[From the 'canon' of Avicenna to the illustration of the 'wound healer'].

The different genres in which Latin medical texts are preserved, may become integrated in German medical literature into a new specific kind of text, the 'arzneibuch'. Depending on which parts of Ortolf von Baierland's 'arzneibuch' are preserved, different literary genres result in further tradition. When little Ortolf text survives in large compilations, as often is the case, it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to identify them as belonging to a certain genre. Although medieval nomenclature is useful, it does not define the different genres, it merely classifies the texts according to their contents.