The Amboinese Herbal, Georg Everhard Rumphius, 1741 Inv inst 1496

If any scientific researcher deserves a consolation prize, it is Georg Everhard Rumphius, a German botanist employed by the Dutch East India Company on Ambon. In 1670 Rumphius had gone blind, so that he was able to continue his research only with the help of others. Shortly afterwards he lost his wife and a child in an earthquake. In 1687 the drawings to accompany the manuscript of his life's work, the six-volume Amboinese Herbal, were lost in a fire, so that his son and a draughtsman dispatched by the East India Company had to do everything again. When the completed work was finally sent to the Netherlands, the ship went down with all hands and the manuscripts. A copy that had been kept back provided a solution: in 1696 the work finally reached Amsterdam ready for the press. However, the East India Company decided that it contained so much sensitive information that it would be better not to publish it. The Herbal finally appeared in 1741, thirty-nine years after the death of the 'blind seer of Ambon'.