A mirror for medicine : some resources of the Wellcome Institute Library an exhibition, Monday 19 October - Friday 18 December 1987.
- Wellcome Historical Medical Library
- Date:
- 1987
Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Credit: A mirror for medicine : some resources of the Wellcome Institute Library an exhibition, Monday 19 October - Friday 18 December 1987. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![The left-hand page illustrates a species of Ipomoea, possibly the common sweet potato, used 'for heat in the heart' (heartburn?); and the right-hand page two species of datura, containing the narcotic stramonium, 'for pain in the side'. Species of datura were used for a variety of conditions by the Aztec physicians, whose therapeutics were highly developed. 2. Francisco Ximenez. Quatro libros de la naturaleza, y virtudes de las plantas, y animales que estan recevidos en el a so de medicina en la Nueva Espana. Mexico: Widow of D. Lopez Davalos. 1615. The first separate appearance in print of a significant part of Francisco Hernan- dez's great Rerum medic arum Novae Hispaniae thesaurus, Rome (1628- 51), on the medicinal plants of New Spain. Part of Ximenez's purpose, as editor and translator, as with many early colonial medical publications, was to provide informed assistance for those far from physicians or apothecaries. He adds many useful asides to his original text from his personal experience. 3. Willem Piso [c.1611-1678] and Georg Markgraf [1610-44]. De Indiae utrius- que re naturali et medica. Amsterdam: L. & D Elzevir. 1658. The recasting by Piso of Markgraf's great work (1648) on the natural history of Dutch-owned Brazil included his illustrated commentary on the use of the ipecacuanha root (p.231). Through these researchers the root entered the Eur- opean pharmacopoeias as a specific against what is now known as amoebic dysen- tery. This edition by the highly successful Dutch physician Willem Piso was evidently intended as a handbook of tropical medicine, pharmacology, and natural history. His share and Markgraf's covered the Americas, and the addition of the complete works of Jacob Bontius [1592-1631] covered the East Indies. Other American remedies, such as sarsaparilla, mechoacan root (jalap), sassafras and guaiacum, are discussed. Bontius and Piso were pioneers of tropical medicine; Markgraf, prodigiously if all too briefly energetic in mathematics, astronomy, meteorology, natural science, medicine, and illustration, remains an outstanding figure in science. 4. Mexico. Junta Principal de Caridad. Extracto de las Providencias dic- tadas por la Junta principal de Caridad .... Estados que manifestan sua piadosos efectos en la Epidemia de Viruelas que huvo en la Ciudad de Mexico el ano de 1797. Mexico, 1798. This concluding report of the Secretary of the Principal Charity Board, dated 28 April 1798, summarises the energetic action undertaken by the ecclesiastical, civil and voluntary bodies to ameliorate the effects of the great smallpox epi- demic of the City of Mexico 1797-98. It claimed over 7,000 lives, a mortality of some 5% of the city population. - 29-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b20456852_0031.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
