Abstract

This paper outlines the life, work, and views of Adam Huber of Riesenpach. Huber was one of the personal physicians to Rudolf II in Prague, a pharmacist, translator, pedagogue, progressive academic and chancellor at Prague University, aiming to re-establish its medical faculty. Here, I will first appraise Huber as a distinguished translator of medical books published by the prominent Prague printer Daniel Adam of Veleslavín and as a scholar who helped establish Czech medical terminology, most notably through his new translation of the great Herbal of Pietro Andrea Mattioli, which he reworked and expanded. In the second part, the article focuses on a popular book on regimen, the De conservanda valetudine by the German humanist author and politician Heinrich Rantzau, translated into Czech by Huber in 1587. The text and its translation are analysed against the backdrop of the new, more specifically Paracelsian, approaches in medicine. The author’s views are compared with Huber’s own ideas expressed in his foreword and in several of his other texts. His distinctive emphases and views are analysed, particularly in relation to Paracelsian medicine, Renaissance concepts of man, and astrology.