Castore Durante, Herbario nuovo (New Herbarium)

Rome: for Iacomo Bericchia, & Iacomo Tornierij, 1585

Sala del Dottorato, Cinq A-III-07

Castore Durante (1529-1590) graduated in Medicine in Perugia, was Pope Sixtus V personal physician and “Reader” of the so-called “Semplici” (educational courses held after the XVI century in Rome that included Medical, Botanical and Pharmaceutical notions) at the Sapienza.

His Herbario nuovo, here displayed in its first edition, presented in alphabetical order more than 950 medical plants from Europe and the East and West Indies.

The abundance of illustrations ensured lasting editorial success until the early eighteenth century.

For each species it provides, in addition to illustration, name (also in other languages), shape, location, quality, and virtue both in Italian and Latin.

Among the various species there are also exotic ones that were first used in pharmacology, such as “pomi d’oro” (golden apples)/tomatoes and Indian corn, and only later as foodstuff.

In the sixteenth century Botany was recognized as a science and the first chairs of botany were established (in 1513 in Rome, in 1533 in Padova, between 1525 and 1537 in Perugia); in the wake of the monastic tradition of the gardens of the so-called “Semplici”, the first vegetable and botanic gardens were established, and Pietro Andrea Mattioli published in latin, for the first time in 1544, the “Discorsi on De Materia Medica of Dioscoride Pedanio” the illustrious ancestor of Herbario nuovo.

This work of the first century. A.D. exerted a profound influence on the history of medicine until the seventeenth century and the herbaria in general were fundamental texts for the medical and the apothecary profession until the birth of the modern pharmaceutical industry.

This page offers a good example of the organization of the Herbario. Durante writes here about garlic, beginning: "eating garlic is a remedy against all poisons."

Against bad breath he finally suggests fresh fava beans, wild celery and fresh rue leaves.