APULEIUS PLATONICUS
INCIPIT HERBARIUM, 1481
AN ALTERNATIVE TO DANGEROUS DOCTORS
The Herbarius by Apuleius Platonicus was printed around 1481 as an incunabulum. These prints frequently have no actual title. However, in order to unequivocally identify them, they were usually named with the first words of the printed text. This incunabulum is entitled "Incipit Herbarium", whereby "Incipit" merely means "It begins".
The publication of the manuscript from late antiquity was intended to improve medical care. The author is extremely derisive of the medical profession in the prologue to the work, in which he distances himself from those physicians whom he identifies as inexperienced and greedy for gain. The Herbarius is supposed to enable the reader to escape these dangerous physicians and cure himself.
The main section describes 129 medicinal herbs, three of which (heliotrope, comfrey and rue) appear twice under two different names. After that follows a chapter on the fantastic herb basilisca, one on special medicinal pastilles and one on the magical mandrake root.