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Title: Anatomical Woman

Title

Apicius [De re culinaria Libri I-IX]

Description

This manuscript contains 500 Greek and Roman recipes from the fourth and fifth century, both culinary and medical, reflecting the polyglot culture of the Mediterranean basin. Sometimes referred to as the oldest extant cookbook in the West, the manuscript is divided into ten books. It is likely that the Apicius began as a Greek collection, mainly written in Latin, and adapted for a Roman palate. The collection is likely compiled from many sources, as no evidence exists that Apicius (a Roman gourmet in 1st century AD), authored a book of cookery. Our manuscript was penned in several hands in a mix of Anglo-Saxon and Carolingian scripts at the monastery at Fulda (Germany) around 830 AD. It is one of two manuscripts (the other at the Vatican) presumed to have been copied from a now lost common source. The Apicius manuscript is the gem of the Academy’s Margaret Barclay Wilson Collection of cookery, acquired in 1929.

Subjects (LC)

Cookbooks, Cooking, Latin peoples, Cooking, Mediterranean, Cooking, Roman, Early works to 1800, Manuscripts, Medicine

Title: Gessner's Owl
Description: Tucked among the magical storehouses of Diagon Alley is a shop that is always dark in order to accommodate the preferences of its nocturnal inhabitants. This is Eeylops Owl Emporium—and the setting for Harry Potter's adoption of his pet, Hedwig, who remains one of his truest companions throughout his school years. The Swiss naturalist Conrad Gessner depicted many owls in his volume dedicated to birds, including this handsome grey owl with his abundance of downy feathers and keenly intelligent eyes. Owls of all types appear throughout the series, retaining the cultural associations they've had for centuries of both wisdom and omens.
Collection: How to Pass Your O.W.L.s at Hogwarts: A Prep Course

Title: Aldrovandi's Basilisk
Description: All hail the king of the snakes! Basilisks—from the Greek basiliskos, for "little king," are depicted in many early modern natural histories and were said to be the kings of the serpents (Dark Arts students will recognize them for their diadem-shaped crests). J.K. Rowling preserves many details of the accounts from sixteenth- and seventeenth-century sources about this terrifying snake, including his birth from a chicken's egg hatched under a toad, and a gaze that could kill. Susceptible to wizard control by some Parselmouths, only Tom Riddle proved snake-charmer enough to ever challenge one.
Collection: How to Pass Your O.W.L.s at Hogwarts: A Prep Course

Title: Duncumb recipe book : autograph manuscript signed, 1791-1800s
Description: This manuscript consists of approximately 425 culinary recipes and 50 medical and household receipts, many attributed. About two-thirds of the recipes in the culinary section are savory and one-third sweet, many of the former stews and pickled dishes, most of the latter creams and jellies. The medicinal receipts include treatments for worms, coughs, bruises, pain, burns, and other ailments.
Subjects (LC): Medicine -- Formulae, receipts, prescriptions, Traditional medicine -- Formulae, receipts, prescriptions, Cooking, English, Manuscripts, English -- 18th century, Manuscripts, English -- 19th century

Title: Spider, Hortus Sanitatis
Description: Even arachnophobes may be well-disposed to this spider, who dates to the 1499 publication of the Hortus Sanitatis (here he appears in our 1517 edition). Spiders were often depicted in early printed books using pictographic shapes, drawing on an earlier medieval tradition. Here, our spider scrambles up a tightly circular web, his thorax evenly studded in a grid design. He may not look scary, but the accompanying text offers strong evidence that this spider might have caused worry, just as J.K. Rowling's giant spider Aragog did. The authors of this early modern tome included several botanical remedies for spider bites.
Collection: How to Pass Your O.W.L.s at Hogwarts: A Prep Course

Title: Plague Visitation Scene

Title: Cookbook : manuscript, circa 1700s and 180
Description: Manuscript containing mostly culinary recipes from the 18th and 19th centuries. The bulk of the recipes are from the early 18th century and written in two hands. Most concern fruit preserving (23 recipes) and fruit and flower wines (10 recipes). Other early 18th-century recipes include little cakes, stewed dishes, fried pasties, pickles and souses, a collar of beef, potted beef, other meat dishes, and a few medicinal receipts. Three later recipes are also found; one is from the late 18th century or later, and the other two are copied from Eliza Acton's Modern Cooking for Private Families, published in 1846.
Subjects (LC): Cooking, English, Medicine -- Formulae, receipts, prescriptions, Traditional medicine -- Formulae, receipts, prescriptions, Manuscripts, English -- 18th century, Manuscripts, English -- 19th century

Title: Valentine's Twelfth Key
Description: In Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Harry learns that the alchemist Nicolas Flamel successfully created the philosopher's stone; in reality, reports of Flamel's reputation as an alchemist and immortal were greatly exaggerated. Jean-Jacques Manget's Bibliotheca Curiosa, published in 1702, compiled many alchemical texts and included Basil Valentine's The Twelve Keys. Valentine's work offered twelve plates that symbolically depicted methods to achieve the philosopher's stone. In this last operation, the final step in realizing the stone, a sun and moon illuminate a laboratory where an alchemist stands in front of a blazing furnace and tends to two roses, as a lion devours a snake.
Collection: How to Pass Your O.W.L.s at Hogwarts: A Prep Course

Title: Letter to the Lord advocate, disclosing the accomplices, secrets, and other facts relative to the late murders; with a correct account of the manner in which the anatomical schools are supplied with subjects
Description: Pamphlet, disbound and mounted.
Collection: The Resurrectionists

Title: Pomet's Unicorns
Description: If you visit Mr. Mulpepper's or Slug & Jiggers Apothecary in Diagon Alley, among the remedies available for a few scant Galleons is unicorn horn. In his comprehensive catalog of plants and animals used for medicinal purposes, the French apothecary Pierre Pomet identifies five species of unicorns, though he is quick to admit that most unicorn horns sold in shops are probably from narwhals. Narwhal or not, these horns were worn as protective amulets, used to cure fevers and rout poisons. They were also displayed as curiosities in pre-Revolution-era France.
Collection: How to Pass Your O.W.L.s at Hogwarts: A Prep Course

Title: 33. Observations on the phrenological development of Burke, Hare, and other atrocious murderers : measurements of the heads of the most notorious thieves confined in the Edinburgh Jail and Bridewell, and of various individuals, English, Scotch, and Irish, presenting an extensive series of facts subversive of phrenology
Collection: The Resurrectionists

Title: Recipe book : manuscript, 1700s
Description: This manuscript consists of 113 medical receipts and 178 culinary recipes. The culinary and medical recipes are in different sections, written from opposite ends of the book, and both sections start with numbered indexes. The medical receipts include plasters, waters, salves, purges, and other preparations for the treatment of green sickness, burns, worms, palsy, dropsy, stones, women's complaints, and other ailments. Of the culinary recipes, approximately 100 are banqueting or dessert dishes and wines. Fruit preserving, sweet wines, puddings, pickled dishes, small breads, pancakes, and fritters are well represented. The remaining culinary recipes include dinner and supper dishes, beer, mead, possets, and caudles. Three hands are evident.
Subjects (LC): Cooking, English, Medicine -- Formulae, receipts, prescriptions -- Early works to 1800, Traditional medicine -- Formulae, receipts, prescriptions, Cooking, English, Manuscripts, English -- 18th century

Title: Who's Afraid...

Title: Gessner's Unicorn
Description: The Swiss naturalist Conrad Gessner's 4,500-page encyclopedia of animals, the Historia Animalium, makes even the prolific Gilderoy Lockhart look like a slouch. Part fantasy, part observation, Gessner's dense and exuberant animal kingdom included creatures real and imaginary, running the gamut from sea monsters and whales to diminutive tabby cats. Of the unicorn, Gessner writes that its horn marrow, cut with a little wine, could heal a man who'd eaten a poisoned cherry, and could cure a number of ailments. All the better to keep young wizards out of the Hogwarts hospital wing.
Collection: How to Pass Your O.W.L.s at Hogwarts: A Prep Course

Title: Case History Card: Conditions Previous to Admittance

Title: Distillation Apparatus
Description: Serviceable copper cauldrons may be found for first years at Potage's in Diagon Alley, but for more advanced potions, students can consult the pages of Philipp Ulstadt's work on distillation for an apparatus upgrade. Ulstadt, a Swiss physician and professor whose very popular Coelum Philosophorum contained concise technical instructions for the processes of distillation, illustrated his manual with hand-colored woodcuts. Among Ulstadt's recipes are many for distillates of herbs and plants with wine, directions for making aqua vitae, and recipes for potable gold. Read closely, and you may find a formula for the molten gold Felix Felicis is near...we wish you lots of Liquid Luck.
Collection: How to Pass Your O.W.L.s at Hogwarts: A Prep Course

Title: 36. Observations on a late pamphlet by Mr. Stone, on the phrenological development of Burke, Hare, &c.
Collection: The Resurrectionists

Title: Pomet's Bezoar with Goat
Description: The French druggist Pierre Pomet devotes a section of his comprehensive history of drugs to bezoars, explaining that the stones appear in the stomachs of cows, apes, and goats. Pomet's goat leaps over a bezoar, sliced open like a geode to reveal its efficacious core. Pomet argues that this bezoar, produced in the belly of a high-leaping wild goat common in the East Indies, would promote sweat and drive away malignant humors. We'd wager Monsieur Pomet, apothecary to Louis XIV, could give even Snape a run for his wand in a battle of the Potion-Masters.
Collection: How to Pass Your O.W.L.s at Hogwarts: A Prep Course

Title: Lykosthenes' Salamander
Description: Konrad Lykosthenes tells us in 1557 that the salamander has a highly toxic venom, so strong it would taint all of the fruit on a tree it climbed. He also connects the animal with fire, arguing that the salamander can put out flames with its touch. In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, salamanders are born from flames; Fred and George also feed one fireworks as a prank, and it releases tangerine stars (not inappropriate given the stellar designs on this fellow's back). Don't let the twins give you any ideas or that'll be ten points from Gryffindor.
Collection: How to Pass Your O.W.L.s at Hogwarts: A Prep Course

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