William Withering (1741-1799) was a British polymath, botanist, mineralogist, and chief physician at the Birmingham General Hospital. He attracted the attention of the medical world to the virtues of common foxglove (also known by its Latin name, digitalis) in the treatment of dropsy when he published his famous work, An Account of the Foxglove, and Some of Its Medicinal Uses, in 1785. Continue reading
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Treasures from the Rare Book Room: Before National Pharmacopeias Were Born…
A pharmacopeia, in the modern sense, is a list of drugs and medicinal preparations, serving as an authoritative source of identification and a standard to be followed. Before the emergence of these works, however, medicines were described together with other treatments as part of general medical texts. Some were depicted in herbals and others in the materia medica books, with traditional medical remedies.
The first real pharmacopeia was, Pharmacorvm Omnivm, published by Valerius Cordus in 1546. Recognized as the official standard in Nurenberg, it inspired a chain reaction as many other European cities published their own local pharmacopeias. By the mid-17th century, this movement reached its peak, and the need to expand the jurisdiction of disparate pharmacopeias resurfaced. This eventually led to development of a standard for an entire country. The Pharmacopeia of the United States of America (Boston 1820) exemplifies this trend.
Publication of the Pharmacopœia Londinensis in 1618, a work widely disseminated in Europe through a multitude of foreign reprints, translations, and adaptations, illustrates another important aspect: authority. Backed by the Royal College of Physicians, the creation of this pharmacopeia was no longer one author’s responsibility. As time passed, institutional authority gradually shifted from societies (“colleges”) of physicians, to societies of pharmacists, or to governments responsible for producing national pharmacopeias.
The 18th century brought another important trend in the development of the modern pharmacopeia: an increased focus on scientific evidence. This was triggered by progress in the sciences, especially chemistry. It led to a reduction of listing remedies associated with superstitions or customs, and to greater interest in the testing of drugs. All of these changes happened slowly, and though the displacement started in the Age of Enlightenment, some traditional medicinal remedies persisted in pharmacopeias until the late 19th century.
Falk Library has original or facsimile editions of the texts mentioned above along with the beautifully preserved Pharmacopoea Wirtenbergica (Stuttgart 1750) pictured here. It served as a standard for the Duchy of Württemberg. This book is an example of a pharmacopeia combining a formulary and a textbook giving comprehensive information about the materia medica in addition to the required listings.
For more information or to view these volumes, e-mail techserv@pitt.edu or call 412-383-9773.
~Gosia Fort
United in Illness: Gómez Miedes’ Enquiridion
Bernardino Gómez Miedes (1520-1589) was a Spanish humanist well-versed in many disciplines. He authored two important books: Commentarii de sale (1572), the earliest discussion of salt, and Enchiridion (1589), a manual about gout. An edition of the latter, published again in Madrid in 1731, caught the eye of Dr. Gerald Rodnan. Dr. Rodnan was an avid book collector, professor of medicine, and the former division chief of rheumatology and clinical immunology at the University of Pittsburgh, who donated his impressive collection of rheumatology books to the Falk Library.
The 1731 edition of Enquiridion is bound in limp vellum, which was the traditional and common choice of binders in the 18th century. The white leather of the cover is not decorated and has only a handwritten spine title, Manual de salud (Health Handbook). The strips of leather supporting the spine and forming the closing ties are visible though no longer functional. Typical for the period was also the use of pages from other, usually older, books. However, the binder of our library copy took a different approach by including as end papers pages 245-246 of a contemporary Spanish medical tract, Restauracion de la medicina antigua, sobre sus mayores remedios, by Francisco Suárez de Rivera, also published in 1731.
Enquiridion was originally published in 1589. It was written in Spanish, therefore destined for a wider domestic audience than a manual written in Latin. It was dedicated to Phillip II with the intention to advise the king, who like Gómez Miedes suffered from gout, on ways to deal with pain caused by the disease. The author was not a physician, but his book shows his erudition, proves his knowledge of ancient authors like Galen, and stresses the importance of clinical observation. He introduces massage as a healing technique. Gomez Miedes’ advice on dealing with pain in illness would have been especially convincing to his contemporaries, as it came from a fellow sufferer of gout.
~Gosia Fort
Treasures from the Rare Book Room: Scrapbooks
The idea of preserving memories, special moments, and histories in albums using scraps such as prints, bookplates, quotes, poems, calling cards, paper cutouts, press clippings, and photographs is not a new concept. In the United States, with the invention of photography and the appearance of a variety of patented photography and scrapbook albums, scrapbooking gained popularity in the 19th century. Today’s renewed interest in genealogy keeps the art of scrapbooking alive.
Falk Library has several interesting scrapbooks in its collections. There are albums from the School of Dentistry and the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic documenting Pitt’s contributions to research in related disciplines as well as illustrating special dentistry collections focused on the history of anesthesia. Other impressive topics include: a volume on curious customs, miracles and psychic occurrences, and three scrapbooks on the supernatural with newspaper clippings from the 1920s and 1930s on vampires, fortune tellers, human sacrifices, and magic. There are also two unique albums from the 27th Base Hospital in Angers during WWI and 27th General Hospital in New Guinea during WWII. Finally, there is a scrapbook honoring Lillian Clayton.
Sarah Lillian Clayton (1874-1930) was a nurse and a Superintendent of Nurses at Philadelphia General Hospital (PGH). She graduated from PGH Training School of Nursing in 1896 and began a nursing career that took her to Dayton, Minneapolis, and Chicago, only to return and complete her career in Philadelphia where she started. She became a national leader in nursing education, active in many organizations, and served as president of the National League for Nursing Education (1917-1920) and the American Nurses Association (1926-1930).
Clayton’s scrapbook was prepared by Florence Anna Ambler (Hay), one of her students and acolytes in 1930. It is a tribute to the distinguished nurse and includes photographs, press clippings, and typescripts of correspondence to and from Miss Clayton. In 1958, the scrapbook was donated to the University of Pittsburgh School of Nursing. Today it can be viewed in the Rare Book Room by appointment.
~Gosia Fort
Treasures from the Rare Book Room: Porterfield on the Eye
The most recent addition to the HSLS rare book collection is a first edition of William Porterfield’s Treatise on the Eye, the Manner and Phaenomena of Vision, published in Edinburgh in 1759.
William Porterfield (ca.1696-1771) was a Scottish physician. Like many of his contemporaries he studied in Glasgow and Leiden before he received his MD from Rheims in 1717. Upon his return to Scotland, he was admitted as a Fellow to the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (1721), appointed a professor (1724), and later its president (1748-1750). Not much is known about his private life, nor how and when he became interested in optics, but he is the author of pioneering work on the physiology of the eye. He wrote articles about external (1737) and internal (1738) eye movements and also described the first optometer for measuring the near and far points of vision. However, it was his book, Treatise on the Eye, the Manner and Phaenomena of Vision, that made him an authority on vision. It was praised by ophthalmic historians as one of the most erudite works, far ahead of others of similar scope. Its greatest strength lay in its numerous original experiments and observations about visual physiology. According to Garrison, his Treatise on the Eye, “was the first important British work on the anatomy and physiology of the eye.” (Garrison-Morton 1484.2)
Porterfield also gave us the earliest first hand doctor’s account of phantom limbs after his leg was amputated. He incorporated his phantom limb experiences into his account of sensory function.
This book is a gift from Dr. E. Kenneth Vey, a local physician, former professor in the School of Medicine, and past president of the Pittsburgh Ophthalmology Society. Prior to Vey’s ownership, the “office copy” belonged to other prominent practitioners from the area. The book also bears the stamp of the so called Vattemare’s agency in Paris. Vattemare’s was the international book exchange program established by Library of Congress in 1848. Allexandre Vattemare was the author of the exchange system and the first agent of the Library of Congress.
~Gosia Fort
Treasures from the Rare Book Room: The First Book on Plastic Surgery
When Italian surgeon, Gaspare Tagliacozzi (1544-1599), published his treatise on nasal reconstruction, De Curtorum Chirurgia per Insitionem (Venice 1597), the work became an immediate bestseller. Though some aspects of plastic surgeries were discussed by earlier authors, it was Tagliacozzi who combined the best medical knowledge of the day with a lifetime of experience perfecting nasal surgery techniques to publish the first book exclusively devoted to plastic surgery. He developed a new method of grafting a flap from an arm instead of the forehead. Unfortunately, Tagliacozzi passed away without leaving any followers to carry on, and his method fell out of fashion.
Plastic surgery was in decline until 1816, when Joseph Constantine Carpue described the “Indian method” of nasal surgery utilizing a median forehead flap. His work, An Account of Two Successful Operations for Restoring a Lost Nose from the Integuments of the Forehead, revived the specialty shaped and characterized by Tagliacozzi two centuries earlier:
“We restore, rebuild, and make whole those parts which nature hath given, but which fortune has taken away. Not so much that it may delight the eye, but that it might buoy up the spirit, and help the mind of the afflicted.”
Falk Library has both of these important texts, but Tagliacozzi’s book is the gem. It has key elements that transform an old book into an object of beauty: attractive font, interesting structure of text underlined by initials and separated by decorative tailpieces, 22 woodcut plates illustrating the treatise and a printer’s mark, printed marginal notes, a bi-color title page, an additional engraved title page, and a beautiful vellum binding. The provenance of this important book is a mystery. The identity of a former owner who left the signature “Doc. Car. Alfieri” cannot be established with certainty at this time. The paper and binding show some signs of aging and stress due to past storage in an overly dry environment. However, considering that this book is more than 400 years old, it still has the power to dazzle the reader with its beauty!
~Gosia Fort
Treasures from the Rare Book Room: Judged by the Cover
The Parisian bookbinding workshop later known as Gruel & Engelmann was founded in 1811 by Isidore Desforges. Desforges took his son-in-law Paul Gruel into partnership in 1825. After Gruel’s death in 1846, his widow Catherine, successfully continued the business. She had exquisite artistic taste and attracted the best talent to her workshop. It was a meeting place for all important binders of the time, and her salon became a literary club for celebrated collectors of books and bindings. Catherine won the highest prize at the Paris Exhibition in 1849, and repeated this success in 1851 at the Great Exhibition in London where she won the gold medal for excellence of workmanship. Continue reading
Treasures from the Rare Book Room: What about Vesalius?
Last year, 2015, marked the 500th anniversary of the birth of the great anatomist Andreas Vesalius. This was celebrated around the world by many events and writings lauding his famous work, Humani corporis fabrica libri septem (1543). This book is arguably the greatest treasure in Falk Library’s Rare Book Collections. Our contribution to the festivities is more practical than spectacular in nature, but it still shows our appreciation and the care with which we look after the De Fabrica. We upgraded the five-line description, which for years served to identify the work in our public catalog, to “full cataloging.” It may seem like a minor step, but to have a record describing the details of the volume, which precisely identify the copy that we have in our collection, is a matter of increased security. It is nearly as important as our physical safekeeping of the book behind a locked door in a climate-controlled environment.
The new description reveals the details specific to our copy. It traces the provenance to the 1914 purchase of the volume from a German bookseller by Dr. James D. Heard. He later donated 147 books from his collection (including the Vesalius) to our library. The enhanced description identifies all pages with handwritten annotations. It also describes the original 16th century binding and the remnants of its closures, and relates the physical state of the volume. These details characterize elements that are unique to our copy, and that are helpful in identifying variants, e.g., noticeable differences between copies of the same edition due to the manual process of printing and binding. It gives detailed information on pagination and numbering errors. Also provided are notes about large folded plates and their placement.
Alternate link for catalog record animation.
The record for the second edition of Vesalius’ De Fabrica (1555), also held in Falk Library’s Rare Book Collection, received the same “anniversary upgrade” as the 1543 edition.
These materials can be viewed in the Rare Book Room by appointment.
~Gosia Fort
Treasures from the Rare Book Room: Rare, Medium Rare, or Well Done?
Have you ever wondered how rare are the books in the Rare Book collection? What makes a book “rare” and worth protecting? There is no clear cut definition. The general rule is to consider rare any book produced before 1801, except for English books which have to be issued before 1641, and for American books published west of Mississippi before 1850. This understanding encompasses manuscripts, incunabula (books produced in the first years after the invention of the printing press, 1455-1501) and books printed before the era of mass production, when all elements of the printing process such as paper, print, or illustrations were done by hand. In addition to age, any of the following qualifying features should be considered: materials used, scarcity, uniqueness, fine binding and illustrations, or intrinsic importance. Each of these criteria is relative, since not every old book is rare and not every rare book is old. Even when something is unique and irreplaceable, it does not mean it has a high value or is important. There are no clay tablets, scrolls, or illuminated manuscripts in the Falk Library collections, but among rare books there is one which, though not old or scarce, is a “must have” in a medical collection.
Papyros Ebers (Leipzig 1875) is a facsimile edition of one of the oldest medical texts, an Egyptian papyrus dating to circa 1550 BC. There is abundant evidence that it was copied from a series of even earlier books. It is written on a 20 meter long scroll. The papyrus covers mental disorders, surgical knowledge of bone-setting and removal of tumors, eye and skin diseases, and more. It includes about 700 formulas, remedies and incantations and is the most complete record of medical knowledge in ancient Egypt. The scroll is named after Georg Ebers, German Egyptologist from the University of Leipzig who purchased it. The published papyrus included an introduction and hieroglyph-Latin dictionary, but it was not translated until 1890, when the German translation appeared followed by the English translation in 1930.
The facsimile is currently on exhibit in the Library’s front lobby. For further information, e-mail techserv@pitt.edu or call 412-383-9773.
~Gosia Fort
Treasures from the Rare Book Room: John Hill’s Family Herbal
Herbals or herbaria—books describing herbs and their medicinal uses—are among the earliest literature created. They may be in the form of manuscripts, scrolls, codices, or loose sheets. Falk Library has several 18th century herbals, but the 1822 edition of John Hill’s Family Herbal is particularly interesting for three reasons: it has color plates unlike earlier herbals in our collection, it has an interesting provenance, and it was written by an author with a notorious reputation.
John Hill (1714-1775) was a polymath, a Georgian botanist, author, and self-promoter. He started as an apothecary, and rose to be the highest paid journalist of his time. Though he lacked a formal university education, he published extensively in botany, medicine, geology, history, and astronomy. He was a brilliant and prolific writer whose books were very popular. His “famous five” potions to cure most common afflictions brought him fortune. This helped to fund his lavish life style, but did not prevent him falling into debt and dying in poverty. Hill introduced the Linnaean classification of plants into England. Though hard working and ambitious to the extreme, his obnoxious behavior earned him epithets like “despiteful” and “shameful” by his contemporaries. He fell into oblivion until George Rousseau published, The Notorious Sir John Hill: The Man Destroyed by Ambition in the Era of Celebrity, in 2012.
The Family Herbal was originally published in 1755. The 1822 edition has beautiful hand-colored plates. It’s an excellent example of a book loved and well-used as indicated by the collector’s ex libris, (his signature), the handwritten index inserted at the end of the volume, and the need to re-back the original leather binding damaged by frequent use. The book belonged to a well-known dentist, William H. Trueman, founding member of the State Dental Society of Pennsylvania. His personal library of 1,250 volumes was eventually donated to the Dental School Library at Northwestern University, although several books, including this one, were acquired by Pitt’s former Dental School Library, and subsequently integrated into Falk Library’s Rare Book Collections.
~Gosia Fort
Treasures from the Rare Book Room: Philip Verheyen and His Corporis Humani Anatomiae
The riveting story circulating on the Internet about Philip Verheyen dissecting his own amputated limb effectively draws attention to the Flemish surgeon and anatomist. He came from a modest family and was educated, with the help of private sponsors and communal funds, at the University of Leuven in Belgium. A brilliant student, he was on the fast track to complete his education to become a clergyman only to be halted by sudden illness which resulted in the amputation of his leg. Forced to change his career, he turned to medicine. After earning his degree in 1681, he continued his education at the University of Leyden, Holland, where he completed his doctoral dissertation and became acquainted with the greatest Dutch anatomists of his time. He returned to Leuven, where he was eventually granted the title of Royal Professor of Anatomy and was elected as Rector Magnificus in 1689.
Philip Verheyen (1648-1710) was a well-read, independent researcher, though his working conditions as a professor of anatomy in Leuven were far from perfect: the bodies were scarce and difficult to acquire, and there were no facilities to dissect them (the first theater for dissections was not built until 1744, long after his death). He was not as prolific an author as his northern colleagues. He only published five books. His most renowned work, Corporis humani anatomiae, published in 1693, was reprinted 21 times and became the textbook of choice for students at many European universities. The illustrations were of lesser quality (he most likely drew them himself) than those in contemporary atlases written for anatomists. However, Verheyen’s book was not only an atlas, but also a concise manual demonstrating to its readers that studying anatomy is an integral part of studying physiology. It was written specifically for students and by the author’s design was meant to be affordable. It remained a work of reference until the middle of 18th century.
Falk Library has a second edition of Corporis humani anatomiae, published posthumously in 1710, at the request of Verheyen’s widow.
The book can be viewed in the Rare Book Room by appointment.
~Gosia Fort
Treasures from the Rare Book Room: Woodburytype Prints in an Old Psychiatry Book
Early publishers of medical books were always eager to adopt technological novelties in photography to enhance the educational power of a text. Therefore, it is not surprising to find a book with the Woodburytype print in our collection.
Woodburytype is a print produced by a special photomechanical process, in which a mixture of pigments suspended in warm gelatin is poured onto a relief surface, and then transferred to paper by pressing. There is a three minute YouTube video explaining this technique. The resulting illustration is in slight relief (it looks like a photograph mounted on paper). It was developed by Walter B. Woodbury and was widely used in fine book illustrations during the last three decades of the 19th century. Illustrations produced with this method perfectly replicated the details of a photograph. The use of carbon black and stable inorganic pigments made images resistant to fading. The attempts to adopt this technique to rotary printing were not successful and Woodburytype printing was replaced by collotype and halftone processes in the 20th century.
Auguste Felix Voisin (1829-1898), the author of the “old psychiatry book” mentioned in the title of this article, studied medicine under the guidance of his father, a physician in Le Mans. Influenced by his physician uncle, Felix, he devoted himself to the study of mental diseases. He was a physician in Paris at Bicêtre, and later at Salpêtrière, where he practiced from 1867 until his death. His experiences and clinical cases from these hospitals were used in his book, Leçons cliniques sur les maladies mentales (1876). Amplifying its success, he revised the book in 1883 and published it under a slightly different title, Leçons cliniques sur les maladies mentales et sur les maladies nerveuses. The second edition, held at Falk Library, was enlarged to 776 pages by adding new chapters on madness and therapy, and new iconography. In addition to lithographic illustrations scattered throughout the text, the book includes color plates, and the three plates of Woodburytype prints showing patients suffering from delusions, addiction, and melancholy. This book can be viewed in the Rare Book Room by appointment.
~Gosia Fort
Treasures from the Rare Book Room: Hieronymus Fabricius Scrutinized
Hieronymus Fabricius ab Aquapendente (1537-1619) was an Italian surgeon and anatomist and one of the founders of modern embryology. He spent most of his life in Padua, eventually becoming chair of surgery and anatomy. During his long academic career he attracted students from all over Europe. Fabricius changed the teaching of anatomy by designing and using the first theater for public anatomical dissections. He 
laid the foundation for modern anatomical illustration by focusing strictly on technical issues, and abandoned the backgrounds and artistic impressions present in his predecessors’ works. Fabricius also contributed to the development of comparative anatomy and surgery. He was the first to describe venous valves. Though he failed to see that they were proof of the circular motion of blood, his work may have inspired William Harvey’s De Motu Cordis.
His posthumously published four treatises, Tractatus Quatuor (Frankfurt, 1624), includes his advanced embryology work on the formed fetus (De Formato Foetu);¹⁻² two texts on speech; and the treatise on venous valves. The book is bound in fine old leather, with a ribbed spine, gold lettering and decorative stamps. It has 41 copper plates including a spectacularly engraved title page with a dissection scene and images illustrating the organs of speech, inside the diaphragm, and an umbilical cord wrapped around the neck of a fetus.
The book can be viewed in the Rare Book Room by appointment.
~Gosia Fort
1. H. Gilson, “De Formato Foetu,” in Embryo Project Encyclopedia, August 27, 2008. http://embryo.asu.edu/handle/10776/1931.
2. S.L.M. Rosenberg, “Hieronymus Fabricius Ab Aquapendente: Parts I-III.” California and Western Medicine 38, no. 3-5 (1933):173-176, 260-263, 367-370.
Treasures from the Rare Book Room: Willem ten Rhijne on Acupuncture
During the second half of the 17th century the Dutch East India Company (the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie), known as VOC, managed to monopolize trade with Asia. It was a new kind of corporation: an aggressive commercial firm which became a profit-making, semi-independent arm of the Dutch state. Its trading post on the island of Deshima was the only window to Japan, otherwise inaccessible for foreigners after the Tokugawa government adopted a national seclusion policy.
Despite the restrictions of a “closed country” some Japanese were still interested in European knowledge, especially medicine and astronomy. The VOC physicians were an excellent source of knowledge for interpreters who continued to work on translating medical books from Europe. In 1673, per the official shogun’s request to bring a physician with botanical and chemical experience,¹ VOC hired Willem ten Rhijne, a young physician educated in Angers and Leyden. As soon as he arrived in Japan he was subjected to many long interviews exploiting his knowledge of western medicine. Ten Rhijne, in return, used contacts with interpreters to inquire about the Japanese practice of acupuncture and moxibustion (fire acupuncture) and, with their help, to learn more on the subject from Chinese texts available to him on Deshima. The result was his book Dissertatio de Arthritide (London 1683), including among others, a very important treatise on acupuncture. The text portrayed Japanese practitioners with admiration for using this therapy to treat diseases in place of the detested European practice of bloodletting.² One may question the accuracy 
of the final transfer of knowledge taken from a Chinese text and translated to Japanese, then to Dutch, and finally rendered in Latin as “De Acupunctura,” but there is no question that for Europeans it was the first detailed account of acupuncture practice. The treatise is illustrated with two Japanese and two Chinese schematics of meridian points, as well as images of the moxa (mugwort) and an acupuncture needle.
The library’s copy of Dissertatio de Arthritide is a variation of the original edition with a single place of publication. It includes all six plates and a frontispiece portrait of the author sometimes missing from other copies. It belonged to Caspar Wistar Pennock (1799-1867), a physician from Philadelphia. It was later acquired by Gerald Rodnan, and eventually donated to the library by his heirs. It can be viewed in the Rare Book Room by appointment.
~Gosia Fort
1. Cook, H. J. Matters of Exchange: Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the Dutch Golden Age. (New Haven, CT, 2007).
2. Carrubba R.W. and Bowers, J. Z. “The Western World’s First Detailed Treatise on Acupuncture: Willem Ten Rhijne’ De Acupunctura.” Journal of the History of Medicine, 29(4): 371-98, October 1974.