Tractatus De Herbis

This late-medieval Latin herbal, surviving in illustrated manuscripts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, is a practical catalogue of plants used in medicine rather than a narrative. Each entry typically names an herb, notes where it grows, and lists the complaints it was thought to treat: fevers, wounds, digestive trouble, and women's ailments among them. The text draws on older Mediterranean and Arabic pharmacological tradition and is organised for consultation, not continuous reading. Accompanying pictures show roots, leaves, and flowers so that a plant can be recognised in the field or market. The work is anonymous. First circulating in manuscript in the later Middle Ages, it records how learned and vernacular healing shared a common plant lore.

Bound in dark green goatskin with leather onlays over bevelled boards, blocked with a design by David Eccles, handmade endpapers, all page edges gilt, ribbon marker. Commentary volume by Minta Collins and Sandra Rapael, bound in quarter buckram with paper sides and title label. Solander box in dark green buckram.