De re Metallica is Agricola's best known work. It is a systematic
examination of mining and metallurgy as practiced in the 16th-century
mining center of Joachimsthal in Czechoslovakia. Agricola was a medical doctor there and observed
at first hand the mining operations commonly used.
Agricola described all mining operations in great detail including prospecting, administration,
the use of water wheels and the transport of ores. The woodcuts in Agricola's magnum opus are by
H.R.M. Deutsch after Blasius Weffring. The 289 woodcuts are models of book illustration in the cause
of information. Agricola writes: "I have hired illustrators to delineate their forms, lest
descriptions which are to be conveyed by words should either not be understood by men of our own times,
or should cause difficulty to posterity." The illustrations were so many, and so complicated that
it delayed the final publication. Agricola's 12-volume treatise was published posthumously in 1556.
This Deutsch woodcut illustrates the use of a water wheel and cams to drive rock crushers.
