Sound, Touch, and Vision: The Translation of Ginseng from the Chinese to the Dutch

In the "stream of translation" (Latour) flowing from the island of Ambon, where Rumphius' had collected the specimens for the Ambonese Herbal at the end of the seventeenth century, to the city of Amsterdam, where Johan Burman made one editorial decision after the other in the 1740s, the relation of text and image was steadily transformed. One of the manuscripts kept in the Special Collections of the Leiden University Library (BPL 314) contains a warning for the printer and engraver. Rumphius .