Natural History Timeline

The earliest surviving monolingual dictionary is the Chinese dictionary called the Eyra.

"The Erya has been described as a dictionary, glossary, synonymicon, thesaurus, and encyclopaedia. Karlgren (1931: 46) explains that the book "is not a dictionary in abstracto, it is a collection of direct glosses to concrete passages in ancient texts." The received text contains 2094 entries, covering about 4300 words, and a total of 13,113 characters. It is divided into nineteen sections, the first of which is subdivided into two parts. The title of each chapter combines shi ("explain; elucidate") with a term describing the words under definition. Seven chapters (4, 8, 9, 10, 12, 18, and 19) are organized into taxonomies. For instance, chapter 4 defines terms for: paternal clan (宗族), maternal relatives (母黨), wife's relatives (妻黨), and marriage (婚姻). The text is divided between the first three heterogeneous chapters defining abstract words and the last sixteen semantically-arranged chapters defining concrete words. The last seven – concerning grasses, trees, insects and reptiles, fish, birds, wild animals, and domestic animals – describe more than 590 kinds of flora and fauna. It is a valuable document of natural history and historical biogeography" (Wikipedia article on Eyra, accessed 05-08-2008).

The Johnson Papyrus (London, Wellcome Library, MS 5753) is a fragment of an early 5th century Greek codex written in Egypt, containing the oldest extant book illustrations of plants. It was discovered by J. da M. Johnson, in 1904 while he was working in Antinoe, Egypt. Johnson later became Printer to the University of Oxford.

One side of the papyrus shows a sphere of dark blue-green leaves supported by some small scraggly roots. Below the illustration is a fragment of Greek text. The illustrated plant has been identified as  comfrey, symphytum officinale. The reverse side shows "phlommos, perhaps mullein" (Conrad, et al, The Western Medical Tradition 800 BC to AD 1800 [1995] Fig. 10, p. 10).

Both sides of the papyrus fragment are illustrated in color in Ford, Images of Sciences. A History of Scientific Illustration (1993) 23.

The oldest surviving copy of Pedanus Dioscorides's treatise on medical botany and pharmacology, De Materia Medica, is an illuminated Byzantine manuscript produced about 512 CE. The manuscript also contains the earliest illustrated treatise on ornithology. It is one of the earliest surviving relatively complete codices of a scientific text, one of the earliest relatively complete illustrated codices on any scientific subject, and arguably the most beautiful of the earliest surviving scientific codices. It also contains what are probably the earliest surviving portraits of scientists or physicians in a manuscript.

The manuscript was produced for the Byzantine princess Anicia Juliana, the daughter of Flavius Anicius Olybrius, who had been emperor of the western empire in 472 CE.  "The frontispiece of the manuscript features her depiction, the first donor portrait in the history of manuscript illumination, flanked by the personifications of Magnanimity and Prudence, with an allegory of the "Gratitude of the Arts" prostrate in front of her. The encircling inscription proclaims Juliana as a great patron of art" (Wikipedia article on Anicia Juliana, accessed 11-22-2008).

For this and other commissions Juliana  may be considered the first non-reigning patron of the arts in recorded history.

"Splendid though the figures in the Codex Vindobonensis are, they reveal a naturalism so alien to contemporary Byzantine art that it is obvious that they were not drawn from nature but derived from originals of a much earlier date—as early, at least, as the second century AD. They vary, however, very much in quality and are clearly not all by the same hand, possibly not even all after the work of a single artist. In the text accompaying eleven of them there is association with the writings of Krateuas. All these figures are admirable, and clearly by the same hand; it must therefore seem certain that they, at all events, are derived from drawings by Krateuas himself" (Blunt & Raphael, The Illustrated Herbal [1979] 17).

The story of the manuscript's survival is relatively well documented:

"Presented in appreciation for her patronage in the construction of a district church in Constantinople, the parchment codex comprises 491 folios (or almost a thousand pages) and almost four hundred color illustrations, each occupying a full page facing a description of the plant's pharmacological properties. . . .

"In the Anicia codex, the chapter entries of De Materia Medica have been rearranged, the plants alphabetized and their descriptions augmented with observations from Galen and Crateuas (Krateuas), whose own herbal probably had been illustrated. Five supplemental texts also were appended, including paraphrases of the Theriaca and Alexipharmaca of Nicander and the Ornithiaca of Dionysius of Philadelphia (first century AD), which describes more than forty Mediterranean birds, including one sea bird shown with its wings both folded and open" (http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/aconite/materiamedica.html, accessed 11-22-2008)

From the time of its creation "Nearly nine centuries were to pass before we have further knowledge of the whereabouts of the codex. Then we learn that in 1406 it was being rebound by a certain John Chortasmenos for Nathanael, a monk and physician in the Prodromos Monastery in Constantinople, where seveteen years later it was seen by a Sicilian traveler named Aurispa. After the Muslim conquest of the city in 1453 the codex fell into the hands of the Turks, and Turkish and Arabic names were then added to the Greek. A century later it was in the possession of a Jew named Hamon, body physician to Suleiman the Magnificent, and it was presumably either by Hamon or by his son, who inherited it, that Hebrew names were also added" (Blunt & Raphael, op. cit., 15).

"Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecq, ambassador of Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I to the Ottoman court of Süleyman, attempted to purchase the Anicia codex in 1562 but could not afford the asking price. As he relates at the end of his Turkish Letters (IV, p.243),

"One treasure I left behind in Constantinople, a manuscript of Dioscorides, extremely ancient and written in majuscules, with drawings of the plants and containing also, if I am not mistaken, some fragments of Crateuas and a small treatise on birds. It belongs to a Jew, the son of Hamon, who, while he was still alive, was physician to Soleiman. I should like to have bought it, but the price frightened me; for a hundred ducats was named, a sum which would suit the Emperor's purse better than mine. I shall not cease to urge the Emperor to ransom so noble an author from such slavery. The manuscript, owing to its age, is in a bad state, being externally so worm-eaten that scarcely any one, if he saw if lying in the road, would bother to pick it up.

"In 1569 Emperor Maximilian II did acquire the Anicia codex for the imperial library in Vienna, now the Austrian National Library (Österreichische Nationalbibliothek), where it is designated Codex Vindobonensis Med. Gr. 1. (from Vindobona, the Latin name for Vienna) or, more simply, the Vienna Dioscorides." (http://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/aconite/materiamedica.html, accessed 11-22-2008)

The Latin herbal associated with the name of Apuleius Barbarus or Apuleius Platonicus or Pseudo-Apuleius, in distinction to Lucius Apuleius Platonicus, author of The Golden Ass, may have been put together from Greek material around 400 CE or might have been compiled earlier, possibly in Roman Africa. Nothing is known about the so-called author except his name, which may have actually been a pseudonym of Lucius Apuleius Platonicus, who described himself as "half-Numidian half-Gaetulian," and who was born in Madaurus (now M'Daourouch, Algeria), a Roman colony in Numidia on the North African coast, bordering Gaetulia.

"The history of the work has been lost with the passage of time, leading to endless speculation on the identity of the author. In all probability 'Apuleius Platonicus' was a pseudonym of Lucius Apuleius of Madaura in Numidia born AD124, [author of The Golden Ass,] while other writers refer to the him as Pseudo-Apuleius. A study of the book shows some of the plants being endemic to North Africa and lends support to the idea that the author was African" (Wikipedia article on Herbarium Apulei Platonici, accessed 06-13-2009).

The earliest surviving manuscript of this herbal, a codex containing a Latin herbarium and other medical texts, was produced in Southern Italy or Southern France in the sixth or early seventh century. It is preserved in the library of  Universiteit Leiden, Vos. Lat. Q9. 

"Its figures are much inferior those of the Vienna Dioscorides, and, like them, derivative, though of different origin; it is, therefore, in spite of being denounced by Singer as 'a futile work, with its unrecognisable figures and incomprehensible vocabulary', and by Frank J. Anderson as a 'straw desperately grasped at by despairing men', in its way a landmark in the history both of botany and of botanical illustration. It was probably written in the south of France and for many generations was unhappily to provide western illustrators from Italy to the Rhine with a storehouse for plunder " (Blunt & Raphael, The Illustrated Herbal [1979] 28).

The Herbarium Apulei was one of the most widely used remedy books of the Middle Ages. Over 60 medieval manuscripts of the text survive.

The Naples Dioscorides (Codex neapolitanus Ms. Ex Vindob. Gr. 1 Salerno) preserved in the Biblioteca Nazionale, Naples, is an early seventh century Greek herbal based on the De Materia Medica of the first-century Greek military physician Dioscorides (Dioscurides) containing descriptions of plants and  their medicinal uses. Until the early 18th century the manuscript was preserved in the Augustine monastery of San Giovanni a Carbonara in Naples. In 1718, the Habsburgs plundered it for the Viennese Court Library.  At the conclusion of the peace negotiations after World War I, in 1919, the codex returned to the Biblioteca Nazionale in Naples.

"Unlike De Materia Medica, the text is arranged alphabetically by plant. The codex derives independently from the same model as the Vienna Dioscurides, composed ca. 512 for a Byzantine princess, but differs from it significantly: though the illustrations follow the same infered model, they are rendered more naturalistically in the Naples Dioscurides. Additionally, in the Naples manuscript, the illustrations occupy the top half of each folio, rather than being full page miniatures as in the Vienna Dioscurides. The plant descriptions are recorded below the illustration in two or three columns. The style of Greek script used in the manuscript indicates that it was probably written in Byzantine-ruled southern Italy, where ancient Greek cultural traditions remained strong, although it is not known exactly where it was produced. Marginal notes indicate that the manuscript had contact with the medical school at Salerno in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries" (Wikipedia article on Naples Dioscurides, accessed 02-03-2009).

The Bern Physiologus, an illuminated copy of the Latin translation, preserved at the Burgerbibliothek, Bern, Switzerland, was probably produced at Reims about 825 CE. It is one of the oldest extant illustrated copies of the Physiologus, a didactic text written or compiled in Greek by an unknown author in Alexandria, between the second and fourth centuries. 

"The Physiologus consists of descriptions of animals, birds, and fantastic creatures, sometimes stones and plants, provided with moral content. Each animal is described, and an anecdote follows, from which the moral and symbolic qualities of the animal are derived. Manuscripts are often, but not always, given illustrations, often lavish."

The book was translated into Latin in about 400, then into European and Middle-Eastern languages. Numerous illuminated manuscript copies survive.  For over 1000 years the text —a predecessor to bestiaries — retained its influence in Europe over ideas of the "meaning" of animals.  Medieval poetical literature is full of allusions that can be traced to the Physiologus tradition, and the text also exerted great influence on the symbolism of medieval ecclesiastical art: symbols like the phoenix rising from its ashes and the pelican feeding her young with her own blood remain well-known.

"Epiphanius used Physiologus in his Panarion and from his time numerous further quotations and references to the Physiologus in the Greek and the Latin Church fathers show that it was one of the most generally known works of Christian Late Antiquity. Various translations and revisions were current in the Middle Ages. The earliest translation into Latin was followed by various recensions" (Wikipedia article on Physiologus, accessed 11-27-2008).

A Greek manuscript of Aristotle's Biological Works, written in Constantinople in the mid-9th century, and preserved at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, is probably the oldest surviving manuscript of texts that founded the science of biology. It contains annotations in Greek hands of the 12th and 13th centuries.

"A list of contents has been added on the last page (fol. 183v) in an English hand of the mid-13th century, which may be that of Robert Grosseteste, one of the earliest Englishment to study Greek. Two titles and a few words of the 13th-cent. Latin translation by William of Moerbeke were added. . . in an English humanistic hand possibly identifiable as that of John Farley (d. 1464), fellow of New College and registrar of Oxford University, whose study of Greek is known from other manuscripts" (Hunt, R.W., The Survival of the Classics, Oxford: Bodleian Library [1975] No. 54.).

The manuscript was given to Corpus Christi College, Oxford by Henry Parry in 1623.

"The surviving corpus of Aristotle derives from medieval manuscripts based on a 1st century BC edition. There were no commentaries on the biological works written until they were collectively translated into Arabic. The first appearance of Aristotle's biological writings in the West are Latin translations of an Arabic edition by Michael Scot, which forms the basis of Albertus Magnus's De animalibus. In the 13th century William of Moerbeke produced a Latin translation directly from the Greek. The first printed editions and translations date to the late 15th century, the most widely circulated being that of Theodorus Gaza. In addition to the three works traditionally referred to as History of Animals, Parts of Animals and Generation of Animals, there are a number of briefer ‘essays’ on more specialized topics: On animal motion, On animal locomotion, On respiration, On life and death, On youth and old age, On length and shortness of life, On sleeping and waking, On the senses and their objects (the last six being included in the so-called Parva naturalia). Whether one should consider De Anima (On the soul) part of this project or not is a difficult question. What is certainly clear, however, is that there are important connections between the theoretical approach to the relationship between body and soul defended in that work and the distinctive way that Aristotle approaches the investigation of animals" (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-biology/).

The periplus (literally "a sailing-around") of Hanno the Navigator, a Carthaginian colonist and explorer circa 500 BCE, which recounts his exploration of the West coast of Africa, is one of the earliest surviving manuscript documents listing in order the ports and coastal landmarks, with approximate distances between, that the captain of a vessel could expect to find along a shore.

In his periplus Hanno states that he brought new colonists to four Carthaginian settlements established where the chain of the Atlas Mountains reaches the Atlantic and then, having founded a new colony at the Tropic, proceeded from there to explore the coast of Africa as far as the Equator. It also contains a description of an active volcano and the first known report about gorillas.

The Hanno's periplus survives in a single Byzantine manuscript, which also contains various other texts, and dates from the 9th or 10th century—Codex Heidelbergensis 398. This manuscript, preserved in the Universitätsbibliothek, Heidelberg, is beautifully reproduced in digital form on their website. Hanno's text was first edited for publication in print by Sigismund Gelenius, and issued from Basel in 1533.

"The primary source for the account of Hanno's expedition is a Greek translation, titled Periplus, of a tablet Hanno is reported to have hung up on his return to Carthage in the temple of Ba'al Hammon whom Greek writers identified with Kronos. The full title translated from Greek is The Voyage of Hanno, commander of the Carthaginians, round the parts of Libya beyond the Pillars of Heracles, which he deposited in the Temple of Kronos. This was known to Pliny the Elder and Arrian, who mentions it at the end of his Anabasis of Alexander VIII (Indica):

" 'Moreover, Hanno the Libyan started out from Carthage and passed the Pillars of Heracles and sailed into the outer Ocean, with Libya on his port side, and he sailed on towards the east, five-and-thirty days all told. But when at last he turned southward, he fell in with every sort of difficulty, want of water, blazing heat, and fiery streams running into the sea" (Wikipedia article on Hanno the Navigator, accessed 05-30-2009).

MS M 652 in the Pierpont Morgan Library, written in Greek miniscule and illuminated in Constantinople during the mid-10th century, contains an alphabetical five-book version of Dioscorides, De Materia Medica, including 769 illustrations and several headpieces and tailpieces, on 385 leaves.

Its contents, according to the Morgan Library's online description, are:

"fols. 1v-199v: Dioscorides, De Materia Medica, Book I. Roots and Herbs -- fols. 200r-220v: Dioscorides, De Materia Medica, Book II. Animals, Parts of Animals and Products from Living Creatures -- fols. 221r-242v: Dioscorides, De Materia Medica, Book III. Oils and Ointments. -- fols. 243r-269v: Dioscorides, De Materia Medica, Book IV. Trees -- fols. 270v-305v: Dioscorides, De Materia Medica, Book V. Wines and Minerals etc. -- fols. 306r-319v: Dioscorides, attr., On the Power of Strong Drugs to Help or Harm -- fols. 319v-327v: Dioscorides, attr., On Poisons and their Effect -- fols. 328r-330v: Dioscorides, attr., On the Cure of Efficacious Poisons -- fols. 331r-333v: A Mithridatic Antidote -- fols. 334r-338r: Anonymous Poem on the Powers of Herbs -- fols. 338r-361r, 377r-384v: Eutecnius, Paraphrase of the Theriaca of Nicander -- fols. 361v-375r: Eutecnius, Paraphrase of the Alexipharmaca of Nicander -- fols. 375r-376v: Paraphrase of the Haliutica of Oppianos (incomplete)."

The manuscript was bound in Byzantium in the 14th or 15th century in dark brown leather blind tooled in a lozenge pattern over heavy boards. It was in Constantinople in the 15th century, where it was owned by an Arabic-speaking person, who added inscriptions in Arabic and genitalia to some animals. In the 16th century it remained in Constantinople where was owned by Manuel Eugenicos, 1578 and listed in his library catalogue. By the nineteenth century the manuscript was in Italy where it was owned by Domenico Sestini, ca. 1820. Later it was in the collection of Marchese C. Rinuccini, Florence, 1820-1849 (MS Cod. 69). From the middle of the nineteenth century it appears to have been in England with the booksellers John Thomas Payne and Henry Foss, London, 1849-1857. In the Payne sale (London, Sotheby’s, Apr. 30, 1857) it was sold to Charles Phillipps for Sir Thomas Phillipps (Phillipps Collection, no. 21975).  In 1920 J. P. Morgan Jr. purchased the manuscript from Phillipps’s estate.

Lambert of St. Omer, also known as Lambert of St. Bertin, compiles the Liber Floridus, a kind of encyclopedia of Biblical, chronological, astronomical, geographical, cartographic, theological, philosophical and natural history compiled from 192 different works.

"In this treatise Lambert compiled a chronicle or history that reaches to the year 1119; it contains various maps, including a mappamundi, which originally like the text, has a date at least earlier than 1125, and has survived in three forms: in the manuscripts of Ghent, Wolfenbüttel, and Paris. In spite of a clearly expressed intention of supplying a complete world map, the oldest copy, the Ghent manuscript, only includes Europe, two Macrobian-zone sketches and a T-O design. This particular manuscript copy seems to have been written by Lambert himself, certainly not later than 1125, and contains some remarkable peculiarities with regards to Europe. The Wolfenbüttel and Paris copies, dating from about 1150, are simply different copies from the same original, which was doubtless of Lambert's own draftsmanship (although in a monograph entitled Die Weltkarte des Martianus Capella, R. Uhden has pointed out that the world map contained in the Wolfenbüttel copy carries a legend ascribing the original to Martianus Capella. The correctness of the ascription is further verified by the identity of various other legends on the map with passages in the Satyricon or De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii . . . by Martianus Capella). These maps, which are based upon Capella's design, contain an equatorial ocean but are quite different than the Macrobian zone-maps (Slide #201). The ecliptic is usually shown, with the twelve signs of the zodiac, and the generalization of the coastlines is rounded in nature. Most of these maps are characteristically oriented to the East (although some show a northern orientation), and have a large amount of text in the southern continent. The climatic zones may or may not be explicitly shown. Regularly shaped islands are usually found in the ocean surrounding the northern continent.

"While containing a less detailed Europe, both the Wolfenbüttel and Paris manuscripts possess a complete mappamundi, together with a special and interesting addition. Nowhere else in medieval cartography do we find greater prominence assigned to the unknown southern continent - the Australian land of the fabled Antipodes (termed Antichthon by the ancients). On the Paris manuscript, where this land occupies half of the circle of the earth, a long inscription defines this 'region of the south' in terms not unlike those used on the St. Sever - Beatus map (Slide #207D)" (http://www.henry-davis.com/MAPS/EMwebpages/217mono.html, accessed 12-26-2008)

The Hereford Mappa Mundi preserved at England's Hereford Cathedral was drawn by "Richard of Haldingham or Lafford".

"Superimposed on to the continents are drawings of the history of humankind and the marvels of the natural world. These 500 or so drawings include images of around 420 cities and towns, 15 Biblical events, 33 plants, animals, birds and strange creatures, 32 images of the peoples of the world and 8 pictures from classical mythology. '... it is without parallel the most important and most celebrated medieval map in any form, . . . and certainly the greatest extant thirteenth-century pictorial manuscript' (Christopher de Hamel)."

The Venetian Senate grants the German printer Johannes de Spira (Speyer) a five-year monopoly on printing in the city.

This was the first monopoly on printing granted by a European government.

Speyer initiated printing in Venice in 1469, issuing Cicero's Epistolae ad familiares in an edition of 100 copies (ISTC no. ic00504000). "Four months" later he issued a second edition of 300 copies (ISTC no. c00505000). He also published the first edition of Pliny's Historia naturalis in a printing of 100 copies (ISTC no. ip00786000). From the text of the decree it appears that the Venetian Senate granted the monopoly to Speyer as a way of supporting his ongoing work, which they much admired.

The manuscript of the grant is preserved in the Venetian State Archives (ASV, NC, reg. 1, c.55r). It is reproduced in color and translated in  Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900), eds L. Bently & M. Kretschmer, www.copyrighthistory.org, from which I quote:

"The art of printing books has been introduced into our renowned state, and from day to day it has become more popular and common through the efforts, study and ingenuity of Master Johannes of Speyer, who chose our city over all the others. Here he lives with his wife, children and whole household; practices the said art of printing books; has just published, to universal acclaim, the Letters of Cicero and Pliny's noble work On Natural History, in the largest type and with the most beautiful letter-forms; and continues every day to print other famous volumes so that [this state] will be enriched by many, famous volumes, and for a low price, by the industry and fortitude of this man. Whereas such an innovation, unique and particular to our age and entirely unknown to those ancients, must be supported and nourished with all our goodwill and resources and [whereas] the same Master Johannes, who suffers under the great expense of his household and the wages of his craftsmen, must be provided with the means so that he may continue in better spirits and consider his art of printing something to be expanded rather than something to be abandoned, in the same manner as usual in other arts, even much smaller ones, the undersigned lords of the present Council, in response to the humble and reverent entreaty of the said Master Johannes, have determined and by determining decreed that over the next five years no one at all should have the desire, possibility, strength or daring to practice the said art of printing books in this the renowned state of Venice and its dominion, apart from Master Johannes himself. Every time that someone shall be found to have dared to practice this art and print books in defiance of this determination and decree, he must be fined and condemned to lose his equipment and the printed books. And, subject to the same penalty, no one is permitted or allowed to import here for the purpose of commerce such books, printed in other lands and places. . . ."

"Scholars and writers too went more readily to Venice than to any other city, in their search for publishers, attracted by the excellence of the local paper stock and typography as much as relatively liberal atmosphere in the city. In contrast to other early modern states where censorship and state regulation took on early to encourage and protect the nascent trade, in Venice, the trade was left virtually uncontrolled in the first years of its development. It was only in 1515 when Andrea Navagero was appointed for the task of the official revision of books that the state began to exercise a degree of control over what was printed. Even then, this literary censorship was primarily concerned with the quality of printed books to secure commercially successful correct editions. Thus the natural play of economic forces had left printers free to establish their printing enterprises and compete against each other in an open market. In other words, Venice was an ideal place from which to begin the 'printing revolution.'

"The rapid expansion of the printing industry leaves no doubt that Venice was the first city in the world to feel the full impact of printing, and to experience the most important revolution in human communications, and a favourable territory in which the system of copyright could develop. This, however, did not make Venice into a champion of literary property. It would take a long time before the copyright holder was identified with the moral or aesthetic personality of the writer.

"The best-known explanation for the emergence of author's rights is a technological one, viewing the need to protect literary production as a consequence of the invention of printing. In a manuscript culture, texts were treated as common property, and copying another man's work was often considered more of a favour than an injury. . . .

"It is not so much printing as the existence of a market in books and ideas that introduced concepts of intellectual property. As the literary market increased in importance, authors, who might well be writing for a living and competing for recognition, began to stress the distinctiveness of their products, in other words their intellectual or literary originality. Printing encouraged the development of such a market and expanded the concept of a book as a commodity (selling object). However, the concept of a book as a particular category of commodity - the work of the mind - was slow to develop" (Primary Sources on Copyright (1450-1900), eds L. Bently & M. Kretschmer, www.copyrighthistory.org, accessed 07-24-2009).

Printer Johann Bämler of Augsburg issues the first edition of Konrad von Megenberg's Buch der Natur.

This was the first natural history written in German, and the series of woodcuts in the first edition were the first natural history book illustrations. There were two woodcuts of plants—the first botanical woodcuts in a printed book.

"The work has 8 chapters

" * the nature of man

" * sky, 7 planets, astronomy and meteorology

" * zoology

" * ordinary and aromatic trees

" * plants and vegetables

" * invaluable and semi-precious stones

" * 10 kinds of metals

" * water and rivers" (Wikipedia article on Konrad of Megenburg, accessed 06-13-2009).

♦ You can view a digital facsimile of this work (ISTC no. ic00842000) at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek website at this link: http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/~db/0002/bsb00029636/images/index.html?id=00029636&fip=67.164.64.97&no=8&seite=10, accessed 01-06-2010.

♦ A digital facsimile of an illustrated fifteenth century manuscript of von Megenberg's work,  Cod. Pal. germ. 300 Konrad von Megenberg Das Buch der Natur Hagenau - Werkstatt Diebold Lauber, um 1442-1448?,  is available from Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg, at this link, accessed 06-13-2009).

Blunt & Raphael, The Illustrated Herbal (1979) 112-13.

Printer Arnaldus de Bruxella in Naples issues the first printed edition of the hexameter poem, De viribus herbarum carmen attributed to Macer Floridus (or Aemilius Macer), possibly a pseudonym of Odo of Meung (Odo de Meung, Odo Magdunensis).

Macer's unillustrated text describes the medicinal properties of 77 herbs and is written in Latin hexameter, a poetic verse form that was most likely employed as a mnemonic device for physicians, apothecaries and others.

"The text titled De Viribus Herbarum (On properties of plants) has been traditionally attributed to Odo de Meung (Odo Magdunensis), who is believed to have lived during the first half of the 11th century and was from Meung on the Loire. Recent research has shown, however, that the De Viribus Herbarum was probably written in an earlier version, perhaps during the tenth century in Germany. The text was further expanded, including new data from the translation of Arabic texts into Latin in Salerno from the end of the 11th century onward. If this is the case, this text is good evidence of the continuity of scientific activity in the Middle Ages: its most ancient parts come from a period when there was a revival of interest in botany and a recovery of the classical tradition, while the most recent additions integrate the contribution of the Arabic world" (http://huntbot.andrew.cmu.edu/HIBD/Exhibitions/OrderFromChaos/OFC-Pages/01Pre-Linnaean%20botany/birth.shtml, accessed 06-13-2009).

ISTC no. im00001000.

The first edition of this work illustrated with woodcuts appears to be a Geneva edition printed circa 1500: ISTC No.: im00005000.

The first printed herbal with illustrations was an illustrated edition of the Herbarium Apulei by Apuleius Platonicus or Pseudo-Apuleius, originally compiled circa 400 CE or earlier, and issued in Rome by the printer and diplomat Johannes Philippus de Lignamine in 1481 or 1482. The earliest surviving manuscript of this text dates from the sixth century, and is noticed in this database.

In his dedicatory letter Lignamine states that he based his edition on a manuscript found in the Abbey of Monte Cassino. In the 1930s F.W.T. Hunger identified a 9th century manuscript as Lignamine's source (codex Casinensis 97 saec.IX). This he published in facsimile as The Herbal of Pseudo-Apuleius (1935). Regrettably the manuscript was destroyed in the bombardment of Monte Casino in 1944. 

The first printed edition of Herbarium Apulei contains in addition to its text, a title within a woodcut wreath and 131 woodcuts of plants, including repeats.  It gives a multitude of prescriptions, and to make the work more useful, lists synonyms for each plant in Greek, Persian, Egyptian, and other languages, illustrating each with a stylized woodcut. These are the earliest series of printed botanical illustrations, and probably the first formal series of illustrations on a scientific subject, though they were preceded by the technological woodcuts in Valturio's De re militari, 1472.  As a practical and instructive reinforcement of the value of particular plants snakes, scorpions, and other venomous animals are depicted in the woodcuts of plants that provide relevant antedotes.

Lignamine sought patronage of his editions through the rich and powerful. As a result, two variant issues of the first edition exist with no priority established:

• one with a dedicatory letter to Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga

• another with a dedication to Giuliano della Rovere, future Pope Julius II.

Blunt & Raphael, The Illustrated Herbal (1979) 113-14. Christie's, N.Y., Important Botanical Books from a Former Private Collection, 24 June 2009, lot 15. ISTC no. ih00058000.

Bernhard von Breydenbach, a wealthy canon of Mainz Cathedral, issues an extensively illustrated travel book, describing his pilgramage to Jerusalem entitled Peregrinatio in terram sanctam or Sanctae peregrinationes.

Von Breydenbach made the pilgrimage in 1483-4, taking with him, as the book explains, "Erhard Reuwich of Utrecht", a 'skillful artist', to make drawings of the sights. As the book relates, Reuwich also printed the first Latin edition of the book in his own house in Mainz, and it is also very probable that because Reuwich was the printer he took the opportunity to identify himself as the artist, since the creators of book illustrations were rarely identified at this time.

"Leaving in April 1483 and arriving back in January 1484, they travelled first to Venice, where they stayed for three weeks. They then took ship for Corfu, Modon and Rhodes - all still Venetian possessions. After Jerusalem and Bethlehem and other sights of the Holy Land, they went to Mount Sinai and Cairo. After taking a boat down the Nile to Rosetta, they took ship back to Venice."

"The Sanctae Peregrinationes, or the Peregrinatio in terram sanctam, was the first illustrated travel-book, and marked a leap forward for book illustration generally. It featured five large fold-out woodcuts, the first ever seen in the West, including a spectacular five-foot-long (1600 x 300 mm) woodcut panoramic view of Venice, where the pilgrims had stayed for three weeks. The book also contained a three-block map of Palestine and Egypt, centred on a large view of Jerusalem, and panoramas of five other cities: Iraklion, Modon, Rhodes, Corfu and Parenzo. There were also studies of Near Eastern costume, and an Arabic alphabet—also the first in print. Pictures of animals seen on the journey, including a crocodile, camel, and unicorn, were also included.

"The colophon of the book is a lively coat-of-arms of the current Archbishop of Mainz, which includes the first cross-hatching in woodcut.

"The book was a bestseller, reprinted thirteen times over the next three decades, including printings in France and Spain, for which the illustration blocks were shipped out to the local printers. The first edition in German was published within a year of the Latin one, and it was also translated into French, Dutch and Spanish before 1500. Additional text-only editions and various abridged editions were also published.

"The illustrations were later adapted by Michael Wolgemut for the Nuremberg Chronicle of 1493, and much copied by various other publishers" (Wikipedia article on Erhard Reuwich, accessed 12-01-2008).

ISTC no. ib01189000.

German botanist and theologian Otto Brunfels publishes the first two volumes of Herbarum vivae eicones ad nature imitationem, sum[m]a cum diligentia et artificio effigiate. . . .  in Strassburg. The third volume was edited by Michael Heer and published two years after Brunfels's death.

While earlier herbals were llustrated with conventional stylized figures, copied and recopied over the centuries from one manuscript to another, Brunfels's Herbarum was illustrated with detailed, accurate renderings of plants taken directly from nature, most of them showing all portions of the plant (root, stem, leaves, flowers and fruit), and some even going so far as to depict wilted leaves and insect damage. The artist responsible for the illustrations was Hans Weiditz; his contributions were credited in a poem appearing on leaf A4r, making him the first botanical illustrator to be recognized for his work. Comparison of Weiditz's woodcuts with the woodcuts in Leonhard Fuchs's De historia stirpium (1542) show that the artists who worked with Fuchs were strongly influenced by Weiditz's work.

In contrast to its revolutionary images, the text of the Herbarum was an uncritical compendium of quotations from older authorities, primarily concerned with the therapeutic virtues of each plant. Brunfels made no attempt to classify the plants he discussed, but related species often appear in close proximity to one another. He restricted himself to plants indigenous to Strassburg and described over forty new species. At the end of the second volume is a collection of twelve tracts edited by Brunfels, entitled De vera herbarum cognitione appendix. This includes the first published writings of both Jerome Bock and Leonhard Fuchs. 

Morton, History of Botanical Science (1981) 124.  Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 361.

German physician and botanist Leonhard Fuchs publishes De historia stirpium (On the History of Plants) in Basel at the office of printer Michael Isengrin.

Fuchs's herbal was illustrated with full-page woodcut illustrations drawn by Albrecht Meyer, copied onto the blocks by Heinrich Füllmaurer and cut by Veit Rudolf Speckle; the artists' self-portraits appear on the final leaf. 

Describing and illustrating circa 400 native German and 100 foreign plants-- wild and domestic—in alphabetical order, with a discussion of their medical uses, De historia stirpium was probably inspired by the pioneering effort of Otto Brunfels, whose Herbarum vivae imagines had appeared twelve years earlier. "These two works have rightly been ascribed importance in the history of botany, and for two reasons. In the first place they established the requisites of botanical illustration—verisimilitude in form and habit, and accuracy of significant detail. . . . Secondly they provided a corpus of plant species which were identifiable with a considerable degree of certainty by any reasonably careful observer, no matter by what classical or vernacular names they were called. . ." (Morton, History of Botanical Science [1981] 124).

Fuchs's herbal is also remarkable for containing the first glossary of botanical terms, for providing the first depictions of a number of American plants, including pumpkins and maize, and for its generous tribute to the artists Meyer, Füllmaurer and Speckle, whose self-portraits appear on the last leaf.  This tribute to the artists may be unique among sixteenth century scientific works, many of which were illustrated by unidentified artists, or artists identified by name only. It is especially unusual for the name of the artist who transferred the drawings onto the woodblocks to be recorded, let alone for that artist to be portrayed.

The widely known and distinctive plant species Fuchsia, named after Fuchs, was discovered on Santo Domingo in the Caribbean in 1696/97 by the French scientist Dom Charles Plumier, who published the first description of "Fuchsia triphylla, flore coccineo" in 1703. The color fuchsia is also named for Fuchs, describing the purplish-red of the shrub's flowers.

"Fuchs's herbal exists in both hand-colored and uncolored versions. While some colored copies may have been painted by their owners after purchase, as was sometimes done in books of this nature, there is sufficient evidence to show that copies were also colored for the publisher Isingrin, who presumably made use of the artist's original drawings. Such 'original colored' copies possess many features in common—for example, the illustration of the rose has the left shoot bearing white flowers and the right shoot red flowers, and the plum tree shows yellow fruits on the left, blue fruits in the center, and reddish fruits on the right—and it is these features that permit one to distinguish between original colored copies and those colored later by private owners. The coloring in the colored copies issued by the publisher accords well with Fuchs's descriptions in the text, which suggest that Fuchs had some control over the painting" (Norman, One Hundred Books Famous in Medicine [1995] no. 17, pp. 66-67).

Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 846.

English physician, ornithologist and botanist William Turner publishes in Cologne, Germany Avium praecipuarum, quarum apud Plinium et Aristotelem mentio est, brevis & succincta historia. 

Turner was the first scientific student of zoology and botany in England. Because of his extreme nonconformist religious views he spent a good deal of time in exile on the Continent, where he observed European fauna and flora, studied the most recent work of contemporary naturalists and made the acquaintance of Conrad Gessner (Gesner). It was during one of these European exiles that Turner prepared the Avium praecipuarum, printed, as were parts of his Herball, in Cologne. An account of the principal bird species mentioned by Aristotle and Pliny, the book was the first ornithological treatise to contain clear descriptions of the appearance of individual species based upon the author's own experience and observations. Compiling this work was by no means easy, as virtually nothing had been written on the subject since Pliny's Historia naturalis and sorting out the names and actual species referred to in the classical texts demanded great philological as well as ornithological expertise. Yet Turner succeeded admirably in his task: Most of his identifications are accurate, with good descriptions of characteristics and habits, and the few anomalies (the phoenix, barnacle goose, etc.) are either strict quotations from classical authors or are based on evidence that Turner tried to verify. His identification of northern European species, especially British ones, provides valuable evidence about their distribution during the sixteenth century.

Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 2117. Raven, English naturalists from Neckham to Ray (1947) 48-137.

The Libellus de medicinalibus indorum herbis, an Aztec herbal manuscript with color paintings of plants describing the medicinal properties of 250 herbs used by the Aztecs, was translated into Latin by Juan Badiano from a Nahuatl original no longer extant. It is the only detailed original account of the ethnobotany of the Aztecs written by Aztecs.

The Nahuatl original was composed in the Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco in 1552 by Martín de la Cruz. Both Badiano and de la Cruz were native Aztecs who were given European names at the Colegio de Santa Cruz. The Libellus is also known as the Badianus Manuscript, after the translator; the Codex de la Cruz-Badiano, after both the original author and translator; and the Codex Barberini, after Cardinal Francesco Barberini, who owned the manuscript in the early 17th century.

"In 1552 Jacobo de Grado, the friar in charge of the Convent of Tlatelolco and the College of Santa Cruz, had the herbal created and translated for Francisco de Mendoza, son of Antonio de Mendoza, the viceroy of New Spain. Mendoza sent the Latin manuscript to Spain, where it was deposited into the royal library. There it presumably remained until the early 17th century, when it somehow came into the possession of Diego de Cortavila y Sanabria, pharmacist to King Philip IV. From Cortavila it travelled to the Italian Cardinal Francesco Barberini, possibly via intermediate owners. The manuscript remained in the Barberini library until 1902, when the Barberini library became part of the Vatican Library, and the manuscript along with it. Finally, in 1990 — over four centuries after it was sent to Spain — Pope John Paul II returned the Libellus to Mexico, and it is now in the library of the National Institute of Anthropology and History in Mexico City.

"A copy was made in the 17th century by Cassiano dal Pozzo, the secretary of Cardinal Barberini. Dal Pozzo's collection, called his Museo Cartaceo ("Papers Museum"), was sold by his heirs to Pope Clement XI, who sold it to his nephew, Cardinal Alessandro Albani, who himself sold it to King George III in 1762. Dal Pozzo's copy is now part of the Royal Library, Windsor. Another copy may have been made by Francesco de' Stelluti, but is now lost. Dal Pozzo and de' Stelluti were both members of the Accademia dei Lincei" (Wikipedia article on Libellus de Medicinalibus Indorum Herbis, accessed 11-27-2010).

Two different English translations of work, by William Gates and Emily Walcott Emmart, respectively, were published in 1939 and 1940. The Gates translation was reissued with a new introduction by Bruce Byland in 2000. A translation into Spanish by Francisco Guerra was published in 1952, and a different Spanish edition was published in 1964 and 1991.

In 1995 Peter Furst published a study of the entheogens, or psychoactive drugs, included in the codex: "This Little Book of Herbs": Psychoactive Plants as Therapeutic Agents in the Badianus Manuscript of 1552," Schultes & von Reis (eds) Ethnobotany: Evolution of a Discipline (1995) 108-130.

Physician, botanist, bibliographer, and naturalist Konrad Gesner (Gessner) publishes In hoc volumine continentur Valerii Cordi Simesusij annotationes in pedacij Dioscordis . . . Stirpium lib. IIII. posthumi . . . Sylva . . . De artificiosis extractionibus liber . . . Compositiones medicinales. His accedunt Stocchornii et Nessi in Bernatium Helvetiorum ditione montium . . . Conradi Gesneri de hortis germaniae liber recens . . . omnia summo studio atque industria doctis. atque excellentiss. viri Conr. Gesneri medici Tigurini collecta, & praefationibus illustrata.

Containing descriptions of about 500 plants, Valerius Cordus’s Historiae stirpium represents the earliest effort to systematize botanical description; Cordus has been called the inventor of phytography. “To read [Cordus’s] description of plants after those of his predecessors and contemporaries is like entering a new world. Each description follows a regular pattern and almost always includes, in this order, the characteristic features of stem and leaves, the flower and time of flowering, the fruit and seeds, the number of loculi in the fruit, the lines of dehiscence, the appearance and the number of rows of seed, the root, whether annual or perennial, taste and smell, and habitat. Cordus thus established in principle the basis for scientific plant description and his transforming influence is evident in most of the leading botanists who followed him” (Morton, History of Botanical Science, p. 126). Gesner, who was sent the manuscript of Historiae stirpium several years after Cordus’s death, recognized the revolutionary nature of Cordus’s work, describing it as “truly extraordinary because of the accuracy with which the plants are described” (Greene, Landmarks of Botanical History, 373).

Cordus’s De artificiosis extractionibus liber, a treatise on the preparation of both simple and compound drugs, published for the first time in this work, contains the first written and published account of the synthesis of sulfuric ether (sweet oil of vitriol)  from sulfuric acid and alcohol on ff. 226v-229r. Cordus is credited with having discovered sulfuric ether circa 1540, four years before his premature death at the age of 29. Paracelsus also wrote about ether in the 1540s; however, his brief discussion of ether was not published until 1605. There is also some speculation that the Arabs, who were the first to distill alcohol and sulfuric acid, may have synthesized ether as early as the 10th century, though no record of this has survived. Cordus described ether's high volatility and noted correctly that “ether promotes the flow of mucous secretion from the respiratory tract and that it affords relief from whooping cough” (Faulconer & Keys, Foundations of Anesthesiology, 267). Cordus also listed several other ailments for which ether was recommended, although he did not mention its soporific effects.

Cordus was the son of German physician and botanist Euricius Cordus, who was the first to establish botany on a scientific basis in Germany. Valerius studied botany and pharmacy under his father and at Wittenburg University, where he gave lectures on the Materia medica of Dioscorides and performed original botanical and pharmacological research based on his own observations (a novelty at the time). Valerius Cordus’s promising career was cut short by his death at the age of 29, but he left a number of works in manuscript which were published after his death, partly from finished manuscripts and partly from notes taken by his students.

The first of Cordus’s works to be published were Pharmacorum omnium . . . vulgo vocant Dispensatorium pharmacopolarum (Nuremberg, 1546; Germany’s first official pharmacopeia), and his Annotationes . . . in Dioscoridis de materia medica, which was included in Pedanii Dioscoridis . . . de medicinali materia libri sex (Frankfurt, 1549; ed. Walther Hermann Ryff), and also appeared in Euricius Cordus’s Botanologicon (Paris, 1551). The Annotationes includes descriptions of the opium poppy and of mandrake (mandragora), a plant containing several narcotic alkaloids (see ff. 66-67). Mandrake’s soporific and anesthetic properties were known in the ancient world, and both mandrake and opium were key ingredients in the medieval “spongia somnifera,” a sponge soaked in a decoction of several herbs which was applied to the patient’s nostrils in order to produce surgical anesthesia. This method of anesthesia was largely ineffectual, however, and went out of use before the end of the 17th century. The publication of Cordus’s remaining works was largely due to the efforts of Gesner. The published volume contains the first editions of four works—Historiae stirpium libri IV; Sylva . . . ; De artificiosis extractionibus liber; and Compositiones medicinales—as well as the third edition of the Annotationes. To this collection Gesner added two works of his own, including De tulipa turcarum, the first scientifically accurate account of the tulip, which had been introduced to Europe only a few years earlier. Gesner also was responsible for issuing Cordus’s Stirpium descriptionis liber quintus in 1563.

Printer Pedro Ocharte, born Pierre Ocharte in Rouen, France, working in Mexico City, issues Opera medicinalia by the Spanish physician, Francisco Bravo. Ocharte had married the daughter of Juan Pablos, the first printer in the New World, and inherited his equipment. Opera medicinalia includes a woodcut title border and a few botanical woodcuts, including images to distinguish the false sarsaparilla of Mexico from the true Spanish sarsaparilla of Dioscorides. It was the first medical book printed in the Western Hemisphere, and its botanical images were the first illustrations of plants printed in the Western Hemisphere.

Of the original edition only two copies are known, of which the only complete copy is at the Universidad de Puebla, Mexico. In 1862 American bookseller and bibliographer Henry Stevens purchased an incomplete copy at the sale of the library of Guglielmo Libri in London. This he resold to the American collector James Lennox. This copy is preserved in the New York Public Library.

In 1970 London antiquarian booksellers Dawsons of Pall issued a facsimile of the complete Universidad de Puebla copy with a companion volume of commentary by Francisco Guerra. The two volumes were printed on hand-made paper by J. Barcham Green, Ltd. and bound in parchment by Zaehnsdorf in London. The edition was limited to 250 hand-numbered copies.

Physician Gaspard Bauhin publishes in Basel the system of "natural" plant classification based upon general morphology, and establishes of the first scientific system of nomenclature. 

Bauhin discarded the alphabetical and other arbitrary systems used by earlier writers, insisting that any useful method of classification must be based on natural affinities.  He grouped plants according to their genera, then, drawing from his own observations and the works of earlier authors, gave each species within a genus a descriptive name.  He thus introduced an orderly system of binomial nomenclature, which—although the concept did not originate with him— marked a significant improvement over earlier schemes. 

Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 139.

The "Museo Cartaceo" ("Paper Museum"), a collection of more than 7,000 watercolors, drawings and prints assembled by the Roman patron and collector Cassiano dal Pozzo and his youngest brother Carlo Antonio, represents one of the most significant attempts made before the age of photography to embrace the widest range of human knowledge in visual form. Documenting ancient art and architecture, botany, geology, ornithology and zoology, the collection is a significant tool for understanding the cultural and intellectual concerns of a period during which the foundations of our own scientific methods were laid down.

"The Paper Museum reflects the taste and intellectual breadth of Cassiano dal Pozzo, one of the most learned and enthusiastic of all seventeenth-century Roman collectors. As secretary to Cardinal Francesco Barberini, patron of artists such as Poussin, and a friend of Galileo, Cassiano crossed the boundaries of artistic, scientific and political disciplines to create his unique visual encyclopaedia. His patronage extended to both the well-known and the lesser-known artists of his day, and his close connections with leading European scientists, scholars and philosophers kept him informed of the latest archaeological and scientific discoveries. His younger brother Carlo Antonio came to share his interests and played a significant role in augmenting and arranging the collection.

"Through his association with Federico Cesi, Prince of Acquasparta (1585–1630), and his membership of the Accademia dei Lincei (the first modern scientific society, founded by Cesi), Cassiano assembled visual evidence of scientifically – and for the first time microscopically – observed natural phenomena, thus establishing a firm basis for scientific classification. Fruit, flora, fungi, fauna, minerals and fossils – all were meticulously recorded, whether commonplace or exotic. He applied the same rigour and systematic methodology to his antiquarian studies: classical and early medieval monuments and artefacts were painstakingly drawn and classified to form a unique survey of ancient architecture, religion, custom, dress and spectacle" (http://warburg.sas.ac.uk/pozzo/prospectus.pdf, accessed 0-03-2010).

The "Paper Museum" was sold by Cassiano’s heirs to the Albani Pope Clement XI , who resold it to his connoisseur nephew Cardinal Alessandro Albani in the early eighteenth century. It remained in the Albani collection until a substantial portion was acquired by George III, also a scientific amateur, in 1762 for his library at Buckingham House. In 1834, the collection was transferred to the Royal Library created by William IV at Windsor Castle, where it forms part of the Royal Collection. Other portions are at the British Library, the British Museum, the botanical gardens at Kew (mycological specimens) , the library of Sir John Soane's Museum. Portions not purchased for George III are preserved at the Institut de France and various other public and private collections. 

Since the 1990s a project has been underway to publish the drawings and prints in the ‘Museo Cartaceo’ in a series of  thirty-six volumes, arranged by subject matter following the method of classification employed by Cassiano himself.  The series is entitled The Paper Museum of Cassiano dal Pozzo ~ A Catalogue Raisonné.

English writer, gardener, and diarist, John Evelyn publishes Sylva, or a Discourse of Forest-Trees, and the Propagation of Timber in His Majesty's Dominions. .  . .To Which is Annexed Pomona, or an Appendix Concerning Fruit-Trees. . .also Kalendarium Hortense; or Gardeners' Almanac. . . .

Sylva was a protest against the destruction of England's forests being carried out by her glass factories and iron furnaces. The work was influential in establishing a much-needed program of reforestation in order to provide timber for Britain's burgeoning navy. This program had a lasting effect on the British economy.

Sylva also bears the distinction of being the first official publication of the Royal Society, which had been permitted to publish in 1662.  The first edition contained two appendixes, "Pomona" and "Kalendarium Hortense"; the second of these was often reprinted separately, and proved to be Evelyn's most popular work.

Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 745.

After the death of Francis Willoughby (Willughby) at the age of 37, English clergyman and naturalist John Ray publishes Francisci Willughbeii . . . ornithologiae libri tres, in quibus aves omnes hactenus cognitae in methodum naturis suis convenientem redactae accurate describuntur. . . . The small folio work included 77 copperplate engravings and 2 folding charts.

Ray and Francis Willoughby studied bird life together, visiting during 1662-63 the west coast of England, the Netherlands, journeying up the Rhine Valley to Zürich, visiting Italy, with Willoughby continuing to Spain. They were the first ornithologists to discard the Aristotelian principles of classification by function, replacing them with a morphological system based on beak form, foot structure and body size that reflected the true relationships even better than Linnaeus’s “natural system” of sixty years later. They were also the first to develop a classification of birds that was independent of geographical boundaries. The credit for this system almost certainly belongs to Ray, who prepared the final version of the Ornithologia from notes left at Willoughby’s death, and who had done the major part of the observations and records during their years of partnership. In an attempt to bring order out of the chaos of tradition, Ray collated his and Willoughby’s observations against those recorded by all previous writers, eliminating duplicate species, species vaguely described or reported on hearsay, and species that were clearly fabulous. An English version, which Ray also prepared, was published in 1678.  A few copies of the Latin edition were published on large paper and hand-colored.

Keynes, John Ray: A Bibliography (1951) no. 39. Raven, John Ray Naturalist (1950) ch. 12. Wing W-2879. 

English Physician and comparative anatomist Edward Tyson publishes Orang-Outang, sive Homo Sylvestris; or, the Anatomy of a Pygmie Compared with that of a Monkey, an Ape and a Man,  including 8 folding plates engraved by Michael Vandergucht after drawings by the artist and anatomist, William Cowper.

Tyson's anatomy of the "orang-outang" (in Tyson's case a chimpanzee rather than an orangutan) was the first work to demonstrate the structural relationships between the anatomy of man and the anthropoid ape. For Tyson the term Orang-Outang meant "man of the woods."

In 1641 the Dutch surgeon and anatomist Nicholas (or Nicolaes) Tulp had used the same words to describe a chimpanzee, which he illustrated in his Observationum medicarum. This book included the first, limited description by a scientist of an African anthropoid ape. Regarding Tulp's description Tyson said that "I confess that I do mistrust the whole representation."

The ape which Tulp described seems to have come from Angola, and Tulp had the opportunity to observe it in the private menagerie of the Prince of Orange. Tulp seems to have learned the name orang-outang from Samuel Blomartio, a friend who had lived in Borneo and was familiar with the Javanese word for "man of the woods." Tulp seems to have been under the impression that orangutans were widely distributed throughout the tropics rather than limited to Asia, and thus confused the two species. The classification of the orangutan in the the Ponginae (Pongo) subfamily of the family hominidae, outside of the subfamily homininae from which humans descend, and to which the chimpanzee belongs, had not yet occurred.

Perhaps with some humor, but also to confirm the anatomical similarities, Tyson had Cowper draw the standing dissected figures of chimpanzees in the style of the famous Vesalian musclemen. A believer in the "Great Chain of Being" or scala naturae, Tyson identified the chimpanzee as the link directly below mankind, stating in his "Epistle Dedicatory" that it "seems the Nexus of the Animal and Rational."

Tyson's anatomical study— the first conducted of a great ape— had a powerful influence on all subsequent thought on man's place in nature. Thomas Huxley referred to it extensively in his 1863 book with that title. Tyson's last section of Orang-Outang is devoted to "A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients," an early contribution to the study of primate-oriented folklore.

Cole, History of Comparative anatomy, 198-221. Montague, Edward Tyson (1943) ch. 8. Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 2120.  Spencer, Ecce Homo. An Annotated Bbiliographic History of Physical Anthropology (1986) no. 1.92.

Dutch anatomist Frederik Ruysch publishes Thesaurus anatomicus in ten parts in Amsterdam from 1701 to 1716, and the first and only part of his Thesaurus animalium in 1710. An index to the Thesaurus anatomicus appeared in 1725.

Probably the most original artist in the history of anatomical preparations, Ruysch enjoyed making up elaborate three-dimensional emblems of mortality from his specimens. These fantastic, dream-like concoctions constructed of human anatomical parts are illustrated in the Thesaurus on large folding plates mostly engraved by Cornelis Huyberts, who also engraved plates for the painter Gérard de Lairesse, illustrator of Govert Bidloo’s anatomy. In their dreamlike qualities many of the plates depicting the preparations reflect surrealism centuries before surrealism became fashionable. Ruysch’s Thesaurus anatomicus and his Thesaurus animalium describe and illustrate the spectacular collections of “Anatomical Treasures” which he produced for display in his home museum between 1701 and 1716 using secret methods of anatomical injection and preservation.

Ruysch's unique anatomical preparations attracted many notables to his museum, including Czar Peter the Great of Russia, who was so fascinated with the preparations that he attended Ruysch’s anatomy lectures, and in 1717 he bought Ruysch’s entire collection, along with that of the Amsterdam apothecary Albert Seba, for Russia's first public museum, the St. Petersburg Kunstkammer. Over the years most of the dry preparations in St. Petersburg deteriorated or disappeared, but some of those preserved in glass jars remain. A few later specimens by Ruysch, auctioned off by his widow after his death, are also preserved in Leiden. Because most of the preparations did not survive, Ruysch’s preparations, and his museum, are known primarily from these publications.

Ruysch's methods allowed him to prepare organs such as the liver and kidneys and keep entire corpses for years. He used a mixture of talc, white wax, and cinnabar for injecting vessels and an embalming fluid of alcohol made from wine or corn with black pepper added. Using his injection methods Ruysch was the first to demonstrate the occurrence of blood vessels in almost all tissues of the human body, thereby destroying the Galenic belief that certain areas of the body had no vascular supply. He was also the first to show that blood vessels display diverse organ-specific patterns. He investigated the valves in the lymphatic system, the bronchial arteries and the vascular plexuses of the heart, and was the first to point out the nourishment of the fetus through the umbilical cord. Ruysch's discoveries led him to claim erroneously that tissues consisted solely of vascular networks, and to deny the existence of glandular tissue. 

Impey & Macgregor (eds.) The Origins of Museums (1985)  55-56. Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 1875.  Rosamond Purcell & Stephen Gould, Finders, Keepers: Eight Collectors (1992) chapter 1 reproduces spectacular color images of Ruysch’s preparations from Czar Peter’s Wunderkammer, and Leiden.  Roberts & Tomlinson, The Fabric of the Human Body (1992) 290-98.

Count Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli, Habsburg general, military engineer, scientist and virtuoso, publishes Histoire physique de la mer in Amsterdam.

This work, illustrated with an engraved frontispiece and 52 engraved plates, and a glowing introduction by physician  Herman Boerhaave, was the first book devoted entirely to marine science, and the first oceanographic study of a single region. Marsigli conducted an intensive investigation of the Gulf of Lyon in the south of France, taking soundings to obtain a profile of the sea floor, analyzing the relationship of the lands under and above water, studying the water's physical properties (temperature, density, color) and its motions (waves, currents, tides), and describing the marine life of the region. Marsigli was the first to give an account of formation of the continental shelf and slope, and the first to class corals as living beings rather than as inorganic mineral formations. His belief that the land and the sea bed formed a continuous structure was confirmed when he discovered rock strata dipping below sea level at the coast. Marsigli's work prefigured the systematic oceanographic exploration that would begin fifty years later with Captain James Cook's voyage in the Endeavor.

Deacon, Scientists and the Sea 1650-1900 (1971) 170-185. Stoye, Marsigli's Europe 1680-1730 (1994) 295-96. Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 1445.

Mark Catesby publishes the Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands. 

This was the first natural history of North American flora and fauna, with 220 plates engraved by Catesby and colored under his supervision, systematically illustrating American birds, reptiles, amphibians, insects, and mammals for the first time. Catesby was the first to place his birds and animals in their natural habitats, a style of representation that would later be used by Alexander Wilson and John James Audubon. He was also the first to abandon the Native American names for his subjects, trying to establish scientific names based on generic relationships. Linnaeus would use Catesby’s work as the basis for his system of binomial nomenclature for American species in the tenth edition of Systema naturae (1758).

Having studied with the naturalist, John Ray, Catesby made his first trip to America to visit his sister who lived in Virginia. He returned to England in 1719. On this visit Catesby became intrigued with the strangeness and variety of American plants, birds and animals, and decided to return again to the New World for another extended trip. For this second visit he acquired a number of sponsors for whom he was to collect and sketch botanical samples. Amongst his sponsors were William Sherard and Sir Hans Sloane. Catesby returned to America in 1722, moving to Bermuda in 1725 as the guest of Governor Phenny. On this trip he collected  botanical samples for his sponsors, but he also sketched painted the birds, plants and animals that he saw on his wanderings throughout rural Southeastern America.

In 1726 Catesby returned to London and sought funding to produce and publish his researches by subscription.  “Catesby worked as a horticulturist first in the nursery of Thomas Fairchild, which passed to the hands Stephen Bacon in 1729, and then in Christopher Gray's nursery in Fulham. His work as a horticulturist and his reputation as an importer of exotic species helped him to generate subscribers for the Natural History as many of his clients read Catesby's work as an 'illustrated catalogue' of the exotic plants Catesby sold.

“Catesby's connections within the Royal Society proved indispensable in financing his American expedition, and they served him equally well in his publication of Natural History; Twenty-nine of his one hundred and fifty-four subscribers were members.Three individual members of the Royal Society were instrumental to producing and publishing the Natural History. Peter Collinson, a wealthy businessman with a keen interest in natural history, lent Catesby "considerable Sums of Money...without interest" and was the main financial supporter of Catesby's work. Sir Hans Sloane, by this time President of the Royal Society, continued to aid Catesby through his own financial support and by helping him enlist subscribers. For help with the Latin names of his subjects, Catesby turned to botanist William Sherard, who had been central in sending Catesby to America in the first place.

“Catesby wanted to send his watercolors to Paris or Amsterdam to be engraved for printing, but the cost was prohibitive. And so, by now in his mid-forties, the self-taught artist endeavored to learn etching. The print maker Joseph Goupy taught Catesby to etch his own plates. His lack of experience and expertise actually served as asset, freeing him to innovate. Instead of the traditional "Graver-like manner" he opted to ‘omit their method of cross-Hatching and to follow the humour of the Feathers, which is more laborious, and I hope has proved more to the purpose’. Each copy was then hand-coloured, though Catesby did have some assistance with this.

“As Catesby sorted through his paintings, deciding which to reproduce, he organized his materials into two volumes. The first hundred images of birds, frequently posed with the plants on which they feed or in which they dwell, would make up Volume I. Volume II was divided into sections treating fish, amphibians, mammals and insects, again, often with related plants. Volume II included plates treating only plants and ended with an appendix, which depicted some animals and plants Catesby was unable to see in person. As a preface to the second volume Catesby wrote a collection of essays discussing the geology, climate and peoples of "Carolina and the Bahama Islands."

“Each volume consists of five parts, each of which Catesby presented to the Royal Society upon completion. While the publication date on the title page of the first volume is 1731, he presented parts I-V between 1729 and 1732. Between 1734 and 1743 he presented parts VI-X, followed by the Appendix in 1747. Catesby sold the sections separately for two guineas a piece. A complete set, at twenty-two guineas, was one of the most expensive works of the 1700s. The order in which these sections of appear vary from copy to copy of the first edition as patrons had the works bound themselves. While Catesby's original proposal for publication stated that a smaller uncolored set would also be available for a single guinea a section, no known black and white copies exist” (http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma02/amacker/etext/pre_3.htm, accessed 12-28-2008).

You may view all the images and captions from Catesby’s work at the website created by Kristy Amaker at http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma02/amacker/etext/home.htm.

In 2007 The Catesby Commemorative Trust produced a beautiful film about Catesby's life and work entitled The Curious Mister Catesby which is available on DVD, and highly recommended. You can watch and listen to a snippet of the film and order it from their website.

Physician Carl Linnaeus publishes in Stockholm, Sweden, his Systema naturae per regna tria naturae, secundum classes, ordines, genera, species, cum characteribus, differentiis, synonymis, locis or translated: "System of nature through the three kingdoms of nature, according to classes, orders, genera and species, with [generic] characters, [specific] differences, synonyms, places." 

Linnaeus issued this work as a series of large charts printed on both sides of seven sheets, or as a series of charts printed on one side only of twelve sheets. It was the first statement of the Linnean classification system.

Catalogue raisonné de toutes les pieces qui forment l'oeuvre de Rembrandt by Edmé-François Gersaint, P.-C.-A. Helle, and Jean-Baptiste Glomy is published in Paris.

This was the "first catalogue raisonné in Western art history" (Sylvia Hochfield, "Rembrandt: Myth, Legend, Truth", ARTnews, accessed 01-04-2008). Gersaint (d. 1750) was the leading auctioneer of the time in Paris of art objects and natural history specimens, and a scholar and connoisseur. He compiled his catalogue from the collection of Arnold Houbraken, of Amsterdam, which had previously been the property of Mayor Jan Six, an intimate firend of Rembrandt and the subject of more than one portrait. Gersaint's widow turned over the manuscript of the unfinished catalogue to Helle and Glomy who augmented this compilation by examination of a number of collections in France, and published the catalogue in duodecimo format one year after Gersaint's death. A supplement by Pieter Yver based on the collection of M. van Leyden, which had been culled from those of Houbraken, Halling, Maas, Moewater and De Burgy, and which was the largest known collection at the time, appeared in 1756.

Swedish physician and naturalist Carl Linnaeus publishes Species plantarum ("The Species of Plants").

Species plantarum introduced binary or binomial nomenclature (genus and species) for plants. Using this system, Linnaeus named, and therefore classified, all plants known to European naturalists at the time.

The will of English physician and naturalist Sir Hans Sloane bequeathes his collection of 70,000 objects, including a library, and an herbarium to Britain as the basis for the British Museum.

"When Sloane retired in 1741, his library and cabinet of curiosities . . . had grown to be of unique value. He had acquired the extensive natural history collections of William Courten, Cardinal Filippo Antonio Gualterio, James Petiver, Nehemiah Grew, Leonard Plukenet, the Duchess of Beaufort, the rev. Adam Buddle, Paul Hermann, Franz Kiggelaer and Herman Boerhaave. On his death on 11 January 1753 he bequeathed his books, manuscripts, prints, drawings, flora, fauna, medals, coins, seals, cameos and other curiosities to the nation, on condition that parliament should pay to his executors £20,000, which was a good deal less than the value of the collection. The bequest was accepted on those terms by an act passed the same year, and the collection, together with George II's royal library, etc., was opened to the public at Bloomsbury as the British Museum in 1759. A significant proportion of this collection was later to become the foundation for the Natural History Museum" (Wikipedia article on Sir Hans Sloane).

Carl Linnaeus publishes the tenth edition of his Systema naturae, in which he introduces binomial nomenclature for animal species.

Using this system, Linnaeus named, and therefore classified, virtually all animal species known at this time.

Having been founded in 1753 by the bequest of English physician Sir Hans Sloane, the British Museum is opened to the public.

Sloane's library of about 40,000 volumes, especially significant for scientific and medical material, was among the largest formed in the eighteenth century. The British Museum retained all the Sloane manuscripts, but during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries they dispersed certain printed books from the collection as "duplicates." 

♦ The Sloane Printed Books Catalogue on the British Library website is a project to publish bibliographical descriptions of each volume in Sloane's original library from institutional holdings around the world.

German Geographer and Zoologist Eberhard August Wilhelm von Zimmerman publishes Specimen zoologiae geographicae, quadrupedem domicilia et migrationes sistens.

This was the first textbook of zoogeography, containing the first world map showing the distribution of mammals.

Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 2280.

William Withering publishes in Birmingham and London An account of the foxglove, and some of its medical uses. . . .

An accomplished botanist as well as a physician, Withering conducted the first clinical trials of the ground-up leaves of the purple foxglove—a traditional folk-remedy, discovering the efficacy of digitalis in heart diseases. Digitalis remains one of the few drugs introduced as early as the eighteenth century that remains widely used today.

Withering's work contains the results of ten years of observations and clinical trials, of the drug which he first learned about from an old woman herbalist in 1775. Of the 158 patients he treated with the foxglove, 101, who suffered from congestive heart failure, experienced relief after treatment with the drug, which is today known as digitalis after the foxglove’s Latin name, Digitalis purpurea. Modern analysis of Withering’s case reports suggests that many of the 57 other cases, such as those with pulmonary tuberculosis, did not involve diseases amenable to treatment with digitalis. Withering himself was aware that these factors might be affecting his results and warned against generalizing on the basis of his cases. Over the ten years of his researches on digitalis, Withering derived what he believed to be the optimum quantity of a single dosage—an amount only slightly less active than the tablet used in contemporary practice. The incidence of side effects of the drug declined as Withering gained clinical experience; Estes and White observed that “it appears that the overall incidence of side effects attributable to digitalis in Withering’s patients approximates the incidence recorded by physicians today. One could learn to use digitalis effectively and safely if one had no other text than Withering’s Account of the Foxglove.” Withering honestly recorded both successes and failures in his trials. He stressed that care must be taken in adjusting the dose, and he accurately described the signs and symptoms of digitalis toxicity and established clear guidelines for its rational use. Despite Withering’s modest but definite claims for the efficacy of the foxglove, the drug became a kind of panacea for nineteenth century clinicians.

Le Fanu, Notable Medical Books in the Lilly Library 139 points out that the folding frontispiece is colored in some copies but not in all. There are two versions of the plate: one, with artist’s name and with lower leaves pointing to the left, was copied from the original which James Sowerby had engraved for William Curtis’s Flora Londinensis; the other is the original version borrowed from Curtis, without artist’s name and with lower leaves pointing to the right.

Estes & White, “William Withering and the purple foxglove,” Scientific American 212 (1965), 110-119.  Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 2255. 

Anton Maria Vassalli publishes Lettere sopra il Sospetto di un Nuovo Senso nei Pipistrelli . . . Con le Risposte dell’Abate Antonmaria Vassalli in Torino at the Stamperia Reale. The 64-page booklet includes letters to Vassalli by Italian biologist and physiologist Lazaro Spallanzani containing Spallanzani's first description of echolocation, or biosonar.

Spallanzani published his own small edition of the letters in Pavia a few days or weeks later. Also in 1794 the original letters were reprinted in Pisa in the Giornale dei literrati with the addition of  new letters on echolocation between Spallanzani and Pietro Rossi, Professor at University of Pisa.  A few months later the original letters were reprinted in Milano together with other new letters in the Opuscoli scelti sulle scienze e sulle arti.

"The problem of obstacle avoidance by bats flying in the dark is often known to European zoologists as 'Spallanzani's bat problem'. This is because the whole subject owes its place in the thoughts of scientists to the incisive thinking and masterly experimentation of Lazaro Spallanzani. . . . In 1793, when Spallanzani was sixty-four years of age, he had occasion to notice that a captive owl became quite helpless if the candle which lighted his room were blown out as it flew too close to the flame. Impressed by the complete disorientation of the owl, which crashed into the walls and other obstacles, Spallanzani repeated the observations with bats and soon realized that they were not at all inconvenienced by the darkness. This was the beginning of a long series of ingenious experiments by which within a year or two Spallanzani learned almost as much about the orientation of bats as others were able to discover in 140 years after his death. Yet only a regrettably small proportion of his observations and conclusions became widely enough known to win any general acceptance among zoologists, and even today much of his work remains unpublished" (Griffin, Listening in the Dark: The Acoustic Orientation of Bats and Men [1958] 57-58).

Gedeon, Science and Technology in Medicine, 340.

Naturalist, explorer and polymath Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt and botanist and explorer Aimé J. A. Bonpland publish Essai sur la géographie des plantes; accompagné d'un tableau physique des régions équinoxales [Vol. I of Voyage aux régions êquinoxales du nouveau continent].

In this contribution to ecology, Humboldt and Bonpland founded the study of the geographical distribution of plants. In 1799 Humboldt and Bonpland embarked on a six-year tour of research through South America and Mexico, a trip which would afterwards be called, justifiably, "the scientific discovery of America."  The two amassed exhaustive data in a wide array of fields from meteorology to ethnography, and gathered 60,000 plant specimens, 6,300 of which had been hitherto unknown in Europe.  Their American travel journals— issued under the general title Voyage aux régions équinoxiales du nouveau continent, fait en 1700, 1800, 1801, 1802, 1803 et 1804— were published in thirty-four volumes between 1807 and 1834; the sheets of the present work were reissued as Vol. I of the Voyage, with an extra half-title and general title and the plate colored. {We have also seen a copy with the plate uncolored.] Humboldt classified these volumes into six subject groups, of which this volume on plant geography constituted the whole of the fifth.  It contains some very interesting ideas on the relation between natural classification of plants and their geographical distribution, as well as one of the earliest attempts to describe the distribution of plants by characterizing geographical-ecological plant associations.

Hook & Norman , The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 1111.

The year after the death of Scottish American physician and scientist, William Charles Wells his Two Essays: One upon Single Vision with Two Eyes; the Other on Dew. A Letter to the Right Hon. Lloyd, Lord Kenyon and an Account of a Female of the White Race of Mankind, Part of whose Skin Resembles that of a Negro was published in London.

Wells’s “Account of a female of the white race. . . ." was read before the Royal Society in 1813, but first appeared in print posthumously. It contained the first recognizable statement of the principle of natural selection. In his study of an albino negro woman, Wells assumed a biological evolution of the human species, drawing an analogy between man’s selective breeding of domestic animal varieties and nature’s selection of varieties of men best suited to various climates.  He wrote,

"[What was done for animals artificially] seems to be done with equal efficiency, though more slowly, by nature, in the formation of varieties of mankind, fitted for the country which they inhabit. Of the accidental varieties of man, which would occur among the first scattered inhabitants, some one would be better fitted than the others to bear the diseases of the country. This race would multiply while the others would decrease, and as the darkest would be the best fitted for the [African] climate, at length [they would] become the most prevalent, if not the only race."

Neither Charles Darwin nor Alfred Russel Wallace was familiar with Wells’s paper when they formulated the theory of natural selection, but after Darwin published the Origin in 1859 Wells' paper was called to his attention, and Darwin paid tribute to Wells’s pioneering statement in the historical introduction to the third edition of the Origin. Wells’s paper was contained in the first collected edition of his essays on binocular vision and on dew formation, both of which represented advances in the knowledge of these subjects.

Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 2200.

Surgeon and scientist William Lawrence publishes Lectures on Physiology, Zoology and the Natural History of Man. This work set out Lawrence’s radical—and to our eyes, remarkably advanced—ideas concerning evolution and heredity. Arguing that theology and metaphysics had no place in science, Lawrence relied instead on empirical evidence in his examination of variation in animals and man, and the dissemination of variation through inheritance. On the question of cause, Lawrence disagreed with those who ascribed variation to external factors such as climate, and rejected the Lamarckian notion of the inheritance of acquired characteristics. His understanding of the mechanics of heredity was well ahead of his time: he stated that “offspring inherit only [their parents’] connate qualities and not any of the acquired qualities,” and that the “signal diversities which constitute differences of race in animals . . . can only be explained by two principles . . . namely, the occasional production of an offspring with different characters from those of the parents, as a native or congenital variety; and the propagation of such varieties by generation” (p. 510).

While Lawrence did not grasp the role that natural selection plays in the origination of new species, he recognized that “selections and exclusions,” including geographical separation, were the means of change and adaptation in all animals, including humans. He noted that men as well as animals can be improved by selective breeding, and pointed out that sexual selection was responsible for enhancing the beauty of the aristocracy: “The great and noble have generally had it more in their power than others to select the beauty of nations in marriage; and thus . . . they have distinguished their order, as much by elegant proportions of person, as by its prerogatives in society” (p. 454). He investigated the human races in detail, and insisted that the proper approach to this study was a zoological one, since the question of variation in mankind “cannot be settled from the Jewish Scriptures; nor from other historical records” (p. 243).

The Natural History of Man came under fire from conservatives and clergy for its materialist approach to human life, and Lawrence was accused of atheism for having dared to challenge the relevance of Scripture to science. In 1822 the Court of Chancery ruled the Natural History blasphemous, thus revoking the work’s copyright. Lawrence was forced to withdraw the book, a fact reflected in the comparative rarity of the first edition. However, the book’s notoriety was such that several publishers issued their own pirated editions, keeping the work in print for several decades. A list of the London editions of Lawrence’s work, taken from OCLC, follows:

1819 J. Callow (authorized)

1819 s.n. (?)

1822 W. Benbow

1822 J. Smith

1822 Kaygill & Price (unillustrated)

1823 R. Carlile

1823 J. Smith

1834 J. T. Cox

1838 J. Taylor

1840 J. Taylor

1844 J. Taylor

1848 H. G. Bohn

1866 Bell & Daldy

Editions were also published in Edinburgh and America. Darwin owned one of the unauthorized editions listed above, the one issued by “the notorious shoemaker-turned-publisher William Benbow, who financed his flaming politics by selling pornographic prints” (Desmond & Moore, Darwin, p. 253). Darwin was obviously impressed with Lawrence’s work, citing it five times in The Descent of Man (1871). 

Botanist Robert Brown publishes for private distribution a small number of copies of his 16-page pamphlet entitled  A Brief Account of Microscopical Observations Made in the Months of June, July, and August 1827, on the Particles Contained in the Pollen of Plants; and on the General Existence of Active Molecules in Organic and Inorganic bodies. 

While studying pollen, Brown observed particles within the grains in a state of constant motion.  He extended his observations to both dead and inorganic matter, and found that such motion was not restricted to live pollen but could be observed in any substance ground fine enough to be suspended in water. In 1879 William Ramsay explained that Brownian motion is due to the impact on particles of the molecules in the surrounding fluid, an explanation proved in 1908 by Jean Perrin. Brown's observations also inspired Einstein's 1905 paper Ueber die von der molekularkinetischen Theorie der Wärme geforderte Bewegung von in ruhenden Flüssigkeiten suspendieren Teilchen, which gave a theory of Brownian motion based on the kinetic theory of gases.

The seemingly random movement of particles suspended in a liquid or gas or the mathematical model used to describe such random movements is often called particle theory.

"The mathematical model of Brownian motion has several real-world applications. An often quoted example is stock market fluctuations.

"Brownian motion is among the simplest continuous-time stochastic processes, and it is a limit of both simpler and more complicated stochastic processes (see random walk and Donsker's theorem). This universality is closely related to the universality of the normal distribution. In both cases, it is often mathematical convenience rather than the accuracy of the models that motivates their use" (Wikipedia article on Brownian motion).

Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 353.

♦ You can download a PDF of the original private printing of Brown's paper at this link.

German botanist Matthias Jakob Schleiden publishes "Beiträge zur Phytogenesis" in Müller's Archiv für Anatomie, Physiologie und wissenschaftliche Medicin (1838) 137-76.

Schleiden’s work represents key step in the evolution of the search for the elementary unit common to the animal and plant kingdoms. Acting upon his belief that plants represented aggregates of individual cells, Schleiden published a study of the vegetable cell, beginning with the cell nucleus (discovered by botanist Robert Brown in 1832), and proceeding to a discussion of its role in the formation of cells. Schleiden’s “watch-glass” theory of cell formation was wrong—he believed that they crystallized in a formative liquid containing sugar, gum and mucous—but it focused attention on the problem of cell reproduction and provided a testable hypothesis. More significant was Schleiden’s insistence that plants consisted entirely of cells and cell products. Tradition has it that the cell-theory was conceived in a conversation between Schleiden and Schwann on phytogenesis. In 1839 Theodor Schwann published Mikroskopische Untersuchungen, in which he demonstrated that Schleiden’s conclusion also applies to animals, thus establishing the cell as the elementary unit common to both plant and animal kingdoms.

Norman (ed) Morton's Medical Bibliography (1991) no. 112. Carter & Muir, Printing and the Mind of Man (1967) no. 307a.  Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science & Medicine (1991) no. 1907. Hughes, History of Cytology, 37ff.

The anonymous author of the sensational evolutionary treatise Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (Robert Chambers) includes a lengthy quote from Babbage’s discussion of programming the Difference Engine from the Ninth Bridgewater Treatise to explain how evolutionary change might occur through time.

This was one of the earliest references to computing within the context of biology.

Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace publish  "On the tendency of species to form varieties; and on the perpetuation of varieties and species by natural selection"  in the Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society.

This was the first printed formal exposition of the theory of evolution by natural selection.  Darwin had developed the essential elements of his theory by 1838 and set them on paper in 1844; however, he chose to keep his work on evolution unpublished for the time, instead concentrating his energies first on the preparation for publication of his geological work on the Beagle voyage , and then on an exhaustive eight-year study of the barnacle genus Cirripedia.

In 1856, at the urging of Charles Lyell, Darwin began writing a vast encyclopedic work on natural selection; however, it is possible that the extremely cautious Darwin might never have published his evolutionary theories during his lifetime had not Alfred Russel Wallace, a naturalist born in New Zealand, independently discovered the theory of natural selection. Wallace conceived the theory of natural selection during an attack of malarial fever in Ternate in the Mollucas, Indonesia (Febuary, 1858) and sent a manuscript summary to Darwin, who feared that his discovery would be pre-empted.

In the interest of justice Joseph Dalton Hooker and Charles Lyell suggested joint publication of Wallace's paper prefaced by a section of a manuscript of a work on species written by Darwin in 1844, when it was read by Hooker, plus an abstract of a letter by Darwin to Asa Gray, dated 1857, to show that Darwin's views on the subject had not changed between 1844 and 1857. The papers by Darwin and Wallace were read by Lyell before the Linnean Society on July 1, 1858 and published on August 20.

J. Norman (ed.), Morton's Medical Bibliography[1991] no. 119.  Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 591.

Charles Darwin issues through the London publisher, John Murray, his book entitled On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. 

The idea of species evolution can be traced as far back as the ancient Greek belief in the "great chain of being". Darwin's great achievement was to make this centuries-old "underground" concept acceptable to the scientific community and educated readers by cogently arguing for the existence of a viable mechanism— natural selection— by which new species evolve over vast periods of time.  Though Darwin stated his case persuasively and in the most diplomatic of tones, the work evoked a storm of controversy, causing Darwin to revise it through six editions during his lifetime. Since its publication the scientific evidence supporting evolution by natural selection has reached a massive—even overwhelming— preponderance, yet the controversy over evolution has never abated.

There is only one issue of the first edition of On the Origin of Species, and although three cloth binding and advertisement variants have been identified, no priority has been established. 1250 copies were printed, of which about 1,170 were available for sale; the remainder consisted of 12 author's copies, 41 review copies, 5 copyright copies, and "Darwin required ninety copies to be sent as presentations to friends, family, and scientists [Correspondence, 8: 554-6]" (Kohler & Kohler, see below, 333). Following Darwin's instructions, these presentation copies were sent out by the publisher, usually inscribed "From the Author" by the publisher's clerk.  The book was offered to booksellers two days earlier on November 22, and oversubscribed by 250 copies causing John Murray to propose a new edition immediately.

On the Origin of Species is undoubtedly the most famous book in the history of the life sciences, and one of the world's most famous books on any subject. It is also perhaps the most published book in the history of science and the most translated book originally published in English. As a result of this fame, a great deal of historical research has been concentrated on this work. Early in 2009 Cambridge University Press published The Cambridge Companion to the "Origin of Species," edited by Michael Ruse and Robert J. Richards. Most pertinent to book collecting and book history is the excellent chapter on "The Origin of Species as a Book" by Michèle Kohler and Chris Kohler.

Among the many very informative details the Kohlers include, of particular interest to the history of collecting rare books in the history of science is their observation that the first edition may have first been offered as collectable "rare book" by Bernard Quaritch Ltd in 1903 for £2-10-0, "a premium on the price of a new copy, not a discount." (p. 345). They also observe that the price of the first edition remained essentially static in the rare book trade until it began to rise in the 1920s, after which it very gradually moved upward. When I first opened my shop at the beginning of 1971 the price of a fine copy of the first edition in the original cloth was $1000. At this time the work was relatively common, and there were usually several copies of the first edition on the market at one time.

Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) No. 593.

English biologist, paleontologist  and evolutionist Thomas Henry Huxley publishes in London Evidence as to Man’s Place in Nature. The first issue of the edition contained publisher’s advertisements dated February 1863.

On February 18, 1863, Darwin wrote to Huxley, “Hurrah the monkey book has come!” (quoted in Desmond, Huxley, The Devils’ Disciple [1994] 312). Man’s Place in Nature was the first book to directly address the evidence for human evolution from primates. Together with Lyell’s Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man, which was published a few weeks earlier, Man’s Place in Nature was also the first book to consider the role of prehistoric human remains as evidence for human evolution. While Lyell approached the topics primarily from the geological point of view, Huxley approached the subjects mainly from the point of view of comparative anatomy.

Concerning Huxley’s work, Darwin wrote in The Descent of Man: “Prof. Huxley, in the opinion of most competent judges, has conclusively shewn that in every visible character man differs less from the higher apes, than these do from the lower members of the same order of primates.” (p.3).

Sometimes called “Darwin’s bulldog”, Huxley enjoyed involvement in scientific controversy that more cautious scientists such as Darwin preferred to avoid. Like Lyell’s Antiquity of Man, Huxley’s book took topics which had previously been confined mostly to scientific journals and brought them to the attention of the reading public. Because Huxley’s and Lyell’s books were often reviewed together in popular magazines, this tended to generate even further controversy.

British naturalist, explorer, and evolutionist Alfred Russel Wallace publishes The Malay Archipelago.

"The preface summarizes Wallace’s travels, the thousands of specimens he collected, and some of the results from their analysis after his return to England. The first chapter describes the physical geography and geology of the islands with particular attention to the role of volcanoes and earthquakes. It also discusses the overall pattern of the flora and fauna including the fact that the islands can be divided, by what would eventually become known as the Wallace line, into 2 parts, those whose animals are more closely related to those of Asia and those whose fauna is closer to that of Australia. The following chapters then describe in detail the places Wallace visited. Wallace includes numerous observations on the people, their languages, ways of living, and social organization, as well as on the plants and animals found in each location. He talks about the biogeographic patterns he observes and their implications for natural history, both in terms of biology (evolution ) and the geologic history of the region. He also narrates some of his personal experiences during his travels. The final chapter is an overview of the ethnic, linguistic, and cultural divisions among the people who live in the region and speculation about what such divisions might indicate about their history. The book is dedicated to Charles Darwin" (Wikipedia article on The Malay Archipelago, accessed 05-08-2009).

Charles Darwin publishes a 2-volume work entitled The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. 

Twelve years after the publication of On the Origin of Species, Darwin made good his promise to “throw light on the origin of man and his history” by publishing The Descent of Man in which he compared man’s physical and psychological traits to similar ones in apes and other animals, and showed how even man’s mind and moral sense could have evolved through processes of natural selection.

In discussing man’s ancestry, Darwin did not claim that man was directly descended from apes as we know them today, but stated that the extinct ancestors of Homo sapiens would have to be classed among the primates. This statement was widely misinterpreted by the popular press, and caused a furor second only to that raised by the Origin. Darwin also added an essay on sexual selection, i.e. the preferential chances of mating that some individuals of one sex have over their rivals because of special characteristics, leading to the accentuation and transmission of those characteristics.

Darwin originated of the single-origin hypothesis in paleoanthropology.

"In paleoanthropology, the recent African origin of modern humans is the mainstream model describing the origin and early dispersal of anatomically modern humans. The theory is called the (Recent) Out-of-Africa model in the popular press, and academically the recent single-origin hypothesis (RSOH), Replacement Hypothesis, and Recent African Origin (RAO) model. The hypothesis that humans have a single origin (monogenesis) was published in Charles Darwin's Descent of Man (1871). The concept was speculative until the 1980s, when it was corroborated by a study of present-day mitochondrial DNA, combined with evidence based on physical anthropology of archaic specimens" (Wikipedia article on Recent African origin of modern humans, accessed 05-15-2010).

Darwin wrote in a section of The Descent of Man entitled "On the Birthplace and Antiquity of Man":

"In each great region of the world the living mammals are closely related to the extinct species of the same region. It is, therefore, probable that Africa was formerly inhabited by extinct apes closely allied to the gorilla and chimpanzee; and as these two species are now man's nearest allies, it is somewhat more probable that our early progenitors lived on the African continent than elsewhere. But it is useless to speculate on this subject, for an ape nearly as large as a man, namely the Dryopithecus of Lartet, which was closely allied to the anthropomorphous Hylobates, existed in Europe during the Upper Miocene period; and since so remote a period the earth has certainly undergone many great revolutions, and there has been ample time for migration on the largest scale."

In spite of Darwin's suggestion, few if any 19th century researchers on human origins searched in Africa for evidence. It was not until Raymond Dart's highly controversial discovery of the first African hominin (hominid), Australopithecus africanus, in 1925 that serious attention began to paid to the African origins of mankind.

American anthropologist, historian, naturalist, and writer George Bird Grinell becomes founding editor and publisher of Forest and Stream magazine. "It was dedicated to the conservation of wild life, induced the birth of the National Association of Audubon Societies, sponsored the National Park Movement, the U. S.- Canada treaty on migratory birds, lately the Migratory Bird Sanctuary Bill in Congress" (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,739586,00.html, accessed 01-18-2009).

British naturalist, explorer, and evolutionist Alfred Russel Wallace publishes The Geographical Distribution of Animals.

Wallace studied the fauna of the Malay peninsula and was struck both with its resemblances to and differences from that of South America. His research expanded into this world-wide study—the first comprehensive world-wide study of zoogeography, illustrated with numerous thematic maps.

German zoologist and environmentalist Karl August Möbius publishes Die Auster und de Austernwirschaft.

In this study of oyster culture precipitated by the impoverishment of natural oyster beds, Mobius provided the earliest description of a marine animal community maintained in a state of equilibrium by limitations of resources.  He was the

"first to describe in detail the interactions between the different organisms in the ecosystem of the oyster bank, coining the term 'biocenose'. This remains a key term in synecology (community ecology)" (Wikipedia article on Karl Möbius, accessed 01-13-2009).

J. Norman (ed.) Morton's Medical Bibliography, 5th ed. (1991) No. 145.61.

Forest and Stream magazine editor George Bird Grinnell, appalled by the negligent mass slaughter of birds that he saw taking place, urges the formation of the National Audubon Society for the protection of wild birds and their eggs.  "The public response to Grinnell's call for the protection of fowl was said to be instant and impressive: Within a year of its foundation, the early Audubon Society claimed 39,000 members, each of whom signed a pledge to 'not molest birds.' Prominent members included jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., abolitionist minister Henry Ward Beecher, and poet John Greenleaf Whittier" (Wikipedia article on National Audubon Society, accessed 01-18-2009).

The first Chief of the Illinois Natural History Survey, and founder of aquatic ecosystem science, Stephen Alfred Forbes publishes "The Lake as a Microcosm" in the Bulletin of the Scientific Association of Peoria, Illinois.

Forbes was the first to apply ecological principles to limnology. He emphasized population regulation and the dynamic nature of the community.

German anthropologist, ornithologist, and entomologist, and Director of the Royal Zoological, Anthropological and Ethnographical Museum in Dresden, Adolf Bernard Meyer, publishes "Studies of the Museums and Kindred Institutions of New York City, Albany, Buffalo, and Chicago, with Notes on Some European Institutions". This appeared in the Report of the United States National Museum for 1903, pp. 311-608, with forty plates. It was a translation revised by the author of studies he first published in German in 1900-02, and 1902-03.

Meyer's work was a pioneering illustrated study of the main museums of science and art in the United States and Europe as well as a survey of major research libraries in both America and Europe.  It includes striking images of building exteriors and interiors either no longer in existence or which have been extensively modified, and it also contains images of state of the art museum displays from the time.

American ornithologist Robert Ridgway self-publishes Color Standards and Nomenclature. This evolved out of his 1886 book, A Nomenclature of Colors for Naturalists, and Compendium of Useful Knowledge for Ornithologists, which was one of the first color systems for bird identification.

"Ridgway was with the Smithsonian Institution from the age of 24 until his death. In 1912 he printed 5,000 copies of his book Color Standards and Nomenclature, one of the most influential works on color ever ublished. This was prompted by his problems with color descriptions in bird portraits. So he developed descriptions of 1,150 colors as well as the technology for making and printing them all; his wife cut all the color swatches by hand and pasted them into the books. In providing a textual description he used very colorful language--deep turtle green, clean fluoride green, malachite green, shamrock green, light Danube green, deep dull green. The books are historic artifacts in and of themselves. But it's important to note that the book is still very much in use. Everyone from stamp collectors to naturalists to chemists refers to 'Ridway colors' to identify specific shades"  (Daniel Lewis, "In Living Color. A Conversation with the Dibner Senior Curator of the History of Science & Technology" by Traude Gomez-Rhine, Huntington Frontiers IV, #2 [2008] 7)

American zoologist, realtor, conservationist, author, poet and songwriter William Temple Hornaday publishes Our Vanishing Wild Life: Its Extermination and Preservation, "one of the first books wholly devoted to endangered wild animals" (in the words of historian Stephen Fox). http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amrvhtml/cnchron6.html, accessed 01-19-2009.

Hornaday "revolutionized museum exhibits by displaying wildlife in their natural settings, and is credited with discovering the American crocodile, saving the American bison and the Alaskan fur seal from extinction" (Wikipedia article on William Temple Hornaday, accessed 01-19-2009).

Plant ecologist Frederic E. Clements publishes Plant Succession: An Analysis of the Development of Vegetation. It is a seminal work of ecological science, establishing a dynamic model of species succession toward an eventual "climax" equilibrium under the influence of climate and other factors in a given habitat.

"From his observations of the vegetation of Nebraska and the western United States, Clements developed one of the most influential theories of vegetation development. Vegetation cover does not represent a permanent condition but gradually changes over time. Clements suggested that the development of vegetation can be understood as a sequence of stages resembling the development of an individual organism. After a complete or partial disturbance, vegetation grows back (under ideal conditions) towards a mature "climax state," which describes the vegetation best suited to the local conditions. Though any actual instance of vegetation might follow the ideal sequence towards climax, it can be interpreted in relation to that sequence, as a deviation from it due to non-ideal conditions" (Wikipedia article on Frederick Clements, accessed 01-19-2009).

Robert Marshall, chief of recreation and lands for the Forest Service, Aldo Leopold, noted wildlife ecologist and later author of A Sand County Almanac, Robert Sterling Yard, publicist for the National Park Service, Benton MacKaye, the "Father of the Appalachian Trail", Ernest Oberholtzer, Harvey Broome, Bernard Frank, and Harold C. Anderson found The Wilderness Society.

"Since 1935, The Wilderness Society has led the conservation movement in wilderness protection, writing and passing the landmark Wilderness Act and winning lasting protection for 107 million acres of Wilderness, including 56 million acres of spectacular lands in Alaska, eight million acres of fragile desert lands in California and millions more throughout the nation" (The Wilderness Society website).

During World War II Swiss chemist Paul Hermann Müller of Geigy Pharmaceutical discovers the high efficiency of DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane) as a contact poison against several athropods.

During World War II DDT was used with great effect among both military and civilian populations to control mosquitoes spreading malaria and lice transmitting typhus, resulting in dramatic reductions in the incidence of both diseases.

In 1948 Müller received the Nobel Prize in Biology and Medicine for this discovery, which is thought to have saved the lives of over 21,000,000 people worldwide. After the war, DDT was made available for use as an agricultural insecticide, and its production and use skyrocketed with unexpected disastrous effects upon the environment. 

As a result of the 1962 book, Silent Spring, by American marine biologist and nature writer, Rachel Carson, noticed in this database, the disastrous consequences of DDT began to be understood by politicians and the public, and DDT was eventually banned in the United States in 1972.

A Sand County Almanac by American ecologist, forester, and environmentalist Aldo Leopold is published one year after his death. A combination of natural history, philosophy, and poetic writing, it has informed the environmental movement. "It is perhaps best known for the following quote, which defines his land ethic: 'A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.' The concept of a trophic cascade is put forth in the chapter Thinking Like a Mountain, wherein Leopold realizes that killing a predator wolf carries serious implications for the rest of the ecosystem" (Wikipedia article on Aldo Leopold, accessed 01-18-2209).

Rachel Carson publishes Silent Spring.

This very carefully documented book convincingly proved the disastrous effects of DDT in the environment, and generated a storm of controversy. It was later credited with founding the "environmental movement" in the United States.

American ecologist Robert McArthur and American biologist E. O. Wilson publish The Theory of Island Biogeography. In this work they showed that the species richness of an area could be predicted in terms of such factors as habitat area, immigration rate and extinction rate.

"Island biogeography is a field within biogeography that attempts to establish and explain the factors that affect the species richness of natural communities. The theory was developed to explain species richness of actual islands. It has since been extended to mountains surrounded by deserts, lakes surrounded by dry land, forest fragments surrounded by human-altered landscapes. Now it is used in reference to any ecosystem surrounded by unlike ecosystems. The field was started in the 1960s by the ecologists Robert MacArthur and E.O. Wilson, who coined the term theory of island biogeography, as this theory attempted to predict the number of species that would exist on a newly created island.

"For biogeographical purposes, an 'island' is any area of suitable habitat surrounded by an expanse of unsuitable habitat. While this may be a traditional island—a mass of land surrounded by water—the term may also be applied to many untraditional 'islands', such as the peaks of mountains, isolated springs in the desert, or expanses of grassland surrounded by highways or housing tracts. Additionally, what is an island for one organism may not be an island for another: some organisms located on mountaintops may also be found in the valleys, while others may be restricted to the peaks" (Wikipedia article on Island biogeography, accessed 05-08-2009).

President Richard Nixon signs the Endangered Species Act  of 1973, designed to protect critically imperiled species from extinction as a:

"consequence of economic growth and development untempered by adequate concern and conservation."

"The stated purpose of the Endangered Species Act is to protect species and also "the ecosystems upon which they depend." It encompasses plants and invertebrates as well as vertebrates. It does not expressly include fungi, which were widely considered to be plants in 1973, [but which are now considered more closely related to animals than plants.]

"ESA is administered by two federal agencies, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) (which includes the National Marine Fisheries Service, or NMFS). NOAA handles marine species, and the FWS has responsibility over freshwater fish and all other species. Species that occur in both habitats (e.g. sea turtles and Atlantic sturgeon) are jointly managed."

"Few species have become extinct while listed under the Endangered Species Act, and 93% in the northeastern US have had their population sizes increase or remain stable since being listed as threatened or endangered. As of August, 28, 2008, there are 1,327 species on the threatened and endangered lists. However, many species have become extinct while on the candidate list or otherwise under consideration for listing" (Wikipedia article on Endangered Species Act, accessed 06-13-2009).