The Lee Library’s current exhibit, “Curious Remedies: Medicine During the Renaissance,” highlights medical knowledge of the Renaissance and Early Modern period with books from Special Collections. Before chemical engineering or even the discovery of penicillin, physicians relied on plants, minerals, and animals to concoct medicines for their patients. Botanical encyclopedias called herbals helped scientists identify …
If you’ve walked past the exhibit space on the main floor of the library, you may have gotten a peek at the latest exhibit being installed. “Curious Remedies” will display the history of medicine in the Renaissance and features a variety of scientific books from Special Collections. This blog will highlight a few of those …
To coincide with the American Library Association’s 2016 Banned Books Week, BYURadio’s Top of Mind With Julie Rose spoke with HBLL’s European Studies Librarian, Richard Hacken, on the history of book banning. Several prominent banned books mentioned in the conversation are found in Special Collections, including Galileo’s Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems (Vault …
In Early Modern Europe, well-connected individuals with the collecting bug assembled eclectic collections of natural and man-made objects known as kunstkammer or cabinets of curiosities. These collections could be small enough to fill a bookcase or large enough to fill an exhibit hall. One prominent collector of the 17th century was Jesuit Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680), …
Special Collections has a small but significant collection of rare Japanese books and manuscripts, and we periodically add to it. One of our most recent acquisitions is a 1796 treatise on Western science, “Oranda tensetsu,” or Dutch Astronomy Explained. It is one of several books published by Japanese printmaker Shiba Kōkan which discuss European science …
Listen to HBLL librarians Tom Stephens and Maggie Kopp talk about the significance of Nicolaus Copernicus and the transmission of his famous book De Revolutionibus on BYU Radio’s Top of Mind with Julie Rose, May 24, 2016 episode.
One of the newest acquisitions in the History of Science collection is the first edition of French mathematician Oronce Finé’s Protomathesis (Paris, 1532), a compendium of astronomical and geographical knowledge. This book is important as a detailed summation of the field of astronomy in the decade before Nicolaus Copernicus published his heliocentric theory of the …
The American Library Association’s 2015 Banned Books Week takes place Sep. 28-Oct. 2, celebrating the freedom to seek information and express views, even unpopular ones. The History of Science Collection contains plenty of examples of works which were unpopular and unaccepted at some point in time. Nicolaus Copernicus’ De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the revolutions …
Special Collections’ newest addition to the History of Science collection is a comet pamphlet by Polish astronomer Johannes Hevelius. The Epistola ad amicum de cometa, anno 1677 (in English: Letter to a Friend on the Comet of 1677) is Hevelius’s rarest publication – only one other copy exists in North American libraries. Hevelius (pictured here …
Saturday, Oct. 5 marked the 300th anniversary of the birth of Enlightenment philosopher Denis Diderot. Diderot is best known as the editor of Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (published 1751-72), one of the earliest and most comprehensive encyclopedias. Diderot wanted to capture all of the world’s knowledge, and the …