Feldtbuch der Wundartzney

Robert Hooke (1635 – 1703)

London: Jo. Martyn and Ja. Allestry, 1665

Health Sciences Library, Rare Book Collection
Hooke constructed one of the first compound microscopes. Micrographia is an account of his discoveries using it and is the first book devoted entirely to microscopic observations. It also introduced the word “cell” to describe the structure of tissue.
The spectacular plates are renowned for their clarity and detail. It seems most are derived from Hooke’s own drawings, though a few may be the work of Christopher Wren. This is of a bluebottle.
Purchased with the John Green Curtis Library, 1914
150.

King’s College Board of Trustees

Manuscript on paper, New York, May 15, 1770

RBML, Columbia College Papers
Though Columbia’s medical school, now known as the College of Physicians and Surgeons, is the second oldest in the United States, having been founded in 1767, two years after the Medical College of Philadelphia, now the University of Pennsylvania College of Medicine, Columbia has the honor of having conferred the country’s first doctor of medicine degree on Robert Tucker in 1770. While Tucker’s diploma appears to no longer survive, this draft preserves the text, if not the format, of one of the founding documents of American medicine.
151.

John Hunter (1728 – 1793)

London: J. Johnson, 1771

Health Sciences Library, Rare Book Collection
Hunter was one of the greatest surgeons of the eighteenth century. Though not a dentist, he wrote several works that laid the foundation for much future dental research. His first major treatise was this meticulous study of the mouth, jaws, and teeth, which described with unparalleled accuracy the growth of the jaws and their relationship to the muscles of mastication. The work also did much to popularize the terms cuspids, bicuspids, molars, and incisors. The illustrations by the Dutch-born artist Jan van Riemsdyck are renowned both for their accuracy and for their beauty.
Purchased with the George Sumner Huntington Library, 1928
152.

James Graham (1745 – 1794)

New York, February 11, 1774

Health Sciences Library, Graham Family Papers
The King’s College Medical School opened in the fall of 1767, boasting an impressive faculty of New York’s leading medical men. Among them was Samuel Bard (1742-1821), who served as dean and would later win fame as physician to George Washington during his first term as President. The medical school, along with the rest of the college, closed in 1776 as a result of the disruptions of the American Revolution. These notes of Bard’s lectures taken by medical student James Graham in 1774 are the only ones from the pre-revolutionary school now in the possession of the University.
Graham did not receive a medical degree from King’s, but he later practiced medicine in Walkill, New York, and his son George was a member of the medical class of 1819.
Purchased with the assistance of W.W. Palmer, M.D., 1940
153.

Luigi Galvani (1737 – 1798)

Bologna: Ex typographia Instituti Scientiarum, 1791

Health Sciences Library, Rare Book Collection
Galvani, professor of anatomy at the University of Bologna, was studying the nervous system of the frog when he noted that distant electrical discharges would cause violent muscular contractions in a dissected frog if the lumbar nerve was in contact with a metal instrument. He called this force “animal electricity” but it quickly became known across Europe as “galvanism.”
Galvani was in error – the phenomena he observed was caused by the generation of electricity by different metals in a moist atmosphere – but his mistake had manifold consequences. The idea of galvanism forms the background to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, while the physicist Alessandro Volta, in disproving Galvani’s theory, was led to the invention of the electric battery.
Galvani first published his findings in the proceedings of the Bologna Academy and Institute of Sciences and Arts in March 1791. A very small edition of the paper was then printed to be distributed to Galvani’s friends. Though the Health Sciences Library owns one of that rare edition, the copy on display here was part of a printing later that same year designated for public sale. The plate shows Galvani’s laboratory with the dissected frog’s legs, an electrostatic machine (left), and a Leyden jar (right).
Purchased with the John Green Curtis Library, 1914
154.

René Théophile Hyacinthe Laennec (1781 – 1826)

Paris: Brosson & Chaudé, 1819

Vol. 1 of 2 Volumes

Health Sciences Library, Rare Book Collection

Laennec discovered “mediate” auscultation in 1816 while examining a female patient whose stoutness made “direct” auscultation – where the physician placed his ear on the chest of the patient – impractical. Taking a piece of stiff paper, Laennec rolled it into a tube and placed one end on the patient’s chest and the other against his ear. He had inadvertently invented the stethoscope.
This first edition of Laennec’s De l’Auscultation Médiate [On Mediate Auscultation] depicts his stethoscope after three years of experimentation. A wooden tube about 30 centimeters long and about 6.75 millimeters in diameter, the instrument was constructed in two pieces that could be unscrewed for easier portability. Readers could purchase the instrument directly from publisher at first, but the simplicity of the design allowed it to be replicated by any competent woodworker.
Purchase, 2002
155a.

Florence Nightingale (1820 – 1910)

London: Harrison, [1860]

Health Sciences Library, Auchincloss Florence Nightingale Collection
Notes on Nursing is Nightingale’s best-known work and the most influential book ever written on nursing. In simple, direct prose, Nightingale set forth her principles of patient care, which stressed cleanliness, fresh air, warmth, light, and proper diet. A popular book, Notes sold over 15,000 copies within months. Nightingale inscribed this copy in its year of publication.