By Anne Rothfeld Want an intriguing dessert from the past to satisfy your present day holiday palate? Serve the syllabub: a cream-based treat, mixed with sweet wine and lemon juice, then whipped with cream until frothy, and garnished with a seasonal herb. The acids, which rise from the lemons to firm the cream, then separate […]
Tag Archives: 1700s
Some of the Most Beautiful Herbals
posted by Circulating Now
By Michael North This post is the sixth 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 […]
Early Journals: What’s in a Name?
posted by Circulating Now
By Atalanta Grant-Suttie The journal is so much a part of the current apparatus of scholarly communication that one never really thinks where and how the term might have originated. The origins of the word “journal” derive from Old French, Middle English and Late Latin in the fourteen century. However, perhaps the concept of the […]
“Wrapped in flesh”: Views of the body in East Asian Medicine
posted by Circulating Now
Circulating Now welcomes guest blogger Yi-Li Wu. Dr. Wu is a Center Associate of the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Michigan, and a Research Fellow of EASTmedicine, University of Westminster and an organizer of the recent workshop Comparative perspectives on body materiality and structure in the history of Sinitic and East […]
Wonderful Works on Horses
posted by Circulating Now
By Margaret Kaiser The Library has acquired two wonderful works on horses. The first, Il Cavallo da maneggio… is by Giovanni Battista di Galiberto, a Neapolitan count and riding master to Emperor Ferdinand IV, King of Hungary and Bohemia. This book, printed in 1650 in Vienna, Austria, is the first edition of this beautifully illustrated […]
NLM’s Unique Early English Books Now Online
posted by Circulating Now
By Krista Stracka Earlier this summer, the National Library of Medicine announced the release of Unique English Imprints, pre-1800, a new collection available now through the NLM’s Digital Collections. The collection comprises letterpress books and pamphlets printed in the English-speaking world between 1550 and 1800 that are uniquely-held by NLM and are now accessible without […]
July Blooms
posted by circulating now
By Ginny A. Roth The image featured above is a botanical illustration of the flower, fruit, and seed of the Larkspur, the July birth flower, and one of the plants featured in Elizabeth Blackwell’s 1737 book A Curious Herbal. Elizabeth Blackwell (1707–1758) was born in Aberdeen, Scotland, and moved to London after her marriage […]