gems, ancient gemology, ancient jewelry, early metallurgy, history of gemology, early lapidary, history

Sinkankas: Hortus Sanitatis, Mainz 1485, is apparently the first edition in German of this renowned herbal. Other German editions followed in 1486, 1487, 1488, and 1496. The first Latin edition appeared in Mainz in 1491, with further editions published between 1496 and 1536 in various languages and locations; none of these have been seen except for the edition described below. A complete collation of the 1491 Mainz Latin edition appears in The Herbert Clark Hoover Collection, pp. 103–4, and another collation exists for the Strasbourg 1517 edition. According to Bibliographie Universelle, vol. 10, p. 327, and Haller’s Bibliothèque Botanique (2 vols., 1771–72), there is a list of all the editions in both German and Latin, including translations into other languages. More information is available in Ellen Shaffer’s Herbal Cat. Health, 1957, no. 35, and in Hunt, 1949, no. 12. A 1924 facsimile edition of the Hortus Sanitatis was published by Verlag der Münchener Drucke, accompanied by W. L. Schreiber’s study Die Kräuterbücher des XV und XVI Jahrhunderts, 64 pp. (not seen). See also Agassiz El, 138. The section on stones—including gemstones—comprises 144 chapters, each devoted to a single stone, beginning with “Adamas” and ending with “Zignites,” as listed under “Tabula de Lapidibus.” As might be expected, many of the stones are so vaguely described that modern identification is often impossible.