Allegorical and historical scenes of medicine: including a dissection and a distillation laboratory, and Hygieia receiving the organic and mineral bounty of the earth employed in remedies. Engraving by J.F. Fleischberger, 1660.

Date:
1660
Reference:
25005i
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Description

This title page to the posthumous 1660 publication of Gregor Horst's complete works is divided into three horizontal registers. A cartouche bearing the title in the central register is crowned by a smaller cartouche in which one sees a cock encircled by a serpent, both symbols of Aesculapius, around which is the motto: "Prudentia et vigilantia". The figures on either side of the title are Hippocrates, who holds a scroll on which it is written: "vita brevis ars longa" while the other figure, most likely Aristotle, holds aloft an armillary sphere in his right hand and with his left, supports a tablet that reads: "quod est superius est sicut inferius". In the central scene of the top register, the enthroned figure of Hygieia accepts a vessel from a woman who indicates a female patient in the bed before them, while another woman with clasped hands looks on. With her left hand, Hygieia grasps a cord from which is suspended a pentagram, employed here as an emblem of health, that descends by a hand that emerges through clouds that surround the tetragrammaton, the name Jehovah written in Hebrew. On either side of this room are landscape scenes. On the left a satyr bears a cornucopia of fruits of the earth before a landscape filled with a variety of animals and vegetation, birds and a swarm of bees. On the right Vulcan holds a cornucopia of the elements before a mining scene and an active volcano. Together they represent the harvest of both above and below the earth which may be used in healing. The lower register is concerned with scenes of seventeenth-century medicine. On the left a disputation is taking place, perhaps a degree defence. On the right is a distillation laboratory. In the centre, a human dissection is about to take place in an anatomical theatre. The anatomist, who touches the corpse while indicating the skeleton set up against the pier to the right, is probably Gregor Horst, who was the chief physician of Ulm, and whose portrait, designed by Andreas Schuch and engraved by Johann Friedrich Fleischberger, who also engraved this title page, is included in the book, presents him in similar dress and a square-cut beard

Publication/Creation

Norimbergæ [Nuremberg] : Impensis Ioh. And. & Wolffg: Iun: Endteror: Hæred, 1660.

Physical description

1 print : engraving ; image 28.4 x 16.1 cm

Lettering

Gregorii Horstii, senioris, tou makaritou <Greek> opera medica Yehova [Hebrew] ; Prudentia et vigilantia. ; Vita brevis ars longa. ; Quod est superius est sicut inferius.

Reference

Wellcome Collection 25005i

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