De Conceptu et Generatione Hominis: de Matrice et eius Partibus, nec non de conditione infantis in utero, and gravidarum cura and officio: De partu et parturientium infantiumque cura omnifaria.

Frankfurt: Petrus Fabricius for Sigismund Feyrabend, 1587.

The most beautiful edition of one best-seller on midwifery. Jacob Rueff was town physician and professor of medicine at Zurich. He was famous as surgeon and Conrad Gessner ranks him as " vir in arte sua pertissimus". His textbook on midwifery is in close relation to Rosslin's Rosengarten but Rueff's work affords much new material since he utilized the results of Vesalius' researches. It contains detailed accounts regarding conception, generation and birth, the duties of the midwife, etc. It was dedicated to Leonhard Thurneisser of Berlin, famous alchemist, whose woodcut arms are to be found on the first page.

The title woodcut shows a lying-in scene, another full-page cut a parturient woman on a delivery chair with two astronomers in the background studying the stars. Another cut shows Adam and Eve with the tree of knowledge, the trunk of which is a skeleton. Other illustrations represent female genital organs, obstetrical instruments, the development of the foetus, monstrosities etc.

"Jakob Rueff, famous lithotomist, born in the Rhineland, settled in Zurich about 1525. In 1552, he was appointed city physician and, in 1554, published the first edition of his Ein schon lustig Trostbuchle, which appeared in later editions as Hebammenbuch, one of the early classics of obstetrical literature. Unlike Rosslin's Rosengarten, this work is based almost entirely on the author's own observations. Rueff not only was an expert surgeon, lithotomist nad obstetrician but also wrote several comedies, which were performed on the stage. He must not be confused with Walther Ryff of Strassburg, a notorious plagiarist" (A History of Medicine, Ralph H. Major).

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