GARDEN OF HEALTH, AN ACCOUNT OF TWO HERBALS THE GART DER GESUNDHEIT AND THE HORTIUS SANITATIS.|THE

N.P.: Book Club of California, The, 1957. cloth-backed boards. Leaf Book. 4to. cloth-backed boards. (vi), 41 pages. Limited to 300 copies and printed by Lawton Kennedy. Prospectus loosely inserted. The leaves have only minor soiling and toning. The book is in pristine condition. With an original leaf of the HORTIUS SANITATIS, 1499, loosely inserted. The leaf has five wood engravings and one wood-engraved character. Furthermore, an additional bi-fold signature of the HORTIUS SANITATIS has been loosely inserted and contains a total of four pages with nine wood engravings and three wood-engraved characters. To have a signature still intact is very rare.



Introduction, history with 38 illustrations in the text, a list of works consulted and a bibliography of editions printed before 1500.



It was an agreeable conceit of the fifteenth century to attribute to its books of herbs and materia medica the qualities of a garden. Two great herbals literally bore the name of "the garden of health"- the Gart der Gesundheit, which first appeared in Mainz, the birthplace of printing, in 1485, and the Hortus Sanitatis, which was published in the same historic city six years later. This study contains numerous illustrations from both.