Mirror of Nature

Four special stamps with illustrations from historical medical books take their viewers on a journey through the natural sciences. The illustrations of the works were based on elaborate woodcuts at the time.

The first printed book on plants was "Herbarium Apulei Platonici" (face value: CHF 1.00).

Published in 1480-1483, it helped to identify herbs so that even lay people could cure themselves if need be. The standard work "Macer Floridus De viribus herbarium" (face value: CHF 1.20), which was translated into many languages, describes the most common medicinal herbs in the form of a Latin didactic poem with over two thousand verses. The work focussed on the medical theory of the four humours and their health-related composition.

"Herbarius latinus" (face value: CHF 1.90) was the first illustrated book on herbs in Germany. It served as a guide for identifying native plants and, in a second part, presented almost one hundred remedies. Moving away from the Latin scholarly book to the vernacular, "Gart der Gesundheit" (face value: CHF 2.50) is a historical drug monograph containing information about the appearance, components and areas of application of the respective remedies.