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Book Plate of Pascal Brooke Bland, MD
Dr. Bland donated many of the
volumes in Special Collections
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Oil paintings, statuary, and even photographs. Any of these terms might come to mind when someone mentions the word "art". But books? Actually books can be works of art in their own right based on a volume's bindings, type of paper, or design. But to accompany written text, books often contain illustrations Ð sometimes as much a work of art as the oil painting on the wall.
Located in the University Archives and Special Collections of the Scott Memorial Library are over 4,000 volumes. Publication dates for these works range from the late-1400s to the mid-1900s. Several of the books in the Archives include woodcuts, engravings, or colored plates.
The exhibit "Art in the Archives" opening in June on the second floor of the Scott Library contains reproductions of illustrations from several different volumes. Ranging in date from 1483 to 1835, the images document anatomy, medical botany, health and hygiene, and obstetrics. While the exhibit only documents a small sampling of items in the University Archives, it includes images from some of the more valuable works. Many of these volumes were donated to the Library by Pascal Brook Bland, MD former chair of obstetrics at Jefferson Medical College.
Illustrations represented within the exhibit include a woodcut attributed to Jan Stephan van Calcar from De humani corporis fabrica libri septem by Andreas Vesalius; colored plate from American Medical Botany by Jacob Bigelow; as well as an engraving by Petrus Leo Ghezzius of Bartholomaeus Eustachius dissecting from Eustachius' Tabulae anatomicae.
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