The Most Elegant Poem of Aemilius Macer of Verona on the Virtues of Herbs, with a Very Concise Exposition of the Difficult and Obscure Passages by Georg Pictorius of Villingen, Doctor of Medicine and Archiater at the Imperial Court at Ensisheim, Never Before Published; with an Adjoining Compendious Table of Degrees, a Fruitful Index of Everything Contained Herein, and at the End an Elenchus, so that Anyone May Easily Learn from It the Medicinal Treatment of All Diseases from the Crown of the Head to the Soles of the Feet

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Original title: De herbarum virtutibus Aemilii Macri Veronensis elegantissima poësis, cum succincta admodum difficilium & obscurorum locorum, D. Georgii Pictorii Villingani doctoris medici, & apud Caesaream curiam Ensishemii achiatrum, expositione, antea nunquam in lucem edita; adhaerentibus graduum compendiosa tabula, omniumque hic contentorum fructuoso indice, & in fine elencho, ut quisque facile ex eo percipiat omnium morborum a summo vertice ad imos pedes medicinalem curam A small octavo Latin herbal printed at Basel by Heinrich Petri in March 1559. Its core is an eleventh-century Latin hexameter didactic poem on the powers of plants, circulated under the name Macer Floridus or Aemilius Macer of Verona, comprising seventy-six verse chapters on garden simples and, toward the end, imported aromatics such as pepper, ginger, galangal, zedoary, cloves, cinnamon, and spikenard. Around the poem Georg Pictorius, physician and archiater at the imperial court at Ensisheim, supplies prose scholia expounding difficult and obscure passages, defining pharmaceutical and nosological terms with Greek etymologies and German plant-names, comparing authorities such as Galen and Avicenna on the degrees of simple medicines, discussing disputed plant identifications (for example borage and buglossum), reporting and often dismissing magical or 'old wives'' claims while retaining remedies attested by repeated trial, and denouncing adulterating drug-sellers and itinerant practitioners against the ideal of the rational physician. The volume includes a dedicatory epistle and address to the reader, Pietro Crinito's life of Macer, a compendious table of Galenic degrees, an index, a closing elenchus of ailments arranged from the crown of the head to the soles of the feet, fifty-two small plant woodcuts, and an appended satirical elegiac poem, De herba quadam exotica, on 'the herb whose name is woman.' 👉 Read our introductory primer, full report, and finding guide here 📜 View the original source file This text was transcribed and translated as part of the ExLatinis project—an effort by Leo to make English translations of every published text in Latin in early modern Europe (between 1450 and 1750) available to the public for free online.

• Read our introductory primer, full report, and finding guide here
• View the original source file

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