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

Des aller furtrefflichsten, hoechsten und adelichsten Gschoepffs aller Creaturen

Description

Walther Hermann Ryff was a surgeon employed in Strassburg in the early 16th Century. One of the highlights of this text are the 42 hand-colored woodcuts in the text, compiled from a number of Renaissance sources. Depicted in the counterfeit style, the illustrations in this book would have implied eye witness knowledge and discovery. In this way, Ryff’s book asserted itself as a credible description of anatomy (though its illustrations were far from anatomically accurate). The text of this book relied on lectures in anatomy and physiology, compounded from other sources. His audience was the ‘gemeine,’ or common man, and its composition in German, rather than Latin, ensured it would have a wider audience. In this way, Ryff’s book would have been indispensable to new readers as a compilation of Renaissance knowledge about the body. The book also offers evidence about early printing history. The wood-blocks for this edition were reused for a set of broadsides before they were passed to a Parisian printer for new editions of Ryff’s work, and for a popular work on surgery. This illustrated the practice of passing wood-blocks from publisher to publisher, and shows how work published in one city continued to be published and disseminated in others

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Subjects (LC)

Anatomy, Anthropometry, Early works to 1800, Medical illustration, Medicine, Printing—History, Proportion (Art), Renaissance, Wood-engraving

Title: Fasciculo de medicina : collectorio universalissimo chiamado Fasciculo de medicina, extracto dalla achademia...[1522]
Description: The Arrivabeni published two editions in 1522, one in Latin and the second in Italian. This edition, in Italian, is likely the second edition published that year by the printers.
Subjects (LC): Human anatomy-Early works to 1800, Human anatomy-Atlases-Early works to 1800, Genitourinary organs-Early works to 1800, Generative organs-Early works to 1800, Plague-Early works to 1800, Phlebotomy-Early works to 1800, Materia medica-Early works to 1800, Medicine-Early works to 1800

Title: Fasciculus medicine ... tractans de anothomia et diversis infirmitatibus, et corporis humani...[1513]
Description: The eleventh edition of the Fasciculus, printed by Gregorio de Gregorii and featuring Latin Gothic type. The size of the printed page is much larger than in all other editions apart from 1491; as a consequence, the plates are less clipped by the binder (though the blocks themselves are abbreviated). Our copy lacks the frontispiece plate and the urinoscopic consultation plate.
Subjects (LC): Human anatomy-Atlases-Early works to 1800, Medicine-Atlases-Early works to 1800, Human anatomy-Early works to 1800, Genitourinary organs-Early works to 1800, Generative organs-Early works to 1800, Plague-Early works to 1800, Medicine-Early works to 1800, Human anatomy-Charts, diagrams, etc

Title: Fasciculus medicine : similitudo complexionum & elementorum. [1500]
Description: The sixth edition of the Fasciculus, and the fifth printed in Venice, also by the brothers Gregorii in Latin. The edition uses the same blocks as the 1495 edition, with some minor modifications of the plates. The edition adds a new treatise by Rhazes on children’s diseases. This is the only edition of our five with colored plates, and is bound with Savonarola's Practica medicinae.
Subjects (LC): Medicine-Early works to 1800, Medicine, Medieval, Human anatomy-Early works to 1800, Human anatomy-Charts, diagrams, etc, Surgery-Early works to 1800, Genitourinary organs-Early works to 1800, Generative organs-Early works to 1800, Plague-Early works to 1800

Title: Fasciculus medicine in quo continentur : videlicet. [1495]
Description: This is the fourth edition of the Fasciculus and the third printed in Venice (after 1491 and 1493 editions both also by the Brothers Gregorii). It was printed in Latin and reset in Gothic type. In this edition, the page is shorter by four lines, resulting in plates that are too large and in many cases, clipped by the binder. This is the earliest edition with a real title page. Our copy lacks the urinoscopic consultation plate and the plate showing the circle of urine glasses.
Subjects (LC): Medicine-Early works to 1800, Medicine, Medieval, Human anatomy-Early works to 1800, Human anatomy-Charts, diagrams, etc, Plague-Early works to 1800, Phlebotomy-Early works to 1800

Title

Historae Rerum Naturalium, Liber Sextus, Qui agit Quadrupedibus, & Serpentibus

Description

The Dutch West India Company occupied northeastern Brazil from 1624 to 1654. In 1638, the physician Willem Piso and astronomer Georg Markgraf arrived as part of Johann Maurits’s research staff, tasked with promoting scientific studies in Brazil. This section of the Historia naturalis Brasiliae was written by Piso's colleague, the astronomer Georg Markgraf. Markgraf wrote the last eight sections of the Historia naturalis Brasiliae, of which this is the sixth. These sections as a whole were devoted to the medical uses of plants; to fish, birds, insects, quadrupeds and reptiles; and to full descriptions of geographic regions and their inhabitants. Markgraf also describes the appearance, habits, and environment of each animal depicted.

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Subjects (LC)

Botanical illustration, Early works to 1800, Indians of Central America, Indigenous crops, Indigenous peoples—Ecology, Natural history—Brazil, Natural history illustration, Medical geography, Medicine, Zoological illustration, Zoology—Brazil, Zoology—Pre-Linnean works, Wood-engraving

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

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

Publisher’s Prospectus & Order Form, Icones Anatomicae

Description

Andreas Vesalius’s De humani corporis Fabrica of 1543 is probably the most beautiful anatomical atlas produced in the 16th century, and Vesalius spared no expense in hiring extraordinary craftsmen to create the woodblocks. In 1932, Samuel Lambert 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. A search at the University of Munich turned up a box containing 227 of the blocks used in the production of the Fabrica and its companion publication from 1543, the Epitome. The University of Munich agreed to co-publish the volume with Academy. 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 were printed and sent to Academy. The title pages of both the 1543 and the 1555 editions of the Fabrica are included in the Tabulae, along with a number of the skeletons, muscle men and flayed men that are some of the Fabrica’s most iconic images.

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Subjects (LC)

Anatomy, Anatomy, Artistic, Anthropometry, Early works to 1800, Human figure in art, Medical illustration, Medicine, Muscles, Musculoskeletal system, Proportion (Anthropometry), Proportion (Art), Wood-engraving

Title: Queste sono le cose contenute in questo dignissimo Fasciculo di medicina vulgare :... [1509]
Description: The ninth edition of the Fasciculus, printed in Italian in Milan (all other editions featured here are Venetian). The edition was printed by Giovanni de Castellione at the expense of Giovanni de Legnano and his brothers. While both plates and texts are taken from the Venice, 1493 edition, the plates have been reversed and introduce a number of variations. The plate with the circle of urine glasses is colored to correspond to their textual descriptions.
Subjects (LC): Medicine-Early works to 1800, Human anatomy-Charts, diagrams, etc, Genitourinary organs-Early works to 1800, Generative organs-Early works to 1800, Plague-Early works to 1800

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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Subjects (LC)

Botanical illustration, Early works to 1800, Indians of Central America, Indigenous crops, Indigenous peoples—Ecology, Natural history—Brazil, Natural history illustration, Medical geography, Medicine, Zoological illustration, Zoology—Brazil, Zoology—Pre-Linnean works, Wood-engraving

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