Instalment Four

Bitter Herbs of Time
Healing Practices and the Experience of the Body in Former Centuries

Herbals and medical handbooks preserve knowledge about plants and diseases, but also humanity’s refusal to accept suffering. Recipes and treatment schemes bear witness to a persistent effort to lessen pain and come to terms with the inevitable.

Alongside printed knowledge there existed another kind – preserved in household manuscripts. These were the noblemen’s silvae rerum, family books maintained over many years, often across several generations.

Each of them is a unique microcosm in which, between a remedy for fever and a method of treating wounds, one may find news of an epidemic, records of births and deaths, notes from local assemblies, and commentary on public affairs. Body and state, illness and politics coexist on the same pages.

Silvae rerum and herbals are invaluable testimonies to everyday life in former centuries. They preserve the memory of a world in which illness was a universal experience, and care for survival – both of the individual and of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth – formed part of the same daily practice.

A

Inc.Qu.4
Johannes von Cuba (?)Herbarius
Moguncja, druk. Peter Schöffer
1484

B

2867
Gregor Reisch
Margarita philosophica
Bazylea, druk. Michael Furter i Johann Schott
1508

C

310381
Adam Lonitzer
Kreuterbuch
Frankfurt nad Menem
druk. Sigmund Latomus
1604

D

Inc.Qu.39a
Sebastian Brant
Navis stultifera
Bazylea, druk. Nicolaus Lamparter
1507