Valerius Cordus

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Valerius Cordus

Valerius Cordus (born February 18, 1515 , probably in Kassel ; † September 25, 1544 in Rome ) was a German botanist , doctor , pharmacologist and humanistic naturalist . Its official botanical author's abbreviation is " V. Cordus ".

Life

The son of the doctor and poet Euricius Cordus ( Heinrich Ritze , 1486–1535) studied from 1527 at the newly founded Protestant University of Marburg , where his father was the first professor of medicine, and in 1531 acquired the degree of baccalaureate there . In 1533 he continued his studies in Leipzig. From 1539 he studied medicine and botany at the University of Wittenberg (among others with Philipp Melanchthon ) and then taught there as a professor.

He carried out remarkable local floristic studies in central and southern Germany and described numerous new, sometimes rare, plant species. He was an excellent observer and had, among other things, already clearly recognized the reproduction of the ferns . He writes about the brown-stalked striped fern Asplenium trichomanes :

"It produces neither flowers nor seeds, but it reproduces anyway, through powder adhering to the underside of the leaves, like all other fern species."

At the suggestion of his uncle, the pharmacist Johannes Ralla , he wrote the first legally prescribed pharmacopoeia north of the Alps under the title Dispensatorium pharmacorum omnium, quae in usu potissimum sunt (Nuremberg, 1535). In another work he describes the distillation of herbs and acids: Annotationes in Pedacei Dioscorides de Materia Medica liber quinque. Liber de artificiosis extractionibus. Liber II de distillatione oleorum (Nuremberg, 1540).

Another work, Stirpium descriptionis liber quintus (Strasbourg 1561), remained a torso because of his early death and was published posthumously by Conrad Gessner .

Cordus is credited with the first synthesis of diethyl ether from sulfuric acid and alcohol, others attribute this achievement to his uncle Johannes Ralla.

From 1542 he went on study trips to Italy, where he died at the age of 29 as a result of an accident.

Dedication names

Charles Plumier named him and his father Euricius Cordus honor the genus Cordia of the plant family of Borage Family (Boraginaceae). Carl von Linné later took over this name.

Fonts

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Fritz Krafft : Cordus, Valerius. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 272.
  2. ^ K. Tallmadge: The third part of the "De extractione" of Valerius Cordus. In: Isis 7, 1925, pp. 394-411.
  3. ↑ Chauncey Depew Leake: Valerius Cordus and the discovery of ether. In: Isis 7, 1925, pp. 14-24.
  4. ^ Charles Plumier: Nova Plantarum Americanarum Genera . Leiden 1703, p. 13f.
  5. ^ Carl von Linné: Critica Botanica . Leiden 1737, p. 92.
  6. ↑ Carl von Linné: Genera Plantarum . Leiden 1742, p. 520.

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personal data
SURNAME Cordus, Valerius
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German botanist , doctor , pharmacologist and naturalist
DATE OF BIRTH February 18, 1515
PLACE OF BIRTH kassel
DATE OF DEATH September 25, 1544
Place of death Rome