HUTTEN, Ulrich von.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Von der wunderbarlichen artzney des holtz Guaiacum genant. Rare first German edition of Hutten's work on the discovery of the virtues of guaiacum officinale - a species of tree in the caltrop family, Zygophyllaceae, native to the Caribbean and the northern coast of South America - and its use of as a cure for syphilis, translated from the first Latin edition of the same year. Although works about the syphilis were published even prior to 1500, instructions for curing the disease with the resin were not published until December 1518. Hutten's directions remained in print throughout the 1500s, with 17 editions, translations, and reprints in other publications published in Latin, German, French, and English.John Alden notes in the preface to the first volume of European Americana that the "appearance in Europe of syphilis at the end of the 15th century seems, all too inexorably [from America], due to its transmission from Hispaniola, beginning with Columbus and his men... The consequences for the bibliographer will be readily evident, for as the armies of European powers traipsed across the Continent they spread this new scourge, reflected in the writings of the period... And even if it were at best dubiously American, treatment for it usually employed medicines derived from American sources, chiefly Guaiacum... introduced from the Caribbean." Today, the American origin of the disease is rarely disputed. Alden adds: "Not in fact without valid therapeutic uses, its popularity as

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