This is the second blog post about this manuscript asking for help from the medieval and/or history of medicine and/or history of science communities. The table below is found on f. 12r of the second volume of 10a 131. I don’t believe they are alchemical symbols, but perhaps abbreviations for chemicals.
– by Wood Institute travel grantee Marieke Hendriksen*
As a historian of art and science, I am particularly interested in the exchange of knowledge and skills between visual artists and medical men in writing and practice in the 18th century. Last year, the F.C. Wood Institute at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia awarded me a travel grant to study the collaboration between artists and anatomists in Philadelphia in the first decades of the College (est. 1787). It has long been known that anatomists and visual artists worked closely together in the production of anatomical atlases and models in early modern Europe, and sometimes were even united in the same person. An extensive corpus of literature about anatomical preparations and illustrations exists, yet little attention has been paid thus far to the development, understanding and transmission of various other techniques for depicting the body among artists and anatomists. My research fills that gap by focusing on the development and exchange of techniques like plaster casting, wax, wood, and papier-mâché modelling among artists and anatomists. The practices and resources in the early decades of the College of Physicians in Philadelphia form a fascinating case for this research project as they developed in conjunction with similar practices in Europe, yet were in a sense also geographically isolated.
Seen here: a drawing of an alembic vessel.
What are quires and catchwords, and why are they important?
10a 131 is comprised of two volumes: one from the 14th century and one from the 3rd quarter of the 15th century, both (probably) from the Veneto in Italy. Donated to the Library by Morris Wickersham sometime in the 1880s, the volumes were soon bound together.
On April 1st, the College of Physicians of Philadelphia released what we lovingly refer to as the “Digital Spine,” one of the few catalogs in the United States that merges descriptions of, and access to, library, archival and museum collections.
Approximately 145,000 bibliographic records for collections in the Historical Medical Library and approximately 28,000 records for objects in the Mütter Museum will be merged in a single, cross-searchable database. To sample this integration, go to https://cpp.ent.sirsi.net/client/en_US/library and search for “foreign bodies.”
We know, thanks to our scribe Christoforus B., that 10a 159 was completed in July 1493. But where did go from there? We don’t know who the first owners may have been, but book stamps, inscriptions, and sale catalogues can tell us about later owners.
