Modern Books and Manuscripts

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection.

Médecine et pharmacopée en Chine is comprised of three volumes that are each bound with colored cord inside an illustrated paper cover.  Published in early 20th-century France the volumes appear to explore medicine and pharmacology in China.  Each individual volume begins with a beautiful color illustration depicting a topic related to Medicine, Pharmacy and Therapeutics, or Medical Superstitions.

One of the illustrations depicts the practice of acupuncture.  It is interesting that the scientific benefits of acupuncture are still debated in present day.  Though the exact origins of acupuncture are disputed most typically agree that it was being practiced during the Han Dynasty in China during the 2nd century.

One of the difficulties in proving the effectiveness of acupuncture is that it is difficult to run a placebo control group since the very action involves piercing the skin with a needle.  More traditional Western medicine has cautiously agreed that acupuncture can be effective for certain conditions though they admit they cannot exactly explain why it works.  Regardless of proven scientific fact many people believe in acupuncture’s ability to relieve nausea and chronic pain and popularity of the practice has greatly increased in the past 20 years.

The third volume explores various medical superstitions that were commonly used in China.  This illustration depicts a man using a rooster to help set a woman’s fracture.  I think the idea is that using the rooster blood will assist in the healing process.

To learn more the Médecine et pharmacopée en Chine. [France] : Editions des Laboratoires du Mictasol, [192-?].  R601 .M48 can be found at the Countway Library at the Harvard Medical School in Longwood.

Thanks to Alison Harris, Santo Domingo Project Manager and Joan Thomas, Rare Book Cataloger at Countway for contributing this post.

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection.

Lowell Thomas was an American writer, traveler, and broadcaster that is often known as the person who made Lawrence of Arabia famous.  This graphic depiction of an Afghan man is from the dust jacket of Beyond Khyber Pass into forbidden Afghanistan a book by Thomas about his travels and observations in the 1920s of Afghanistan.  Beyond Khyber Pass was no easy feat to write since it took Thomas two years just to gain access to the country itself for as he states in the book “…our chances of getting to Kabul seemed to be considerably less than those of a camel’s passing through the eye of a needle.”  Just as they were about to give up hope the intervention of his Majesty Amanullah Khan, Amir of Afghanistan meant success for their endeavor.

Historically Khyber Pass was an important trade route and once an integral part of the Silk Road, which connected East to West and was highly significant in the developing civilization of China, Europe, and India.  Khyber Pass goes through the Spin Ghar mountains that connect Afghanistan and current day Pakistan, which at the time was British controlled India.

As the title indicates Thomas travels beyond the pass and explores the country and notoriously isolated people of Afghanistan.  The journey throughout the book is filled with both engaging writing, as well as reproductions of photographs taken by both Thomas and his companion Harry Chase.  To learn more about this fascinating cultural exploration look at Beyond Khyber Pass into forbidden Afghanistan. Illustrated with many original photographs taken by Harry A. Chase and the author. New York, Grosset & Dunlap [1925].

Thanks to Alison Harris, Santo Domingo Project Manager for contributing this post.

We are very pleased to announce the launch of the Emily Dickinson Archive, http://edickinson.org, an open-access site that brings together nearly all of Emily Dickinson’s extant poetry manuscripts. A collaborative effort across many institutions, the resource provides readers with images of manuscripts held in multiple libraries and archives, and also offers an array of transcriptions of Dickinson’s poems and digital tools intended to foster exploration and scholarship.

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This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection.

  Stephen Huneck was not only an American author but a carving artist, painter, and furniture maker.  Originally from Sudbury, Massachusetts he began working in wood when he lived in Rochester, Vermont.  He was ostensibly discovered when an art dealer bought a carved angel out of the back of his truck for $1000.  After a near death experience with respiratory distress syndrome he began work on the Dog Chapel in St. Johnsbury, Vermont.  An homage to dogs the chapel has both human sized doors and a dog door, as well as carved wooden dogs on the pews and stained glass windows of dogs.  My Dog’s Brain is about his beloved black lab Sally, which recounts a glimpse into the psyche of a dog and how she spends her days.      Huneck credited his recovery after his near death experience to his dog, as well as the process of making the woodcuts for the book.  

Tragically Huneck committed suicide in 2010.  Art pieces of Huneck’s can be found at the Smithsonian and the Museum of American Folk Art.  To look at more of the gorgeous illustrations the book can be found through the Fine Arts Library.  My dog’s brain / by Stephen Huneck.  New York, N.Y., U.S.A. : Viking Studio, c1997. NE1112.H86 A4 1997 .

Thanks to Alison Harris, Santo Domingo Project Manager and Leo Evangelista Cataloging Specialist at 625, for contributing this post.

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection.

Description of the Retreat, an institution near York, for insane persons of the Society of Friends is a volume by Samuel Tuke who was a Quaker and mental-health reformer in early 19th-century England.  Tuke believed in this new concept of moral treatement of the insane in which the treatment focused on rewarding good behavior.  The text is quite fascinating and touches on information about what types of rooms patients had, their medical treatments and even their diet.

They abscribed to the theory that a full belly can quiet those that have mania and trouble sleeping at night.  They were also looking for ways to have patients safely use a knife and fork instead of being forced to eat with a spoon. 

The subject of cold versus warm baths is also examined in length by Tuke.  He states that patients that suffer from melancholia and were treated with a warm bath have an unusually high recovery rate.  Unfortunately a warm bath only seems to aggravate those with mania.  Cold baths are said to be unfavorable in treating either melancholia or mania, which is quite a departure for the norms of the time.  Tuke also wrote Practical hints on the construction and economy of pauper lunatic asylums; including instructions to the architects who offered plans for the Wakefield Asylum which can be found at the Houghton Library.

To learn more about the historical treatment of the insane look to Description of the Retreat, an institution near York, for insane persons of the Society of Friends : containing an account of its origin and progress, the modes of treatment, and a statement of cases / by Samuel Tuke ; with an elevation and plans of the building. York, Printed for W. Alexander, and sold by him; sold also by M.M. and E. Webb, Bristol; and by Darton, Harvey and Co., William Phillips, and W. Darton, London, 1813 RC450.E3 T812 1813 at the Countway Library at the Harvard Medical School in Longwood.

Thanks to Alison Harris, Santo Domingo Project Manager and Joan Thomas, Rare Book Cataloger at Countway for contributing this post.

This past spring, Houghton Library collaborated with the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst and the North Bennet Street School in Boston to create exact reproductions of the writing desk and bureau originally in Emily Dickinson’s bedroom in the Homestead. Since 1950, the two iconic pieces have been part of the Emily Dickinson Collection at the Library, the gift of Gilbert Montague, Class of 1901.

As part of the project, the Library asked Sean Fisher of Robert Mussey Associates furniture conservation to do detailed condition reports on the two pieces. We suspected that the finishes were later than Dickinson’s lifetime; and there were some minor condition problems with the bureau. This would be an opportunity to learn more about the furniture.

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This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection.

Voyage dans la lune avant 1900 is an extraordinary French children’s book that is composed primarily of color lithographs by Herold & Cie., which are based on the original designs of A. de Ville d’Avray’s.  Almost nothing about the author A. de Ville d’Avray is known.  In his Preface he says that he made the book for his children “sheet by sheet during the long evenings of winter.”  It was published around 1892 and is considered by some to be the first science fiction book.  The text features two characters M. Baboulifiche and his faithful servant, Papavoine.   They transport themselves in a hot air ballon to the moon, but after crashing face a number of monstrous and surreal creatures.  Once they are able to escape some dangerous situations on the moon they are taken by gigantic bats to Saturn and end up suffering several versions of death, including being eaten by flying lizards.  In the end we discover that it was all a terrible dream as Baboulifiche wakes up safe in his home.    Voyage dans la lune avant 1900 / par A. De Ville D’Avray. Paris : Librairie Furne, Jouvet & Cie., [1892]. PN56.V6 V4 1892. can be found at Houghton Library along with many other more contemporary science fiction titles in their Science Fiction Collection.

Thanks to Alison Harris, Santo Domingo Project Manager, and Ryan Wheeler, Rare Book Cataloger, for contributing this post.

In her formative years, the American poet Emily Dickinson’s interests centered on the study of voice and especially piano, for which she displayed considerable accomplishment and ambition. Her correspondence supplies the background for these activities while the contents of her music book provides a revealing perspective on just how assiduously and enthusiastically she collected, listened to, and performed the music of her time.

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This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection.

The Santo Domingo collection is broad in scope, but its many volumes also accommodate exhaustive collecting of a number of particular authors. Among these is David Gascoyne (1916-2001), the British poet and translator known for his association with the Surrealist movement in his early career. Processing is currently underway on an archive of Gascoyne’s papers as part of work on Santo Domingo.

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This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection.

Today from the Santo Domingo Collection, a curiosity: Scènes d’alcoolisme, a series of transparencies printed on glassine paper and published by Libraire Larousse, depicting the ravages of alcoholism. Included with the sheet of transparencies are a sheet of text describing the images and an envelope printed with publication information. The publication isn’t dated, but it appears to have been printed in the late nineteenth century.

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This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection.

Considered one of the greatest illustrators of the French press is Jean Sennep, also known as Jean-Jacques Charles Pennes, who worked for several French newspapers including Candide and Le Figaro.  He also published quite a few volumes of his cartoons including Le Milieu which has 52 full pages of political cartoons that primarily expose the shenanigans and corruption of French politics in the 1930s.  Sennep was typically considered to be part of the French Right and anti-communist, nationalistic, and often anti-Semitic.  His cartoons show a very definite nationalistic point of view and echoed a lot of popular opinion for the time.

Below you can see a caricature of Leon Blum and Edouard Daladier, both members of the government in 1934.  Sennep appears to be referring to the February 6th street demonstration that was organized by far-right groups and ended up in a riot by the French National Assembly.  Several people were killed and many were injured during the riot.

To look at more cartoons look in Hollis for Le Milieu / Sennep; préface de René Benjamin. Paris : Floury, 1934.

Thanks to Alison Harris, Santo Domingo Project Manager for contributing this post.

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection.

The Santo Domingo Collection often comes across volumes that need a little extra TLC before being sent to their forever homes.  Sometimes the binding is no longer attached, the cover has been ripped, or the material needs a special enclosure to protect it.  Who do we turn to?  The very talented preservation folks!  My hard working colleagues in the Collections Conservation Lab in Widener routinely deal with preservation issues regarding materials in Harvard’s collections. They have an area devoted to preservation review, collections care, conservation treatment, reformatting preparation, and construction of protective enclosures.  The volume Histoire de l’Asie was in fragile paper covers with a slightly detached spine so they constructed a hardbound volume allowing one to look at it safely.  Special enclosures are another approach to protecting an item especially when it is small or an unconventional shape or size.          And voila- De Profundis is now safely tucked away!  Dust jackets often provide important contexual information about a volume particularly for the Santo Domingo materials which have a lot of fascinating covers chronicling drug culture and psychedelic experiences of the 60s and 70s.  As one might imagine dust jackets can be pretty fragile and tear easily so the Lab uses a machine that encases the jacket in plastic to protect it.

All of the people that work in the Lab are an integral part of the processing of this collection, not to mention the countless other materials in the Harvard Library, so I offer up a big thank you to them all!

The book of Thoth; a short essay on the tarot of the Egyptians, being the equinox, volume III, no. 5, by the Master Therion. Artist executant: Frieda Harris.

The Dancing Stones / Leonard Alfred Knight. London :Sampson Low, Marston & Co.,[1946].

The way of the shaman : a guide to power and healing /Michael Harner. 1st ed. San Francisco : Harper & Row, c1980.

Thanks to Alison Harris, Santo Domingo Project Manager for contributing this post.

[Thanks to Houghton patron Scott Guthery for contributing this guest post.]

In putting together a story of mathematics in post-colonial America – in particular mathematics as found outside of colleges and universities – I found Google’s digitization of Harvard’s copy of Mathematical Tables by Solomon P. Miles and Thomas Sherman, the third stereotype edition of 1842 published by Benjamin B. Mussey. Miles and Sherman were both Harvard graduates, Class of 1819 and Class of 1825 respectively, and both taught at Boston English.

On an early page summarizing the book, Miles and Sherwin wrote, “The Tables, comprised in this volume, have been very carefully compared with the best English and French Tables; and they will be found, it is believed, not inferior, in point of correctness, to any similar Tables in use.” At the bottom of that page there was a barely-legible handwritten note that begged to differ.  The note seemed to be signed by two brothers: Harvard mathematics professor James Mills Peirce (1834-1906) and philosopher and mathematician Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), but I couldn’t be sure.

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This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection.

Reginald Manning was an American artist and illustrator that began working for the Arizona Republic in 1926 as a photographer and spot artist. He eventually began drawing daily editiorial cartoons and worked at the Republic for the next 50 years.  He won a Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning in 1951 for “Hats” which was a commentary on the Korean War and also published several books, including A Cartoon Guide to Arizona.

This volume which is a reprint of the 1938 edition is a tourist guide to Arizona complete with humorous text and illustrations of landmarks, animals, and other destinations not to be missed.  Apparently a horned toad can be held in one’s hand and if you are brave enough you can “stroke his head and he’ll close his eyes in mock sleep.”

Reg Manning is known as one of the more prominent conservative voices in cartooning.  A man of many talents he also apparently did copper wheel engravings on crystal glass.

Reg Manning’s cartoon guide of Arizona.  New York : J.J. Augustin, 1939. 

Thanks to Alison Harris, Santo Domingo Project Manager for contributing this post.

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection.

  Interested in learning more about cacti and where they grow?  This French publication of Les cactées cultivées could be for you.  The volume was published by the Librairie Agricole de la Maison Rustique in 1931 by André Guillaumin, who was a French botanist.  Guillaumin became the chair of botany and plant physiology at the Museum of Natural History in Paris, and then eventually the deputy director from 1947-1950.

Echinopsis multiplex zuccarini is apparently found in Southern Brazil, while Echinopsis pentlandii, which flowers, is more commonly located in Bolivia.  Inside the pages of this volume there were two small color illustrations mounted on paper.  Cierge en tuyaux d’orgue is commonly known as the organ pipe cactus due to its shape.  The series and number information printed on the front of both imply that these were part of a set of illustrations about cacti.  The size suggests the possibility of them being stamps, but we don’t really know.  It doesn’t appear that these color illustrations were connected to the volume, most likely they were simply stuck between the pages by a previous owner.

Les cactées cultivées / par A. Guillaumin. Paris : Librairie agricole de la Maison rustique, 1931. SB438 .G85 1931x

For more information about cacti check out the Botany Libraries.

Thanks to Alison Harris, Santo Domingo Project Manager, Gretchen Wade, and Judith Warnement of the Botany Libraries for contributing this post.

The Mississippi newspaper shown here came to Houghton Library from the 1957 bequest of Lee Max Friedman (1871-1957), a prominent scholar of Jewish-American history. Established July 9^th, 1868 and offering weekly coverage of the presidential election, The Corinth Caucasian is neither listed in American Newspapers 1821-1936, nor in a 1942 union list of Mississippi newspapers compiled by the Mississippi Historical Records Survey, nor in the Union List of Serials in Libraries of the United States and Canada, nor in the online catalogs of any library whose holdings are reported to WorldCat. Only recently brought to light and cataloged at Houghton, this premiere issue is perhaps the only one extant. Under the editorship of Confederate army veteran Thomas Jefferson Key (1831-1909), The Corinth Caucasian advanced the interests of racist, landowning whites, backing Democratic candidates and assailing the Reconstruction policies of northern “radicals,” especially Republican candidate for president Ulysses S. Grant.

The tactics used to undermine the Grant candidacy are precisely what roused Friedman’s interest. On the back page a short editorial titled “Grant and the Jews” precedes a transcript of a speech given by the late Senator Lazarus W. Powell of Kentucky, excoriating Grant over his infamous General Order No. 11 (1862) which expelled Jews from the Department of Kentucky. Brazenly outflanking Grant on the issue of racial tolerance, the ardently racist editor of the Caucasian takes the side of Senator Powell in condemning Grant’s anti-Semitism. While it is reasonable to read Key’s moral outrage as genuine, his partisan invective rather suggests a political motivation.

Without references in the bibliographic literature, it is unknown whether any further issues of The Corinth Caucasian were published. Certainly both Thomas J. Key and co-publisher S.G. Barr remained active newsmen for decades to come. Of S.G. Barr little is known, aside from his role as publisher of a succession of Corinth newspapers. Key however led a life both interesting and well documented. Born in Tennessee, Key began his career as a newspaperman in Tuscumbia, Alabama at the age of fifteen. Vehemently pro-slavery and Democratic in politics, Key moved to the Kansas Territory where the 1856 publication of his Kansas Constitutionalist incited violent confrontations with Free-Staters.  Relocating to Helena, Arkansas, Key served in the state legislature, voting for secession in 1860 and later enlisted in the Confederate army. When he found the diary of a Union soldier near Atlanta in 1864 Key filled in the remaining blank pages with his own daily entries. This unique volume containing the wartime diary of both a Confederate and Union soldier was edited and published in 1938 by the University of North Carolina Press under the title Two Soldiers.

After the war Key settled in Corinth, Mississippi and published the agricultural journal Model Farmer concurrent with The Corinth Caucasian. Whereas the Caucasian seems to have ceased publication by the end of 1868, Southern Agriculturist, as the agricultural journal was renamed, endured for decades under Key’s editorship. Published in Nashville after several changes of home office, Southern Agriculturist became one of the largest American journals of its kind, merging with Farmer and Range in 1949 and only ceasing publication in 1963.

The Corinth Caucasian. Vol. 1, no. 1. July 9, 1868. Corinth, Miss.: Key & Barr. AB85.A100.868c4

Thanks to Bibliographic Assistant Noah Sheola for contributing this post.

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection.

The novelist and music-hall performer Colette (1873-1954; full name Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette) is known both for her literary work – principally the novel Gigi – and her love affairs with men, women, and in one case, her own stepson. Mes apprentissages, published in 1936, is one of several autobiographical works in which Colette recounts her fascinating life; specifically, this volume deals with her first marriage, to Henry Gauthier-Villars, known as “Willy”. Gauthier-Villars was a writer and critic who acted as Colette’s mentor; her first several novels were first published under his name. Mes apprentissages excoriates Gauthier-Villars as controlling, patronizing, and unfaithful.

While this copy of Mes apprentissages is one of a limited number on Holland paper and is handsomely bound in morocco and marbled paper by Alain Devauchelle, it is most remarkable for containing several pieces of manuscript correspondence written by Colette to various parties. These include two letters to Pierre Louÿs, a French writer who dealt unabashedly in erotic, and particularly lesbian, themes; and a postcard to Émilie Marie Bouchaud, an actress who worked under the stage name Polaire. Polaire’s breakthrough role was in the title role of a play based on Colette’s Claudine à Paris, produced during Colette’s marriage to Gauthier-Villars.

Colette. Mes apprentissages: ce que Claudine n’a pas dit. [Paris]: Ferenczi, c1936. FC9.C6796.936m.

Thanks to rare book cataloger Ryan Wheeler for contributing this post.

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection.

Les borgnes de la guerre : prothèse chirurgicale & plastique (Valois et Rouveix) is a valuable contribution to military ophthalmology particularly regarding the physical reconstruction of visual organs that were damaged in wars.  Written by Gaston Valois, who was a French physician this volume was published in Paris in 1918.  The volume has many descriptions and illustrations of the various methods used when treating patients for injuries to the tissues of the face, eyelids, and orbital walls.

World War I greatly increased the demand for better medical care regarding eye injuries particularly for military personnel.  For several countries this resulted in better coordination regarding surgical materials for those eye injuries.  In particular the medicomilitary authorities in France of the Thirteenth Region created a space to study orbital injuries as well as to manufacture eye prosthetics for cosmetic improvement.

Valois also discusses the steps regarding ocular operations that were in vogue at the time.

To learn more about these medical procedures as well as ocular prosthesis check out the Countway Library at the Harvard Medical School.

Les borgnes de la guerre : prothèse chirurgicale & plastique (Valois et Rouveix) / par le Dr. G. Valois, membre de la Société d’Ophtalmogie de Paris ; planches hors texte dessinées par G. Reynard de la Société des Artistes Français. Paris : Masson et Cie., 1918. RE80 .V19 1918.

Thanks to Alison Harris, Santo Domingo Project Manager and Joan Thomas, Rare Book Cataloger for contributing this post.

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection.

Maurice Barrès (1893-1923) was a French novelist, journalist, and political ideologue who aligned himself with the anti-Semitic French nationalist movement of his period. Besides novels and political works, Barrès also produced several books of travel writing, including this volume from the Santo Domingo Collection: Un amateur d’âmes (1899), about traveling to Spain. It features illustrations drawn by the Swiss artist Louis Dunki and made into detailed woodcuts by a host of engravers. Continue Reading »

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection.

The French poet and novelist Edmond Haraucourt began his career with a volume of poems, La légende des sexes: poëmes hystériques, first published in 1882. The poems were controversial for their time, and Haraucourt published under the pseudonym Le Sire de Chamblay – though he gave the game partly away by parenthesizing (Edmond H…) below that name.

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