Damien Ihrig, MA, MLIS
Curator, John Martin Rare Book Room
Happy August, everyone. This newsletter issue is the first of a series looking more closely at some of our items with binder's waste.
As mentioned in the last newsletter, I was part of a small team who presented at the 2023 Rare Books and Manuscripts Section (RBMS) conference in June. Our presentation focused on the Iowa Initiative for Scientific Imaging and Conservation of Cultural Artifacts (IISICCA) and the involvement of the JMRBR. For more on the project and its scanning techniques, see the IISICCA group's article in Heritage Science.
This month's book was one of six JMRBR items selected to be scanned as part of the IISICCA project. Iatrapologia (Greek: "medicine") by Giovanni Filippo Ingrassia (1510-1580) was selected for two reasons. One, with backlighting through the thin, limp vellum cover, we were able to determine it had small pieces of manuscript waste that included both green and red inks. Different inks show up at different energy levels in Computed Tomography (CT) scanners - or sometimes not at all. Finding a variety of inks helps to calibrate both types of scanners used in the project.
And two, it's just a darn cool book.
Ingrassia was an influential 16th-century Italian physician. He grew up in a well-educated family and received a classical education. He studied at the University of Padua, one of the most important western centers for the study of medicine and anatomy.
There, he learned from renowned intellectuals and physicians, such as Realdo Columbo, Bartolomeo Eustachi, Girolamo Fracastoro, and, of course, the Anatomaster® himself, Andreas Vesalius. Ingrassia would go on to make his own significant impact on not only anatomical medicine but also public health and hygiene, forensic medicine, and teratology (the study of abnormalities of physiological development).
After completing his studies in 1537, he became the personal physician to a minor Italian noble family in Palermo. Soon after, he became the professor of human anatomy at the University of Naples. It was during his time in Naples that he wrote Iatrapologia. Ostensibly a book about how to treat head wounds, it was also a critique of the current state of medicine and surgery - one of the subtitles, liber quo multa adversus barbaros medicos disputantur, translates as "a book in which many things are argued against the barbarian physicians."
In Iatrapologia and elsewhere, Ingrassia argued that medicine should be considered a less subjective discipline. Treatments should be verified, results checked, and useful diagnoses disseminated among physicians. He also thought that physicians and surgeons should be integrated into a single profession to prevent surgeries by "unqualified" people. Indeed, in Iatrapologia, he states rather dramatically,
"Oh, God, so much human suffering has been caused by the vainglory of contemporary doctors. Indeed, surgery has been abandoned to some inexperienced, empiric [i.e., quack] physicians, most of whom are not only lacking in dogma, but also in what relates to the Art." p. 252
Ingrassia was also a strong believer in continuing education, suggesting physicians should refresh their dissection skills every five years so as to avoid becoming "imperfect and ignorant physicians." If nothing else, Ingrassia demonstrated a natural skill with insults!
Read below to find out more about Ingrassia and to see under the covers of this interesting little book.
Stay well and happy reading!
Hours
The Room is currently under renovation. Requests for materials will be considered on a case-by-case basis. For more information, please contact me at damien-ihrig@uiowa.edu or 319-335-9154.
