Magical Stones and Imperial Bones

August 19, 1999

SEARCH THE GAZETTE

HARVARD GAZETTE ARCHIVES

By Ken Gewertz
Gazette Staff

A page from De Humani Corporis Fabrica (1543) by Andreas Vesalius, one of the most renowned and beautiful of all medical books. Vesalius, a Flemish anatomist, based his descriptions of the body's systems on the careful dissection of cadavers, a controversial procedure at the time.

An illustration showing twins in the womb from An Abridgement of the Practice of Midwifery by William Smellie (1697-1763). Smellie was a pioneer English obstetrician who was the first to use forceps to rotate a fetal head. This edition of his work, printed in Boston in 1786, was the first book on obstetrics published in the United States.

An 1898 X-ray of the hand and wrist of Nicholas II, Emperor of Russia. X-ray photography was invented by Wilhelm R–ntgen in 1895, so the technique was very new at this time. The X-rays were made by Dr. H.H. Horne, who was invited to St. Petersburg to demonstrate the process.

The title page of De Viribus Herbarum (On the Powers of Herbs) by Macer Floridus, believed to be a pseudonym of a 12th-century French physician, Odo of Meung. This edition was published in Naples in 1477 and is one of the first printed books. The text, written in Latin verse, describes the medicinal virtues of various plants and herbs and was a standard work in some of Europe's earliest medical schools.

In 1898, Dr. H.H. Horne, a practitioner of the recently invented art of X-ray photography, brought his equipment to the winter palace in St. Petersburg at the request of Czar Nicholas II.

He successfully X-rayed the hands of both the Czar and Czarina despite shorting out the palace’s electrical system. Photographic reproductions of those X-rays, showing the royal digits festooned with spectacular jewelry, can now be seen in a fascinating exhibition at the Countway Medical Library at the Medical School.

"Magical Stones and Imperial Bones" now occupies the exhibition alcove adjoining the library’s Rare Book and Special Collections department. The exhibition is open to the public and will remain on view through December 1999.

This is the first exhibition to occupy the alcove, which was created as part of Countway’s ongoing renovation. Jack Eckert, the department’s reference librarian, was given the job of putting together materials from the Library’s collections that would do justice to the modest but handsomely appointed space.

"These are the things that said ‘Wow!’ to me," Eckert said.

Other items that passed Eckert’s wow-test include the following:

• Lecture notes by philosopher William James from his years as a student at Harvard Medical School. The page of notes scribbled in pencil in 1866-67 include some interesting doodles by the future author of Varieties of Religious Experience, and prove that even great minds can wander.

• A letter from novelist Henry James to Dr. James Jackson Putnam of Boston. In the letter, dated 1912, two years after the death of his brother William, James asks for advice on losing weight and for treatment of what he calls "evil times" — apparently a bout of depression.

• A dish containing an actual colony of Penicillium notatum from the London laboratory of Sir Alexander Fleming. It was from this mold, discovered by Fleming in 1928, that the antibiotic penicillin was later refined and purified.

• Photographs taken in 1881 during an autopsy of President James A. Garfield, showing the bullet hole in his vertebrae made by assassin Charles Julius Guiteau on July 2.

• The manuscript of a poem written by Guiteau while awaiting execution. Guiteau’s lawyers argued that he was insane at the time of the shooting, but he was convicted nevertheless and was executed on June 30, 1882.

• A signed letter from Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Waterhouse, who championed smallpox vaccination in America.

• A 13th-century manuscript edition of De Lapidibus, an 11th-century treatise on the use of precious and semiprecious gems in the treatment of disease.

Eckert, whose job is to help the public use the rare books collection and find the information they want, said that his aim in putting together the exhibition was to "raise the collection’s profile" by displaying some of its most striking items in a spot where users would be sure to notice.

"This is a very high traffic area. People are streaming through here all day," Eckert said.

The Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine opened in 1965, but the origins of its collection can be traced back to 1782, when Harvard Medical School was formed.

Virtually all the great works in the history of medicine can be found in the Countway’s Rare Books and Special Collections department, including numerous medieval manuscripts and one of the world’s finest collections of medical incunabula, books printed before 1501.

The Countway Library is located at 10 Shattuck St., next door to the School of Public Health. Getting to Rare Books and Special Collections in the building’s basement may seem a little intimidating because of the ongoing renovation, but persistence is sure to pay off in the form of a few "Wow!"s of your own.