Grete Herball
[1] The Grete Herball is a single volume compendium which details the medicinal properties (or virtues) of plants and some non-botanical items according to the system of humoralism.
Its full title is "The grete herball: whiche geueth parfyt knowlege and under standyng of all maner of herbes & there gracyous vertues whiche god hath ordeyned for our prosperous welfare and helth: for they hele & cure all maner of dyseases and sekenesses that fall or mysfortune to all maner of creatoures of god created: practysed by many expert and wyse maysters, as Aucienna & other &c." Like most medieval and early modern herbals, the Grete Herball is made up of information taken from earlier works.
[2] De Materia Medica (Περὶ ὕλης ἰατρικῆς) of the 1st century Pedanius Dioscorides is considered one of the most important encyclopedias of plant knowledge from the time, but herbals became numerous and wholesale lifting of information common and expected.
[4] Later botanists, such as William Turner and Nicholas Culpeper, would begin to break this tradition and put their own observations, research, and theories into their herbals alongside older knowledge.
They are in fact copies of a series of woodcuts which first appeared in the German Herbarius zu Teutsch (also known as Der Gart).
One such book is "The vertuose boke of Distillacyon of the waters of all maner of Herbes (1527), translated by Laurence Andrew from the Liber de arte distillandi by Hieronymus Braunschweig, [which] is illustrated with cuts from the same wood-blocks as the Grete Herball.
"[9] The book is printed in a double column format with black letter typeface and contains a variety of woodcuts depicting plants, animals, people, and garden scenes.
Botanist Richard Pulteney's description of a 1526 copy states that "...if printed with numbered pages, [it] would make three hundred and fifty, exclusive of the Preface and Index.
Treveris was active as a printer between approximately 1525 and 1532, during which time he printed such works as Hieronymus Braunschweig's Noble Handiwork of Surgery (1525), the Grete Herball (1526, 1529), and the Polychronicon (1527).
The Grete Herball's translation from French may have been performed by his associate Lawrence Andrewe, a fellow printer and bookseller, but this is as yet unconfirmed.
Some copies of the Herball contain an image of Treveris's personal device, a shield bearing his initials held up by a wild man and woman.
Sotheby's auction house valued one 1526 copy (bound together with Treveris's printing of the Noble Handiwork of Surgery (1525)) between £50,000 and £70,000 GBP.
Accompanying woodcuts demonstrate this belief, but the Grete Herball's entry text dismisses the myth outright: "Some say that the male hath figure or shape of a man.
This categorization allowed doctors to prescribe a corresponding medicine for diseases, which were defined by the same system in a separate section of the book.
Foods that double as remedies are also present, with cheese prescribed for purgation, butter, honey, and zipules (a type of heavy fritter) recommended for toothaches.
Besides medical uses, these entries also provide information on cosmetic applications of items, such as the bones of sepia (cuttlefish) for whitening the teeth and complexion.
