Incunabula

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Iusiurandum (Verona: Boninus de Boninis, circa 1475-1483)

At the end of Nicolaus Perottus' De generibus metrorum appears one of the most famous documents in the history of medicine, ethics, and education: the first printing of the Iusiurandum, the Hippocratic Oath. While certainly not composed by Hippocrates of Cos, the Iusiurandum was probably formulated in the fourth century B.C. and expresses many Hippocratic ideals. It became common practice, by the 1850s, for American medical students to take this oath of conduct at the completion of their studies; the tradition continues to this day. The Boston Medical Library also holds a copy of the Articella (Venice, 1483), containing another fifteenth century edition of the Iusiurandum, as well as Francisco Arceo's A Most Excellent and Compendious Method of Curing Wounds in the Head (London, 1588) with the first translation of the Hippocratic Oath into English.

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Engraving of Skeleton (Italy: circa 1494-1505)

This unusual copper engraving is one of the earliest printed representations of the human skeleton, predating Andreas Vesalius' De humani corporis fabricaby nearly half a century. Only two other specimens are known.

The engraving appears to be only the fourth printed depiction of the skeleton and the first produced by copper engraving rather than woodcut. The archaic Italian inscription below reads "I cannot deny—I said, probably just before dying—that the agony that comes before dying is extremely painful, but even more painful is the fear of eternal damnation." When Librarian James F. Ballard first saw this engraving, its fine condition caused him to question its authenticity.

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De bello Peloponnesiaco (Treviso: Johannes Rubeus, 1483?)

Thucydides was a fifth-century Greek and eyewitness to the long struggle (431-404 B.C.) for dominance between the warring city-states of Athens and Sparta. De bello Peloponnesiaco, or The History of the Peloponnesian War, his contemporary account of events, is one of the earliest works of historical writing. The Italian humanist, Lorenzo Valla (1407-1457), was commissioned by Pope Nicholas V to make this translation from Greek. It was the first Latin edition of Thucydides and the only one produced during the fifteenth century.

In 430 B.C., just at the beginning of the war, Athens suffered an outbreak of plague which severely demoralized its citizens and killed the city's leader, Pericles. Thucydides himself was afflicted but survived and left a vivid description of the effects of the plague.

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Almanach ad annum 1494 (Nuremberg: Caspar Hochfeder, circa 1493)

Almanacs were used to record the most propitious days and times for purging, bloodletting, and pharmaceutical manufacture according to astrological and astronomical events. This specimen for the city of Erfurt in 1494 includes woodcuts depicting solar and lunar eclipses. The Boston Medical Library holds an exceptional collection of broadside Latin and German almanacs and calendars, with twenty-four examples printed during the fifteenth century.

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Malleus maleficarum (Speyer: Peter Drach, before 15 April 1487)

This is a first edition of the Malleus maleficarum [The Witches' Hammer], the foremost legal and theological handbook on witchcraft and demonology. It describes the operations of witches, remedies against spells, and the judicial proceedings of ecclesiastical and civil courts against witches and heretics. Twenty-eight editions of the Malleus maleficarum were produced before 1600, and it was still consulted in the eighteenth century.

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De revelatione facta ab angelo Beato Methodio in carcere dete[n]to (Basel: Michael Furter, [5] January 1498)

This book of prophecies attributed to the fourth-century martyr, Methodius, was probably composed by a fifteenth century monk, Wolfgang Aytinger, to arouse animosity between Christians and Muslims. Although not specifically medical, the De revelatione contains a number of unusual woodcuts, among them this image of the birth of the Antichrist—which is also one of the earliest printed depictions of a Caesarian section birth. There is a long iconographic tradition of linking the Antichrist with a Caesarian birth, hinting at the suspicion and distrust surrounding this "unnatural" procedure.

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De sermonum proprietate, sive, Opus de universo (Strassburg: the "R" printer [Adolf Rusch], before 20 July 1467)

This encyclopedia of a ninth-century archbishop is the oldest incunable in the Boston Medical Library collection. The De sermonum proprietate contains chapters on subjects as diverse as the earth, animals, precious stones and metals, heretics, paradise, time, and sewers, but it is also the earliest printed book known to contain a section devoted to medicine, De medicina et morbis, [On medicine and disease].

Incunabula