Lorenz Fries Explained

Lorenz Fries, also called Lorenz Phryes, Latinized Laurentius Frisius or Phrisius (born around 1490; died 1531/32 in Metz[1] [2]) was a German physician, astrologer and cartographer, who worked mainly in Alsace. His most famous work is the “Spiegel der Arznei” (Mirror of Medicine) ​​(twelve editions 1518–1557), one of the earliest works on medicine in the German language.

Life and work

The date and place of birth of Lorenz Fries cannot be determined with certainty. Possible birth dates discussed include: “around 1485”, 10 August 1489 or “after 1490”[3] Possible places of birth were given as: Mulhouse or Colmar, Metz, Swabia (Markgröningen).[4] Sudhoff (1904) and Öhlschlägel (1985) have suggested that Fries studied in Padua, Piacenza, Montpellier and Vienna, where he probably completed his studies. There is no direct evidence for this.

Fries’ name first appeared in 1513 on a Nuremberg broadsheet.[5] [6] At the end of 1518 he lived in the Augustinian monastery in Colmar.[7] He probably worked as a general practitioner in Colmar.[8] On the title page of the first edition of the “Spiegel der Arznei” in 1518 he called himself “from Colmar / Doctor of Philopsophy and Medicine”. He dedicated this work to Johann Dingler, the Schlettstadt (Sélestat) guild master of the fishermen.

In March 1519, Fries moved to Strasbourg. In July of the same year, he accepted a call to Freiburg im Üechtland, where he held the office of city physician for 8 months and where he met Agrippa von Nettesheim. In the middle of 1520, he returned to Strasbourg and married Barbara Thun, the daughter of the deceased Strasbourg master glazier Ambrosius Thun. Fries thus became a citizen of Strasbourg and a member of the guild "Zur Steltz" (goldsmiths and printers). While in Strasbourg, he re-worked a number of the maps of Martin Waldseemüller, and prepared a revised edition of Ptolemy's Geography.[9] In May 1525, Fries gave up his Strasbourg citizenship and left the city.

Until the winter of 1528, he stayed in Trier, where he worked as a doctor. On February 28, 1528, Paracelsus, who had fled from Basel, wrote to Bonifacius Amerbach: "Phrusius de Colmaria optime valet, sumque optimus familiae et totam civitatem". ("Fries von Colmar is in the best of health, and I have been well received by his family and the whole city.")[10] In July 1528, Fries wrote a "Prognostication" for the year 1529 in Diedenhofen (Thionville). In Metz he created a French-language "Prognostication" for the year 1529 in October 1528 and on November 14, 1528 a birth horoscope for his friend Nicolas de Heu (1494–1547), the mayor of Metz. In the 1532 edition of "Spiegel der Arznei" printed by Balthasar Beck in Strasbourg, a foreword by Lorenz Fries was printed, which he had written on July 23, 1530 in Metz. In it he noted in passing: "... Let me, God, live for a short time ..." Another foreword in the same edition was written on May 14, 1532 by Otto Brunfels. It said: “... therefore the author of this book, the highly renowned doctor Laurentius Fries, was commissioned to correct this before his death...” From these statements it was concluded that Fries died between July 1530 and May 1532.[11] [12] [13]

There waas a "long-standing friendship" between Fries and the Strasbourg printer and publisher Johannes Grüninger, who published the majority of his works.[14]

Writings

The 1525 and 1530 editions are anonymous. Only the 1539 edition names Fries as the author. Karl Sudhoff (1904, p. 771) assumed that Fries wrote all these syphilis writings – the physician, librarian and medical historian Ernest Wickersheimer (1880–1965) doubted Fries' authorship of all editions.[24]

Spiegel der Arznei

Fries' main work, the Mirror of Medicine, was printed in twelve editions by three publishers from 1518 to 1557 and edited from 1529 by the humanist Otto Brunfels. The first print appeared on September 1, 1518.

The editions

The library of the Zürcher Medizinhistorischen Instituts (Zurich Institute of the History of Medicine) has two double folios in which the Spiegel der Arznei and the Kreuterbuch by Eucharius Rösslin have been bound together since the 16th century:

The sources

Following the introduction, Fries lists his sources. It is hardly possible and no attempt has yet been made to list all of these sources in the Spiegel. The main source can be assumed to be Avicenna's Canon of Medicine, which - based in particular on Galen - gives a general overview of what we today call "internal medicine".[36]

Target audience and German-Latin language dispute

The Mirror was a popular representation of the whole of "internal medicine". The title page of the first edition in 1518 claimed to be the first work on medicine in the German language. However, Der Spiegel was not the first work in German with medical content. The Arzneibuch by the Würzburg surgeon Ortolf von Baierland (1477) is worth mentioning,[37] also the Gart der Gesundheit of the Frankfurt city doctor Johann Wonnecke von Kaub (1485), the Buch der Cirurgia (1497), and the Kleines Destillierbuch (1500) and the Großes Destillierbuch (1512) of the Strasbourg surgeon Hieronymus Brunschwig. Like Fries in his Spiegel der Arznei, Hieronymus Brunschwig also emphasized in his Kleines Destillierbuch that he had written his work to educate the sick and the "common paople". But the printed books were expensive and their use presupposed that the buyers could read.[38] The Mirror of Medicine can be classified in the category of household literature. However, his writings in the vernacular and rejection of the tradition of medical writing in latin brought Fries bitter opposition from the "learned doctors":

[this work] for which I have suffered much, is greatly hated and persecuted by the learned doctors, because I have revealed the content of this art to German tongues.[39]

Works cited

References

  1. Wilfried Kettler: Untersuchungen zur frühneuhochdeutschen Lexikographie in der Schweiz und im Elsass. Strukturen, Typen, Quellen und Wirkungen von Wörterbüchern am Beginn der Neuzeit. Peter Lang, Bern/Berlin/Brüssel/Frankfurt am Main u. a. 2008, ISBN 978-3-03911-430-6, pp. 384.
  2. Werner E. Gerabek: Fries […], Lorenz. In: Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. 2005, pp. 441.
  3. Baas 1907. - Öhlschlegel 1985, 21-22. - Sudhoff 1904.
  4. Sudhoff 1904. - Baas 1907. - Bittel 1943. - Friedrich 1980, 11-12.
  5. Wundergeburt zu Rom vom 7. März 1513. Einblattdruck. Johann Weissenburger, Nürnberg 1513 (digitized copy).
  6. Eugen Holländer (1867–1932): Wunder, Wundergeburt und Wundergestalt in Einblattdrucken des XV. bis XVIII. Jahrhunderts. Kulturhistorische Studie. Stuttgart 1921, pp. 312. – Jean Michel Friedrich (1980), pp. 255–257 (u. a. Abbildung des Blattes).
  7. Brief des Magistrats von Straßburg an den von Colmar (18. April 1525). – Charles Schmidt (1890), pp. 528.
  8. Werner E. Gerabek: Fries […]. In: Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. 2005, pp. 441.
  9. Book: Irwanto . Dhani . Taprobana: Classical Knowledge of an Island in the Opposite-Earth . 2019 . Indonesia Hydro Media . 978-602-72449-6-2 . 19–22 .
  10. Theophrast von Hohenheim. Sämtliche Werke. Herausgegeben von Karl Sudhoff. Barth, München 1922, I. Abteilung, 6. Band, pp. 33–35.
  11. Jean Michel Friedrich: Laurent Fries, médecin, astrologue et géographe à Colmar, Strasbourg et Metz. Straßburg 1980,pp. 9–27.
  12. Rudolf Öhlschlegel: Studien zu Lorenz Fries und seinem Spiegel der Arznei. Tübingen 1985, pp. 21–49.
  13. Kismet Bell. Jameson Bradley. 2011 . From Allegory to Emblem: Uncovering the Brain in Lorenz Fries's Spiegel Der Artzney and Hans Von Gersdorff's Feldtbuch Der Wundarzney . PhD . The Pennsylvania State University.
  14. Zitat von Fries aus dem Vorwort in Uslegung der Mercarthen (1527).
  15. Wundergeburt zu Rom vom 7. März 1513. Einblattdruck. Johann Weissenburger, Nürnberg 1513 (digitized copy)
  16. Traktat der Wildbäder Natur. Joh. Grüninger, Strasbourg 24. July 1519 (digitized copy)
  17. Traktat der Wildbäder Natur. Bartholomäus Grüninger, Strasbourg 1538 (digitized copy)
  18. Synonyma und gerecht ußlegung […]. Joh. Grüninger, Strasbourg 29. Nov. 1519 (digitized copy bsb)(digitized copy Heidelberg)
  19. Synonyma und gerecht ußlegung […]. Barth. Grüninger, Strasbourg 1535 (digitized copy)
  20. Kurze Schirmred der Kunst der Astrologiae. Joh. Grüninger, Strasbourg 28. November 1520 (digitized copy)
  21. Claudii Ptolemaei / Alexandrini Mathematicor. principis. Opus Geographie. Joh. Grüninger, Strasbourg 12. March 1522 (digitized copy)
  22. Prognostication 1529 (digitized copy)
  23. Ein kurzer Bericht wie man das Gedächtnis stärken mag. Joh. Grüninger, Strasbourg 12. March 1523 (digitized copy)
  24. Ernest Wickersheimer. Le Guaiac à Strasbourg au XVIe Siècle. In: Analecta Medico-Historica. I. Materia Medica in the XVIth Century. Proceedings of the Symposium of the International Academy of the History of Medicine held at the University of Basel, 7. September 1964. Hrsg. von M. Florkin. Oxford 1966, pp. 55–66.
  25. Auslegung der Meerkarten (von Martin Waldseemüller). Joh. Grüninger, Strasbourg 2. March 1525, 3. June 1527 (digitized copy)
  26. 22. April 1530 (digitized copy)
  27. Defensio medicorum Principis Avicennae ad Germaniae medicos. Johann Knobloch. d. J., Strasbourg 24. August 1530 (digitized copy)
  28. Epitome opusculi de curandis pusculis. Henricus Petrus, Basel 1532 (digitized copy)
  29. Spiegel der Arznei. Gedruckt bei Johannes Grüninger in Straßburg. 1. Auflage, 1. September 1518 (digitized copy)
  30. 3. Ausgabe, J. Grüninger, Straßburg 17. März 1529 (digitized copy)
  31. Spiegel der Arznei, Beck, Strasbourg August 18, 1529 (digital copy)
  32. Spiegel der Arznei, Beck, Strasbourg 1532 (digital copy)
  33. Spiegel der Arznei, Beck, Strasbourg 1546 (digital copy)
  34. Johann Dryander 1542 (digital version)
  35. With the appendix of the Little Wound Medicine Lanfrank's. 1547 and 1557 (digital version)
  36. Rudolf Christian Ludwig Öhlschlegel: Studien zu Lorenz Fries und seinem „Spiegel der Arznei“. Medizinische Inaugural-Dissertation, Tübingen 1985, pp. 98–103: Zu den Quellen des Werkes.
  37. Ortolff von Bayrlandt: Ayn Artzpuech mayster Ortolfs von Bayrn [...]. Augsburg 1477 (digitized copy)
  38. Rudolf Schenda: Der „gemeine Mann“ und sein medikales Verhalten im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert. In: Joachim Telle (Hrsg.): Pharmazie und der gemeine Mann. Hausarznei und Apotheke in den deutschen Schriften der frühen Neuzeit. Wolfenbüttel 1982, ISBN 3-88373-032-7, pp. 9–20
  39. Lorenz Fries: Spiegel der Arznei, Beck, Straßburg 1532, Vorred (digitized copy)
  40. Robert (Ruprecht) von Monreal († 1539), Sohn von Karl d. Ä. von Monreal († um 1507) und ⚭ um 1471 Maria von Malberg († um 1503), 1495 Präbende (Pfründe) und Aufnahme in der Abtei Echternach, 1506 bis 1539 Abt von Echternach.

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