If you were to look at where all of the pre-1800 books in our collections were published, you would notice that some cities show up over and over, such as Venice, Paris, Lyon, Basel, and Frankfurt.
Garth’s work is a satirical take on the traditional epic poem, and is perhaps one of the better examples of the “medical poetry” genre. What better way to celebrate National Poetry Month than by taking a closer look at this work and its author?
Our rare book collections hold several editions of Ambroise Paré’s surgical works. This is not unusual. Paré (1510-1590) is one of the most famous early modern surgeons, and his writings were very popular during that time period. While he published short treatises on distinct subjects beginning in 1545, the large folio editions of his collected [Read more]
Although we are a medical library, not every single volume in our rare book collections takes medicine as its focus. Our shelves also have 19th century novels, 18th century poetry, and 19th century poetry of questionable quality. We also have quite a few travelogues! Today we’ll look at Mungo Park’s account of his explorations in West Africa in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Prophetic works began to be printed as soon as Gutenberg developed his system of printing with movable metal type. In the early modern period, illustrated prophetic texts provided a way for people to try and understand the political and religious upheavals that surrounded them.
Some of the most fascinating objects in the CID-Max A. Goldstein Collection in Speech and Hearing are works that contain examples of early modern manual alphabets. One of the most significant of these is Juan Pablo Bonet’s Reduction de las letras, y arte para enseñar a ablar los mudos (Simplification of the Letters of the [Read more]
The Becker Library recently acquired a very interesting work: Jacob Christian Schäffer’s Die Eingebildeten Würmer in Zähnen (The Imaginary Tooth Worms), publi
October is a good time to highlight some of the more unusual items in our collection. It doesn’t get much more unusual than medicinal cannibalism, which is exactly what it sounds like: the practice of using human body parts as an ingredient in medicinal recipes.
Do you pay any attention to the title pages in your books, or do you just skip past them to get to the text? Most of today’s books have the title and author printed right on the cover o