Choris was the artist aboard the Rurik, 1815-18, commanded by Otto von Kotzebue. After visiting islands in the South Seas, Kotzebue explored the North American coast and landed twice in the Hawaiian Islands. Choris's work, illustrated with 104 plates, is of particular interest for the outstanding images, and includes scientific information by Cuvier, Chamisso, and Gall. The book was issued in 22 parts. Buyers had the option of ordering the plates in black & white, the plates partially colored and partially uncolored, or with the plates entirely colored.

Digital facsimile from Biodiversity Heritage Library at this link.

In 1836 King Louis-Philippe, enthusiastic for Southern Hemisphere exploration, sponsored Dumont d'Urville's plan for a circumnavigation focusing on the South Seas. D'Urville had already distinguished himself on two Pacific expeditions and was eager to rival the achievements of James Cook. Between 1837 and 1840, the ships Astrolabe and Zélée explored the waters of the Antarctic area and Oceania in extremely harsh conditions; almost forty crew members died or deserted. However, d'Urville discovered a new portion of the Antarctic coast, shed light on the ethnography of several Pacific islands and brought back multitudes of botanical specimens. D'Urville published his account of the voyage, including his contributions to geography, natural history and ethnography in 10 vols, from 1841 to1846. Vol. 10, includes extracts from his correspondence, as well as a biography. The extensive scientific team who sailed on the voyage published their reports in 13 additional volumes. Their works are listed below.

Histoire du Voyage par M. Dumont d'Urville 10 vols, 1841-1843-46- [47]. Text. Plus Atlas pittoresque. 2 vols. 200 plates, 8 maps.

Anthropologie par M. [Pierre-Marie-Alexandre] Dumoutier, texte ...par M. É[mile]. Blanchard. 1854.

Anthropologie Atlas (50 plates) 1842-47.

Zoologie, par MM. [Jacques Bernard] Hombron et [C. H.] Jacquinot

Vol. 1. De l'homme dans ses rapports avec la Création, par M. Hombron. 1846.

Vol. 2. Considérations générales sur l'anthropologie suivies d'observations sur les races humaines de l'Amérique méridionale et de l'Océanie, par M. H. Jacquinot.

Vol. 3. Mammifères et oiseaux, par M. H. Jacinot et M. [Jacques] Pucheran.

           Reptiles et poissons, par M. H. Jacquinot et M. A. Guichenot.

           Crustacés par M. H. Jacquinot et M. H. Lucas. 1853.

Vol. 4. Description des insects, par E[mile]. Blanchard. 1853. 

Vol. 5. Description des mollusques, coquilles et zoophytes, par L. Rousseau. 1854.

Zoologie Atlas: Mammifères, 29 colored plates; Oiseaux, 37 colored plates; Reptiles, 18 colored plates; Poissons, 5 colored plates, Insectes, 25 colored plates; Crustacés, 9 colored plates; Mollusques, 20 colored plates; Zoophytes, 3 colored plates. 1842-53.

Botanique

Vol. 1. Plantes cellulaires par  [Jean Pierre François] C[amille] Montagne.

Vol. 2. Description des plantes vasculaires, par J. Decaisne.

Botanique Atlas. 66 plates (20 colored). 1852.

Géologie, Minérologie et Géographie physique...par M. J. Grange. 2 vols. 1848, 1854.

Géologie Atlas. 9 plates, 4 colored maps.

Physique, par MM. Vincendon-Dumoulin et Coupvent-Desbois. Vol. 1. 1842.

Hydrographie, [par M. Vincendon-Dumoulin. 2 vols. 1843, 1851.

Hydrographie Atlas. 57 maps. 1847.

Digital facsimile of d'Urville's 10 vols. texte from Biodiversity Heritage Library at this link.

Vol. 1. Historique, by François Péron. 1807

Vol. 2. Historique [by Francois Péron, completed by L. de Freycinet] 1816.

Vol. 3. Navigation et géographie, [by L. Freycinet.] 1815. 

Atlas historique [by C. A. Leseur & N. Petit] 1817.

[The following summary of the complex authorship and history of this voyage is a conflation of selections from various articles from the Wikipedia, accessed 3-2020:]

In October 1800  Napoleon selected the French explorer, cartographer, naturalist and hydrographer Nicolas Baudin (1754-1803) to lead what became known as the Baudin expedition to map the coast of Australia (New Holland). To make the voyage and conduct research Baudin had two ships, Géographe and Naturaliste captained by Hamelin, and a suite of nine zoologists and botanists, including Jean Baptiste Leschenault de la Tour. Baudin left Le Havre on 19 October 1800, stopped off in St. Croix, Tenerife, then sailed straight to the Ile de France arriving on 15 March 1801, 145 days later. The voyage, overlong with early rationing left sailors and scientists feeling discouraged, but the colony was happy to build up the crews in case of conflict and to make use of the new skills they brought with them. Baudin reached Australia in May 1801, and would explore and map the western coast and a part of the little-known southern coast of the continent. The scientific expedition proved a great success, with more than 2500 new species discovered. The French also met Aboriginal peoples and treated them with great respect.

In April 1802 Baudin met Matthew Flinders, also engaged in charting the coastline, in Encounter Bay in present-day South Australia. Baudin then stopped at the British colony at Sydney for supplies, and from there he sent home the Naturaliste, carrying all of the specimens that had been collected by both ships up to that time. Realizing that the Géographe could not venture into some of the shallow waters along the Australian coast that he was intending to survey, he bought a new ship — Casuarina — named after the wood it was made from, and placed it under the command of Louis de Freycinet, who would 15 years later make his own circumnavigation in the corvette l'Uranie. Baudin then headed back to Tasmania, before continuing along the southern and western coasts of Australia to Timor, mapping as he went. In very poor health, Baudin then turned for home, stopping at Mauritius, where he died.

During the voyage, which charted significant stretches of the Australian coast between 1801 and 1803, the naturalist François Péron clashed repeatedly with Baudin. When Stanislas Levillain and René Maugé died, Péron rose to prominence as the sole remaining zoologist. (Baudin had already lost numerous officers, sailors, savants and artists who deserted in Mauritius.) With the aid of the artist Charles Alexandre Lesueur, Péron was largely responsible for gathering some 100,000 zoological specimens—the most comprehensive Australian natural history collection to date. Although he died before he could fully study his specimens, Péron made a major contribution to the foundations of the natural sciences in Australia and was a prescient ecological thinker. He was also a pioneer oceanographer who conducted important experiments on sea water temperatures at depth.

Baudin died before he could return to France, and it was Péron who began writing the official account of the expedition: Voyage de découvertes aux Terres Australes. In doing so, he committed a great injustice to his former commander's memory by magnifying his faults and frequently distorting the historical record. In the wake of the resumed fighting between France and Britain, Péron also drafted a secret Mémoire sur les établissements anglais à la Nouvelle Hollande, which advocated a French conquest of Port Jackson with the aid of rebellious Irish convicts.^[1]

Péron died of tuberculosis in his hometown of Cérilly in 1810. He was just thirty-five years old. The task of completing the official account of the expedition fell to Louis de Freycinet.

Digital facsimile from Biodiversity Heritage Library at this link.

Includes four engravings based upon photographs of Union soldiers who were emaciated following imprisonment at Belle Isle. The contributors included Dorothea Dix and several military surgeons, including William Ely, G. B. Parker, and J. Woodbridge. Mott's commission was charged with "ascertaining, by inquiry and investigation, the true physical condition of prisoners, recently discharged by exchange, from confinement at Richmond and elsewhere, with in the Rebel lines; whether they did, in fact, during such confinement, suffer materially from want of food, or from its defective quality, or from other privations, or sources of disease; and whether their privations and sufferings were designedly inflicted on them by military or other authority of the Rebel Government, or were due to causes which such authorities could not control. And that the gentleman above named be requested to visit such camps of paroled or discharged prisoners as may be accessible to them, and to take, in writing, the depositions of so many of such prisoners as may enable them to arrive at accurate results."

Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

In 1817 Freycinet commanded the Uranie, accompanied by marine hydrologist Louis Isidore Duperrey, the artist Jacques Arago, junior draughtsman Adrien Taunay the Younger and others, and a guard of seventeen officers. Freycinet sailed to Rio de Janeiro to take a series of pendulum measurements and to make observations, not only in geography and ethnology, but in astronomy, terrestrial magnetism, and meteorology, and for the collection of specimens in natural history. Freycinet also managed to sneak his wife Rose de Freycinet aboard.

For three years, Freycinet cruised about the Pacific, visiting Australia, the Mariana Islands, Hawaiian Islands, and other Pacific islands, South America, and other places, and, notwithstanding the loss of the Uranie on the Falkland Islands during the return voyage, returned to France with fine collections in all departments of natural history, and with voluminous notes and drawings of the countries visited.

The set consists of:

1. Historique par L. de Freycinet.  2  vols. plus Atlas of 113 plates), 1825-29.

2. Recherches sur les langues des sauvages. 

3. Zoologie, par MM. Quoy et Gaimard. 1 vol. plus Atlas of 96 plates.

4. Botanique. Par M. C. Gaudichaud. 1 vol. plus Atlas of 120 plates.

5. Observations du pendule et de magnétisme. 

6. Météorologie 1 vol.

7. Hydrographie. 1 vol. plus Atlas de 22 plates.

 Digital facsimile from Biodiversity Heritage Library at this link.

Regarding Garioponto or Gariopontus see Florence Eliza Glaze, "Galen refashioned: Gariopontus in the Later Middle Ages and Reniassance," Textual healing: Essays on Medieval and early modern medicine, edited by Elizabeth Lane Furdell (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2005). Digital facsimile from Bayerische StaatsBibliothek at this link.

A collection of articles by various experts supporting the opening of the planned Johns Hopkins Medical School to women. Contributors included Cardinal Gibbons, Mary Putnam Jacobi, Josephine Lowell, C. F. Folsom, Carey M. Thomas, and Osler. "In light of the experience in Switzerland, Dr. Osler expressed himself as entirely in favor of the admission of women on a co-educational basis." When it opened in 1893 The Johns Hopkins Medical School accepted a limited number of women students.

Digital facsimile from the U.S. National Library of Medicine at this link.

"Jacobi's paper was a response to Dr. Edward H. Clarke's earlier publication, Sex in Education; or, A Fair Chance for the Girls (1875), a book claiming that any physical or mental exertion during menstruation could lead to women becoming infertile.^[4] Jacobi did not believe this was the case, and to test the idea she collected extensive physiological data on women throughout their menstrual cycle, including muscle strength tests before and after menstruation. She concluded that "there is nothing in the nature of mentruation to imply the necessity, or even desirability, of rest." (Wikipedia article on Mary Putnam Jacobi, accessed 3-2020). 

Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

Hayward's case report of the first major operation performed under ether anesthesia, which he performed at the Massachusetts General Hospital on November 7, 1846, three weeks after Warren's first operation using ether on October 16, 1846. For the first experiment with ether as a surgical anesthetic Warren chose a minor operation-- the removal of a small vascular tumor. Hayward followed Warren's initial experiment the following day with second minor operation using ether for removal of a small lipoma of the arm on October 17, 1846.

Though both operations were successful, Morton was initially unwilling to disclose the nature of his new anesthetic agent, as he wished to patent it, and no further public trials were permitted for a period of three weeks. In early November Henry Jacob Bigelow informed Morton that his initial demonstrations would be unconvincing to the surgical establishment unless his anesthetic agent could be used successfully during the performance of a "capital" or major operation, after which Morton asked Hayward if he might use his anesthetic agent during an amputation of the thigh that Hayward was schedule to perform. Hayward wrote:

"The patient was a girl of 20 years of age, named Alice Mohan, who had suffered for two years from a disease of the knee, which terminated in suppuration of the joint and caries of the bones. For some months before the operation her constitutional symptoms had become threatening, and the removal of the limb seemed to be the only chance for her life. The ether was administered by Dr. Morton. In a little more than three minutes she was brought under the influence of it; the limb was removed and all the vessels were tied but the last, which was the sixth, before she gave any indication of consciousness or suffering. She then groaned and cried out faintly. She afterwards said that she was totally unconscious, and insensible up to that time, and she seemed to be much surprised when she was told that her limb was off. She recovered rapidly, suffering less than patients usually do after amputation of the thigh, regained her strength and flesh, and was discharged well on the 22nd of December."

Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link. Hayward's paper was published from a different setting of type in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal on April 21, 1847.

The first publication in England of the discovery of ether anesthesia appeared in the "Medical Intelligence" section of the London Medical Gazette on December 18, 1846. Prior to Fulton & Stanton's discovery of this article it was long assumed that the earliest publication in England was published ten days later, on the last page of The Lancet for Saturday, December 28, 1846. The text of the "Medical Intelligence" entry in the London Medical Gazette is much more substantial than the brief notice in The Lancet. The editor of the London Medical Gazette wrote, "We learn on the authority of a highly respectable physician of Boston, U.S.,[Henry Jacob Bigelow] that a Dr. Morton, a surgeon-dentist of that city, has discovered a process whereby in a few minutes the most profound sleep may be induced, during which teeth may be extracted, and severe operations performed, without the patient being sensible of pain, or having any knowledge of the proceedings of the operator. The process simply consists in causing the patient to inhale the vapour of ether for as short period, and the effect is to produce complete insensibility." See John F. Fulton, "The reception in England of Henry Jacob Bigelow's original paper on anesthesia," New Eng. J. Med., 235 (1946) 745-746.

The most ancient testimony concerning the opium poppy found to date was inscribed in cuneiform script on a small white clay tablet at the end of the third millennium BC. This tablet was discovered in 1954 during excavations at Nippur, and is currently kept at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Deciphered by Samuel Noah Kramer and Martin Leve, it is considered to be the most ancient pharmacopoeia in existence.^[7] (Wikipedia article on History of General Anesthesia, accessed 3-2020).

Rickham founded the first neonatal surgical unit in the world, at Alder Hey Children's Hospital in Liverpool. This unit became the benchmark for similar units around the world. It brought about an improvement in the survival of newborn infants undergoing surgery from 22% to 74%.

"The history of human coronaviruses began in 1965 when Tyrrell and Bynoe found that they could passage a virus named B814. It was found in human embryonic tracheal organ cultures obtained from the respiratory tract of an adult with a common cold. The presence of an infectious agent was demonstrated by inoculating the medium from these cultures intranasally in human volunteers; colds were produced in a significant proportion of subjects, but Tyrrell and Bynoe were unable to grow the agent in tissue culture at that time. At about the same time, Hamre and Procknow were able to grow a virus with unusual properties in tissue culture from samples obtained from medical students with colds. Both B814 and Hamre's virus, which she called 229E, were ether-sensitive and therefore presumably required a lipid-containing coat for infectivity, but these 2 viruses were not related to any known myxo- or paramyxoviruses. While working in the laboratory of Robert Chanock at the National Institutes of Health, McIntosh et al reported the recovery of multiple strains of ether-sensitive agents from the human respiratory tract by using a technique similar to that of Tyrrell and Bynoe. These viruses were termed “OC” to designate that they were grown in organ cultures....

"In the late 1960s, Tyrrell was leading a group of virologists working with the human strains and a number of animal viruses. These included infectious bronchitis virus, mouse hepatitis virus and transmissible gastroenteritis virus of swine, all of which had been demonstrated to be morphologically the same as seen through electron microscopy. This new group of viruses was named coronavirus (corona denoting the crown-like appearance of the surface projections) and was later officially accepted as a new genus of viruses."

Digital facsimile from Harvard Library at this link.

A comprehensive survey written two years after the pandemic, including historical information back to 1893. Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

Digital facsimile from the Hathi Trust at this link.

Public health advice from the U.S. Public Health Service published during the pandemic.

First published as Epidemic and peace 1918, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1976. New edition, 2003.

This otherwise comprehensive handbook excludes medicine, per se. Sections most directly pertinent to the life sciences are:

Touwaide, Alain. "Botany". Vol. 1, pp. 145-180.

       This a very detailed bibliographical essay covering the history of Western and Arabic texts concerning botany and materia medica in the Middle Ages. Digital facsimile from Academia.edu at this link.

Touwaide, Alain. "Pharmacy". Vol. 2, pp. 1056-1089.

Touwaide, Alain. "Pharmaceutical literature." Vol. 3, pp. 1979-1999.

To identify an uncultured and unidentified pathogen that was often visualized in tissue sections of lesions of bacillary angiomatosis with Warthin-Starry staining, the authors utilized two different techniques that were innovative at the time: 16S ribosomal RNA analysis and PCR. This was seen as a milestone in the molecular identification of pathogens that could be "seen" but not cultured. The authors indicated in their abstract that "this bacillus may also cause cat scratch disease." They concluded that "The cause of bacillary angiomatosis is a previously uncharacterized rickettsia-like organism, closedly related to R. quintana. This method for the identification of an cultured pathogen may be applicable to other infectious diseases of unknown cause." Digital facsimile from nejm.org at this link.

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

Order of authorship in the original publication: Slater, Welch, Hensel.... Hensel, a medical technologist working in the clinical microbiology laboratory, University Hospitals, Oklahoma City, used innovative culture methods to discover a previously unknown gram negative bacillus in blood cultures of two HIV patients with persistent fever and bacteremia. They stated that the organism most closely resembled "Rochalimaea quintana" (now named Bartonella quintana).

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

Order of authorship in the original publication: Regnery, Anderson, Clarridge....The authors paid homage to the innovative work of medical technologist Diane Hensel by naming the species after her. It was initially grouped into the Rochalimea genus, later reclassified to Bartonella.

The abstract read:

"Isolation of a Rochalimaea-like organism from a febrile patient infected with human immunodeficiency virus was confirmed. Analysis of 16S rRNA gene sequences, together with polymerase chain reaction and restriction endonuclease length polymorphism analysis of a portion of the citrate synthase gene, demonstrated that the agent is closely related to members of the genus Rochalimaea and that the isolate is genotypically identical to the presumptive etiologic agent of bacillary angiomatosis. However, the same genotypic analyses readily differentiated the new isolate from isolates of other recognized Rochalimaea species as well as other genera of bacteria previously suggested as putative etiologic agents of bacillary angiomatosis and related syndromes. We propose that the novel species be referred to as Rochalimaea henselae sp. nov."

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

Order of authorship in the original publication: Dolan, Wong, Regnery....The authors demonstrated that Rochalimea henselae (now Bartonella henselae) is the infectious agent causing cat scratch fever.

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

Order of authorship in the original publication: Chomel, Kasten, Floyd-Hawkins.... Chomel and colleagues studied 47 cattery cats from a private home for 12 months. They found that such cats typically are bacteremic. Since fleas feed on the cats' blood they studied the fleas that were biting the cats (132 fleas) and found that 34% of those fleas were positive for the bacterium. This explained why people who were not actually scratched by a cat, but were instead bitten by a flea that had bitten an infected cat, could catch cat scratch fever.

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

The authors described an organism resembling, but different from, Bartonella bacilliformis (Oroya fever) on a patient returning from Peru. The patient recalled numerous insect bites on her legs and feet during her trip to Peru. The authors identified a "Bartonella isolate BMGH DQ683199" nearly identiical to a Bartonella species identified in a pulex flea from Cuzco, Peru, and posited this as the probable vector. The organism was named Bartonella Rochalimaea Eremeeva in honor of the first author. Digital facsimile from nejm.org at this link.

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

Digital facsimile from Biodiversity Heritage Library at this link.

Reprint, with a forward by Johannes Steudel. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 2001.

Showcases the work of forty-six scholars from around the world, and comprises an Introduction followed by forty-nine chapters, concluded with a general index. Each chapter is followed by a bibliography featuring multilingual academic work published up to 2016.

"All too often ancient herbal and other remedies have been dismissed as ’simply’ folklore, of no relevance to medical science. John Riddle’s approach, however, has been to explore the history of drugs with the hypothesis that ancient and medieval medicines were effective - a methodology that he expounds in the final essay (hitherto unpublished). Indeed, he shows, both from detailed case-studies and from the comparison of the listings given by classical and medieval authorities with those in modern pharmacopoeias, that our ancestors had discovered and made effective use of many of the drugs used in medicine today, from antiseptics and analgesics to oral contraceptives, even chemotherapy for cancer. There is the suggestion, therefore, that more careful examination and identification of the drugs used in the past may reveal chemicals that can be exploited anew. Central to these studies is the investigation of how a drug was used and how knowledge about it was transmitted - and perhaps also distorted in the process - from the Classical world through the Middle Ages" (publisher).

Iconographic reconstruction and original size facsimile in color of 127 sheets, including 97 preserved in Istanbul and 30 sheets dispersed in different institutional collections in Europe and the U.S., of this illuminated manuscript of the Arabic text of Dioscorides that was completed in 1224 in Baghdad, and preserved in Byzantium. For each plate Touwaide provided a commentary. He also provided an historical introduction in the first volume. 

See also, Muntner, "The antiquity of Asaph the Physician and his editorshoip of the earliest Hebrew book of medicine," Bull. Hist. Med., 25 (1951) 101-131.

Elizabeth Blackwell was the first woman to graduate M.D. in the United States. This paper on typhus was her first publication, and is thus the first publication in America by a woman physician educated in the United States. Digital facsimile from the Hathi Turst at this link.

Blackwell's first book, a volume about the physical and mental development of girls, emphasizing the value of exercise, intended to help prepare young women for motherhood. Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

First description of progressive supranuclear palsy as a distinct disorder. The authors recognized the same clinical syndrome in 8 patients and described the autopsy findings in 6 of them in 1963.

Digital facsimile from the Hathi Trust at this link.

The first published catalogue of plants in the Singapore Botanic Gardens. Digital facsimile from the Hathi Trust at this link.

Digital facsimile from the Hathi Trust at this link.

Digital facsimile from the Hathi Trust at this link.

The Walkerian Botanic Garden was the first botanical garden founded in Cambridge. It is the ancestor of the Cambridge University Botanic Garden. Digital facsimile from the Hathi Trust at this link.

Digital facsimile from the Hathi Trust at this link.

This work was published over 73 years. Vols. 1-3 were by Harvey and Sonder. The remaining volumes were by "Various Botanists" edited by Thiselton-Dyer, except for Vol. 5, Section 2 (Supplement) edited by Arthur William Hill and published in 1933. Digital facsimile of the whole set from Biodiversity Heritage Library at this link.

Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

Unusually well illustrated in color, with detailed bibliography, surveying the history from its origins in prehistory, the Neolithic revolution, to the present. Digital facsimile rbg.vic.gov.au at this link.

In the 15th century people still hoped that the original garden of Eden might be rediscovered, but in the 16th and 17th centuries efforts turned to collecting plants and attempting to re-create the wonder of the garden. Examines famous early botanical gardens in Paris, Oxford, Padua, Leyden, and Uppsala.

Digital facsimile from publikationsserver.tu-braunschweig.de at this link.

Provides "a detailed analysis of the foundation, extent, management and achievements of the 120 botanic gardens, herbaria and botanic stations - from Hong Kong to British Honduras, Malacca to the Gold Coast, Fiji to Malta, Jamaica to Sydney - which flourished in the Victorian British empire. There young British curators faced the hazards of malaria, blackwater fever, occasionally a hostile indigenous population, snakes and dangerous animals, personal penury, and jealous settlers who usually opposed any suggestion of diversification from monoculture or of preserving the natural bush for ecological reasons" (publisher).

Completely revised and updated second edition.

http://scarc.library.oregonstate.edu/omeka/exhibits/show/seed/introduction/collection/

"The OSU Seed and Nursery Trade catalogue collection contains over 2,000 items from 1832 to 1966. While the collection is most comprehensive in its representation of American catalogues from the 1940s, it contains many older examples from North America, Great Britain, and Holland, as well other European and Asian countries. Former agricultural librarian Laura Kelts compiled the collection from various sources in the 1960s and 1970s. At that time, it was stored in a locked room of the science area of the library, where space was at a premium. In 1986, the new Special Collections unit was formed and the collection was moved there, where it resides today.

"Seed and nursery trade catalogues are lists of seeds or plants available for sale. Many of the oldest surviving printed catalogues are not much more than lists, divided into categories by plant type such as vegetables, sweet and medicinal herbs, flowers, and bulbous roots. Today, we expect a catalogue to contain much more: prices, shipping and ordering information, illustrations, product descriptions, and growing instructions. Catalogues often include pre-selected assortments, special offers, customer testimonials, and a way to contact the company to ask questions by phone, fax, or email. Rather than offering merely seeds and plants, catalogues offer garden tools, kitchen gadgets, gardening clothes and furniture. Recipes, personal notes from company owners, and evidence of companies’ charitable works are all common elements in modern retail catalogues. The study of older seed and nursery catalogues makes it possible to trace how and when these developments occurred in response to available technology and the demands of gardeners in changing times."

This work was "the first textbook of descriptive systematic botany and botanical Latin".^[1] It also contains Linnaeus's first published description of his binomial nomenclature.

"Philosophia Botanica represents a maturing of Linnaeus's thinking on botany and its theoretical foundations, being an elaboration of ideas first published in his Fundamenta Botanica (1736) and Critica Botanica (1737), and set out in a similar way as a series of stark and uncompromising principles (aphorismen). The book also establishes a basic botanical terminology" (Wikipedia article Philosophia Botanica, accessed 3-2020).

Digital facsimile from Biodiversity Heritage Library at this link.

First edition by Blunt, 1950.

A deluxe sale catalogue illustrated with 21 plates, including 7 mezzotints. 

"The Catalogus Plantarum is notable as one of the earliest flower books to contain plates printed in colors. It is perhaps unique in that one third of its plates are so printed, in mezzotint from a single plate, while two thirds are engraved and handcolored in the usual way. The book is also unusual in that it was ostensibly the work of twenty authors, listed as the Society of Gardeners at the end of the Preface, though it is usually assumed that one of their number, Philip Miller, was responsible for the text....One intention of the Society was to agree on a nomenclature, so as to limit confusion in ordering plants; but that does not make it easy to translate into modern binominals. The present list of plants is offered as a means to a better one." (Hunt Botanical Library, No. 485)

Digital facsimile from the Biodiversity Heritage Library at this link.

Though Tournefort's classification was completely artificial, and neglected some important divisions established by earlier botanists, and was a step backwards in systematics, the text was so clearly written and well structured, and contained so much valuable information on individual species, that it became popular amongst botanists, and nearly all classifications published for the next fifty years were based upon it.

"Tournefort is often credited with being the first to make a clear distinction between genus and species. Though he did indeed cluster the 7,000 plant species that he described into around 700 genera, this was not particularly original. Concepts of genus and species had been framed as early as the 16th century, and Kaspar Bauhin in particular consistently distinguished genera and species. Augustus Quirinus Rivinus had even advocated the use of binary nomenclature shortly before Tournefort's work was published.^[2] (Wikipedia article on Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, accessed 3-2020).

Digital facsimile of a hand-colored copy from BnF Gallica at this link,.

Jussieu was the first to publish a natural classification of flowering plants, basing his system on a extensive unpublished work by his deceased uncle, the botanist Bernard de Jussieu.

"In his study of flowering plants, Genera plantarum (1789), Jussieu adopted a methodology based on the use of multiple characters to define groups, an idea derived from naturalist Michel Adanson. This was a significant improvement over the "artificial" system of Linnaeus, whose most popular work classified plants into classes and orders based on the number of stamens and pistils. Jussieu did keep Linnaeus' binomial nomenclature, resulting in a work that was far-reaching in its impact; many of the present-day plant families are still attributed to Jussieu. Morton's 1981 History of botanical science counts 76 of Jussieu's families conserved in the ICBN, versus just 11 for Linnaeus, for instance" (Wikipedia article on Antoine Laurent de Jussieu, accessed 3-2020).

Digital facsimile from the Biodiversity Heritage Library at this link.

Pages 42-46 are an extremely detailed, briefly annotated bibliography.

Available online from ncbi.nlm.nih.gov at this link.

"The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), a division of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) at the U.S. National Institutes of Health, is a leader in the field of bioinformatics; it studies computational approaches to fundamental questions in biology and provides online delivery of biomedical information and bioinformatics tools. NCBI hosts approximately 40 online literature and molecular biology databases—including PubMed, PubMed Central, and GenBank—that serve millions of users around the world. The second edition of the NCBI Handbook, released in November 2013 in conjunction with the 25th anniversary of NCBI, aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the breadth of informatics resources at NCBI, and an in-depth account of the scope, data, infrastructure, processing, and access for each major database or resource. The databases and resources are organized here into seven concept areas: literature, genomes, variation, health, genes and gene expression, nucleotide, proteins, and small molecules and biological assays. Three additional categories encompass tools, infrastructure, and metadata. Each concept area begins with an overview chapter that provides a contextual framework for the resources discussed under that concept; the overview is followed by separate chapters that cover individual databases or resources.

As with the first edition, The NCBI Handbook 2nd Edition is geared towards advanced users of NCBI resources to provide an understanding of how bioinformatics resources at NCBI work. It is not a step-by-step user manual but complements NCBI user guides, tutorials, help information, and other existing documentation. It is our intent that the handbook will reflect, to the extent possible, the current state of databases, resources, and tools at NCBI, with information updated periodically."

Order of authorship in the original publication: Yardley, Hendrix. The authors made the first observations of previously uncultured, unseen and unidentified bacilli associated with Whipple's disease, suggesting that it was caused by an infection. 

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

Order of authorship in the original publication: Relman, Schmidt, MacDermott....The authors used 16S ribosomal RNA sequencing to identify the bacillus associated with Whipple's disease that had resisted culturing methods for more than 80 years. Based on its unique characteristics and its association with an illness that leads to emaciation by interferring with intestinal absorption of nutrients they named it "Tropheryma whippelii gen. nov. sp. nov."  Digital facsimile from nejm.org at this link.

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

Order of authorship in the original publication: Raoult, Birg, La Scola. Raoult and colleagues cultured the bacterium causing the systemic digestive tract infection Whipple's disease from a mitral valve of a patient with endocarditis due to the disease. This was the first time that the bacterium causing Whipple's disease was cultured since the Whipple first described the disease in 1907. Digital facsimile from nejm.org at this link.

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

Order of authorship in the original publication: Raoult, Fenollar, Birg. Raoult and colleagues cultured the infectious agent of Whipple's disease from the stool of a patient with the disease. In the process the authors learned that this particular bacillus is resistant to glutaraldehyde, a disinfectant that was then used to decontaminate endoscopes used for colonoscopy and other procedures.

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

Born in 1876 Honolulu, James Judd, the grandson of missionaries, was a private practice physician and graduate of Oahu College, Yale and Columbia Universities. He served in three wars: the Spanish-American and World Wars I and II, and helped found the Kauikeolani Children's Hospital.

In World War I he and Mrs. Judd volunteered with the American Ambulance Service long before the U.S. entered the conflict, travelling to France together in 1915. Dr. Judd served first in Neuilly Hospital Seine, and was later appointed chief surgeon of the Juilly Hospital, Seine et Marne from 1915-17. Mrs. Judd  nursed at the hospitals to which her husband was assigned. On July 14, 1921, Dr. Judd was award the Légion d'honneur in recognition of his services to the French government during the war. All profits from the sale of his memoir were sent to aid the fatherless children of France. 

Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

"On August 1st, 1957, Theodore Kurze at the University of Southern California became the first neurosurgeon to use an operating microscope to remove a a neurilemmoma of the VIIIth nerve. The inspiration to develop this was provided by watchin the delicate middle ear surgeries performed utilizing an operating microscope performed by Dr. William House, an otological surgeon. Dr. Kurze introduced many neurosurgeons to the oeprating microscope amonst whom were Robert Rand...." (Misra and Chaudhuri, "The operating microscope," Ramamurthi et al (eds.) Textbook of operative neurosurgery (New Delhi: BI Publications, 2005) 29).

"In 1947 Leksell visited Wycis in Philadelphia and then developed and described his instrument in a publication in 1949. This was the first example of a stereotactic system based on the principle of ‘‘center-of-arc’’.^[8] In contrast to the Cartesian coordinate system of the Spiegel-Wycis device, Leksell’s frame utilized three polar coordinates (angle, depth and anterior–posterior location). This ‘‘arc-quadrant’’ device provided maximum flexibility in choosing probe entry point and trajectory, and was therefore much easier to use. The frame has been modified over the ensuing years, but remains remarkably similar in function and appearance to the original 1949 device.^[9] The use of a movable semi-arc with an electrode carrier implies that the tip of a probe can reach the target regardless of the position of the carrier or the angling of the arc relative to the skull fixation device, a frame or base plate with bars for bone fixation screws. This construction permits also transphenoidal, straight lateral and suboccipital probe approaches. Leksell was in many respects a perfectionist and for the rest of his life he continued to change and revise the design of virtually every small part of his instrument though the basic semicircular frame was retained. He focused not only on upgrading the function of the instrument but also on its aesthetic appearance. An important feature was that ‘‘the apparatus should be easy to handle and practical in routine clinical work’’ and ‘‘a high degree of exactitude is necessary.’’ An oft-cited quotation is ‘‘Tools used by the surgeon must be adapted to the task and where the human brain is concerned, no tool can be too refined.’’^[10] (Wikipedia article on Lars Leksell, accessed 3-2020).

Leksell Gamma Knife. "Over the subsequent 50 years Gamma Knife surgery has evolved to cover much of what is done in neurosurgery and there are more than 330 Gamma Knife centers all over the world. By the end of 2017 more than 1.2 million patients had undergone Gamma Knife surgery" (Niranjan, Lunsford, Kano (eds),"The origins and development of radiosurgery and the Leksell Gamma Knife," Leksell radiosurgery. Prog. Neurol. Surg. 34 (2019) 1-8.

The first textbooks on microneurosurgery by the pioneering American neurosurgeon, Robert Rand, and the pioneering Turkish-Swiss neurosurgeon Gazi Yasargil, both appeared in 1969.

Describes surgical cases that Ranby treated under Lord Stair in the German campaign up to the Battle of Dettingen. While the Earl of Stair exercised operational control, the Allied army was nominally commanded by George II, accompanied by his son the Duke of Cumberland. As a result, the battle is now best remembered as the last time a reigning British monarch led troops in combat.

Ranby extoled the use of Peruvian bark in the suppuration following upon gunshot wounds, and observed that its virtue is increased if the elixir of vitriol is given with it; he thus anticipated the use of quinine. He also provided a detailed account of a leg wound sustained by the Duke of Cumberland; and recorded cases of death from tetanus following gunshot wounds. Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

Most of the chapters in this book were written by Yasargil. Chapter one: "A history of microsurgery" by R. M. P. Donaghy includes a bibliography of the earliest published references on this subject.

"In 1958 RMP Donaghy established the word's first microsurgery research and training laboratory in Burlington, Vermont. In 1960, Jacobson and Suarez, working in this laboratory, performed a successful small-vessel anastomosis using the microscope. Then, collaborating with Hans Littman of the Zeiss Corporation in Germany, they designed the diploscope, a stereoscopic microscope utilising the beam-splitter technology, to allow a second surgeon to assist the operating surgeon.

"In 1966, MG Yasargil attended this pioneering microneurosurgical laboratory of Donaghy, and returned to Zurich to make these microneurosurgical techniques an integral part of modern neurosurgery. He performed the first superficial temporal artery to middle cerebral artery anastomosis under an operating microscope in 1967 and also established a training laboratory in Zurich...." (Misra, Chaudhuri, "The operating microscope," Ramamurthi, et al, (eds.) Textbook of operative neurosurgery (New Delhi: B.I. Publications, 2005) p. 29.

"In October 1965, Dr Yasargil began his training in vascular microsurgery in Burlington, USA [1, 2]. He was 40 years old and already had 13 years of experience in classic neurosurgical procedures [3]. On December 3rd, 1966, he started working on dog’s middle cerebral arteries and in the next day on basilar artery, and he considers this as the birth of microneurosurgery [1, 4]. He also developed the technique for transplantation of the superficial temporal artery to the middle cerebral artery by end-to-side anastomosis [2, 4]. During this time, he also started working with bipolar coagulation, created a few years earlier by Len Malis [1, 3]. In this period, he started to travel around the USA organizing meetings to divulgate and integrate new techniques in microsurgery, which began a series of microneurosurgical courses around the world in the next years [1, 3].

In 1967, he began the microneurosurgery routine in Zürich, performing 103 operations in the first year [1]; the number soon increased, and the outcomes have been published in the six volumes of the book Microneurosurgery [2, 3]."....

"His ingenuity in developing microsurgical techniques for use in cerebrovascular neurosurgery has transformed the outcomes of patients with conditions that were previously inoperable [2]. He conceived microsurgical instruments, retractors, floating microscope, and aneurysm clips [2, 4]. Every neurosurgical procedure performed today has been affected by his work [4]" (Lovato, Araujo, et al, "The legacy of Yasargil: the father of modern neurosurgery," Indian J. Surg., 78 (2016) 77-78)

House, an otologist, pioneered exploration of the internal auditory canal and removal of acoustic neuromas through the microscope. His success stimulated neurosurgeons to pursue the application of the operating microscope in neurosurgical procedures.  See also House, "Historical review and problem of acoustic neuroma," Arch. Otolaryng., 80 (1964) 601.

A 250-page monograph, with bibliographical references, on the development of the BCG vaccine from M. bovis, from 1909 to 1927 by the scientists involved.

(Thanks to Ron Cox for this reference.)

Order of authorship in the original publication: Mahairas, Sabo, Hickey.... From the Abstract:

"The live attenuated bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine for the prevention of disease associated with Mycobacterium tuberculosis was derived from the closely related virulent tubercle bacillus, Mycobacterium bovis. Although the BCG vaccine has been one of the most widely used vaccines in the world for over 40 years, the genetic basis of BCG's attenuation has never been elucidated. We employed subtractive genomic hybridization to identify genetic differences between virulent M. bovis and M. tuberculosis and avirulent BCG. Three distinct genomic regions of difference (designated RD1 to RD3) were found to be deleted from BCG, and the precise junctions and DNA sequence of each deletion were determined."

Mahairas and colleagues showed that the BCG bacterium had a deletion in its DNA called the RD1 deletion, which was not present in Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Because of this deletion the protein ESAT-6 could be expressed by M. tuberculosis, but not by BCG. This paved the way for a new and more accurate diagnostic test for TB based on detection of the ESAT-6 protein. This was particularly useful since it had been discovered that the Tuberculin Skin Test (TST) had a major drawback--it tested positive in individuals who had received the BCG vaccine but were not infected with TB.

(Thanks to Ron Cox for this reference and its interpretation.)

Digital facsimile from Biodiversity Heritage Library at this link.

Andersen and colleagues found that a protein fraction obtained from M. tuberculosis was immunologically active in mice, suggesting that it was one of the proteins recognized by T cells. In this paper the authors identified and purified the active protein, ESAT-6, and showed that it consists of 95 amino acids. This work and that of Mahairas and colleagues (No. 11995) led to a new test called the Interferon gamma release assay.

(Thanks to Ron Cox for this reference and its interpretation.)

Abstract: "Countless millions of people have died from tuberculosis, a chronic infectious disease caused by the tubercle bacillus. The complete genome sequence of the best-characterized strain of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, H37Rv, has been determined and analysed in order to improve our understanding of the biology of this slow-growing pathogen and to help the conception of new prophylactic and therapeutic interventions. The genome comprises 4,411,529 base pairs, contains around 4,000 genes, and has a very high guanine + cytosine content that is reflected in the biased amino-acid content of the proteins. M. tuberculosis differs radically from other bacteria in that a very large portion of its coding capacity is devoted to the production of enzymes involved in lipogenesis and lipolysis, and to two new families of glycine-rich proteins with a repetitive structure that may represent a source of antigenic variation."

(Thanks to Ron Cox for this reference.)