Leonhard Fuchs and Anonymous, 1539 and 1538

FUCHS, Leonhard (1501-1566). Alle Kranckheyt der Augen ... allen augen artzten hochnöttig zuwissen. Strasbourg: Heinrich Vogtherr, 1539. [Bound with:] [Anonymous, fl 1538]. Ein newes hochnutzlichs Büchlin von erkantnus der Kranckheyten der Augen. Strasbourg: Heinrich Vogtherr, 1538.

Exceptionally rare first editions of two important early treatises on ophthalmology. The second work here is "the first separate publication on diseases of the eye after Grassi (1474). This very rare anonymous work was intended, according to its title, to provide highly useful knowledge of the anatomy of the eye, and eye diseases and their various remedies" (Morton). It is bound after Fuchs's more expansive and technical treatise on the eye from the same publisher, perhaps the very work promised at the end of the anonymous Büchlin.

Because ophthalmology was the province of barber-surgeons, publications by learned medical authorities did not appear until relatively late. The Büchlin here is aimed at lay audience, although providing a sophisticated level of medical information for the time, including a detailed woodcut diagram of the eye which may have inspired a similar illustration in the 1572 edition of Alhazen. The text concludes with several pages of remedies for various eye afflictions. The later work, by the celebrated medical botanist Leonhard Fuchs, influenced Bartisch’s celebrated 1583 Augendienst—although Hirschburg has suggested it may not have been composed by Fuchs himself, but rather adapted from his work by the publisher, Heinrich Vogtherr. In any case, the recipes at the end of the treatise are not from Fuchs but from the Vogtherr family. Both works are rare at auction; this is the only complete copy of either which is recorded by ABPC or RBH. VD16 F 3229; VD16 1189; not in Wellcome.

Two works in one, quarto (195 x 142mm). I: Woodcut armorial printer's devices on title and final page, woodcut diagram of eyeball; II: Woodcut eyeball diagram, woodcut printer's device with portrait on final leaf (some light dampstaining around the edges). 19th-century German decorated paper boards (rebacked preserving backstrip, worn).