Items

Title

An Abstract of the Patent Granted by His Majesty King George…

Description

Patent medicines originated in England in the mid 17th century and were marketed with extravagant claims, offering cures for a host of maladies. Recommendations for dosage were vague, and ingredients (often including opium) were usually not specified. In 1726 Benjamin Okell was granted the royal patent for Dr. Bateman’s Pectoral Drops, a tincture of gambir (an astringent extract from an Asian plant) and opium. Advertisements published in the London Mercury as early as 1721 directed prospective customers to the warehouse and printing shop at Bow's Churchyard, where they could purchase the drops for one shilling. Our copy of the 1731 reprint by Peter Zenger is likely the first piece of medical printing in New York. Zenger, who would later become famous for printing seditious texts, was instrumental in establishing freedom of the press in America. The Academy has the only known copy. Bound with our copy of the abstract is a copy of A Short treatise of the virtues of Dr. Bateman's Pectoral Drops, also issued by Okell and his printing house partners. Here, Batemans efficacy as a treatment for numerous ailments are described in sections dedicated to each. The last section of the treatise offers testimonials from satisfied customers.

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Subjects (LC)

Advertising—Medicine, Early works to 1800, Fever, Medicine, Patent medicines, Rheumatism

Title

Apicius [De re culinaria Libri I-IX]

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

Aristotle’s Masterpiece, Or The Secrets of Generation displayed in all the parts thereof

Description

Published initially in 1684 and popular in both America and England for over two hundred years, this became the most widely reprinted medical book in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The contributions of the Masterpiece were not particularly scientific, but drew largely from Hippocrates, and Galen, as well as other classical and medieval writers. The source material came from two earlier books: Levinus Lemnius’s Secret Miracles of Nature, originally published in Latin in 1599, and The Complete Midwives Practice Enlarged (author unknown). Chapter headings include sections titled, “The Signs of Barrenness” “The Way of getting to a Boy or a Girl,” “How a Midwife Ought to be Qualified” and “A Word of Advice to both Sexes in the Act of Copulation.” The information this title offered on conception, pregnancy, and childbirth wasn’t particularly innovative; many seventeenth century discoveries in gynecology are absent from the text and replaced by Hippocratic pathology, or by superstition. The “Aristotle” of the title was pseudonymous, and likely evoked by the book’s author to give the tome scientific credibility. The book’s true author is unknown, though Culpepper and William Salmon, an English physician and author, are sometimes credited.

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Subjects (LC)

Abnormalities, Human, Conception, Early works to 1800, Gynecology, Medicine, Midwifery, Obstetrics, Reproduction, Sex instruction, Sexual behavior

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

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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Subjects (LC)

Early works to 1800, Illumination of books and manuscripts, Manuscripts, Medical illustration, Medicine, Medicine—History, Medicine, Medieval, Surgery—History, Surgical instruments and apparatus

Title

Specimen Medicinae Sinicae

Description

The Specimen Medicinae Sinicae is the first illustrated book published on Chinese medicine in the West. It contains an overview of Chinese medical practices including acupuncture and meridian theories, semiology of the tongue, descriptions of Chinese pharmaceuticals and their uses, and an important translation of a Ming treatise on pulse diagnosis. The Specimen includes thirty engraved plates and woodcut illustrations in the text, depicting the Chinese doctrine of the pulse and the semiology of the tongue, along with eight tables showing the variations of the pulses. Explaining Chinese pulse theory to a European audience proved difficult. Insufficient description of the plates, which pictured figures with doubled lines running through the bodies, confused western audiences, who interpreted these representations as indication that the Chinese didn't know their anatomy. The publication of the Specimen Medicinae Sinicae did little to change the commonly-held belief that the Chinese were crackerjack diagnosticians, with a misguided idea of the body's interior. The tenets of Chinese medicine and diagnostics were also somewhat muddled in the minds of westerners. Nevertheless, the translation did much to introduce pulse lore, acupuncture, and new materia medica to a Western audience of medical practitioners eager to experiment.

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Subjects (LC)

Acupuncture—China, Anatomy, Chinese—History, Early works to 1800, Materia medica—China, Medicine, Medicine, Chinese, Medical illustration, Pulse—Measurement

Geographic Subject

China

Title

The byrth of Mankynde newly translated out of Laten into Englyshe

Description

The Byrth of Mankynde, published in 1540, is the oldest manual for midwives printed in the English language. It remained in use both as a guidebook for midwives and as a source for physicians in the practice of obstetrics throughout Europe for the next two hundred years. The 1540 Byrth was a translation from the Latin edition of De Partu Hominis of Eucharius Rösslin’s Rosengarten. Rösslin was charged with supervising the midwives of Frankfurt, and although this volume contains sound instruction on delivery procedures, it did not break new ground in the field of obstetrics. Instead, it makes available the teachings of the Roman physician Soranus, popularized by Moschion, author of a 6th century question – and –answer book for Roman midwives. Other influences include Galen, Hippocrates, Aetius, Magnus and others. The volume’s seventeen copper-engraved plates were among the first in England to be produced by a roller press. The first illustrates “the Womans Stwle,” or birth chair, a birth aid which had been in use at least since Soranus’ time. Sixteen additional plates depict “Byrth Figures” in various positions in utero. The babies in these images, who resemble children age three or four and not fetuses, float dreamily in light-bulb-shaped vessels.

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