Background
Cordus was born on February 18, 1515, in Erfurt, Germany. His father, Euricius Cordus was an educated physician and an ardent Lutheran convert.
Augustusplatz 10, 04109 Leipzig, Germany
Cordus completed this training in the apothecary shop of his uncle Johannes Ralla at Leipzig, where he moved in 1533 and enrolled at the university. He remained there probably until 1539; his enrollment at the university can be traced back only to that year.
Biegenstraße 10, 35037 Marburg, Germany
After spending his childhood and youth at Kassel, then at Erfurt and Brunswick, Cordus went to Marburg, where in 1527 he and his brother Philipp enrolled at the university; he received his bachelor’s degree in 1531.
Augustusplatz 10, 04109 Leipzig, Germany
Cordus completed this training in the apothecary shop of his uncle Johannes Ralla at Leipzig, where he moved in 1533 and enrolled at the university. He remained there probably until 1539; his enrollment at the university can be traced back only to that year.
Cordus was born on February 18, 1515, in Erfurt, Germany. His father, Euricius Cordus was an educated physician and an ardent Lutheran convert.
After spending his childhood and youth at Kassel, then at Erfurt and Brunswick, Cordus went to Marburg, where in 1527 he and his brother Philipp enrolled at the university; he received his bachelor’s degree in 1531.
During the two years of study, Cordus was under the direct influence of his father, who instructed him in the preparation of medicines as well as in botany. It was with pride that in his Botanologicon Euricius Cordus mentioned his son’s knowledge, for young Cordus had become very familiar with the science of drugs at an early age.
Subsequently, Cordus completed this training in the apothecary shop of his uncle Johannes Ralla at Leipzig, where he moved in 1533 and enrolled at the university. He remained there probably until 1539; his enrollment at the university can be traced back only to that year.
Cordus attended Melanchthon’s lectures on the Alexipharmaka of Nikander of Colophon and on three occasions - during the winter semesters of 1539/40 and 1542/43 and the summer semester of 1543 - lectured on the Materia medica of Dioscorides. This lecturing is important - as evidenced by the reports of his students - because in his research, which was novel at the time, he departed from the purely philological interpretation of and commentary on the text, preferring to rely on his own powers of observation, which he had acquired during walks and longer excursions with students and friends.
Cordus also developed close ties to the local apothecary shop of the painter Lucas Cranach. Once again this meant close ties to a practical pharmacy. The experience he acquired then found expression in the Dispensatorium, which he completed there. During his short visit to Nuremberg in 1542, he submitted that work to the city council, which published it in 1546. The last of the many trips that Cordus took from the university led him to Italy. Via Venice, Padua, and Bologna he reached Rome, where in 1544 - when he was only twenty-nine years old - he died from a severe fever, or possibly an accident. His grave in the Church of Santa Maria dell’Anima, described by his contemporaries, was later lost track of and destroyed during one of several renovations.
A survey of Cordus’ work, which appeared in print only after his death and received wide dissemination and recognition particularly through the edition of Conrad Gesner, reveals three principal points of his scientific achievement.
His role in pharmacy is based primarily on the much-praised Dispensatorium (1546), which through a limited selection of prescriptions brought order for the first time into the unsystematic corpus of medicaments and soon became the obligatory standard for all of Germany. In addition to describing approximately 225 medicinal plants and minerals, Cordus also refers, with careful commentary, to the origin and adulteration of drugs. The undated first edition was quickly followed by the second and subsequent editions that made this first official pharmacopoeia known far beyond the borders of Germany. Cordus also is generally called the discoverer of ether, for which - probably based on work by his predecessors - he gave the first method of preparation in De artificiosis extractionibus liber (1561).
Cordus’ two principal works in botany are Annotationes in Dioscoridis de materia medica lihros (1549) and Historiae stirpium libri IV (1561); the latter was followed by Stirpium descriptionis liber quintus (1563). He shows himself to be an observant and critical natural scientist in the Annotationes, which served as the basis for his Wittenberg lectures and also ran to several editions, and in the Historiae, which contains approximately 500 descriptions of plants, with special emphasis on their smell, taste, and location. In contrast with most of his contemporaries, he attempted to establish distinct differences between species and genus, to make the nomenclature precise, and, above all, to form his own opinion based upon his own observations and to correct by comparison even authors long recognized by tradition.
Cordus’ rank as a pharmacologist is based - apart from the minor publication De halosantho (1566) - on his thorough knowledge of the materia medica, as evidenced by his comments in the Dispensatorium and the Annotationes. In his evaluation of the various remedies, he benefited greatly from the experience gained in the apothecary shops in Leipzig and Wittenberg. He is quite justifiably regarded as one of the fathers of pharmacognostics (Tschirch).
Extraordinarily gifted and with an appealing personality - such were descriptions by his friends - Cordus knew how to interest others in science and created new areas in botany with his research.