„Von der Krafft und Würckung": Plants as food and medicine reread in Hieronymus Bock's ‘Kreütter Buch’ (1539)

Plants form an integral part of our diet, provide food for our livestock and are an important source for medicine.

The systematic description of plants began in ancient times with Aristotle's student Theophrastus. Greco-Roman physicians such as Dioscorides also interpreted plants as the basis for a healthy diet and for the treatment of diseases. In the 16th century, the physicians and plant researchers Hieronymus Bock, Otto Brunfels and Leonhart Fuchs (also known as the “fathers of botany”) laid groundwork for modern systematic botany in Germany. They compiled the knowledge of the time of plant species occuring in Central Europe. They described in detail the specific benefits of selected plants for human nutrition as well as for the healing and prevention of diseases.

The natural history exhibition shows book pages of selected plant species from an original “Kreütter Buch” by Hieronymus Bock from 1572. The book is artfully illustrated and hand-colored with impressively detailed, partly iconographic woodcuts by David Kandel.

Immerse yourself in the state of knowledge about the biology of plants in the 16th century and their use for nutrition and medicine, and discover interesting insights from today's research perspective.