Sauer’s Herbal Cures

Sauer’s Herbal Cures:
America’s First Book of Botanic Healing
William Woys Weaver

$45.00 · Hardcover, 400pp, ISBN: 9781958530030
Volume XII of the Annual Publication Series of the
Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center, Kutztown University
Produced in Cooperation with the Roughwood Center for Heritage Seedways

Assembled by Pennsylvania apothecary and printer Christopher Sauer Jr. (1721-1784), Sauer’s Herbal Cures is the first American herbal, printed in Sauer’s agricultural almanacs between 1762 and 1778. As a system of botanical medicine cures and remedies based on the use of herbs, the Sauer’s Herbal Cures is rooted in the medical thinking of the late Middle Ages and renaissance, yet in its own unique way it forms a bridge between that era and eighteenth-century colonial America. Lavishly illustrated with original woodcuts from immigrant herbals from Sauer’s era, Sauer’s Herbal Cures illuminates the folk-cultural attitudes towards health and healing among the Pennsylvania Dutch from the time of transatlantic immigration.

Dr. William Woys Weaver is an internationally known food ethnographer and author of 22 books dealing with culinary history and heritage seeds. He is the founder of the non-profit organization The Roughwood Center for Heritage Seedways. His grandfather, H. Ralph Weaver, established the Roughwood Seed Collection in 1932, the oldest private seed collection in the Eastern United States. William Woys Weaver received his PhD in ethnography from University College, Dublin, and his non-fiction works have won many awards. Dr. Weaver also is an accomplished food photographer and has illustrated two of his books. Having worked on fiction and folk tale for many years, he now looks forward to bringing that material into print.