| Item Description: | Title from cover.
Detlev Aubermann, bookseller, description: Manuscript on paper in two parts (complete) in German in a neat, cursive hand in brown ink; 165 x 105 mm; 29 pages; the title or first page and the final, blank leaf browned and a bit soiled; otherwise only lightly browned and occasionally a little stained; repaired along spine, but overall very well preserved. An intriguing mid-17th century manuscript on veterinary, especially equine, medicine, probably authorial, signed George Kochmar. Divided into two parts, the first is on hippiatric medicine, with the second providing advice to the common man, citizen, farmer, and carter on the maintenance of horses and cattle at a low expense. The reference in the title to the first part to Duke Franz Albrecht von Saxe-Lauenburg (1598-1642), allows to contextualise the manuscript. Franz Albrecht was son of Duke Franz II and Maria of Saxe-Lauenbrurg. Dutchess Maria in turn was daughter of Duke Julius of Brunswick-Lüneburg and his wife Hedwig of Brandeburg. In the years 1625/26 Duke Franz Albrecht was in charge of two cavalry and one infantry regiment under the command of Wallenstein in the Thirty Years War. He later converted to Protestantism and was promoted to ‘kursächsischer’ fieldmarshall at Dresden. A cavalry officer, Franz Albrecht would have had to show much interest in the care of the regiments’ horses, and it is highly plausible that George Kochmar at some stage was employed in the Duke’s services as claimed, and that he eventually decided to put his years of experience in the care of horses onto paper with the possible intention of publication which, however, appears not to have been realised. The first part contains 31 recipes, including for treatment of afflictions to the hooves and lameness, sprains to the legs, worm infestations, salves for the treatment of fresh, as well as rotting wounds, salves for scabs and the hooves, eye ointments, a treatment for swellings, gall stones, constipation, coughs, overfeeding, fistulae to the head, the treatment of kicks, and dizziness. The second includes advice on badly nailed hooves, how to treat a horse that refuses to have its hooves nailed, prescriptions for stomach ailments and excessive wind, treatment of swellings caused by a saddle, further recipes for worms, swellings, sprains, and also blindness. The final recipes concern the treatment of cattle. As indicated on the title page or first leaf, the recipes or treatments are partly borrowed from a variety of authors, and partly Kochmar’s own. They include plant-based preparations from garlic, lemon peel, line oil, rose and juniper water, verbena, ivy, watercress, laurel, acorns, bark, and savin. Animal products include badger fat, deer tallow, egg shell, chicken dung, goose fat and pig’s lard, down feathers, crows eyes, honey, powdered newts, and the blood of a black cock. Silver foam, arsenic, verdigris, sulfur, terpentine, and petroleum are amongst the mineral products used. Also applied are costly ingredients such as ginger, pepper, and Venetian Theriac. Whilst a Ross-arznei-büchlein by a ‘G. Kochmar’ was offered by the bookbinder Meiners at Grossenmeer in the Wesermarsch, Lower Saxony, in 1788, 130 years after the present manuscript (see Karl-Heinz Ziessow: ‘... so schreibe ich was gut ist daraus ab’. Schreibkulturelle Wechselbeziehungen zwischen Stadt und Land im Nordwesten um 1800. In: Niedersächsisches Jahrbuch für Landesgeschichte 78 (2006), p. 108, and note 27), no such printed version appears to be recorded or traceable. Whether or not the present tract is indeed authorial remains open due to the lack of further information regarding its author, but the wording of the title indicates this to be the case. |
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