Digital facsimile from Biodiversity Heritage Library at this link.

Privately printed pamphlet describing Sarlandière's "artificial leech," a mechanical bleeding device designed to replace leeches when they were not available. Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

Digital facsimile from Biodiversity Heritage Library at this link.

Digital facsimile from Biodiversity Heritage Library at this link.

In Omphalos, published in 1857, two years before the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species, Gosse attempted to reconcile the paleontological record with creationist religious beliefs by arguing that the fossil record was not evidence of evolution, but an act of creation by God to make the world appear older than it actually is. This tautology parallels how Gosse chose to explain why Adam, who could have had no mother, had a navel: Though Adam would have had no need of a navel, God gave him one anyway to give him the appearance of having human ancestry. Following this argument, the title of Gosse's book, Omphalos, means "navel" in Greek.

Digital facsimile from Biodiversity Heritage Library at this link.

Digital facsimile of the complete set from the Internet Archive at this link.

Covers the period from 1800 to about 2005.

Digital facsimile from Biodiversity Heritage LIbrary at this link.

Wood Jones was one of the first to study coral reefs as living organisms interacting with their environment. Prior to Wood Jones's book most of the work on corals was done from the systematics viewpoint using specimens in museums. Jones's book was one of the first accounts of a living coral reef. Digital facsimile from Biodiversity Heritage Library at this link.

A thorough analysis of the problem of foundling children from a social, medical, legal and historical standpoint. The work begins with a history of the treatment of abandoned children from antiquity to the time of writing; this is followed by accounts of the various laws and institutions established for handling abandoned children in France and other countries. An entire section of the book discusses foundling hospitals, including the benefits and drawbacks of their operations; elsewhere, the authors describe the training of foundling children for employment in the military and in the French colonies. The book finishes with numerous tables giving statistics of births, exposures and deaths of foundling children in France, as well as monies expended on foundlings and the transfer of children in and out of foundling hospitals. Pp. 479-94 contains a bibliography of the principal works on foundling children published to the time of writing. Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

Riggan supervised this long-term project of calculating and publishing cancer mortality rates and trends for every county in the United States over several decades. The last 30 of the 40 years of the underlying data base includes every death record in the country, not just those which indicate a cancer as a cause of death. This data remains valuable for researching the relationships between exposure to environmental factors and causes of death. Digital facsimile from the Hathi Trust at this link.

Twenty years after publication of the first edition (No. 1691), Süssmilch published a second edition "that was so different from the earlier book that it may well be called a separate work. While maintaining his original demographic theses, Süssmilch enlarged the scope of demographic enquiry to the field of social and economic policies. Many commentators have alluded to the differences between these two editions (Arisawa, 1979, p. 23; Hecht, 1980, p. 670; Rohrbasser, 1996, p. 984; Dreitzel, 1986a, p. 43). Still, the evolution of Süssmilch’s work has not yet been adequately highlighted and even less explained in the context of the population debates of his time.... Süssmilch radically changed his project and his outlook on the purpose of assembling demographic material in the twenty years between the two separate editions. The latter one deliberately forms part of the German political and economic discourse of the second third of the eighteenth century, while his previous intervention showed no signs of knowledge of this discourse and little interest in contributing to it. This reading of Süssmilch is informed by the assumption that the erudite discourse on population development and the debates about population politics were largely separated in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, thus differing from the situation in Western Europe" (Nipperdey, "Johann Peter Süssmilch: From divine law to human intervention," Population, 66 (2011/3) 611-636).

Digital facsimile from the Hathi Trust at this link.

A three-volume critical edition including the first edition in French.

One of the best-selling books of the twentieth century, selling 500,000 copies in the six months after its initial publication in 1946, and 50 million by the time of Spock's death in 1998. As of 2011, the book had been translated into 39 languages.

Joslin was the first physician in the United States to specialize in the treatment of diabetes; this was the first textbook on the subject in the English language. The book underwent its 12th edition in 1985. Digital facsimile of the first edition from the Hathi Trust at this link.

Joslin founded the Joslin Diabetes Center, "the world’s largest diabetes research center, diabetes clinic, and provider of diabetes education. It is located in the Longwood Medical and Academic Area in Boston, Massachusetts."

Includes information on asbestosis.

Hoffman was statistician for the Prudential Insurance Company of America. This work, "Hoffman's first, characterized African Americans as exceptionally disease-prone. The work was motivated by a concern about issues of race, and also the need of insurance companies to justify the higher life insurance premiums charged to African Americans. An 1897 critique of this work by Kelly Miller in occasional papers of the American Negro Academy of Washington, D.C., pointed out sampling problems with the 1890 census, which was the statistical basis of the work, and that there were insufficient adjustments for environmental factors" (Wikipedia article on Frederick Ludwig Hoffman, accessed 2-2020).

Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

Full text available from en.wikisource.org at this link.

"Despite the global spread of Western medical practice, traditional doctors still thrive in the modern world. In Recipes for Immortality, Richard Weiss illuminates their continued success by examining the ways in which siddha medical practitioners in Tamil South India win the trust and patronage of patients. While biomedicine might alleviate a patient's physical distress, siddha doctors offer their clientele much more: affiliation to a timeless and pure community, the fantasy of a Tamil utopia, and even the prospect of immortality. They speak of a golden age of Tamil civilization and of traditional medicine, drawing on broader revivalist formulations of a pure and ancient Tamil community.Weiss analyzes the success of siddha doctors, focusing on how they have successfully garnered authority and credibility. While shedding light on their lives, vocations, and aspirations, Weiss also documents the challenges that siddha doctors face in the modern world, both from a biomedical system that claims universal efficacy, and also from the rival traditional medicine, ayurveda, which is promoted as the national medicine of an autonomous Indian state. Drawing on ethnographic data; premodern Tamil texts on medicine, alchemy, and yoga; government archival resources; college textbooks; and popular literature on siddha medicine and on the siddhar yogis, he presents an in-depth study of this traditional system of knowledge, which serves the medical needs of millions of Indians.Weiss concludes with a look at traditional medicine at large, and demonstrates that siddha doctors, despite resent trends toward globalization and biomedicine, reflect the wider political and religious dimensions of medical discourse in our modern world. Recipes for Immortality proves that medical authority is based not only on physical effectiveness, but also on imaginative processes that relate to personal and social identities, conceptions of history, secrecy, loss, and utopian promise" (publisher).

Probably the first study of how women physicians used their medical training. Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

Reprints text and translation from Martius's 1568 edition with extensive annotations by Bernard, and divergent manuscript readings based on the study of several codices. For an analysis of this Byzantine medical handbook of thereputics see Joseph A. M. Sonderkamp, "Theophanes Nonnus: Medicine in the Circle of Constantine Porphyrogenitus," Dunbarton Oaks Papers, 38, Symposium on Byzantine Medicine (1984) 29-41.

Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

Extensively annotated critical texts of Theophilus Protospatharius, Leo the Physician, Constantinus Pogonatos (De cibis; On foods). Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

Definitive analysis of the most extensive extant collection of Roman instruments. 

Digital facsimile from the Hathi Trust at this link.

Caplan's syndrome, originally identified in coal miners with progressive massive fibrosis. It is a combination of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and pneumoconiosis that manifests as intrapulmonary nodules, which appear homogenous and well-defined on chest X-ray. Digital facsimile from Thorax.bmj.com at this link.

A techno-thriller novel documenting the efforts of a team of scientists investigating the outbreak of a deadly extraterrestrial microorganism in Arizona.

Loosely based upon the notorious crimes of Burke and Hare, who murdered 16 people in 1828 in order to sell their corpses to Scottish anatomist Robert Knox. In Stevenson's story, the anatomist is referred to as Mr. K___, and the main characters are two of Knox's medical students who become entangled in providing corpses for their mentor.

Order of authorship in the original publication: Mojica, Díez-Villaseñor, Jesus García-Martínez. In this paper Mojica and colleagues showed the the CRISPR system is a bacterial immune system against viral attack. This was the first evidence that bacteria have an immune system. A consequence of this discovery is the implication that the human immune system could have begun evolving billions of years ago in bacteria.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Horvath and his team provided key details of the extremely complex mechanisms involved in CRISPR's function as an immune system for bacteria against bacteriophages. Analogous to Pasteur's heroic role in saving the French wine industry 150 years earlier, Drs. Horvath and Barrangou were called upon by a high-tech food company that was using the bacterium Streptococcus thermophilus in the production of yogurt, mozzarella cheese and other dairy products, commandeering a mine of Strep cultures worth more than 40 billion dollars. This collection of cultures was under attack from bacteriophages, and at eminent risk from being wiped out.

To solve this problem Horvath and colleagues explored sections in the bacterial genome with clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR). The CRISPR system in the strep had highly variable 'space' sequences that would vary in between different strep strains. The researchers obtained two of the principal attacking bacteriophages and mixed them with the strep in test tubes. They found that although the highly efficient killing bacteriophage machines killed about 99.9% of the bacteria, evolution intervened and created a few rare spontaneous mutant strains that were immune to phage attack. They then looked closely at the CRISPR sequences in the immune mutants, and found that they differed from the killed bacterial strains. Those bacterial sequences had acquired new snipets of DNA spliced between the CRISPR repeats, and now matched genome sections of the DNA of the killer phages, thus binding to the phage nucleic acid, and inactivating it using an inherent nuclease cutting tool that could remove a predetermined nucleic acid sequence. This tool, embedded into the CRISPR system is called the "Cas" /Cas9 system. Furthermore, since these "new" sequences were in the bacterial DNA they were being passed on automatically in a genetic manner to following generations.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Order of authorship in the original publication: Jinek, Chylinski, Fonfar, Hauer, Doudna, Charpentier. Doudna, Charpentier and colleagues showed for the first time that the CRISPR evolutionary immune tool of bacteria against bacteriophages could be manipulated, reprogrammed, and guided to make very specific "cuts" on desired target segments of DNA in the lab, making this a gene-targeting and genome-editing tool. This potentially allowed scientists to change or rewrite the genetic code of any organism at will. However, at this point the science was only applied to bacteria. Digital facsimile from PubMedCentral at this link.

In 2020 Charpentier and Doudna were awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry “for the development of a method for genome editing.”

See also Nos. 11845, 11867 and 11849.

 (Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Order of authorship in the original publication: Jinek, East, Cheng...Doudna. Doudna and colleagues presented the first demonstration that the CRISPR Cas/Cas9 bacterial editing tool functions could be applied in human cells. The DNA of cells modified in this research were human embryonic kidney cells called HEK-293. The authors summarized the consequences of this paper in the last sentence of their Abstract, which read, "These results show that RNA-programmed genome editing is a facile strategy for introducing site-specific genetic changes in human cells." Digital facsimile from PubMedCentral at this link.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Order of authorship in the original publication: Cong, Ran, Cox....Zhang. Zhang and colleagues edited the genome of human and mouse cells (mammalian cells). Digital facsimile from PubMedCentral at this link.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Order of authorship in the original publication: Mali, Yang, Esvelt....Church. Church and colleagues reported genome editing in human cells. Digital facsimile from PubMedCentral at this link.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Order of authorship in the original publication: Whitworth, Rowland, Ewen, ... Prather. Using the CRISPR Cas molecular gene-editing tool, Prather and colleagues edited the gene that codes for the CD163 protein in adult male and female pigs gametes (sperm and egg) that acts similar to a receptor to which the Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV) attaches. This artificial genetic mutation created offsprint piglets that were resistant and immune to this panzootic infection which was previously lethal and incurable.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Order of authorship in the original paper: Doubna, Charpenter.

"Abstract

"The advent of facile genome engineering using the bacterial RNA-guided CRISPR-Cas9 system in animals and plants is transforming biology. We review the history of CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced palindromic repeat) biology from its initial discovery through the elucidation of the CRISPR-Cas9 enzyme mechanism, which has set the stage for remarkable developments using this technology to modify, regulate, or mark genomic loci in a wide variety of cells and organisms from all three domains of life. These results highlight a new era in which genomic manipulation is no longer a bottleneck to experiments, paving the way toward fundamental discoveries in biology, with applications in all branches of biotechnology, as well as strategies for human therapeutics."

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

From the 15th to near the end of the 19th century attempts were made to decontaminate mail which had been in contact with plague, smallpox, cholera, and other contagious diseases. 

"This book uses Florentine death registers to show the changing character of plague from the first outbreak of the Black Death in 1348 to the mid-fifteenth century. Through an innovative study of this evidence, Professor Carmichael develops two related strands of analysis. First, she discusses the extent to which true plague epidemics may have occurred, by considering what other infectious diseases contributed significantly to outbreaks of 'pestilence'. She finds that there were many differences between the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century epidemics. She then shows how the differences in the plague reshaped the attitudes of Italian city-dwellers toward plague in the fifteenth century" (publisher).

The first work in English on the history of disease in China traces an epidemic of bubonic plague that began in Yunnan province in the late eighteenth century, spread throughout much of southern China in the nineteenth century, and eventually exploded on the world scene as a global pandemic at the end of the century.

Lillie found that sex steroids in the blood controlled differentiation. "Free-martins, sterile female cows born without sex organs, were a perplexing issue for cattle ranchers. Lillie found that free-martins formed when twins shared the same placenta. The hormones from the male twin would then be shared with the female, stunting the growth of her reproductive system." (Wikipedia article on Frank Rattray Lillie, accessed 3-2020).

Explores the various manifestations of eating disorders in literature, including cannibalism, the magic attributes of food, religiously motivated fasting, and children's eating problems, from the classical period to Toni Morrison, in American, British, and European texts.

"In The Road to Yucca Mountain, Walker covers the U.S. government's controversial attempts to address the engineering and social issues associated with high-level radioactive waste repository (HLRWR) management and spent reactor fuel (SRF). He starts with the Manhattan Project and works through the policy debate. In 1987, Yucca Mountain, Nevada emerged as the most likely candidate for a repository. He explicates the United States Atomic Energy Commission's flop with its first attempt to build a HLRWR in a Kansas salt mine. He addresses deep geological disposal and surface storage of HLRW and SRF as well as fuel reprocessing" (Wikipedia article on J. Samuel Walker, accessed 3-2020).

Pozzi was the firector of the newly formed Royal Veterinary School, Milan, and professor of pathology and hygiene.  Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

‘It is apparent that by the 1640’s Paracelsian medicine had gained momentum in Italy and that iatrochemical theories were being adopted by a number of Italian physicians. […] In 1644 there appeared the first Italian translation from Paracelsus, made by ... Ludovico Locatelli, who included a version of Paracelsus’ Erklärung über etliche Aphorismen des Hippokrates in his Teatro d’arcani. Unlike Bardi, Locatelli was a fervent Paracelsian; he espoused Paracelsus’ medicine and philosophy, and explicitly rejected traditional medicine. Locatelli, who travelled to Germany in 1642, maintained that chemical reactions took place in the human body that were the same as those produced in the laboratory. Natural bodies contained a subtle and pure spiritual substance that chemists could extract and use for their remedies. Following Bovio, Locatelli attacked Galenists as ignorant and greedy, and promoted a great number of chemical remedies, like arcanum corallinum, tartar, vitriol, mercurius vitae, and aurum potabile, most of them taken from Paracelsus. (A. Clericuzio, ‘Chemical Medicine and Paracelsianism in Italy, 1550–1650’, in M. Pelling and S. Mandelbrote, eds., The Practice of Reform in Health, Medicine, and Science, 1500–2000, 2005, p. 77). Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

Provides all the references used in Abbott, Atlas of congenital cardiac disease. New York: American Heart Association, 1936, but not included in the 1936 work.

By 1902 Reed knew that the infectious agent of yellow fever was smaller than bacteria, though he did not specifically call it a virus. "In 1898, the passage of an animal pathogen through a Chamberland filter was reported; it is now named foot‐and‐mouth disease virus. In Cuba, serum from a yellow‐fever case was diluted and passed through a Berkefeld filter (of diatomaceous earth and impervious to bacteria). When inoculated into a non‐immune individual it promptly induced an attack of yellow fever. The word ‘virus’ was not used for this case, but because it might be designated as ultra‐microscopic, the infectious agent of yellow fever was compared with that of foot‐and‐mouth disease of cattle" (Clements & Harbach, "History of the discovery of the mode transmission of yellow fever virus," J. Vector Ecol. , 42 (2017) 208-222).

The yellow fever virus discovered by Reed was the first virus discovered that caused human disease.

Digital text is available from Wiley Online Library at this link.

Order of authorship in the original publication: Niu, Shen, Cui. The authors presented the first evidence that CRISPR can work in primates. Open Archive version available from Cell at this link. "Summary

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

This paper was rejected by both Nature and Science partly for "ethical objections." When published it immediately triggered worldwide controversy among scientists and the public. This was the first application of the CRISPR gene-editing tool to human embryos. The authors used human embryos from fertility clinics which had been created for in vitro fertilization but had an extra set of chromosomes (tripronuclear) which was the result of anomalous fertilization by two sperm instead of one. Such  embryos could undergo only a few stages of development but could not result in a live birth. Of 84 initial embryos, 71 went on to the early stages of division and 54 were chosen for genetic evaluation, leaving 28 of them acceptable. However, a surprising number of "off target" mutations were introduced by the CRISPR/Cas complex acting on other parts of the cell's genome with catastrophic results. This led the authors to stop the experiment.

Open access: available from link.springer.com at this link.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Order of authorship in the original publication: Gaudelli, Komor, Rees....Liu. 

Liu and colleagues developed an advanced CRISPR system that can edit pairings of DNA nucleotide bases Adenine and Thymine into Guanine and Cytosine. In order to achieve this they created a new enzyme in the lab to chemically convert and work on the above pairings. They called this enzyme a "base editor."  In theory this tool would enable this improved CRISPR able to target a substantial fraction of SNPs (Single-nucleotide polymorphisms) associated with human genetic diseases.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Order of authorship in the original publication: Anzalone, Randolph, Davis....Liu.

Liu and colleagues modified the CRISPR tool to create the "prime editing" or precise genome editing technique. Working with human and mouse cells, the authors used a heavily modified Cas9 protein and the guide RNA. The new guide called "pegRNA" contains an RNA template with a reverse transcriptase which makes DNA for a new "desired/normal" DNA sequence from and on the blueprint carried in the pegRNA that is added to the genome at the abnormal / target location. With this new tool they performed 175 different edits, and as proof of principle, they created and then corrected the mutations that cause sicle cell anemia and Tay Sachs.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

A review of the scope of potential genome editing applications, the strategies from the most basic (2012) to the most recent (i.e. No. 11866), the current status of tissue specific delivery, accuracy, precision and safety of genome editing, clinical/therapeutic genome editing, and heritable genome editing. The 115 references to landmarks in the brief history of this science are arranged with bold letter synopsis under each, documenting watershed moments over the previous decade. Doudma concluded her Abstract with, "Genome editing is— or will soon be— in the clinic for several diseases, with more applications under development. The rapid pace of the field demands active efforts to ensure that this breakthrough technology is used responsibly to treat, cure and prevent genetic diseases."

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Order of authorship in the original publication: Hampton, Watson, Fineran. Summarizes, and documents with 173 references, the extensive research on the multitude of methods that bacteriophages use to disable the CRISPR immune system attacks from their bacteria hosts.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Though relatively brief (50pp.) this may be the first historical study of opium in English. Text in English and Chinese. Digital facsimile from the Hathi Turst at this link. Reprinted without the Chinese text, Shanghai: American Presbyterian Mission Press, 1898. Digital facsimile of the 1898 edition also from the Hathi Trust at this link.

"generally considered to be the first attempt at a scientific systemization of plants" (D.S.B., 3, 412-13.) Digital facsimile from Biodiversity Heritage Library at this link.

A popular guide to healthy living, dealing with such topics as sleep, exercise, sex, hygiene, drugs, and especially diet, with an emphasis on the qualities and properties of  foods, including their cooking and preparation. It also includes information about drinking, drinks and especially wines. The work is considered a synthesis of little known Jewish and Arabic teachings about food with information from more common western texts. ISTC No. ig00111000. Digital facsimile from Bayerische StaatsBibliothek at this link.

Abstract:

"Three worldwide (pandemic) outbreaks of influenza occurred in the 20th century: in 1918, 1957, and 1968. The latter 2 were in the era of modern virology and most thoroughly characterized. All 3 have been informally identified by their presumed sites of origin as Spanish, Asian, and Hong Kong influenza, respectively. They are now known to represent 3 different antigenic subtypes of influenza A virus: H1N1, H2N2, and H3N2, respectively. Not classified as true pandemics are 3 notable epidemics: a pseudopandemic in 1947 with low death rates, an epidemic in 1977 that was a pandemic in children, and an abortive epidemic of swine influenza in 1976 that was feared to have pandemic potential. Major influenza epidemics show no predictable periodicity or pattern, and all differ from one another. Evidence suggests that true pandemics with changes in hemagglutinin subtypes arise from genetic reassortment with animal influenza A viruses."

Full text available from PubMedCentral at this link.

The first treatise on gynecology written by a Portuguese author, the work was written in two parts: Part one, about theory, was titled De natura mulierum (On female nature) and was divided into four books: (1) Anatomy of the uterus and the breasts; (2) Semen and menstruation; (3) Intercourse, conception, and pregnancy; (4) Childbirth and breastfeeding. Part two, titled De morbis mulierum (On female diseases) was more practical in nature, but was also divided into four books: (1) Diseases common to all women; (2) Diseases of widows and virgins; (3) Diseases related to generation and pregnancy; (4) Puerperal and wetnurses’ diseases.

In exploring issues in physiology and anatomy, embryology, conception, sex, pregnancy, abortion, infertility, childbirth, monstrous beings, etc de Castro evaluated classical and Arabic traditional thinking on these subjects in the writings of Hippocrates, Aristotle, Pliny, Soranus, Galen, Averroes, Avicenna, etc., He also established a multivocal dialogue between traditional ideas and new ideas, engaging with the work of more contemporary authors such as Du Laurens, Amato Lusitano, Mercado, Akakia, Paré, Rousset, Mercuriale and others. 

Digital facsimile of the 1604 edition from Google Books at this link.

The first Italian work on resusciation. Testa’s work is also one of the earliest on the subject published after the foundation in 1767 of Amsterdam’s pioneering Maatschappij tot Redding van Drenkelingen, the first organization devoted to rescuing and reviving persons apparently drowned. Prior to 1767 anyone taken from the water apparently lifeless was presumed dead and no attempts were made to revive them; however, after the Amsterdam society began publishing reports in 1768 its methods were rapidly adopted throughout Europe. Testa’s book contains three references to the Maatschappi, as well as to numerous other authorities on drowning both ancient and contemporary. He carefully described the symptoms of drowning—water in the lungs, cessation of respiration, accumulation of blood in the head and chest—but denied that these were the cause of death, instead ascribing drowning deaths to phlogiston (inflammable air) retained in the lungs. Testa believed that drowning was a gradual death, therefore resuscitation was possible even if all perceptible signs of life were absent. Testa’s hypothesis on the causes of drowning was not widely accepted. 

Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

The most valuable features of this work are the exceptionally fine and delicate histologic illustrations engraved on steel and printed on thick paper to eliminate show-through. Each image is faced with detailed explanatory captions. Of the images the author writes in the preface (p. vi):

"The one hundred and thirty-seven illustrations are all original, and were made by Mr. Hermann Faber and Mr. Erwin F. Faber. It would be impossible to exaggerate the faithfulness and skill with which they have performed their work. All but one of the drawings are by Mr. Erwin F. Faber, and the etchings on steel are partly by one and partly by the other of the artists. The sections of tissues are, with two exceptions, my own preparations. The drawings were made with the camera lucida, the outlines, dimensions and relations of parts being thus kept true to nature. With each picture is a scale, magnified to the same extent as the tissues, which enables anyone to ascertain the enlargement. The method, as concerns the etchings, has probably been seldom if ever previously employed. The reflection of the magnified object was thrown by the camera lucida upon the steel plate and traced directly with the needle by the etcher, thus obviating the necessity for the intermediate sketch which is ordinarily used in etching. For accuracy this method cannot be surpassed."

Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link. (Unfortunately, the scan published was done artlessly, and fails to provide high quality reproductions of the very delicate etchings.)

Order of authorship in the original publication: Mendoza, Nieweglowska, Govindarajan. The authors showed that the large phage that specifically infects a Pseudomonas bacterium segregates its DNA, which the phage CRISPR would attack and destroy, by building a proteinaceous compartment or wall around its DNA. This protein barrier makes its DNA inaccessible to the CRISPR nuclease attack and destruction. This could be called the operation of natural selection at the molecular level.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Order of authorship in the original publication: Al-Shayeb, Sachdeva, Chen.... Doudna.  Open access, available from nature.com at this link.

This paper was a collaboration of about 50 scientists of diverse regions and specialities, assembled to advance knowledge of the bacteriophage evolutionary response and the tools huge phages possess against the onslaught of the bacterial immune system. The authors reconstructed 351 phage sequences and derived metagenomics datasets acquired from human feces, buccal areas, animal fecal samples, freshwater lakes and rivers, marine ecosystems sediments, hot springs soils, deep subsurface habitats, etc., mirroring most aspects of the earth's ecosystems. The main findings of this research were:

1. Many of the genomes of large phages have a length that rivals those of small celled bacteria.

2. These expanded genomes of large phages include diverse and previously undescribed CRISPR-Cas systems, TRNA's, tRNA synthases, tRNA modification enzymes, ribosomal proteins and others.

3. CRISPR-Cas systems of phages have the capacity to silence host transcriptional factors and translational genes, potentially as part of a larger interaction network that intercepts translation to redirect biosynthesis to phage encoded functions.

4. Some phages may repurpose bacterial CRISPR-Cas systems to eliminate competing phages.

5. The number of huge genome phages was far higher than expected.

6. Some phages that lack genes for interference and spacer integration have similar CRISPR repeats as their hosts and may therefore use the Cas proteins of the host.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

This study of the plants around Cambridge includes some of the classification work of Joachim Jungius, whose classification system did not begin to be published until 1662. Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

The first manual of Philippine botany published in the Philippines. The first two editions (1837 and 1845) were unillustrated. From 1877 to 1883 Celestine Fernandez Villar (1838-1907), together with others including Antonio Llanos, published an illustrated posthumous edition printed by C. Verdaguer of Barcelona.

Flora de Filipinas, según el sistema sexual de Linneo. Adicionada con el manuscrito inédito del. fr. Ignacio Mercado, las obras del fr. Antonio Llanos, y de un apéndice con todas las nuevas investigaciones botanicas referentes al archipiélago Filifino [sic]. Gran edicion. 4 vols. Manila: Establecimento Tipografico, 1877-1883.

Digital facsimile of the 1837 edition from the Internet Archive at this link.

In the 10th edition of his Systema naturae, Linnaeus introduced binomial nomenclature for animals. He had previously introduced binomial nomenclature for plants in his Species Plantarum (1753). In this edition Linnaeus also introduced the term mammalia. Technically, Linnaeus first applied the term in the thesis of one of his students: Hager, Johann, Natura pelagi, quam, consens. experient. Facult. Medic. in illustri Academia Upsaliensi, sub præsidio ... Caroli Linnæi ... publicæ ventilationi offert ... (Upsalla, 1757).

"Before 1758, most biological catalogues had used polynomial names for the taxa included, including earlier editions of Systema Naturae. The first work to consistently apply binomial nomenclature across the animal kingdom was the 10th edition of Systema Naturae. The International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature therefore chose 1 January 1758 as the "starting point" for zoological nomenclature, and asserted that the 10th edition of Systema Naturae was to be treated as if published on that date.^[1] Names published before that date are unavailable, even if they would otherwise satisfy the rules. The only work which takes priority over the 10th edition is Carl Alexander Clerck's Svenska Spindlar or Aranei Suecici, which was published in 1757, but is also to be treated as if published on January 1, 1758.^{[1]  (Wikipedia article on} 10th edition of Systema Naturae, accessed 3-2020)

Digital facsimile from the Biodiversity Heritage Library at this link.

Posthumous first publication of Jungius's Isagoge phytoscopia, an expansion or supplement to his system of botanical classification first published in his Doxoscopiae physicae minores (1662). The second edition of the Doxoscopiae was included in this edition, which was edited by Jungius's student, Martin Fogel. Jungius was the first to appreciate and expand upon the botanical ideas of Cesalpino. Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

Jungius was the first to appreciate and expand upon the botanical ideas of Cesalpino. In this posthumously published work, edited by his student Martin Fogel, and in his  Isagoge phytoscopica published in 1669, Jungius gave a remarkable account of plant morphology, analyzing plants into a limited number of fundamental parts, and describing these and their relations ton one another with precise and comprehensive terminology. Jungius's methods of morphological analysis were adopted by John Ray and Linnaeus.

Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

This was the first system of botanical nomenclature adopted by an international governing body. Digital facsimile from Biodiversity Heritage Library at this link.

Translated into English as Laws of botanical nomenclature adopted by the International Botanical Congress, held at Paris in August 1867; together with an historical introduction and a commentary. London: L. Reeve & Co., 1868. Digital facsimile of the English translation from Biodiversity Heritage Library at this link.

This work work organized and systematized the huge mass of data being collected by the numerous scientific expeditions of the time to explain the geographical distribution of plants. Digital facsimile from BnF Gallica at this link.

Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

The dating and contents of this pamphlet are discussed in Hoolihan, An annotated catalogue of the Edward C. Atwater Collection of American popular medicine & health reform S-741.1.

Allison was the first to connect a hereditary disease (sickle cell disease) to an infectious disease (malaria). He proved that heterozygous and homozygous individuals to the sickle cell trait or disease respectively show a resistance to malarial illness which allows them to survive while others die. The sickle cell individuals then survive to puberty, reproduce and pass down their ‘beneficial’ trait. Digital facsimile from PubMedCentral at this link.

In 1956 Allison published a semi-popular version of this research as "Sickle cells and evolution," Scientific American, 195 (1956) 87-94.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

In 2014 Allison was interviewed concerning his sickle cell research in this video from hhmi biointeractive:

The authors showed that the Plasmodium vivax parasite requires the Fya/Fyb Duffy antigen/chemokine receptor on the surface of red blood cells for penetration of human red blood cells. Because most African and American blacks have the FyFy genotype they are resistant to infection by P. vivax.

(Thanks to Juan Weiss for this reference and its interpretation.)

Traces the arguments of the participants in the coca debates in Peru during the last four centuries. Gagliano surveys the role of the leaf in Peru's socio-political history, focusing on coca usage as a source of controversy for the policymakers among the coastal elites who have dominated Peruvian politics and economics since the Spanish conquest. At the same time, coca's supporters have drawn upon myth, scientific ignorance, and economic exigency to make a strong case for "the divine plant of the Incas". It is no surprise that controversy still reigns over coca use in Peru. Its use is deeply embedded in Andean culture, and there is no quick or easy way to end its cultivation and use among people who have relied on it for centuries. 

A detailed guide to the way that botanic drugs were identified and produced in America at the end of the 19th century. Digital facsimile from the Hathi Trust at this link.

Describes the botany, history, distribution, cultivation, preparation, and dosage of more than 400 psychoactive plants and fungi. The encyclopedia also offers information on ritual and medicinal use. Also includes 168 detailed monographs on the major psychoactive plants (e.g., Cannabis, Datura, and Papaver) as well as 20 full monographs on psychoactive fungi (e.g., Psilocybe and Amanita).

The Appendix is Medieval gynecological texts: A handlist. This is "a list of all gynecological texts currently known to me from western Europe written between the 4th and 15th centuries. It includes gynecological excerpts from larger texts when they circulated independently. It also includes all vernacular gynecological textes, including those in Arabic (from Muslim Spain) and Hebrew...."

"Méry became closely associated with the comparative-anatomical work led by Claude Perrault and J.-G. Duverney. As a member of this group, Méry made contributions to their joint publications, in which each man’s specific contributions usually cannot be determined. Méry worked closely with Duverney until about 1693, when their differing interpretations of mammalian fetal circulation estranged them. The coolness that resulted was apparent to Martin Lister, when he visited Paris in 1698. Méry probably did more to retard than to aid the understanding of this problem. Méry claimed that the blood flowed from the left to the right through the foramen ovale in the interatrial septum. This view was prevalent enough that Haller look time to refute it. Méry initially formulated his theory from a false analogy between a tortoise heart and a fetal mammalian heart. Ultimately he based his theory of fetal circulation on a comparison of the cross sections of the pulmonary artery and the aorta, concluding that not all of the blood passing through the pulmonary artery and returning to the heart by the pulmonary vein could pass into the aorta. Instead, he thought, a portion of that blood passed through the foramen ovale from the left to the right side of the heart.

"Méry erred in assuming that the cross section of an artery is the only factor determining the amount of blood that can flow through it. He compounded this error by his method of measuring the relative cross sections of the arteries. He may have used fresh preparations for his measurements on cows and sheep. For those on human beings, he probably used preserved specimens, dried ones as a rule. The results were inconsistent at best. For example, Martin Lister described a fetal heart that he saw in Méry’s collection which had no valve for the foramen ovale, and which was open in both directions and had a diameter nearly equal to that of the aorta. For two decades numerous arguments were presented on both sides of the controversy between Méry’s views and the traditional views dating back to Harvey and Lower. Méry held his views against all opposition to the end" (DSB). See Kenneth J. Franklin, “Jean Méry (1645–1722) and His Ideas on the Foetal Blood Flow,” in Annals of Science, 5 (1945), 203–338.

Frère Jacques Beaulieu, the work of which the first part of Méry's book refers, was a notorious quack travelling lithotomist.

"A general introduction to the history of medieval Jewish medicine, its origins in Muslim countries, the main Arabic and Judeo-Arabic texts, and the renaissance of Hebrew as a language of science in the 12th-15th centuries is followed by a survey and analysis of the 15 extant medieval Jewish gynaecological texts (including translations from Greek, Latin and Arabic as well as original Hebrew treatises) and a comparison of the particular characteristics of Jewish gynaecology to the Latin and Arabic traditions. In the second part of the work the author presents critical editions [in Hebrew] with translations of six medieval Jewish gynaecological texts" (publisher).