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: Duncumb recipe book : autograph manuscript signed, 1791-1800s
Description: This manuscript consists of approximately 425 culinary recipes and 50 medical and household receipts, many attributed. About two-thirds of the recipes in the culinary section are savory and one-third sweet, many of the former stews and pickled dishes, most of the latter creams and jellies. The medicinal receipts include treatments for worms, coughs, bruises, pain, burns, and other ailments.
Subjects (LC): Medicine -- Formulae, receipts, prescriptions, Traditional medicine -- Formulae, receipts, prescriptions, Cooking, English, Manuscripts, English -- 18th century, Manuscripts, English -- 19th century

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: Cookbook : manuscript, circa 1700s and 180
Description: Manuscript containing mostly culinary recipes from the 18th and 19th centuries. The bulk of the recipes are from the early 18th century and written in two hands. Most concern fruit preserving (23 recipes) and fruit and flower wines (10 recipes). Other early 18th-century recipes include little cakes, stewed dishes, fried pasties, pickles and souses, a collar of beef, potted beef, other meat dishes, and a few medicinal receipts. Three later recipes are also found; one is from the late 18th century or later, and the other two are copied from Eliza Acton's Modern Cooking for Private Families, published in 1846.
Subjects (LC): Cooking, English, Medicine -- Formulae, receipts, prescriptions, Traditional medicine -- Formulae, receipts, prescriptions, Manuscripts, English -- 18th century, Manuscripts, English -- 19th century

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.

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Title: Who's Afraid...

Title

Facendo Il Libro: The Making of Fasciculus Medicinae, an Early Printed Anatomy

Description

The collection includes five editions of the Fasciculus Medicinae printed between the years of 1495 and 1522. The Fasciculus medicinae—literally, the “little bundle of medicine”—is a small group of independently-authored medical treatises and illustrations first printed in 1491. Remarkable as one of the earliest illustrated medical books to be printed, the Fasciculus was reprinted in dozens of different editions and translated into the major European vernacular languages into the 1520s. The Fasciculus also serves as an important witness to a dynamic period of change, reflecting both medieval medical ideas and new advances spurred by the humanistic surge associated with the Renaissance. This is perhaps best illustrated by the inclusion of the first printed scene of human dissection, an indication of the growing importance of empirical investigations of the interior. The images attached to the Fasciculus are a blend of diagrams copied from medieval manuscripts alongside newer, narrative-based scenes demonstrating the modern taste for classical styles in figures and interiors.

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This digital collection was made possible by generous support from The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation.

Title: Case History Card: Conditions Previous to Admittance

$La methode curative des playes, et fractures de la teste humaine avec les pourtraits des instruments$

Title

La methode curative des playes, et fractures de la teste humaine avec les pourtraits des instruments

Description

Ambroise Paré is renowned as the father of modern surgery. In obstetrics, Paré pioneered a new way of turning an infant in the uterus. He also made significant advancements in the treatment of hernias, the fitting of artificial limbs and eyes, and devised a new instrument to reduce hemorrhage after amputation. As with much of his work, the Methode Curative was widely distributed and reached a large audience. Long considered a classic text on the treatment of head wounds, this book contains 74 woodcuts, many hand-colored and adapted from the corpus of Vesalius. The first section, devoted to the anatomy of the head, is illustrated with woodcuts. The anatomical engravings were modified from the woodcuts of Vesalius and completed by the talented Jean le Royer, King’s Printer. The second part of the book details the treatment of head wounds, skull fractures and diseases of the face. Included in this section are drawings of surgical instruments, many fashioned by Paré himself. The book contains the woodcut portrait by Jean Cousin, printed in an oval surrounded by Paré’s motto, “Labor improbus omnia vincit” (hard work conquers all). It is bound in limp vellum, with a gold-tooled vignette on the cover.

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Subjects (LC)

Anthropometry, Early works to 1800, General Surgery, Head—Anatomy, Head—Wounds and injuries, Medical illustration, Medicine, Surgery, Surgery—History, Surgical instruments and apparatus, Wood-engraving, Wounds and Injuries

Title

William H. Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards

Description

The William H. Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards contains approximately 300 colorful pharmaceutical trade cards produced in the U.S. and France between 1875 and 1895 that were used to advertise a wide range of goods in the nineteenth century; although introduced (in the mid-eighteenth century) as an ephemeral form of advertisement, they soon became collectors' items and were mass-produced in collectible 'series' comparable to those produced by sports teams in the twentieth century. They are now regarded as some of the best source material for the study of advertising, technology and trade in the post-Civil War period.

The collection was donated to the Academy Library by Mr. Helfand (one of the nation's leading collectors of medical ephemera) in a series of individual gifts between 1986 and 1992. The collection includes a number of duplicates, some of which are useful for scholarly study (e.g. bearing the stamps of different distributing pharmacists).

Scope Note: A collection of approximately 300 trade cards, ca. 1875 - ca. 1925 (bulk ca. 1875 - ca. 1914). Almost all advertise patent medicines or herbal remedies; a few deal with cosmetics, chocolate, or veterinary products. The collection includes a small number of French, German, Italian and Spanish cards; however, the bulk of collection is from the United States. Some of the companies represented manufactured the medicines and products advertised on the cards; others are local pharmacies which had their names printed onto cards advertising products they distributed. Many of the medicines and remedies claim to cure almost any complaint, or to address generalized conditions such as weakness, nervousness and general debility. Others address specific conditions or groups of ailments. Only a few cards list the printer or lithographer responsible for producing the image; very few indicate a date of publication or copyright.

Historical Note: Trade cards are small illustrated advertisements that were distributed for free by manufacturers and retailers from the 17th century to the early 20th century. Following the Civil War, trade cards became enormously popular in the United States and were the most effective mass advertising medium until the end of the 19th century. Late 19th century American trade cards were typically small pasteboard cards printed with illustrations in multiple colors. These cards were either custom-produced for one firm or store, or issued as stock cards. Stock cards allowed a manufacturer or retailer to have printed or stamped their advertisement and/or name and address on the front or back of an existing illustrated card, thus avoiding the expense of having one specially made.

Helfand, William H. The William H. Helfand collection of pharmaceutical trade cards. United States & France, 1875-1925.

Title

Vesalius’s De humani corporis Fabrica

Description

Andreas Vesalius’s De humani corporis Fabrica of 1543 is probably the most beautiful anatomical atlas produced in the 16th century. Vesalius, the 28 year old professor of anatomy at the University of Padua at the time of the book’s publication, spared no expense in hiring extraordinary craftsmen to create the woodblocks to illustrate his monumental atlas and we know that some of the drawings that were transferred to the blocks were made by Jan Stephen van Calcar, a Venetian artist working in Titian’s studio, although the block cutters themselves are unidentified. Despite Vesalius’s attempt to protect the images in the Fabrica through the acquisition of various royal privileges, they immediately became extremely popular and were widely reproduced in many other publications.

In 1932, Samuel Lambert, who had been the Academy's 32nd president, began raising money for the publication of the Icones Anatomicae, an edition of all of the images from the two editions of the Fabrica (1543 and 1555) and some of Vesalius’s other publications. Lambert studied and wrote about the historiated initials that appeared in the Fabrica, and a colleague suggested to him that the original wood blocks might still survive. He wrote to Dr. Willy Wiegand of the Bremer Press in Munich, asking if he would do some investigation. Wiegand visited the library at the University of Munich and a search turned up a box containing 227 of the blocks used in the production of the Fabrica and its companion publication from 1543, the Epitome (but none of the blocks for the initials). In light of this felicitous discovery, Lambert approached the Academy with the idea of publishing an edition of the rediscovered images.

Lambert envisioned a very ambitious and beautiful book, which is described at length in the Prospectus. After the discovery of the blocks, Lambert began raising money for a Library Publication Fund, and amassed over $15,000 from various donors by the end of 1932. The University of Munich agreed to co-publish the volume with NYAM, and Willy Wiegand, the head of the Bremer Press, was engaged as the printer. As we can see from the information in the Prospectus, no expense was spared in the creation of the book. Fine handmade paper with a special watermark was created especially for the volume, and photographic reproductions of the missing blocks were made and subtly marked in the descriptive tables.

Four hundred copies of the Icones Anatomicae were printed and sent to NYAM; an additional 295 copies were printed for the European market. At the same time, a small number of portfolios of 40 loose plates, the Tabulae Selectae, was printed as well. For years, individuals wrote to the NYAM librarians requesting individual images from the Tabula, which were sold at a very modest price. The portfolio was also available as a complete set. The title pages of both the 1543 and the 1555 editions of the Fabrica are included in the Tabula, along with a number of the skeletons, muscle men and flayed men that are some of the Fabrica's most iconic images.

Sadly, both the woodblocks and all of the copies of the German edition of the Icones were destroyed during the bombing of Munich in the summer of 1944, so NYAM has the distinction of being the organization that was responsible for the final inking and printing of the beautiful 16th century blocks.

Vesalius, Andreas. [Icones anatomicae, tabulae selecta]. Munich, 1935.

Photography by Ardon Bar-Hama courtesy of George Blumenthal.

Title

NYAM Lectures Broadcast by WNYC

Description

Forty lectures on medicine and society that NYAM produced and WNYC-FM broadcast in the 1950s. Digitized from the original lacquer disks.

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LIBRARY DIGITAL COLLECTIONS & EXHIBITS

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