Theme

History of Science

Featured Items

Detail of a printed text shows a large, leafy tree. Labels printed below.

Museum Museorum

Michael Bernhard Valentini
1704
Detail of a printed book shows full-page illustrations of plants. Text in Latin also visible.

Aromatum, et simplicium aliquot medicamentorum apud Indos

Garcia de Orta
1567
Detail of an engraved, hand colored full-page illustration shows a yam.

A collection of exotics, from the Island of Antigua

Lydia Byam
1797
Detail of a hand colored, engraved print of Grenada shows a scene of naval warfare, as seen by smoke engulfing one ship.

Prise de l'isle de la Grenade...

Roger fils
1782
Detail from a printed book shows text in Spanish reading "Los aguacates es uno fruta en las Indias muy preciada, y medicinal."

Secretos de chirurgia

Pedro Arias de Benavides
1567
Detail from a printed book shows text in Spanish including "Ensayo" at the top of the page.

Semanario del Nuevo Reyno de Granada

Francisco Jose de Caldas
1808
Detail of manuscript diary shows childlike drawings of a house, a person, and a ship.

Diary of Captain Samuel Tillinghast

Samuel Tillinghast
1761-1766
Detail of a printed book shows text in English reading "Appendix" at the top of the page.

Medical Inquiries and Observations

Benjamin Rush
1789

Related

agave or maguey

Atlantic Materia Medica

Winter - Spring 2007
men work inside a mine

Subterranean Worlds: Under the Earth in the Early Americas

Spring - Summer 2015
a Mohawk man teaches children in a schoolhouse

Controlling Colonial Impressions

May-October 2019
map showing water, volcanoes, the sun, mountaintops, waterways and towns

Bodies of Water/Bodies at Work

Summer - Fall 2018
printed title page of a religious text in Algonquian and English
Collections Up Close

A healthy conversion: John Eliot, Robert Boyle, and the Algonquians

January 1, 2019
16th century charts documenting the calculations of solar and lunar calculations
In House

Eclipses in Print

October 24, 2018
Our Fellows

Fresh Ink: A Not-So-New World by Chris Parsons

September 11, 2018
19th century illustration of chichona bark, quina, cascarilla, Jesuit's Bark plant
In House

Exploring Quina in the JCB Collections

April 12, 2018

See Also

Ephemera

Indigenous Languages