ROBERT JAMES (1705-1776). A medicinal dictionary. 3 vols. London: T. Osborne, 1743-1745. James studied at Oxford and was granted his M.D. from Cambridge by royal mandate in 1728. He settled in London after practicing at Sheffield, Lichfield, and Birmingham. A successful physician, he became quite wealthy and famous when his “fever powder” became the most popular nostrumContinue reading “Notes from the John Martin Rare Book Room; James Medicinal Dictionary”

Puerperal fever, often called childbed fever, ravaged obstetrics patients in the U.S., Britain, and Europe throughout the 18th and 19th centuries.  Its symptoms included severe abdominal pain, fever, and debility and carried a mortality rate as high as seventy percent during some epidemics.  Even though the greatest incidences occurred in close-quartered  “lying-in hospitals,” (state-supported maternityContinue reading “Notes From the Rare Book Room –A Private Pestilence”

 Gerardus Blasius (1626?-1692?).  Anatome animalium.  Amsterdam, 1681.  Although Blasius was a practicing physician in Amsterdam, his real interest lay in anatomy and, in particular, comparative anatomy.  He worked closely with philosophers and scientists such as John Locke, Jan Swammerdam, and Niels Stensen to promote the study of anatomy and to widen the availability of bothContinue reading “Notes from the Rare Book Room “Anatome animalium””

 Daniel Le Clerc (1652-1728). Histoire de la médecine. Nouvelle ed. Amsterdam: Aux depens de la Compagnie, 1723. Swiss physician, Daniel Le Clerc was born at Geneva and studied medicine at Montpellier and Paris. He received the M.D. degree at Valencia in 1670 and returned to Geneva to enter private practice. Although successful as a physician,Continue reading “Notes from the Rare Book Room “Histoire de medicine””

But she has taen the broken lance, And washed it from the clotted gore, And salved the splinter o’er and o’er. —Sir Walter Scott: Lay of the Last Minstrel—1805 The notion that wounds can be healed from a distance dates back hundreds, perhaps thousands of years and is retained in some folk remedies today. However,Continue reading “Notes from the Rare Book Room “Wrap up the Sword and Call me in the Morning””

In the sixteenth century the same spirit which inspired Vesalius and others in the field of anatomy served also as the inspiration for the study of flora from actual specimens, culminating in what is certainly the most celebrated and probably the most beautiful herbal ever published, Fuchs’ De historia stirpium commentarii Basel, 1542. Leonhart FuchsContinue reading “Notes from the Rare Book Room: The Great Herbal of Leonhart Fuchs”