In the email, he writes:
As we have further examined the lecture book, it seems that the lectures are really just the outlines, and that the students filled out the details. It makes fascinating reading. Too bad it's not also illustrated with the wonderful old botanic engravings!This is quite interesting indeed! An interleaved and annotated book (so bound from the date of the spine illustration, which is clearly from the period of the book’s initial publication). It was specially bound for the purpose of annotation. The dated/located note in manuscript facing page 41 (“Philadelphia 1868”?) gives some internal evidence for dating the annotations. This is rare in any book, but a long tradition regardless, of recipes for “simples” (i.e., medicinal preparations and compounds) comprised here not only of naturalia (i.e., naturally occurring herbs, roots, ground resins, metals, etc.) but also of artificially formed chemicals, some perhaps commercially available (by the mid-19th c.) through industrial means.
Hello Meg, Back in the 19th century, pharmacists actually compounded pills and medicine from prescriptions, as opposed to doling out portions from commercial sources, so doctors had to have a detailed knowledge of what simples and ingredients made up a particular remedy. There were large printed dispensaries full of formulas, but doctors and pharmacists (not to mention individual householders) also accumulated their own store of cures, often kept in manuscript notebooks or even on little scraps of paper. I am sending you by email one such dated 1840 from my own collection.
ReplyDelete--Jim