Woodcuts and Wood-Engravings

Pierre Pena (1535-1605) and Matthias de L'Obel (1538-1616)
Stirpium adversia nova...
Londini: [Excudebat prelum T. Purfoetij], 1570 [1571]

Pierre Pena, a French doctor and botanist, was friends with Matthias L'Obel, as well as physician to Henry III of France. L'Obel was court physian to William the Silent, Prince of Orange, before moving to England to become the physician and botanist to James I. Together, Pena and L'Obel, after having collected hundreds and hundreds of specimens, described some 1300 plants for this volume, and L'Obel was able to argue for his position that botany and medicine had to be based on exact observation and fact. The plant Lobelia, so essential later to the Thomsonian medical practitioners, was named for L'Obel. This joins the many other volumes on pre-Linnean plant classification in the Lloyd collection.

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