Items

Title: From Basilisks to Bezoars: The Surprising History of Harry Potter’s Magical World
Description: This collection celebrates the twentieth anniversary of the publication of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by showcasing rare books and objects dating back to the fifteenth century that reveal the history behind many of the creatures, plants and other magical elements that appear in the Harry Potter series—from mandrakes to basilisks to Nicholas Flamel and the philosopher’s stone itself. The collection is organized as a fictional study aid for Hogwarts students preparing for their important wizardry exams, the O.W.L.s, with content relating to seven Hogwarts courses.
Disclaimer: This exhibition is not licensed or endorsed by Warner Bros. or J.K. Rowling.

Title: The Edwin Smith Papyrus
Description: A collaboration with the National Library of Medicine (NLM), this Flash exhibit uses NLM's "Turning the Pages" concept to let you unroll the scroll of the world's oldest surgical document.
EXPLORE THE PAPYRUS ON NLM →

Title

Description

This manual for military surgeons first published in Strassburg in 1517 was only the second handbook on surgery to be published in Germany in the vernacular. It was reissued at least twelve times, with translations in Latin and Dutch. The Feldtbuch was written and compiled by Hans Gersdorff, an Alsatian army surgeon who had served in the Burgundian war. The book enumerates treatments for the injuries most common to soldiers, including gunshot wounds, loss of limbs, and leprosy. The woodcut illustrations, many by Johann Ulrich Wechtlin, are among the earliest European depictions of surgery. The gaze in these illustrations and throughout the text belongs to the surgeon. Little attention in the text or image is paid to the recovery or long-term rehabilitation of the patient; the focus is on the squarely on the surgical procedure itself. The last section of the book is devoted to three Latin-German glossaries on anatomy, pathology and the medicinal uses of herbs.

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Subjects (LC)

Anatomy, Early works to 1800, Herbs—Therapeutic use, Medicine, Medicine—History, Medical illustration, Medicine, Military—Study and teaching, Pathology, Surgery, Surgery—History, Surgery, Surgical instruments and apparatus, Wood-engraving, Wounds and Injuries—Surgery

Title: Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound
Description: Trade card advertising Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound, Lydia E. Pinkham's Liver Pills, Lydia E. Pinkham's Blood Purifier, and Lydia E. Pinkham's Sanative Wash featuring a coastal landscape of a house whose chimney is letting out smoke in the distance. A body of water is in the foreground, and there is a group of trees on the left-hand side. The image is framed by branches and pink and white blossoms. The back lists the benefits of the items advertised.
Conditions Cured (LC): Asthenia, Backache, Depression, Headache, Indigestion, Insomnia, Neurasthenia, Peptic Ulcer, Tumors
Subjects (LC): Advertising—Medicine, Chimneys, Flowers, Nature, Smoke Plumes, Trees, Water, Water And Architecture
ID: WH186
Collection: William H. Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards

Title: If you knew you could help a sick baby to health you would gladly do so

Title: Staten Island

Title: New York Milk Committee Ephemera Collection
Description: The New York Milk Committee Ephemera Collection contains materials issued between 1910 and 1917 or 1918 by the New York Milk Committee and its Committee for the Reduction of Infant Mortality, dealing with their work in the Blue Front milk stations in New York City where they distributed milk and educated mothers.
New York Milk Committee. New York Milk Committee Ephemera Collection, New York, 1910-1918.

Title

Transfiguration

Description

A core class at Hogwarts for years 1-5, Transfiguration teaches young wizards the art of changing the appearance and characteristics of an object. This course has historical roots in the practice of alchemy, embraced by a diverse group of scientific investigators interested since the Fall of Rome in changing base metals into gold and achieving the philosopher’s stone, rumored to secure eternal life. The practice of alchemy continued through the eighteenth century.

Disclaimer: This exhibition is not licensed or endorsed by Warner Bros. or J.K. Rowling.

Title

William S. Ladd Collection of Prints

Description

The William S. Ladd Collection of Prints consists of 671 prints, primarily portraits, dating from the 17th century through the early 19th century. In 1975, the Academy accepted the Ladd Collection as a gift from the Cornell University Medical College. William S. Ladd, the original donor, had been Dean of the Medical College and when his significant collection of prints came into the Medical College Library, Erich Meyerhoff, the Librarian, recognized its research value and the fact that such a collection properly belonged in a major research library. With the permission of the Dean of the Cornell University Medical College and the donor’s son, Dr. Anthony T. Ladd, Eric Meyerhoff offered the collection to the Academy. It was accepted and arrived in the Malloch Rare Book Room (now the Drs. Barry and Bobbi Coller Rare Book Reading Room) in May of 1975.

The prints themselves had been accumulated in the first half of the 20th century by William S. Ladd. He had purchased a great many of them as deaccessioned duplicates from the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. Primarily portraits of significant and lesser known figures in medicine and science, the prints span a period from the early 17th century to the first half of the 19th century. The printing processes used to render the various images include etching, engraving, stipple, mezzotint, and lithography. Among the etchers, engravers, artists and lithographers are some very famous names, a history in fact of English and Continental art and printmaking, with a smattering of American efforts among the lot. For example, the portrait of John Syng Dorsey (1783-1818), a little known American surgeon who rated a footnote in Fielding Garrison’s An Introduction To The History Of Medicine, is an engraving after a painting by Thomas Sully (1783-1872). Sully, who had studied with Gilbert Stuart and Benjamin West, is best known for his famous painting of Washington crossing the Delaware. The portrait of Charles Lucas (1713-1792), an Irish physician who did not even get a footnote in Garrison’s work, was engraved by James McArdell after a painting by Joshua Reynolds. James McArdell was an engraver who specialized in mezzotints. ...READ MORE

The New York Academy of Medicine Library and the William S. Ladd Collection of Prints digitization was supported in part by funds from the Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO) through the New York State Regional Bibliographic Databases Program.

Ladd, William S. The William S. Ladd Collection of Prints, ca. 1600 to ca. 1850.

Title

History of Magic

Description

The Academy Library’s card catalog, in service since the late nineteenth century, has a drawer devoted to witchcraft. Witches were pursued in earnest in Europe for centuries, culminating in the witch trials of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The historical record offers many accounts of occult practices and witch-hunting manuals.

Attention to magical tricks-of-the-trade, over time, will serve you well in your studies, and may prove to have practical applications.

Disclaimer: This exhibition is not licensed or endorsed by Warner Bros. or J.K. Rowling.

Title: The New-York Milk Dairy

Title: Selected images from the West Port murders
Description: Images selected by the New York Academy of Medicine curator from the book 'The West Port Murders ...' for display as JPEGs. Includes portraits of Burke, Hare, and their respective partners; a view of Burke's execution; an image of Burke's house; and the ground plan of Burke's house.

Title

Here biginneth the inventorie or the collectorye in cirurgicale parte of medicene compiled and complete in the yere of oure Lord

Description

An illuminated and illustrated manuscript of the Chirurgia magna, or great surgery, by Guy de Chauliac. Attempting in the Chirurgia to collect the best medical ideas of his time, he compiled sources from Arabic and Greek writers, including Rhazes, Avicenna, Hippocrates, Aristotle and others. Guy wrote the first text of the Chirurgia in Latin at Montpellier, in approximately 1363. This text was published in many editions and remained the authoritative text on surgery through the seventeenth century. It consists of 181 pages of English black letter in double columns and lines lightly ruled in red. It is ornately illuminated in gold and silver with finely decorated floral borders and large floriated initials, heightened with gold leaf. The manuscript includes 24 drawings of surgical instruments. The calf binding dates to Henry VIII’s reign or to the Elizabethan era. The original brass and leather clasps are engraved with stars and lion heads. There has been dispute about the manuscript’s date, with authorities dating it between the late 14th and second half of the 15th century. The manuscript was sold with the Streeter collection to the New York Academy of Medicine in 1928.

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