MA in the History of Science, Technology and Medicine
Special Collections Teaching Session
The following items were displayed as part of the Special Collections Teaching Session for the MA in HSTM:
Vesalius’ De Humanis Corporis Fabrica is considered one of the most important books in the history of medicine, responsible for reviving the art of anatomy in the sixteenth-century as an empirical science, based on direct observation of the human body. The first edition, printed in 1543, was a lavishly illustrated work, dedicated and presented to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, who promptly appointed Vesalius as imperial physician to his court. This is the second folio edition (a small sextodecimo edition was printed in 1552) and contains Vesalius’s final revisions of the text, along with significant typographical improvements.
This is the Italian translation of Matthioli’s Latin commentary on Dioscorides’ De materia medica and includes Matthioli’s translation of Dioscorides’ Greek text. The discorsi are expanded and revised texts of his 1544 and 1548 works and includes woodcut illustrations of plants and animals throughout the main text.
Selected pages available online via Luna
Giorgio Liberale and Wolfgang Meyerpeck, Althea woodblock [1562]
Special Collections R220996
One of a series of woodblocks designed by Giorgio Liberale and cut by Wolfgang Meyerpeck for Pietro Andrea Mattioli’s Herbář and New Kreuterbeuch (Prague, 1562, 1563) and Commentarii in sex libros Pedacii Dioscoridis Anarzabei de Medica materia (Venice, 1565 and later editions). It appears on p. 925 of the 1565 Latin edition and p. 975 of the 1568 Italian edition.
Image available online via Luna
Robert Boyle, The Sceptical Chymist [London, 1661]
Special Collections SC12901A
Boyle’s fourth, but best known work, is a dialogue expounding his theory of matter and addressing the definitions previously set forth by Aristotle and Paracelsus. It treats alchemy as a higher form of natural science, though his treatment of ‘elements’ lays the foundation for modern chemistry.
Micrographia was one of the first books published by the Royal Society (founded in 1660) and used the recently discovered power of the microscope to detail intricate descriptions of minute objects that had not been shown to a public audience before. Hooke’s illustrations are ambitious and diverse: from the point of a needle and fragments of glass to enormous images of flies’ eyes and other tiny insects.
Available online via Early English Books Online
Selected pages available online via Luna
A popular early nineteenth-century anatomical textbook, marketed as a “companion” for medical students in the dissecting room. It was a plain and practical book, with no illustrations. This copy is notable for being interleaved with lively manuscript illustrations by a Manchester medical student. It offers a unique insight into the practicalities of medical education at a time when it was becoming increasingly professionalised. Textbooks such as these helped to contribute to a sense of a ‘standardised’ human body, which could be examined by students with an objective disciplinary gaze.
Available online via Luna
Available online via Manchester Digital Collections
Special Collections SC12891B,(VI,24)
The thesis, which is in two parts: 1. Recherches sur les substances radioactives; and 2. Propositions données par la faculté resulted in Curie being awarded the first doctorate in Physics attained by a woman in France, and her subsequent winning of the 1903 Nobel Prize for Physics. This copy forms part 24, volume 6 of Electric discharge through gases, a collection of pamphlets and offprints in six volumes, made by the third Lord Rayleigh and his son, the fourth baron. It is a presentation copy and is signed by the author.
Wang Ren Ye (ed.), Compilation of Materia Medica and Prescriptions with Illustrations and Annotations (Tuzhu bencao yifang hebian) [1798]
Chinese Printed Sequence Crawford 83
This publication comprises illustrated notes on the medical prescriptions described in Bencao Kang Mu Xu (Principles of Herbalism, Crawford 81). The original work was written in 1674 and this edition dates from 1798 and is composed of 10 juan.
Images reproduced with the permission of The John Rylands University Librarian and Director of the University of Manchester Library. All images used on this page are licenced via CC-BY-NC-SA, for further information about each image, please follow the link in the caption description.
