By Michael Sappol Originally published in Hidden Treasure: The National Library of Medicine, 2011. In the early decades of the twentieth century a modernizing imperative took hold. Suddenly it seemed that a new age was dawning—an era of new technologies, fashions, and political philosophies—modern times. In the aftermath of the Great War (1914–1918), with the […]
Tag Archives: art
May
05
A Mughal Era Manuscript Curiously Illustrated
posted by Circulating Now
By Homira Pashai The National Library of Medicine is the home of many precious manuscripts belonging to the Indian Mughal era (16th–18th century). Among these manuscripts, there is a unique copy of Kitab-i fi al-tibb al-mansuri (Book on Medicine Dedicated to al-Mansur) by Muhammad Zakariya al-Razi (died 925 AD). Al-Razi’s text on the subject of […]
April
05
Images and Texts in Medical History—Miriam Posner
posted by Circulating Now
On April 11-13, 2016, the National Library of Medicine will host the workshop “Images and Texts in Medical History: An Introduction to Methods, Tools, and Data from the Digital Humanities” funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) through a generous grant to Virginia Tech, and held in cooperation with Virginia Tech, The Wellcome […]
January
21
The Wonders of Creation
posted by Circulating Now
By Homira Pashai The National Library of Medicine holds an important collection of over 200 manuscripts dating back to the eleventh century in Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Turkish relating to health and medicine. Many of them contain colorful illustrations and calligraphy. Among the collection of over 30 Persian manuscripts, there are a few illustrated copies […]
October
30
A Portal of Death
posted by Circulating Now
By Elizabeth Mullen Are you ready to walk and talk with the skeletons? It’s Halloween again. As the nights get longer and leaves turn and fall, many will spend the dark evening communing with spooks, specters and skeletons and pondering frightening images of death. The ‘portal of death’ above is the Frontispiece from Bernardino Genga’s […]
September
29
A German Botanical Renaissance
posted by Circulating Now
By Michael North This post is the third in a series exploring the National Library of Medicine’s rich and varied collection of “herbals,” which are books devoted to the description of medicinal plants (and sometimes other natural substances) with instructions on how to use them to treat illness. The Library’s herbals are some of the […]
July
09
Medieval Herbals in Movable Type
posted by Circulating Now
By Michael North This post is the second in a series exploring the National Library of Medicine’s rich and varied collection of “herbals,” which are books devoted to the description of medicinal plants (and sometimes other natural substances) with instructions on how to use them to treat illness. The Library’s herbals are some of the […]
