150 km N of Nürnberg and 180 km SE of Hannover. Erfurt Airport can be reached by plane via Munich. It lies in the southern part of the Thuringian...
,
ThuringiaThe Free State of Thuringia is located in central Germany. It has an area of and 2.29 million inhabitants, making it the sixth smallest by area and the fifth smallest by population of Germany's sixteen
Bundesländer...
at the age of twelve, and graduated as
Baccalaureus artium. In 1524 he became Magister Artium in
IngolstadtIngolstadt is a city in the Free State of Bavaria, Germany. It is located along the banks of the Danube River, in the center of Bavaria. As of December 31, 2005, Ingolstadt had 121,801 residents. It is part of the Munich Metropolitan Area with a population of more than 5 million.Ingolstadt is...
, and was received
doctor of medicineThe Doctor of Medicine is a doctoral degree for physicians...
in the same year.
From 1524-1526 he practiced as a doctor in
MunichMunich is the capital city of Bavaria, Germany. It is located on the River Isar north of the Bavarian Alps. Munich is the third largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Hamburg...
, until he received a chair of medicine at
IngolstadtIngolstadt is a city in the Free State of Bavaria, Germany. It is located along the banks of the Danube River, in the center of Bavaria. As of December 31, 2005, Ingolstadt had 121,801 residents. It is part of the Munich Metropolitan Area with a population of more than 5 million.Ingolstadt is...
in 1526. From 1528-1531 he was the personal physician of Georg, Margrave of Brandenburg in
AnsbachAnspach may refer to:In places:* Neu-Anspach, Hesse, Germany* The former name of Ansbach, Bavaria, GermanyIn people:* Henri Anspach , Belgian épée and foil fencer* Paul Anspach , Belgian épée and foil fencer...
.
Fuchs was called to
TübingenTübingen, a traditional university town in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, is situated 30 km southwest of Stuttgart, on a ridge between the Neckar and Ammer rivers.-History:...
by
Ulrich, Duke of WürttembergHerzog Ulrich von Württemberg succeeded his kinsman Eberhard II as Duke of Württemberg in 1498, being declared of age in 1503.-Early life:...
in 1533 to help in reforming the university in the spirit of
humanismHumanism is a perspective common to a wide range of ethical stances that attaches importance to human dignity, concerns, and capabilities, particularly rationality. Although the word has many senses, its meaning comes into focus when contrasted to the supernatural or to appeals to authority...
. He created its first medicinal garden in 1535 and served as chancellor seven times, spending the last thirty-one years of his life as professor of medicine. Fuchs died in Tübingen in 1566.
Scientific views
Like his
medieval predecessorsMedieval medicine in Western Europe was a mixture of existing ideas from antiquity, spiritual influences and what Claude Lévi-Strauss identifies as the "shamanistic complex" and "social consensus." In this era, there was no tradition of scientific medicine, and observations went hand-in-hand with...
and his contemporaries, Fuchs was heavily influenced by the three Greek and Roman writers on medicine and
materia medicaMateria medica is a Latin medical term for the body of collected knowledge about the therapeutic properties of any substance used for healing . In Latin, the term literally means "medical material/substance"...
, Dioscorides,
HippocratesHippocrates of Cos or Hippokrates of Kos - Greek: ; Hippokrátēs was an ancient Greek physician of the Age of Pericles, and was considered one of the most outstanding figures in the history of medicine...
, and
GalenAelius Galenus or Claudius Galenus , better known as Galen of Pergamum , was a prominent Greek physician and philosopher and probably the most accomplished medical researcher of the Roman period. His theories dominated and influenced Western medical science for well over a millennium...
. He wanted to fight the Arab hegemony in medicine, as it had been transmitted by the medical school of
SalernoSalerno is a small city in Campania and is the capital of the province of the same name. It is located on the Gulf of Salerno on the Tyrrhenian Sea....
, and to "return" to the Greek authors. But he saw the importance of practical experience as well and offered botanical field days for the students, where he demonstrated the medicinal plants
in situ. He founded one of the first German
botanical gardenBotanical gardens grow a wide variety of plants primarily to categorize and document for scientific purposes. Botanists and horticulturalists tend the flora and maintain the garden's library and herbarium of dried and documented plant material. Botanical gardens may also serve to entertain and...
s.
Eponymy
Fuchs' name is preserved by the plant
FuchsiaFuchsia is a genus of flowering plants, mostly shrubs, and can grow long shoots, which were identified by Charles Plumier in the late-17th century, and named by Plumier in 1703 after the German botanist Leonhart Fuchs . The English name fuchsias is frequently misspelled "fuschias".- Description...
, discovered on
Santo DomingoSanto Domingo, is the capital and largest city in the Dominican Republic. Its metropolitan population was 2,084,852 in 2003, estimated at 2,253,437 in 2006. The city is located on the Caribbean Sea, at the mouth of the Ozama River...
in the Caribbean in 1696/97 by the French scientist Dom
Charles PlumierCharles Plumier was a French botanist, after whom the genus Plumeria, or Frangipani is named.-Biography:Born in Marseille, at the age of sixteen he entered the religious order of the Minims...
, who published the first description of "
Fuchsia triphylla, flore coccineo" in 1703. The color
fuchsiaFuchsia is a pinkish-purple color named after the flower of the fuchsia plant. Fuchsia is used as an alias for electric magenta.There is also a somewhat redder and slightly less saturated hue termed fashion fuchsia that is used in women's fashion .The first recorded use of fuchsia as a color name...
is also named for him, describing the purplish-red of the shrub's flowers.
Publications
- Errata recentiorum medicorum ("Errors of recent doctors") (Hagenau, 1530), his first publication, in which he argued for the use of "simples" (herb
A herb is a plant that is valued for flavor, scent, or other qualities. Herbs are used in cooking, as medicines, and for spiritual purposes....
s) rather than the noxious "compounds" of arcane ingredients concocted in medieval medicine.
- De historia stirpium commentarii insignes ("Notable commentaries on the history of plants", Basel
Basel is Switzerland's third most populous city . With 830000 inhabitants in the tri-national metropolitan area , Basel is Switzerland's second-largest urban area....
, 1542), his great herbalA[n] herbal is a book, often illustrated, that describes the appearance, medicinal properties, and other characteristics of plants used in herbal medicine...
, which was offered, with varying degrees of fidelity to his text, as "New Kreüterbuch" in a German translation (1543), "New HerbalA[n] herbal is a book, often illustrated, that describes the appearance, medicinal properties, and other characteristics of plants used in herbal medicine...
" in English, "Den nieuwen Herbarius, dat is dat boeck van den cruyden" (1543) in Dutch.
Fuchs tried to identify the plants described by the classical authors. The book contains the description of about 400 wild and more than 100 domesticated plant species and their medical uses ("Krafft und Würckung") in alphabetical order: Fuchs made no attempt at presenting them in a natural system of classification. The first reports of
Zea mays and of chilli peppers were among the exotic new species The text is mainly based on Dioscorides.
The book contains 512 pictures of plants, largely growing locally, in woodcuts. The illustrators were Heinrich Füllmauer and Albert Meyer, the
woodcutWoodcut — formally known as xylography — is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with gouges...
ter Veit Rudolph Speckle, portraits of whom are contained in the volume. It was printed at the famous shop of Michael Isengrin in Basel.
- Eyn Newes hochnutzlichs Büchlin/und Anothomi eynes auffgethonen augs/auch seiner erklärung bewerten purgation/Pflaster/Tollirien/Sälblin pulvern unnd wassern/wie mans machen und brauchen sol (A new, very useful book and anatomy of the open eye/also an explanation of useful purgatives/plasters/poultices/salves, powders and waters/how one should make and use them), 1539.
- Alle Kranckheyt der Augen (All diseases of the eye), 1539.
Fuchs's books on the anatomy of the eye and its diseases were among the standard references on this subject during this period.
- All in all, Leonhart Fuchs wrote more than 50 books and polemics.
External links
Historical editions
Modern editions
- Klaus Dobat/Werner Dressendorfer (eds.) Leonhart Fuchs: The New Herbal of 1543 (Taschen 2001).
- Frederick Meyer/Emily Trueblood/John Heller (eds.) The Great Herbal of Leonhart Fuchs: De Historia Stirpium Commentarii Insignes, 1542: Vol 1 & 2. (Stanford University Press 1999).