Historical manuscripts hand-copied by scribes largely disappeared after the invention of the printing press. With the advent of typewriters and computers, modern handwritten texts are also scarce and soon might disappear altogether. Today’s text editors do not offer the same opportunity to study penmanship, deletions, and notations to glimpse a writer’s personality and writing process. Falk Library’s small manuscript collection aims to preserve some handwritten resources to give researchers another angle from which to study the past.
Erik Homberger Erikson (1902-1994), a German-American developmental psychologist and psychoanalyst, is famous for his theory of the stages of psychosocial development, and for coining the term “identity crisis.” He never received a formal degree in medicine, but instead studied art, traveled widely in Europe in order to “find himself,” and studied psychoanalysis with Anna Freud in Vienna. He moved to the United States in 1933 and began working as a child psychoanalyst. He held various teaching positions at Harvard, Yale, and Berkeley. While working at the Austen Riggs Center in the 1950s, he was also a visiting professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Continue reading
Charles Estienne (1504-1564) was a contemporary of Andreas Vesalius. He came from a family of Parisian printers and publishers. Estienne studied classical philology at the University of Padua in Italy, and upon his return to France, earned a medical degree at the University of Paris. He practiced medicine and taught anatomy at the Faculté de Médicine (1544-1547). His De dissectione partium corporis humani (1545) is often compared to the famous De humani corporis fabrica by Vesalius (1543). Estienne prepared anatomical drawings with the surgeon and artist Etienne de la Riviére. They partially printed the book in 1541, but its full publication was delayed due to a lawsuit in which both collaborators were involved. Had it appeared as planned, this work may have changed several “firsts” in medical history as claimed by Vesalius. 
Peter Lowe, author of A Discourse of the Whole Art of Chirurgery published in London in 1654, left a significant mark on Scottish medicine by founding the Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons in Glasgow, reorganizing the practice of medicine in the same city, and then writing a book that made quite a stir. Contrary to the dominating trend at that time to write scientific books in Latin, this book was written in the vernacular and enjoyed great popularity (four editions in the 17th century). However, even more than its importance to 17th century medicine, are the provenance notes added in the 19th century that make the volume in Falk Library’s rare book collection special and unique.
Leonard Baskin’s Ars Anatomica: a medical fantasia, thirteen drawings (1972) is the most recent addition to our historical collection. The book was donated by Dr. Brian Primack, the former dean of Pitt’s Honors College. The portfolio includes thirteen anatomical drawings commissioned by Editions Medicina Rara from a contemporary artist, Leonard Baskin (1922-2000).
We know very little about the author of an unusual book on hernia found in the Falk Library Rare Book Collection. Jean Pierre Le Rouge was a surgeon at the College of Surgeons in Paris and at the Hôtel-Dieu in the second half of the 18th century and was the author of two books on hernias. He had 17 years of experience working at the biggest hospital in Paris, Hôtel-Dieu, when he published his first popular work Avis très important aux personnes attaquées de hernies ou descentes [Translation: Very important notice to people attacked by hernia] in 1784. A year later, in 1785, his thesis Dissertatio anatomico-chirurgica de perfecta inguinalis herniae simplicis curatione [Translation: Thesis on the treatment of inguinal hernia] appeared. Both books are very scarce.