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The Czech edition with colored illustrations of plants by important Renaissance-era physician and botanist Pietro Andrea Mattioli, who worked as a physician in Siena, Rome, Trident and Gorizia. From 1554 Mattioli lived in Prague, where he was summoned to be the personal physician to Ferdinand II, Archduke of Further Austria. In 1561 Jiří Melantrich of Aventino published his medical letters in a book titled Epistolarum Medicinalium libri quinque (“Pět knih lékařských dopisů”) in Prague; the expanded Czech translation of his herbarium (titled “Herbář neboli Bylinář”) was published the following year. The German translation of the herbarium was published at the same printing press in 1563. It had first been published in Italian in 1544, and the Latin version was published in Venice ten years later, in 1554. Mattioli's most well-known book was published many times afterwards and continues to be published to this day. The herbarium was originally created as a commentary on Dioscoride's work “De materia medica”. However, Mattioli continuously expanded on the work, and each subsequent edition published during his lifetime was longer than the previous one.