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Mainz / DPA
Gardeners at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz in Germany are attempting to bring to life a 15th-century herb garden partly based on Arab medical traditions.
In their botanical gardens they’ve planted more than 70 plants featured in a 1485 book — published in the German city of Mainz — called
Gart der Gesundheit (Garden of Health).
“The integral approach in this herb book is still current,” says Ralf Omlor, the curator of the botanical gardens, as he gives a tour, pointing out mandrake, mugwort, dittany and agrimony.”Five hundred years ago, medical care was mostly based on plants,” says the botanist. But people didn’t expect their ailments to be cured instantly.”Rather, the herbal treatments were supposed to restore the body’s harmony and make healing possible.” The book was commissioned by a senior Mainz Catholic priest, Bernard von Breidenbach, and written by the doctor Johann Wonnecke von Kaub.
In the introduction, the canon writes, “Often have I observed the wonderful work of nature’s Creator in myself.” The book, he wrote, was intended to show “by which herbs and creatures a sick person … may regain his bodily health.”The book contains woodcuts and descriptions of 382 plants as well as 25 animal-derived compounds and 28 minerals. Not all of them can be grown in Germany because of the climate.
In the chapter on garlic, the doctor writes, “Smearing the head with garlic juice will kill lice and nits.”The recommendations elsewhere also give some idea of the ailments from which people suffered 500 years ago; sorrel seed for example was apparently good at getting rid of round worms.
The author of the book – the first of its kind printed in the German language – brings together three main sources of medical wisdom, according to Omlor.They are: ancient written records which have often been transmitted and modified by Arab scholars; medieval monastic traditions; and traditional home cures usually passed on orally between the generations.
That’s why the books contain references to cures and the properties of plants which have since been scientifically proven – such as the antibacterial properties of garlic – as well as more bizarre tips based on superstition and housewives’ tales.The influence of the work of Hildegard von Bingen, a 12th-century German botanist and mystic, can also be found in the book.
The recommendations from Gart der Gesundheit have been used by generations of people.More than 60 editions of it were printed, well into the 18th century.Some of the woodcuts from the book have been
chiselled onto a stone slab in the middle of the university’s garden.
The pictures, which are very accurate, make the book the forerunner of scientific botany, according to Omlor. Pharmacist Otto Eichele is one of the first people to visit the medicinal garden.”I try to open people’s eyes,” he says.
Even if people can’t remember all the plants’ names, he says, the garden might make them look a little more closely at nature.”A large part of the population wants to get back to nature,” he says. “As a pharmacist I notice that, because people want to have more plant-based remedies.”
People can even try the book’s suggested cures at home.Eaten raw, the starflower, with its distinctive blue petals, for example, can “quell the trembling of the heart and make people cheerful.”
