Items

Title: Anatomical Woman

Title

Description

This manuscript contains 500 Greek and Roman recipes from the fourth and fifth century, both culinary and medical, reflecting the polyglot culture of the Mediterranean basin. Sometimes referred to as the oldest extant cookbook in the West, the manuscript is divided into ten books. It is likely that the Apicius began as a Greek collection, mainly written in Latin, and adapted for a Roman palate. The collection is likely compiled from many sources, as no evidence exists that Apicius (a Roman gourmet in 1st century AD), authored a book of cookery. Our manuscript was penned in several hands in a mix of Anglo-Saxon and Carolingian scripts at the monastery at Fulda (Germany) around 830 AD. It is one of two manuscripts (the other at the Vatican) presumed to have been copied from a now lost common source. The Apicius manuscript is the gem of the Academy’s Margaret Barclay Wilson Collection of cookery, acquired in 1929.

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Subjects (LC)

Cookbooks, Cooking, Latin peoples, Cooking, Mediterranean, Cooking, Roman, Early works to 1800, Manuscripts, Medicine

Title: Milk: What Milk to Buy and How to Care for it in the Home
Description: Photographs of healthy, well-nourished infants and young children adorn this educational circular produced by the New York Milk Commitee. Aimed at parents and caretakers, the circular contains guidelines for the purchase, storage, and preparation of milk as part of a child's healthy diet.
Subjects (LC): Milk, Infants, Children, Nutrition, Bottle feeding
ID: mk1e042
Geographic Subject: New York. New York City.
Collection: New York Milk Committee Ephemera Collection

Title: Chocolat de l'Abbaye d'Igny
Description: Trade card printed on two sides advertising chocolate manufactured in France.
Subjects (LC): Surgery
Manufacturer: Chocolat de l'Abbaye d'Igny
Language: French
ID: WH219
Collection: William H. Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards

Title: Gessner's Owl
Description: Tucked among the magical storehouses of Diagon Alley is a shop that is always dark in order to accommodate the preferences of its nocturnal inhabitants. This is Eeylops Owl Emporium—and the setting for Harry Potter's adoption of his pet, Hedwig, who remains one of his truest companions throughout his school years. The Swiss naturalist Conrad Gessner depicted many owls in his volume dedicated to birds, including this handsome grey owl with his abundance of downy feathers and keenly intelligent eyes. Owls of all types appear throughout the series, retaining the cultural associations they've had for centuries of both wisdom and omens.
Collection: How to Pass Your O.W.L.s at Hogwarts: A Prep Course

Title: Lawrence and Martin's Tolu
Manufacturer: [Lawrence and Martin], [s.l.]
Language: English
ID: WH293
Collection: William H. Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards

Title: Everybody says the Botanical Preparations are the Best
Description: Trade card printed on two sides advertising herbal remedies produced by the Excelsior Botanical Company.
Subjects (LC): Children playing
Manufacturer: Excelsior Botanical Co. (Boonville (N.Y.))
Language: English
ID: WH263
Collection: William H. Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards

Title: Aldrovandi's Basilisk
Description: All hail the king of the snakes! Basilisks—from the Greek basiliskos, for "little king," are depicted in many early modern natural histories and were said to be the kings of the serpents (Dark Arts students will recognize them for their diadem-shaped crests). J.K. Rowling preserves many details of the accounts from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century sources about this terrifying snake, including his birth from a chicken's egg hatched under a toad, and a gaze that could kill. Susceptible to wizard control by some Parselmouths, only Tom Riddle proved snake-charmer enough to ever challenge one.
Collection: How to Pass Your O.W.L.s at Hogwarts: A Prep Course

Title: A Simple Catechism [from verso]
Description: Trade card printed on two sides advertising Slaven's Effervescent Fruit Salt, a remedy for digestive ailments.
Subjects (LC): Dolls, Monocles, Top hats
Language: English
ID: WH353
Collection: William H. Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards

Title: H.R. Steven's Family Balsam
Description: Trade card printed on two sides advertising Familine, a cure-all remedy.
Subjects (LC): Roses
Manufacturer: H.R. Stevens (Boston (Mass.))
Language: English
ID: WH265
Collection: William H. Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards

Title: Milk: Its Value to the Home, Its Care in the Home
Description: An eight-page pamphlet (a single sheet folded into eight pages) produced by the New York Milk Committee, emphasizing milk's importance as a "family food." Images of healthy children, cows in verdant fields, and milk surrounded by produce reinforce the central message of milk's vital role in maintaining and promoting children's health. Nutritional comparisons between milk and other foods are provided, as are instructions for the proper selection, storage, and use of milk. Members of the Milk Committee's Standing Committee on Milk Consumers are listed at the top of the last page.
Subjects (LC): Milk, Infants, Nutrition, Education, Child rearing
ID: mk1e043
Geographic Subject: New York. New York City.
Collection: New York Milk Committee Ephemera Collection

Title: Spider, Hortus Sanitatis
Description: Even arachnophobes may be well-disposed to this spider, who dates to the 1499 publication of the Hortus Sanitatis (here he appears in our 1517 edition). Spiders were often depicted in early printed books using pictographic shapes, drawing on an earlier medieval tradition. Here, our spider scrambles up a tightly circular web, his thorax evenly studded in a grid design. He may not look scary, but the accompanying text offers strong evidence that this spider might have caused worry, just as J.K. Rowling's giant spider Aragog did. The authors of this early modern tome included several botanical remedies for spider bites.
Collection: How to Pass Your O.W.L.s at Hogwarts: A Prep Course

Title

De symmetria partium in rectis formis humanorum

Description

Albrecht Dürer, printmaker and painter of the German Renaissance, was equally famous during his lifetime for contributions to the study of mathematics and proportion. In this text, Dürer treats the arithmetic and geometrical constructions of bodies, largely at rest. Numerous woodcuts represent bodies male and female in various sizes and ages, and register their measurements. The ideas expressed in the De symmetria and the two complimentary volumes that followed, also on human proportion, were widely influential on artists and anatomists for centuries to come. This 1532 text in Latin contains the first two books of the results of this research, first published in German in 1528 as Vier Bücher von menschlicher Proportion (Four Books on Human Proportion.) Dürer died shortly after receiving the first proofs of the German edition; the remaining publication details were completed by his friends. Our copy is bound in stamped pigskin, with a front panel illustrating Jacob’s ladder and a back panel depicting the baptism of Christ. The woodcut monogram Dürer developed in 1497 to protect his work from piracy is visible on the title page.

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Subjects (LC)

Anatomy, Artistic, Anthropometry, Early works to 1800, Human figure in art, Medical illustration, Medicine, Proportion (Anthropometry), Proportion (Art), Wood-engraving—16th century

Title: Plague Visitation Scene

Title: West Port murders; or, an authentic account of the atrocious murders committed by Burke and his associates, containing a full account of all the extraordinary circumstances connected with them. Also, a report of the trial of Burke and M'Dougal, with a description of the execution of Burke, his confessions, and memoirs of his accomplices, including the proceedings against Hare, &c.
Description: Disbound book. Engraved frontispiece (artist, George Andrew Lutenor; engraver, Thomas Clerk). Illustrated with engravings. Includes drawings by Walter Geikie. Has broadside titled "The West Port Murders" tipped in (14 cm.).
Collection: The Resurrectionists

Title: Nature's Pleasant Laxative
Description: Folded trade card printed on two sides advertising Syrup as Figs as a laxative. Edges are decoratively trimmed.
Subjects (LC): Fig trees, Harvesting, Orchards
Manufacturer: California Fig Syrup Co (San Francisco (Calif.))
Language: English
ID: WH242
Collection: William H. Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards

Title: A laconic narrative of the life and death of James Wilson, known by the name of Daft Jamie; to which is added, a few anecdotes relative to him and his old friend Boby Awl, an idiot who strolled about Edinburgh for many years
Description: Chapbook that has been disbound and mounted in a window-pane style. Illustrated.
Collection: The Resurrectionists

Title

Recipes and Remedies: Manuscript Cookbooks

Description

The Library holds about 40 manuscript receipt books in its collections. Many of the manuscripts contain a combination of culinary recipes, home remedies, and recipes for things like cosmetics and substances that would be used to accomplish general household tasks such as cleaning and polishing. Others are solely medical, containing formularies for the compounding of various remedies. This digital collection contains eleven English-language manuscript receipt books that were compiled between the seventeenth and the late nineteenth centuries in which the majority of the collected recipes are culinary in nature, but many recipes for home remedies are discoverable here as well.

Funding for the conservation and cataloging of the 31 culinary manuscripts was provided by the Pine Tree Foundation in 2012. Funding for the digitization of this group of English-language manuscripts was provided by the Pine Tree Foundation in 2019.

LIBRARY DIGITAL COLLECTIONS & EXHIBITS

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