The details of his life are unclear. In 1519 he inscribed at the university of
Heidelberg. He married Eva Victor in 1523, and was schoolteacher in
Zweibrücken for nine years. He became the prince's physician and caretaker of the kitchen garden of the
count palatine and in 1533 received a life-time position as a Lutheran minister in nearby
Hornbach where he stayed up to his death in 1554. His surname was translated into
Latin as
Tragus;
Bock is German for "male
goat," while τράγος (
tragos) is Ancient Greek for the same. The first edition of his
Kreutterbuch (literally "plant book") appeared in 1539 unillustrated; his stated objectives were to describe German plants, including their names, characteristics, and medical uses. Instead of following
Dioscorides as was traditional, he developed his own system to classify 700 plants. Bock apparently traveled widely through the German region observing the plants for himself, since he includes ecological and distributional observations. His 1546
Kreutterbuch ("
herbal") was illustrated by the artist
David Kandel. In the wine world, Bock is noted for having the first documented use of the modern word
Riesling in 1552 when it was mentioned in his Latin herbal. Bock's description of
oak apples is noted in the
entomologists data base. The grass genus
Tragus (by Haller in 1768) and the spurge genera of
Tragia (Plum. ex L. in 1753) and
Tragiella (by Pax & K.Hoffm. in 1919) are all named after him. == Works ==