BibliOdyssey

Monday, October 10, 2005

Historical Anatomies

These are just random details taken from images out of a large selection of historic anatomical texts that I've been perusing online over the last hour or so. I was tempted to focus on a couple of works - in fact most of the images here come from the University of Iowa Hardin Library website, where I started - but ultimately I decided that I might just well post all the links (mostly from the National Library of Medicine), some of which have been circulating around over the last couple of years. This entry can be my link resource for future reference, if nothing else.

These (author names & publication date) all lead to thumb pages unless otherwise stated -

*Asterisks refer to the publication date being (well) after the work was written (and there are maybe 4 or 5 I didn't do this for - it was a thought that came to mind when I added the later entries).

Where does the art finish and the science start?

Hebrew Micrography

Omer calender detail: Italy, ca. 1825 Micrographic text: Five Megillot
(Esther, Ruth, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, and Lamentations)
B (NS)Mc43

One of the few traditional Jewish artforms, micrography, a sub-branch of calligraphy, arose in the middle east in about the 9th or 10th century, and was particularly used in biblical works. As suggested by the name, micrography employs tiny lettering which is distributed as a pattern to provide shadowing or embellish artwork or form artistic motifs themselves, as with the deer above.

Of course, the practice has crossed cultures and there are a number of examples at Almaleh, including this portrait of Queen Victoria which is made up of 170,000 words describing her life.

This post derives circuitously via the eclectic Carnet de Zénon.

Scandanavian Ornithology

Niels Kjærbølling - Ornithologia Danica 1848-1851 & Icones Ornithologiae Scandinavicae 1851-1856, from the Danmarks Fugle Online site.

This would be a wonderful site I'm sure, if I understood Danish or could find a decent translator. There seems to be about 3 databases combined here. First, they have the 19th century illustrations, with links to details about the species, illustrations from history and historic manuscripts and literature as well as links to photographs and more technical information from the natural history museum. Alas.. I can at least tell you that a couple of the humorous illustrations here were done by Hans Christian Andersen.

This link takes you to the first illustration. Click on each bird for a larger image of that bird, even if there are multiple birds on the one page. Click on the small bird icon to advance through the 108 pages of illustrations.

This link takes you to an alphabetical list of the same birds (I think), with latin names as well. But click around. There are weird and wonderful 'accessories' about.

Omni

Gustave Doré (1832 - 1883) Strasbourg, France.
MegaIllustrator.

Sunday, October 09, 2005

The Beasts Rise

One of the most interesting elements associated with the evoluton of science as a logical discipline is observing its rise from the dark ages notion of fantastical beliefs; whether in astronomy or chemistry or, as here, with natural science/biology.

The sample of woodcut images displayed unfairly suggests that the book from which they came leaned toward the mythical over the living. That's not the case. The apparent slant is merely a product of my affinity for the unusual. If it weren't for the conjured species I would doubtless have passed over it entirely. But there is quite a bit of stylizing in depicting the real creatures that makes the set all the more interesting as a whole.

Su : "A wild beast from Patagonia that has a broad tail and carries its young on its back. It is described by Topsell as a "cruell, untameable, impatient, violent, ravening, and bloody beast." When it sees hunters coming after it, "she roareth, cryeth, howleth, brayeth, and uttereth such a fearefull, noysome, and terrible clamor that the men which watch to kill her are not thereby a little amazed."

(colour version)

It's a little tricky identifying just when these images were created or under whose authorship they were first published. But they were scanned from a book called The History of Four-Footed Beasts and Serpents which was published in 1658 - from the first 2 volumes of a 3 volume set edited by John Rowland. The original version of The History.. was published by Edward Topsell in 1607 as The Historie of Foure-Footed Beastes, Describing the True and Lively Figure of Every Beast. He further published The Historie of Serpents; Or the Second Booke of Living Creatures the following year.

Lamia

Mantichora

But these works by Topsell were not entirely original as they were based on a 5-volume publication by Conrad Gesner in the mid 1500s - Historiae Animalium. The woodcuts themselves were lifted straight from Gesner's book. But despite deference to prior beliefs by including imaginary beings, the book(s) try to follow a line of reasoning in describing their subject matter. (Scan of the first page of the 1658 edition) Aristotle and Pliny the Elder were major sources.

Hydra

The Special Collections department of the University of Huston Libraries have an exhibit of 175 scans from the 1658 Rowland book, noting where known both the original and modern name of the creature portrayed. It is very comprehensive for what must have been known of the naturual world at the time.

Addit: This 4-page site doesn't seem at all authoratative but there is some further commentary taken from the book.