SALC 72111 — The History of the Book (Week 11)
Special Collections Teaching Session
The following items were displayed as part of the Special Collections Teaching Session for SALC 72111 (Week 11):
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
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
Theodore de Bry, Historia Americae siue Noui Orbis [Frankfurt, 1634]
Special Collections 11096
This work constitutes the original edition of the Elenchus of Theodor de Bry’s Great Voyages, printed in fourteen parts, in Latin, German, French, and English, in Frankfurt am Main, Oppenheim, and Hanau from 1590–1644, and the Elenchus, an outline of the thirteen Latin parts, published by Matthias Merian in Frankfurt am Main in 1634.
Selected pages available online via Luna
Wenceslaus Hollar, Theatrum Mulierum [England?, After 1663]
Special Collections R13148
This gathering of illustrations, commonly referred to as fashion plates presents 48 numbered engraved plates that are full-length pictures of women from various countries in seventeenth century dress. The plates have Latin inscriptions below the illustrations, and English above for most. The first edition, published by H. Overton in 1643, included 36 plates, all dated between 1642 and 1643 and signed W. Hollar, with the caption in Latin only. Another edition published by Overton in the same year included 48 plates. The plates in this edition carry multiple dates.
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