4 results
General History of the Things of New Spain by Fray Bernardino de Sahagún: The Florentine Codex. Book XI: Natural Things
Historia general de las cosas de nueva España (General history of the things of New Spain) is an encyclopedic work about the people and culture of central Mexico compiled by Fray Bernardino de Sahagún (1499–1590), a Franciscan missionary who arrived in Mexico in 1529, eight years after completion of the Spanish conquest by Hernan Cortés. Commonly referred to as the Florentine Codex, the manuscript consists of 12 books devoted to different topics. Book XI, the longest in the codex, is a treatise on natural history. Following the traditional division ...
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Medicea Laurenziana Library, Florence
The Exquisite Book on Effective Spices
This 17th-century manuscript by Zawraq al-Maghribī is a treatise on the uses of herbs and animal body parts. Based on the teaching legacy of his father, Ḥafṣ Īsā ibn Husayn, the author states that he personally has tested all the information contained in the book. The work is divided into 12 sections, methodically arranged with reference to the human body, literally from head to toe. Chapter 1 covers headaches; Chapter 2, the digestive tract and the chest; Chapter 3, the stomach, liver, pancreas, kidneys, and bladder; Chapter 4, the stomach ...
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National Library and Archives of Egypt
The Full Moon and its Illumination of the Operations of the Sun and the Moon
The author or compiler of this manuscript, Alī ibn Sālim ibn Muhammad, introduces himself as a student of Dāwūd al-Antāki, and further attributes the text he is presenting to the famous eighth-century authority on science, Jābir Ibn Hayyān. The text is divided into three main sections followed by a conclusion. The first section is on mines, and discusses the association between various mines and celestial bodies. The second section covers stones; the third section discusses plants and herbs. There is an additional folio with some information not contained in the ...
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National Library and Archives of Egypt
Book of Herbs
Johannes Hartlieb’s Kräuterbuch (Book of herbs) of 1462 is basically an extract from Konrad von Megenberg’s Buch der Natur (Book of nature) written a century earlier, which was the first natural history in the German language. Hartlieb’s subject is plants, mostly herbs, and their medical uses. What makes the Kräuterbuch special is the side-by-side presentation of text and images. The high cost of such a richly decorated book makes it unlikely that it was actually used by doctors or pharmacists of the time. The botanical imprecision of ...
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Berlin State Library - Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation