Small Treasures in the LuEsther T. Mertz Library
Posted in From the Library on June 6 2016, by Jane Lloyd
Jane Lloyd is a volunteer in the LuEsther T. Mertz Library of The New York Botanical Garden.
Visitors to a garden are often impressed by the showy, brightly colored roses and barely notice the smaller, humbler daisies. Likewise, visitors to the Rare Book Room in the LuEsther T. Mertz Library of The New York Botanical Garden often admire the large folio volumes of botanical illustrations by renowned botanical artists, but are unaware of the treasures among the smaller print volumes on the shelves. For the last two years I’ve been examining the names written and bookplates pasted in these books, trying to trace the histories of these books and to identify their former owners. This detective work has revealed that many books have led fascinating lives.
One book that has had a particularly noteworthy life is Apologia adversus amathum lusitanum by Pietro Mattioli, first published in 1558. Mattioli (1501–1577) was a well-known physician, botanist, and natural scientist from Siena, Italy. His book is a discussion of another book, first published in 1557, In Dioscoridis Anazarbei de materia medica libri quinque, enarrationes eruditissimae by Lusitano Amato (Juan Rodrigo Del Castel-Branco) (1511–1568), a well-known Jewish-Portuguese physician and natural scientist. Amato’s book is a discussion of De materia medica, written in the first century A.D. by the Roman physician Dioscorides (c.A.D. 40–90). De materia medica was a comprehensive compilation and description of plants and their derivatives and of animal and mineral substances used as medicines at that time and was one of the most important reference books on medical substances in the Western world for 1600 years.