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Circulating Now From the Historical Collections of the National Library of Medicine, NIH
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Category: Curious Herbals

A series exploring NLM’s rich and varied collection of “herbals,” books devoted to the description of medicinal plants with instructions on how to use them.

Colored botanical illustration of a dandelion plant.

Some of the Most Beautiful Herbals

April 14, 2016 Circulating Now

By Michael North This post is the sixth in a series exploring the National Library of Medicine’s rich and varied collection of “herbals,” which are

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Bontanical illustration of a branch with large oval leaves and stems with clusters of small pink flowers.

Colonialism and the Plant Hunters

March 22, 2016 Circulating Now

By Michael North This post is the fifth in a series exploring the National Library of Medicine’s rich and varied collection of “herbals,” which are

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Text block surrounded by flowers and butterflies.

Research Reborn: Dioscorides and Mattioli

January 6, 2016 Circulating Now

By Michael North This post is the fourth in a series exploring the National Library of Medicine’s rich and varied collection of “herbals,” which are

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A colored illustration of a corn plant.

A German Botanical Renaissance

September 29, 2015 Circulating Now

By Michael North ~ This post is the third in a series exploring the National Library of Medicine’s rich and varied collection of “herbals,” which

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Colored woodcut showing a bushy plant with handlike leaves, large flowers.

Medieval Herbals in Movable Type

July 9, 2015 Circulating Now

By Michael North This post is the second in a series exploring the National Library of Medicine’s rich and varied collection of “herbals,” which are

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A simple botanical illustration of gladiolus leaves and flowers.

The Earliest Herbals

May 14, 2015 Circulating Now

By Michael North This post is the first in a series exploring the National Library of Medicine’s rich and varied collection of “herbals,” which are

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Films and Essays from NLM: Medicine on Screen

Shared Suffering Onscreen: Animal Experiments and Emotional Investment in the Films of O. H. Mowrer

Shared Suffering Onscreen:  Animal Experiments and Emotional Investment in the Films of O. H. Mowrer

NLM Collections on Instagram

This #17thCentury book is getting new sewn endbands. We chose green because there was evidence that the previous endbands, which were entirely missing except for a few stray threads, were also green. We went with a slightly lighter shade of green to avoid any confusion between these and the historic endbands.
Happy Independence Day! Don't forget to #CelebrateSafely. According to the CPSC, the safest way to enjoy fireworks is to watch the professional displays. We'll leave these #fireworks in the #18thCentury!
Born #OTD in 1818, Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis was a Hungarian physician and scientist widely regarded as the “savior of mothers” for his discovery of handwashing as crucial in preventing maternal mortality. In 1850, Semmelweis showed that puerperal fever—also known as childbed fever—was caused by an infection, which could be prevented by disinfecting the hands of the obstetricians and midwives with a chlorine solution before they examined mothers in labor. Today, hand hygiene is recognized as a key practice for health care workers to diminish the spread of infections.
Don't put down that #ComicBook! You may learn something!
In addition to being used to create book pages, #parchment is also an option for covering books. Today on #NationalParchmentDay we're sharing a small manuscript from the mid-#16thCentury. It has a limp parchment cover that has shrunk to the point it no longer fully covers the text block - a common phenomenon for this material, which is very sensitive to the many environmental changes that would happen over the course of centuries.
Today we are celebrating the birthday of Helen Keller (born #OTD in 1880). She lost both her hearing and sight after a bought of illness as a young child and went on to become a disability rights advocate. Among her many achievements was her work on behalf of returning veterans during and after the Second World War. This photograph of Helen Keller at the bedside of a wounded veteran was taken during her visit to the patients of Brooke General Hospital in 1944 and was featured in an article in the hospital's magazine, the Brooke Bluebonnet Broadcast. To the patients and staff she said, "The fighting men have splendid morale...it is hard to define--makes me feel the spirit that is mightier than all wars--a spirit that will at last recreate the world."

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