Items

Title: Put Upon Their Feet [from verso]
Description: Trade card printed on two sides, advertising Burdock Blood Bitters.
Subjects (LC): Collars, Feathers, Hats, Women
Language: English
ID: WH131
Collection: William H. Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards

Title: Urine Wheel Diagram
Description: The urine wheel diagram is yet another visual trope adapted from medieval manuscripts. Urine texts were very popular, and while the urine consult scene appears to be original to the Fasciculus medicinae, several medieval medical texts included this circular diagram to aid a physician in remembering the various attributes of urines, and what they indicated about a person’s health. It is set up like a wagon wheel, with the urines grouped together by color. The outer edge of the wheel describes each color in detail by comparing it to a common object; for example, “The color of this urine is yellow like gold.” The inner circle of the diagram further divides the urines into groups of colors, and what producing a urine in that color signified about a person’s digestion and overall health. In each of the four corners of the page outside of the diagram are descriptions of the four temperaments, sanguine, choleric, melancholic, and phlegmatic, and what urine colors meant in regard to a person’s humoral balance. 1495: The urine wheel diagram is not in this 1495 version, for reasons unknown. 1500: In this version, the artist has tried to represent the urine colors using the color descriptions at the base of each jar around the wheel. This diagram also includes an introduction discussing the Fasciculus at the top center of the page, as well as a brief few lines of verse mentioning the connections between the four humors, the four elements (earth, air, fire, water), and the four complexions or temperaments. All were thought to be tied together, and revealed much about a person’s personality and physical tendencies. 1509: The urine wheel is the only image in the 1509 edition that includes color. The urines are lightly painted to correspond to their textual descriptions. Unfortunately, a large part of the upper portion of this page has been damaged, and subsequently repaired. The same few lines of verse describing the temperaments and complexions (translated into Italian) can be seen at the bottom of this page between the descriptions of phlegmatic and melancholic temperaments. 1513: The 1513 version is essentially the same as the 1500 version, although without the colors. 1522: The 1522 version is the same as the 1513 and 1500 versions, but translated into Italian and lacking any color.

Title: Ayer's Cherry Pectoral
Description: Trade card printed on two sides advertising Ayer's Cherry Pectoral, a syrup for colds and coughs.
Subjects (LC): Cherries, Hats, Women
Manufacturer: J.C. Ayer & Co. (Lowell (Mass.))
Language: English
ID: WH225
Collection: William H. Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards

Title: 34. Answer to "Observations on the phrenological development of Burke, Hare, and other atrocious murderers, &c. By Thomas Stone, Esq.," &c.
Collection: The Resurrectionists

Title: Out of Town
Description: Within this folded circular produced by the New York Milk Committee is a sentimental poem contrasting the summer holidays of wealthy city dwellers with the fate of working-class infants struck down by disease. Opposing phtographs of healthy children, poor children, country life, and city life emphasize the poem's theme. The back side of the circular lists milk stations where city parents can find care and relief for their children.
Subjects (LC): Milk, Infants, Mothers, Summer, Death, Poetry, Funeral processions, Mortality, Mortality
ID: mk1e001
Geographic Subject: New York. New York City.
Collection: New York Milk Committee Ephemera Collection

Title: Red Star Cough Cure
Description: Trade card printed on two sides advertising Red Star brand cough remedy.
Subjects (LC): Actors, Daggers and swords
Manufacturer: Red Star Cough Cure
Language: English
ID: WH335
Collection: William H. Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards

Title: Bloodletting Figure

Title: 17. Confessions, lamentations, & reflections of William Burke, late of Portsburgh, who is to be executed at Edinburgh, on the 28th January, 1829, for murder, and his body given for public dissection
Description: Ballad, illustrated. Cut and mounted.
Language: English
Collection: The Resurrectionists

Title: Recipe book : manuscript, 1804
Description: Manuscript volume comprises about 92 culinary recipes, as well as about two dozen medical and household recipes. The majority of the culinary recipes are for savory dishes, including soups, curries, stewed fish dishes, collars, and pickles. Sweet recipes (fruit preserves, jellies, cakes, lemon creams, and a "raspberry spunge") are also present. Entries, written in multiple hands, are up to page 86; the remainder are blank except for one page with a partial index.
Subjects (LC): Cooking, English, Medicine -- Formulae, receipts, prescriptions, Traditional medicine -- Formulae, receipts, prescriptions, Manuscripts, English -- 19th century

Title

Specimen Medicinae Sinicae

Description

The Specimen Medicinae Sinicae is the first illustrated book published on Chinese medicine in the West. It contains an overview of Chinese medical practices including acupuncture and meridian theories, semiology of the tongue, descriptions of Chinese pharmaceuticals and their uses, and an important translation of a Ming treatise on pulse diagnosis. The Specimen includes thirty engraved plates and woodcut illustrations in the text, depicting the Chinese doctrine of the pulse and the semiology of the tongue, along with eight tables showing the variations of the pulses. Explaining Chinese pulse theory to a European audience proved difficult. Insufficient description of the plates, which pictured figures with doubled lines running through the bodies, confused western audiences, who interpreted these representations as indication that the Chinese didn't know their anatomy. The publication of the Specimen Medicinae Sinicae did little to change the commonly-held belief that the Chinese were crackerjack diagnosticians, with a misguided idea of the body's interior. The tenets of Chinese medicine and diagnostics were also somewhat muddled in the minds of westerners. Nevertheless, the translation did much to introduce pulse lore, acupuncture, and new materia medica to a Western audience of medical practitioners eager to experiment.

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Subjects (LC)

Acupuncture—China, Anatomy, Chinese—History, Early works to 1800, Materia medica—China, Medicine, Medicine, Chinese, Medical illustration, Pulse—Measurement

Geographic Subject

China

Title: Fasciculus medicine in quo continentur : videlicet. [1495]
Description: This is the fourth edition of the Fasciculus and the third printed in Venice (after 1491 and 1493 editions both also by the Brothers Gregorii). It was printed in Latin and reset in Gothic type. In this edition, the page is shorter by four lines, resulting in plates that are too large and in many cases, clipped by the binder. This is the earliest edition with a real title page. Our copy lacks the urinoscopic consultation plate and the plate showing the circle of urine glasses.
Subjects (LC): Medicine-Early works to 1800, Medicine, Medieval, Human anatomy-Early works to 1800, Human anatomy-Charts, diagrams, etc, Plague-Early works to 1800, Phlebotomy-Early works to 1800

Title: Midwifery and Childbirth
Description: A collection of texts on midwifery and childbirth, including the best-selling sex manual and guide to childbirth and the oldest manual for midwives printed in the English language.

Title: Fasciculo de medicina : collectorio universalissimo chiamado Fasciculo de medicina, extracto dalla achademia...[1522]
Description: The Arrivabeni published two editions in 1522, one in Latin and the second in Italian. This edition, in Italian, is likely the second edition published that year by the printers.
Subjects (LC): Human anatomy-Early works to 1800, Human anatomy-Atlases-Early works to 1800, Genitourinary organs-Early works to 1800, Generative organs-Early works to 1800, Plague-Early works to 1800, Phlebotomy-Early works to 1800, Materia medica-Early works to 1800, Medicine-Early works to 1800

Title: Dr. Ingham's Nervine Pain Extractor
Description: Trade card printed on two sides advertising Dr. Ingham's Nervine Pain Extractor, a general purpose painkiller recommended for gastroenterological diseases.
Subjects (LC): Fans, Kissing, Vines
Manufacturer: Dr. H.A. Ingham and Co. (Vergennes (Vt.))
Language: English
ID: WH280
Collection: William H. Helfand Collection of Pharmaceutical Trade Cards

Title: Wound Figure

Title

[Introduction]

Description

The Dutch West India Company occupied northeastern Brazil from 1624 to 1654. In 1638, the physician Willem Piso and astronomer Georg Markgraf arrived as part of Johann Maurits’ research staff, tasked with promoting scientific studies in Brazil. This is the Introduction to their collaborative illustrated folio volume, which spanned 12 books and was published in 1648. Rich in description of native life, the book contains 446 woodcuts illustrating local flora and fauna, and comprises the most important early documentation of zoology, botany and medicine in Brazil.

LIBRARY DIGITAL COLLECTIONS & EXHIBITS

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