The study is devoted to the identification of medicinal plants and fungi species which are enlisted in an 18th-century Polish medical help-book entitled Compendium medicum auctum. This 1st part of the study contains entries from A to K, the second part (to be released) will entail the remaining entries L–Z, the discussion and conclusions.

MATERIALS AND METHODS:
The subject of the critical study is the list of medicinal plants and fungi names from the 7th edition issued 1752 in Częstochowa. The authorship of the work is still uncertain (frater Apolinary Wieczorkowicz or a physician Maciej Daniłkowicz). Species of medicinal plants and fungi (with lichens) are listed in one of the initial captions (pages 19 to 29). The plants were indentified on the grounds of their 18th-century Polish and pre-Linnaean Latin names. We used 18th- and 19thcentury monographs and dictionaries on materia medica and vernacular names of plants.

RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS.:
The list of medicinal plants and fungi in the Compendium contains 288 entries together with 8 cross-references and those entries which concern the same repeated species. Some names can hardly be appended to an individual plant species. The studied work enumerates both local (native) i.e. wild growing plants (they prevail in the list), species cultivated in fields and in gardens (including ornamentals), as well as some exotic, imported plants. Compendium medicum enlists a relatively great deal of exotic species; most of them are south-European, Mediterranean ones, a few species originate from the West Europe. The number of errors and obscurities in the list is really large. These mistakes reveal that the author (or compiler) had no sufficient botanical education nor knowledge.