John Martin Rare Book Room Open House
Thursday, March 22
5-8pm
Now in the 200th year since its publication, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus continues to raise questions about humanity, scientific ethics, and the place of the monster in our imaginations.
LEOPOLDO MARCO ANTONIO CALDANI (1725-1813) and FLORIANO CALDANI (1772-1836). Icones anatomicae., 1801-1813
Leopoldo Caldani was chair of anatomy at Padua, and was assisted in the publication of his anatomical works by his nephew, Floriano Caldani, also a professor at Padua.
Together, they created this massive, beautiful compilation of the best anatomic representations of past years. The representations of bones and muscles follow Albinus, the teeth and sexual organs are after John Hunter, the lymphatics after Mascagni, and the pregnant uterus and embryos after William Hunter and Soemmerring. Many of the plates were drawn by the younger Caldani. The lithographs are some of the earliest in book illustration.
Additional illustrations from our volumes available online.
You may view this book in the John Martin Rare Book Room, Hardin Library for the Health Sciences. Make a gift to the Hardin Library for the Health Sciences by donating online or setting up a recurring gift with The University of Iowa Foundation.
The University of Iowa History of Medicine Society and the University Libraries invite you to the annual open house in the John Martin Rare Book Room.
Early Modern England: Medicine, Shakespeare & Books
Thursday, March 23, 2017, 4pm-7pm
John Martin Rare Book Room, 4th Floor, Hardin Library for the Health Sciences
37 books from 1531 to 1697 will be on display highlighting general medical beliefs, herbals, monsters, poisons and cures. The books will also feature Shakespeare’s contemporaries and doctors in Shakespeare’s plays.
Donate to the Hardin Library. Donate to the UI History of Medicine Society.
Directions to Hardin Library.
Limited metered parking available behind library. Newton Road Parking Ramp 1 block away.
Cambus: take Pentacrest route to VA Loop or Newton Road Ramp stops.
Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend all University of Iowa-sponsored events. If you are a person with a disability who requires a reasonable accommodation in order to participate in this program please call Janna Lawrence at 319-335-9871.
JOHANNES DRYANDER (ca. 1500-1560). Anatomiae. Marburg: Apud Eucharium Ceruicornum, 1537.
Dryander (also known as Eichmann), professor of surgery at Marburg, was a friend of Vesalius and among the first anatomists who made illustrations after their own dissections.
This Anatomiae appeared six years before Vesalius’ great work. This was the first significant book on the anatomy of the head and contains 20 full-page woodcuts made from Dryander’s own dissections.
Sixteen of the plates are of the head and brain and were done to show successive stages of dissection. The first eleven plates appeared earlier in his Anatomia capitis humani (1536) and the remaining four plates of the chest and lungs were added as an appendix.
You may view this book in the John Martin Rare Book Room, Hardin Library for the Health Sciences. Make a gift to the Hardin Library for the Health Sciences by donating online or setting up a recurring gift with The University of Iowa Foundation.
Phil stands for philanthropy, and this year we celebrate on April 28. Hardin Library for the Health Sciences and the John Martin Rare Book Room exist because of generous gifts.
The John Martin Rare Book Room was started with a gift of Dr. Martin’s extensive collection of 3000 original, historical medical books from the 15th Century-present day. Dr. Martin also provided an endowment which helped further purchase new materials for the collection. The collection now numbers approximately 6500 items.
Dr. Robert C. Hardin envisioned the need for a comprehensive campus medical library while he was Dean of the College of Medicine. Dr. Hardin found donors to help with the construction of the Health Sciences Library. A photographic history of the library is available online.
Gifts to the Hardin Library can also be used to pay for renovations like new study rooms, modern furniture, or new technology like the One Button Studio.
Financial support to the Hardin Library for the Health Sciences or the John Martin Rare Book Room should be donated via The University of Iowa Foundation. You may also give financial support to Hardin Library online.
The University of Iowa History of Medicine Society invites you to attend the 2016 R. Palmer Howard Dinner on Friday, April 22, 2016 at the Sheraton Hotel, Iowa City. Reception begins at 6pm, followed by a buffet dinner and presentation.
Stephen Greenberg will talk on the use of photography in 19th Century printed medical books. Researchers and photographers pushed the existing art to their limits. Why were these pictures taken? Who saw them? Were they meant for private study or professional publication? How did they reflect the techniques and aesthetics of the rest of contemporary Victorian photography?
Please register and prepay by April 15. Cost is $10 for students, $40 for everyone else. Printable HOM 2016 Banquet Registration Form
Please consider donating online to the University of Iowa History of Medicine Society to sponsor events or student participation in the R. Palmer Howard Dinner.
Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend all University of Iowa-sponsored events. If you are a person with a disability who requires a reasonable accommodation in order to participate in this program, please contact Janna Lawrence in advance at 319-335-9871.
WILLIAM PORTERFIELD (1695-1771). A treatise on the eye, the manner and phaenomena of vision 1st edition. 2 vol. Edinburgh: Printed for A. Miller at London, 1759.
Porterfield was born in Ayrshire, Scotland, received his M.D. in 1717 at Rheims, and by 1721 was practicing in Edinburgh. Porterfield was made a professor at the University of Edinburgh in 1724 but apparently never taught.
Porterfield devoted himself chiefly to research on the physiology of vision, reporting his experiments and observations in this book. Porterfield’s Treatise was carefully read by all of the subsequent great contributors to ophthalmology and visual science for more than a century after its publication.
One of the most erudite of 18th century medical authors, Porterfield quoted widely from both the ‘old’ and ‘modern’ authors of his day. This book’s greatest strength, however, lies in numerous original experiments and observations about visual physiology.
You may view this book in the John Martin Rare Book Room, Hardin Library for the Health Sciences. Make a gift to the Hardin Library for the Health Sciences by donating online or setting up a recurring gift with The University of Iowa Foundation.
Visit the annual Open House in the John Martin Rare Book Room at Hardin Library on Thursday, March 31 from 4-7pm.
34 books will be on display, with a focus on medical innovations from 1527-1936.
For more information on the History of Medicine Society, or to donate, please see: http://hosted.lib.uiowa.edu/histmed/index.html
Open House 2016 Innovators Bibliography
[Image via Fisher Library Digital Collections, University of Toronto].
Nathaniel Highmore of Dorset, England was a British surgeon known for his 1651 treatise on anatomy, the first of its kind to give an accurate account of the circulatory system. Highmore studied at Oxford beginning in 1631, after which he practiced at Sherborne in Dorset. Corporis, the best-known of his several works, is divided into three sections corresponding to the abdomen, thorax, and head. Although the plates, drawn in the style of Vesalius, echo those of an earlier period, Highmore was responsible for a number of important advances. The most noteworthy of these are his descriptions of the sinus maxillaris (the largest nasal cavity, then known as the antrum of Highmore) and the mediastinum testes (the septum dividing the scrotum, or Highmore’s body).
To learn more about medical history, visit the John Martin Rare Book Room website.
Get to know Curator Donna Hirst at Iowa Now.
RICHARD BRIGHT (1789-1858) and THOMAS ADDISON (1793-1860). Elements of the practice of medicine. London: Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1839.
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[/ezcol_1half] [ezcol_1half_end]This rare work represents a joint undertaking by two of the most famous physicians in nineteenth-century Europe. The preface describes it as “a work at once elementary and practical to which [teachers] might refer their pupils as a companion and assistant during the period of their studies.”
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[/ezcol_1half] [ezcol_1half_end]Elements lists over sixty diseases and conditions and includes a lucid account of their histories, causes, prognoses, diagnoses, and treatments. Though the style is dated, the descriptions of the diseases excel in accuracy and conciseness. Originally issued in three parts from 1836 to 1839, the work is bound in a single volume. The intended second volume was never published. Hardin has digitized 17 images from the book. See them here.
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Text adapted from Donna Hirst, Curator, John Martin Rare Book Room.
Images: Respectively, Richard Bright, Thomas Addison. Credits: Wikimedia, prlog.org.