Monthly Archives: December 2016

Getting to Know GreyLit: National Network of Libraries of Medicine Grant Recipients

Posted on by
Reply

T229_logo_gl18he New York Academy of Medicine hosted the 18th International Conference on Grey Literature: Leveraging Diversity in Grey Literature (GL18) on November 28 – 29, 2016.  The Academy received a professional development grant from the National Network of Libraries of Medicine (NN/LM) to help support attendance at the conference.  Five grant awardees, students and information professionals, were chosen to attend the conference for one or both days.  Post-event, the awardees stated that the conference had a remarkable impact on their understanding of grey literature.

In their own words, awardees describe their experience at the GL18 conference:

Jennifer Kaari
Library Manager | Mount Sinai

I was interested in attending the 18th International Conference on Grey Literature because like so many librarians, I often find that grey literature is a missing piece of the research process. I was struck during the conference by how apt diversity was a theme for a grey literature conference. Grey literature is a wildly diverse arena, from the many formats and publication types that fall under the umbrella to the wide range of fields that generate and use grey literature. Many of these were represented in the conference, from the law to nuclear science to community initiatives.

As highlighted by the presentations on the Indigenous Law Portal and LGBT communities, grey literature can also give a voice to communities that may be left out of traditional scholarly publishing. I came away with the understanding that leveraging grey literature is essential to ensuring that these voices are included in research and the policy decisions that result.

Perhaps most importantly for my personal development, I left the conference with a bright new idea about a topic in grey literature to research in the upcoming year. I’m looking forward to attending future conferences- hopefully as a speaker! Thanks to the NN/LM for this wonderful opportunity.

Sharon Whitfield
Emerging Technologies Librarian | Cooper Medical School of Rowan University

The 2016 Grey Literature conference, titled Leveraging Diversity, had at least one presentation of interest to everyone.  The presentation topics ranged from open access to LGBT+.

As this was my first GreyLit conference, I was surprised to find a very welcoming community of researchers, librarians and professionals who all were invested in researching, reporting and making grey literature accessible.  During the first day, I found the presentations inspiring. The presentation showed how grey literature impacted the various constituencies at each institution and the importance of making the literature available to the populations.

On the second day, the conference had more of a practical application by addressing open access and researchers’ needs. An example was the Data Science Panel. The Data Science panel, which included two librarians and a researcher, addressed research needs that are occurring at my own institution.  The panel provided new technologies that I am currently exploring for institutional adoption.  Yet, it was hearing the importance of access to grey literature and datasets by the researcher, which really help me to understand the role the library should be playing to support researchers at my own institution.

poster-session-21

Poster session at GL18. Photo by Danielle Aloia.

Cheryl Branche, MD, MLS
P/T Adjunct Reference Librarian | Health Professions Library Hunter College, CUNY Brookdale Campus

On Tuesday, November 29, I viewed the engaging poster presentations and discussed the posters with the presenters, who hailed from France, Italy, Japan, Korea, The Netherlands, and the United States. Three posters interested me:

  • Policy Development for Grey Literature Resources: An Assessment of the Pisa Declaration
  • Grey Literature in Transfer Pricing: Japan and Korea
  • WorldWideScience.org: An International Partnership to Improve Access to Scientific and Technical Information and Research Data.

During the Tuesday afternoon session, Debbie Rabina presented an ongoing long-term study, which identified the information needs of incarcerated people and demonstrated their willingness to write to agencies for information. The late afternoon session included a presentation entitled: The GreyLit Report: Understanding the Challenges of Finding Grey Literature.

On Wednesday, November 30, I joined the GreyLit: Intro and Search Strategies session. It was a hands-on learning session focused on finding grey literature. It was very interesting.

The conference was quite stimulating, informative and useful and I look forward to adding the new techniques to my armamentarium to seek, find…and explore more grey literature.

Alyssa Grimshaw | Drexel University
Library Services Assistant IV / MSLIS Student | Cushing/Whitney Medical Library / Drexel University

The 18th International Conference on Grey Literature was an exceptionally eye-opening experience. In regards to grey literature I consider myself a novice, but found this conference enlightening, as it clearly illustrated the benefits of promoting and utilizing grey literature within the library system.

The conference started out strong with the Keynote Address by Taryn Rucinski. Rucinski was very energetic and informative, discussing all of the literature found within the law grey literature. I was truly flabbergasted to discover that one can find expert testimony on a large wide array of different subjects in the legislative proceedings on government websites. This is just one example of the many exceptional ways to utilize grey literature.

The conference also helped me uncover a great resource – The Grey Literature Report! The New York Academy of Medicine publishes this report bi-monthly and takes all of the obscure grey literature and makes it easily searchable!  I particularly enjoyed the international aspect of the conference because it allowed me to learn a little more about how other countries use and preserve grey literature. I believe this to be incredibly important because in order for libraries to grow and develop they should be able to learn from, and interconnect with, one another. Each day of the conference was filled with valuable information and great tips that I intend to bring back to my library and apply in order to help our patrons!

altmetrics

Joachim Schöpfel at GL18. Photo by Danielle Aloia.

Kate Nyhan, MLS
Research and education librarian for public health | Cushing/Whitney Medical Library, Yale University

Attending one day of #GL18 at #GreyLitWeek at the New York Academy of Medicine – thanks to generous professional development funding from the National Network of Libraries of Medicine – I learned a great deal about what I don’t know. Of course, when it comes to grey literature, ignorance is a common state indeed.

  • Students and even a few eminent researchers I’ve spoken with aren’t quite sure what “grey literature” is.
  • Information professionals don’t always know the information ecosystem of grey literature’s producers and aggregators.
  • Medical librarians might not even be aware of the diverse types of grey literature that could be relevant to biomedical and public health questions – such as the governmental administrative materials that are generated by legislative, litigation, and regulatory processes. (Read “The Elephant in the Room” by excellent speaker Taryn Rucinski of Pace University Law School for more details)
  • Finally, organizations that generate grey literature sometimes seem not to know the first thing about the preservation and discovery of information – even when they are desperately trying to disseminate their high-quality, free, information products.

Thanks to the excellent talks, posters, and discussions at GL18, the unknown unknowns of grey literature are starting to become known unknowns for me. I choose that phrase to acknowledge that I’m still a novice at, say, retrieving government administrative materials, or even hard-to-find theses and dissertations – but now I’m a novice with better tools!

Cakes and Ale at Woodbine: From Twelfth Night to New Year’s Day

Posted on by
Reply

By Paul Theerman, Associate Director

Part of the Margaret Barclay Wilson collection of cookbooks and cookery, Cakes and Ale at Woodbine: From Twelfth Night to New Year’s Day is a pseudonymously published light novel of mid-century Fordham, New York. Ostensibly the work of “Barry Gray,” the book was written by Robert Barry Coffin (1826–1886), one of the “Bohemians” of antebellum New York.[i]  He was a critic for, and eventually editor of, the Home Journal, later renamed Town and Country, which continues in publication to this day.  This book was first published in 1868; the Library’s edition is from 1883.

The “cakes and ale” of the title is not culinary, but purely literary. On the title page is this quote from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night: “Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?” (Act 2, Scene 3).

sir-toby-belch

Sir Toby Belch uttered the line “Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?” the epigram for the novel. This is an image of Lionel Brough in a 1901 production.

“Cakes and ale” are not only mentioned in Twelfth Night, they are parts of Twelfth-Night celebrations: the merriment on the day of (or day before, depending on how one count) the feast of the Epiphany on January 6, the twelfth day after Christmas. Coffin is therefore having fun with the title, “From Twelfth Night to New Year’s Day,” as it means from January 6 all around to January 1: a romp through the year, touching on all the major holidays in turn. Each day is an occasion for indulging in cakes and ale, “the good things of this life” (p. 13): Epiphany, the first day of spring, a birthday, Easter, the fourth of July, “summer,” Christmas and a Christmas wedding, and then New Year’s.

Set at the author’s purported cottage, Woodbine, in Fordham, New York, domestic scenes alternate with long fanciful stories, much of which contrast city and country life, to the decided benefit of the latter! Toward the end of the book, the narrator has an imagined (perhaps alcohol-induced) encounter with Santa Claus, who says he prefers the large expansive chimneys of the country to the narrow ones of the city, and thought that the new city fashion of Christmas trees might put him out of a job:

“When the city folks first began to talk about Christmas trees, and introduced them into their nurseries, it nearly broke my heart; for I feared that my occupation . . . was gone” [p. 225.]

The virtues of the country always win out, in grand matters of love, and more prosaic ones of cakes and ale.

May you have a great holiday season, and may you get all the cakes and ale you want!


Another literary retreat, left, the Edgar Allan Poe house in Fordham, New York, where the author lived from 1846 to 1849, some 20 years before the recounted events in Cakes and Ale, also set in Fordham, a village only recently connected to the city by rail.  Right, a view of the Poe cottage in its rural setting.

References

[i] “Gray, Barry (1826–1886) [Robert Barry Coffin],” in “The Vault at Pfaff’s: An Archive of Art and Literature by the Bohemians of Antebellum New York,” https://pfaffs.web.lehigh.edu/node/54192, accessed December 22, 2016.

Image Sources

A Show of Hands

Posted on by
Reply

By Emily Miranker, Project Coordinator

Welcome to my celebration of one of our collections’ unsung heroes – not a specific book, or author, but a punctuation mark that decorates many of them: the manicule.

berengario_anatomiacarpi_1535_manicule-marginaliap12_watermark

As you can see from the example above, the manicule is a disembodied, pointing hand. In case this, as in many, the manicule also has a little cuff, and a fingernail on the pointing finger that is visible, too. This manicule comes from our Anatomia Carpi by Jacopo Berengario da Carpi, a 16th century Italian physician.

The manicule gets its name from the Latin maniculum for “little hand.” This connection with the actual human body is apparent in some of the other names of the symbol: fist, printer’s first, bishop’s fist, pointer, pointing hand, even mutton-fist.[1] Its usage starts around the 12th century, though there is a record of it appearing in the Domesday Book of 1086 in John Johnson’s Typographia.[2]

Professor William Sherman of York University draws a connection between the classical gesture of “three fingers doubled under the thumb [and index the] finger extended”[3] from formal Roman oration to the strong connection between hands and texts when zeroing in on the manicule in his research on marginalia. Sherman observes the bond between hands and reading is so innate it often goes unnoticed:

“Unless we’re wrestling with an unusually large volume or feeling our way through an unusually delicate book; unless we’re running our fingertips over a text in Braille or our pointers through a Torah scroll; and unless we’re the kind of reader who follows along with our index finger or gives them a good lick before turning the page, it’s probably safe to say that we’re not even conscious of our hands as we make our way through a text.”

It’s certainly compelling to think of the manicule mark as the descendent of an oratory pose and natural human gesticulation.

Manicules are windows into people’s relationships with their books and texts.  Time was taken to read the passage, react to it and record or reference it by hand on the page, which makes sense given the tremendous amount of work, time and expense it once took to get a book into your hands. Keith Houston, author of Shady Characters, observed readers’ investment and attachment to their books was quite unlike the modern day consumer. “It was second nature for a book’s owner to brand it, to annotate and embellish it as they read; to underline pithy phrases and fill the margins with notes.”[4] Indeed, the manicule isn’t really a punctuation mark, something put in by the author for grammatical structural or clarity. Rather, it’s a reader’s mark indicating something to that person – something that could be wholly mysterious, banal, or unimportant to me or you.

doctors-dispensary_page1_watermarked

One past owner of our 1657 copy of The Doctor’s Dispensary found many points of interest in the book. Its pages are littered with marginal notes, underlining and manicules. This reader’s manicules are fairly simple, though they do include a cuff –or possibly a sleeve or an arm- while some examples can have long sleeves that drip down to mark the end of the passage of notable text, complete with shading on the clothing or secondary digits pointing things out as well.

As intellectual and cultural knowledge fairly exploded during the Renaissance, ink flowed from readers marking up their books. Then came the world-altering printing press from Johannes Gutenberg in 1440 in Mainz, Germany. Readers continued to annotate their printed books just as they had their handwritten ones; and printed manicules joined the handwritten ones on the page.[5] Printers inserted in-line manicules that indicated authorial notations that were not the readers’ own commentary, subtly (or not) guiding a reader to the ‘correct’ interpretation of the work. Printed manicules became more prominent as authors and publishers took advantage of a means to protect the integrity of their work. The manicule drawn in by hand more or less died out by the 19th century.

berengario_anatomiacarpi_1535_manicule-marginalia1_watermark

The mark lived on in its printed form and got almost annoyingly ubiquitous by the end of the 19th century. Manicules were a bread and butter symbol for advertising typography where they literally pointed the way to headlines, punchlines, venues and notable names.[6] They were even on gravestones, pointing the way to heaven.[7]

manicule-on-a-va-gravestone

This gravestone photo from a Virginia cemetery was snapped by literature professor and medievalist Jonathan Hsy of George Washington University.

The public visually overdosed on the manicule as this point and it fell from such frequent (over)use. The manicule is definitely still around though; on returned envelopes from the US postal service, in design products seeking to impart a vintage flare and in directional signage. And of course in the newest frontier of information and communication; the digital screen where the computer’s cursor was, and sometimes still is, a hand pointing the way.

cursor-hand_freeclipart

References

[1] Sherman, William H. Towards a History of the Manicule, 2005. Accessed November 22, 2016.

[2] McPharlin, Paul. Roman numerals, typographic leaves and pointing hands: some notes on their origin, history and contemporary use. New York: Typophiles, 1942. 47.

[3] Sherman, William H. Towards a History of the Manicule, 2005. Accessed November 22, 2016.

[4] Houston, Keith. Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols & Other Typographic Marks. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. 170.

[5] Houston, Shady Characters. 178.

[6] Palmer & Rey. Palmer & Rey’s Type Specimen Book. San Francisco: Palmer & Rey, 1887.

[7] McPharlin, Roman numerals, 1942. 65.

Item of the Month: John E. Stillwell’s Prize Notebook

Posted on by
Reply

By Becky Filner, Head of Cataloging

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, medical schools offered academic prizes, frequently accompanied by a monetary award, for the best essays, examinations, and student notebooks.[1] The New York Academy of Medicine’s Library holds several examples of prize-winning student medical notebooks, including John E. Stillwell’s Report of Prof. Thomas’ Gynecological Clinics, Session of ’73 and ’74. This notebook is an ornate presentation copy, not the rough notes Stillwell would have taken during the clinics. Written in a neat, legible hand, it also includes a calligraphic title page and twenty-nine watercolor illustrations. The notebook is bound in full leather with blind-stamped fleurs-de-lis and shamrocks on the cover and spine. The notes are from a series of clinics offered during the 1873-1874 school year by Theodore Gaillard Thomas, a professor of gynecology at New York’s College of Physicians and Surgeons and author of A Practical Treatise on the Diseases of Women.

stillwell_title_page_watermarked

Calligraphic title page of John E. Stillwell’s Report of Prof. Thomas’ Gynecological Clinics: autograph manuscript, 1873-1874.

Stillwell’s notes, like Thomas’s lectures, are organized into a series of case studies. In the case study shown below, a woman named Annie Coyle reports that “her friends noticed her abdomen increasing in size” and her “menses … are ‘larger’ and … come twice as often as they ought.” When she had an examination at the dispensary, the examiner “pronounced her pregnant”; she came to Dr. Thomas for an examination because she was “unwilling to rest under such unjust suspicions.”

Stillwell’s carefully transcribed lecture notes and a watercolor showing a woman with an ovarian tumor, from Stillwell’s autograph manuscript, Report of Prof. Thomas’ Gynecological Clinics, 1873-1874.

Dr. Thomas notes that he found an abdominal tumor and gives details on how he determined that it is a “fluid tumor” rather than one “that is filled with air or that is solid.” He rules out pregnancy because he cannot feel any movement when he places his hands on her abdomen and her mammary glands are not enlarged. His conclusion is that she has an ovarian cyst and requires an ovariotomy to remove it. Stillwell’s account of the clinic is accompanied by a watercolor of a female figure with an enlarged abdomen labeled, “Ovarian Tumor.” Other clinics in the notebook cover problems of the uterus and cervix, tumors, peritonitis, fibroids, complications during and after pregnancy, menopause, dementia, and sterility. There is even an account (with an illustration) of a woman who has two vaginas.

stillwell_retroflexed_uterus_watermarked

Watercolor by John E. Stillwell of a retroflexed uterus, from his Report of Prof. Thomas’ Gynecological Clinics, 1873-1874.

Student medical notebooks were usually submitted anonymously to ensure that the judging would not be biased. In this case, we know that Stillwell submitted this prize-winning notebook (even though the notebook does not contain his name) because the Library acquired the notebook along with the prize itself, a wooden case of gynecological instruments with a plaque that reads, “A Prize Awarded for the best Gynecological Report of 1874 in the College of Physicians and Surgeons N.Y. by Prof. T. Gaillard Thomas to J.E. Stillwell.”[2]

stillwell_prize_plaque_watermarked

A plaque on the wooden case indicates that Stillwell received this prize from Prof. Thomas for the “best Gynecological Report of 1874 in the College of Physicians and Surgeons.”

stillwell_prize_instruments_watermarked

Stillwell’s prize consisted of a full set of gynecological instruments stored in a sturdy wooden box lined with purple velvet. The instruments were made by G. Tiemann & Co., Manufacturers of Surgical Instruments, 67 Chatham St., N.Y.

The tools include all the necessary implements for a gynecology practice in the 1870s. Thomas describes many of the tools in his A Practical Treatise on the Diseases of Women (which was a required textbooks for medical students at the College of Physicians and Surgeons around this time). Shown below are drawings of several of the tools, including “Buttles’ spear-pointed scarificator,” a “hard rubber cylinder for dry-cupping the cervix uteri,” cauterizing irons, and tools for sutures, and descriptions of how they were used.[3]

Taken from T. Gaillard Thomas’s A Practical Treatise on the Diseases of Women, 2nd ed., these drawings show obstetrical tools and give brief descriptions of how they were used.

Taken together, John E. Stillwell’s prize notebook and the handsome case of obstetrical tools that he won for his efforts provide an interesting window into both 19th-century medical school competitions and 19th-century obstetrics and gynecology.

References

[1] Contemporary handbooks from medical schools list the types of prizes awarded and the prize money attached to them. See, for example, the section on “Prizes” under “School of Medicine” in Columbia College’s Handbook of Information as to the Several Schools and Courses of Instruction 1886-1887, p. 222-225.

[2] An account of the commencement exercises of the College of Physicians and Surgeons in The Medical Record confirms Stillwell’s receipt of the Thomas prize. “The Thomas prize was awarded to J.E. Stillwell, for a report on ‘Cliniques for Diseases of Women’” (The Medical Record, ed. George F. Shrady, New York: W.M. Wood & Co., v. 9, issue of March 16, 1874, p. 158).

[3] Thomas, Theodore Gaillard.  A Practical Treatise on the Diseases of Women, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Henry C. Lea, 1869).

12 Gifts for the Medical History Buff in Your Life

Posted on by
Reply

By Emily Miranker, Project Coordinator

Search no further for one-of-a-kind gifts for the medical history buff in your life: the Library’s online shop has you covered with over 3,000 products to choose among. Find a few of our favorites below. And take an extra 15% off as our holiday gift to you: use code ZAZZLETHANKS at check out.

  1. This sturdy tote bag with a vintage advertisement for Tolu’s Rock and Rye cough tonic – good for what ails you. And groceries.

rockandrye-tote

  1. Our skeletal musicians give a whole new meaning to death metal. They might be from 1779; but our headphones are totally 21st century with a 20hz – 20,000hz range, built-in answer button and microphone to seamlessly take calls, and vegan leather padding.

gamelin-skeletal-musician-headphones

  1. This cheery orange fruits and leaves lunchbox includes a large sandwich container, two small containers and an ice pack. Dishwasher safe and BPA-free. Mangia!

culpeper-lunchbox

  1. Speaking of eating, food goes great with wine. These wine charms featuring skulls by 16th century Flemish anatomist Andreas Vesalius go great with glasses of wine.

vesalius-skulls-wine-charms

  1. Since red wine is good for your heart, admire this panel of an exquisite engraving of an anatomical heart by Scottish surgeon Charles Bell on your wall while you sip.

bell-heart-engravingw-with-close-up

  1. Keep your life in order with this desk organizer, the illustration of one of several poems gathered by Hugo Erichsen to “amuse the busy doctor in leisure hours.”

desk-caddy

  1. This flask is from a New York-based surgical supply company’s turn of the century catalogue. Chemistry-lovers, you’re welcome.

gold-flask-locket

  1. Never be too far away from a good book with this rather cellular-looking red marbled book endpaper wallet.

marbled-paper-wallter

  1. Take ‘digital’ back to its roots of actual fingers with this artificial hand by French surgeon Ambroise Paré on your laptop case.

atrifical-hand-laptop-case

  1. Just in case you feel naked without your actual stethoscope around your neck: this tie.

stetho-tie

  1. Once upon a time, your garden was your pharmacy. Peonies were used to treat spasms and cramps, gout, headaches, and fatigue. Caffeine is more popular for fatigue now…

peony-travel-mug

  1. Baby, it’s cold outside! Magnify your warmth by snuggling up with these microscopes.

microscopes-throw-pillow

Lastly, for the person who really and truly has everything already—or more likely just has no space—give the gift of membership to our Friends of the Rare Book Room, the people and programs that explore and support the books where all these remarkable images come from. All proceeds from the shop support the library’s collections’ preservation and public programming, and all Friends memberships are tax-deductible. Happy Holidays!

holiday-rabbit_aldrovandi

Found in the Eyes of Rams: The Bezoar and its Powers

Posted on by
5

By Emily Miranker, Project Coordinator

This post title is not strictly true. Or remotely true, actually. Bezoars are not found in rams’ eyes (to the relief of sheep everywhere, I’m sure). Maimonides, the 12th century Sephardic Jewish philosopher, reported an Eastern belief that bezoars could be found “in the eyes of rams,” though he then went on to note that “it is found in their [rams] gallbladder and this is true.”[i] Bezoars are in fact found in goats’ stomachs and gastrointestinal tracts, as well as that of other animals such as sheep, cows and us humans.

bezoar_watermark_19xx

Our library’s trichobezoar, ca.1862. Basically the coolest hairball you’ll ever see.

A bezoar is a mass of undigested or inedible material found in the GI tract. Today, they are typically grouped into four categories: phytobezoars (made of vegetable or fruit fibers), lactobezoars (made of milk proteins), trichobezoars (made of hair and food particles) and pharmacobezoars (aggregates of various medications).[ii] Nowadays, if a bezoar doesn’t pass through the digestive system on its own they can be treated through medication to dissolve the mass, lavage therapy, and even surgery.

Once upon a time you may have wanted one in your system. I referenced this in Poisons, Pirates, and Professors in September for National Talk Like a Pirate Day. If you had been poisoned by an attacking pirate, you’d want to swallow a bezoar to cure yourself. Pierre Pomet, 17th century French druggist, wrote of bezoars curing all manner of things from smallpox to epilepsy, ending with its ability to work as an antidote to poison.[iii]

pomet_hist-of-drugs_1725_bezoar-uses-watermarked

pomet-bezoar-goat-_1725_watermarked

The word bezoar comes from the Arabic bazahr or badzehr, meaning counterpoison[iv] and it is also mentioned in ancient Hebrew texts as bel zaard, “master” or “master of poison.”[v] Its power to counteract poison may come from a near eastern goat, the markhor. In Persian, mar is snake and khor means to eat. Snake-eater. So presumably immune to venom. Except that the markhor is an herbivore dining upon grasses and leaves. Misnomer alert! The name may have to do with their corkscrew-like horns (reminiscent of a winding snake) or that they are known to kill snakes on occasion.[vi]

Berlin_Tierpark_Friedrichsfelde_12-2015_img02_Markhor.jpg

This handsome markhor is clearly eating carrots or yam, not a snake.  Source: A. Savin, A Markhor in Berlin Tierpark, Wikimedia Commons.

Whatever the origins of the belief in curing poison, bezoars were popular in the Middle Ages and into the 17th century as antidotes. They were carried as charms, included as decor or attached to drinking and eating vessels to protect the diner, and tests were even designed to detect fakes –the selling of which was a punishable offense.[vii]

bezoar-stone_med-journal-of-aus-1986_watermarked

basin-with-bezoar_med-journal-of-australia-1986_watermarked

Another Frenchman represented in our collections’ holdings, barber surgeon Ambroise Paré, conducted an experiment to test the healing properties of a bezoar stone in the 1500s.[viii] A royal cook caught stealing silver had been sentenced to death. The cook was offered the alternative of being poisoned and then being given a bezoar under Paré’s supervision. If the cook survived the poisoning, he’d be spared. The cook lived only seven hours after the poison was administered, and Paré concluded the bezoar could not cure all poisons.

Still, the bezoar as antidote and mythical token lives on in the popular imagination. In J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter stories, Professor Snape quizzes Harry on where he’d find a bezoar in his first potions class and later when his friend Ron Weasley is poisoned with mead –intended for Professor Dumbledore- Harry quickly shoves a bezoar down Ron’s throat.

harry-potter-bezoars

Box of bezoars and Half Blood Prince movie still.  Source.

Join us for a free First Mondays lunchtime tour in our Drs. Barry and Bobbi Rare Book Reading Room for a chance to see our bezoar in person. It’s well worth a visit even if poison and goat guts aren’t high on your to-do list; the Rare Book Room is pretty much the real life Hogwarts.

nyam_rbr_106

References:
[i] Rosner, F. (trans.) 1988. Maimonides’ Medical Writings, Treatises on Poisons, Hemorrhoids, Cohabitation. The Maimonides Research Institute, Haifa, 1988, 49-50.
[ii] Eng, Katharine and Marsha Kay. “Gastrointestinal Bezoars: History and Current Treatment Paradigms,” Gastroenterology & Hepatology. Vol. 8, Issue 11, November 2012. 776.
[iii] Pomet, Pierre. A compleat History of drugs. Bonwick, London. 1725.
[iv] Williams, Randolph S. “The fascinating history of bezoars,” The Medical Journal of Australia. Vol. 145. December 1986. 613.
[v] Barroso, Maria Do Sameiro. “The bezoar stone: a princely antidote,” Acta Med Hist Adriat. 2014;12(1):78.
[vi] “Capra falconeri – Markhor.”Brent Huffman. An Ultimate Ungulate Fact Sheet. Accessed November 11, 2016.
[vii] Williams. 613.
[viii] Thompson, C. J. S. (1924) Poison Mysteries in History, Romance and Crime J.B. Lippincott, New York, 61-62.