„Polacy jeszcze na onym babim Herbarzu siedzą”, czyli o fenomenie polskich edycji Ogrodu zdrowia
“Poles are still sitting on that old woman’s Herbarium”, or the phenomenon of Polish editions of The Garden of Health

Summary/Abstract: When in 1564, Marcin Siennik’s Experienced Medicines (Lekarstwa doświadczone), published thanks to the efforts of Łazarz Andrysowicz, appeared on the Polish publishing market, everything indicated that the Gardens of Health (Ogrody zdrowia), which had previously reigned supreme, would become forgotten. Especially since the graphic equipment, which plays an important role in herbarium publications, has remained largely unchanged since the first edition from 1534 (On Herbs and Their Power (O ziołach I mocy ich), Kraków, Florian Ungler), and its quality is far from perfect. Meanwhile, creators of foreign herbaria competed with each other in providing their works with illustrations that were more faithful to nature. It is enough to recall the excellent Herbarum vivae eicones by Otto Brunfels (Strasbourg, Johann Schott 1530) or De Historia stirpium commentarii insignes by Leonhart Fuchs (Basel, Michael Isengrin 1542). And although Experienced Medicines was far from reaching a similar editorial level, its publication was a clear step in the right direction. Unfortunately, only four years later, in Mikołaj Szarfenberger’s publishing house, Herbarz was created, i.e. a description of local, foreign and overseas herbs (Herbarz, to jest ziół tutecznych, postronnych i zamorskich opisanie), which is nothing more than another variant of Gardens of Health, which, on top of that, was developed by Marcin Siennik, who had previously sharply criticized this publication.The aim of this article is therefore to try to answer the question of what the phenomenon of Polish editions of Gardens of Health was. Why, at a time when pharmacopoeias were being published in foreign centers that were more and more modern and more carefully illustrated, the same work with its roots in the Middle Ages was still being published in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth?

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