Medical marvel

In need of a fireside book for the winter?

If you can read Low German and are interested in Renaissance-age medical practices, the perfect book will be on sale in Jay County this weekend.

A book almost as old as the original King James Bible will be available at Loy Real Estate and Auction on Saturday at the Jay County Fairgrounds.

Nuremberg doctor Joachim Camerarius, since deceased, wrote the fourth edition of a series of books detailing medical treatments and herbal remedy recipes in 1626. Somehow a copy of it survived, traveled thousands of miles to another continent and ended up wrapped in an electric blanket box in western Ohio.

An Ottoville, Ohio, woman who wished to remain anonymous, told auctioneer Doug Loy the book was passed down in her family for generations and she found it in her aunt’s house after she passed away. Her children didn’t care to have it, so she took it to the auctioneer.

She told Loy it was simply known as “the book” in her family and she doesn’t know how it came into their possession.

“Those kinds of books don’t just show up,” said Portland’s Jim Waechter, former director of Delaware County Historical Society, who Loy called to come look at the book. “You wouldn’t expect to find it out here in eastern Indiana or western Ohio.”

Nearly half a millennium old books are outside the expertise of Loy, who said he has never received anything older than 19th century coins, so he needed Waechter’s historical background to help him understand just what exactly he had up for auction.

Waechter, who is also heavily involved with Museum of the Soldier in Portland, said the book is in “really great condition” with copper plate engravings, linen-based paper and ink that has held up relatively well. The same edition sold for $7,000 at auction in 2007, he said.

The book was printed less than 200 years after the printing press was invented in Germany by Johannes Gutenberg, so it is larger than the usual modern-day paperback. An old herb was inside of the book when it was found, Loy said, but it quickly withered away.

“To see something that old is amazing,” said Waechter. “It’s a treasure, something that needs to be well cared for.”

“We’ll never see anything this old again,” said Loy, whose family business started in 1955.

Anyone wishing to see or bid on “the book” can attend the auction, which starts at 9:30 a.m. Saturday in the Bubp Building at the fairgrounds.