Rembert Dodoens (Latin: Rembertus Dodonaeus; originally named…
1583 CE
Rembert Dodoens (Latin: Rembertus Dodonaeus; originally named Rembert Van Joenckema) had received a medical degree from the University of Louvain in 1535 and composed works on cosmography and physiology before turning to botany with the brief treatise De frugum historia (1552).
His Cruydeboek (1554), an extensive herbal, owes a great deal to the “German fathers of botany,” especially Leonhard Fuchs; instead of arranging plants in alphabetical order, Dodoens grouped plants according to their properties and reciprocal affinities.
Translated into French in 1557, it has become a standard in England through Henry Lyte's English translation of 1578.
Pemptades, which has introduced new families, arranged plants into twenty-six groups, and added many original and borrowed illustrations, is the basis of John Gerard's celebrated Herball.
Dodoens, having served as physician to the Holy Roman emperor Maximilian II and his successor, Rudolph II, joins the faculty of medicine at Leiden University in 1582.
His Stirpium historiae pemptades sex sive libri XXX (1583) is considered one of the foremost botanical works of the late sixteenth century.