SEEING IS BELIEVING.

• Author: LEE, JENNIFER B.
• Position: A history of illustration

Seven centuries of illustrations look back at the artistry and skill that gave visual expression to the wonders of science and medicine.

As botanist Leonhart Fuchs noted in the introduction to his 1542 book on medicinal plants, pictures can communicate information much more clearly than the words of even the most eloquent men. In the 20th century, Ronald N. Giere, a professor of philosophy at the University of Minnesota, suggested that scientific theory is more like a picture than anything that can be captured in words. Indeed, scientific and medical illustration often allows a reader to "see" information that cannot actually be seen by using different methods to show various kinds of theory or reality. Images such as astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus' simple diagram of the solar system and naturalist Charles Darwin's chart of the evolutionary tree present theories based on careful study.

Other images--such as physician Andreas Vesalius' elegant drawings of the muscles of the human body, naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian's depictions of an insect in its various stages of metamorphosis, and artist and astronomer Etienne Leopold Trouvelot's glorious attempts to capture the wonders of the heavens--are based on observed, though selective, reality. A third type of image shows the way to conduct an experiment or procedure, or simply the equipment needed. Examples include artist Albrecht Durer's use of perspective in drawing a lute, astronomer/astrologist Petrus Apianus' astronomical devices, and the equipment chemist Robert Boyle used in his experiments on air.

An exhibition at The New York Public Library's Humanities and Social Sciences Library presents a selection of scientific and medical illustrations dating from the 13th century through the beginning of the 20th century, drawn primarily from the collections of illustrated books of science and medicine in the Library's four research centers, augmented by materials from The New York Academy of Medicine and from a private collector.

At its founding in 1895, The New York Public Library already possessed a splendid array of important books in the fields of science and medicine. These were to come to the new library from the two private collections whose merger, along with a bequest from the Tilden Trust from the estate of Samuel J. Tilden, former governor of New York, created the new institution. The first of those private collections, the Astor Library, founded in 1848 through the bequest of fur...