Woodcuts

Seeing Is Believing: Ophthalmology In The Renaissance Era

Staff #MütterMedicineMondays, Staff research , , ,

– by Patrick Magee, Visitor Services/Gallery Associate

 

Woodcut from [Ophthalmodouleia], das ist Augendienst [219r]

Have you been to your eye doctor lately? The process might have been a little bit different than it was ten or twenty years ago, with developments in optometry resulting in new tests, diagnostic processes and equipment. In some instances, dilation is not even needed for a full exam to be completed anymore! Now, recognizing that these changes have come within many of our lifetimes, can you imagine how much different ophthalmology was a hundred years ago? What about during the Renaissance era? Through the Digital Image Library, we have assembled a collection of images and historical records that show off just what Renaissance era eye doctors could do with the tools and knowledge of the time. Keep in mind some of the forthcoming imagery (both literal and written) might not be for the faint of heart!
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Plague Era Woodcuts Shed Light on Shared Beliefs In Action

Staff #MedievalMedicineMonday, Out of the stacks, Staff research , , , ,

– by Patrick Magee, Visitor Services/Gallery Associate

 

Welcome back to another issue of #MedievalMedicineMonday! On Mondays, Visitor Services/Gallery Associate Patrick Magee will be exploring the depths of medieval medicine as depicted by woodcuts found in our early printed books.

This week, we’re going to look at how woodcut creators and the general public made sense of the beginnings of a plague. In Pestbuch, Hieronymus Brunschwig depicted the onset of a pandemic through a series of woodcuts, themselves serving a purpose somewhere between documentation and warning. In the woodcut drawings, Brunschwig depicts a mixture of illness at its worst alongside the continuing lives of everyday folks and doctors/attenders of the sick.

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Fungus Among Us: How One Type of Mushroom Has Been a Medical Boon Since the 1700s

Staff #MedievalMedicineMonday, Out of the stacks, Staff research , , , ,

– by Patrick Magee, Visitor Services/Gallery Associate

 

Welcome to #MedievalMedicineMonday! On Mondays, Patrick Magee, Visitor Services/Gallery Associate, will be exploring the depths of medieval botanical medicine as depicted by woodcuts found in our early printed books.

Although commonly held beliefs over medicine change quite a bit over time, one thing that’s certain is the ceaseless documentation of every turn of events within the medical world, from plague to poison. Medicinal science involves a lot of trial and error, and sometimes what seems like an inscrutable idea at first can become the backbone of treatment. In this series of posts on medically significant plants, we wanted to beg several questions – which plants do we still use? Which ended up being effectively snake oil? What was for health, and what was for fun? All of these questions and more will be addressed over time, starting in this case with a fungus.
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