Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 330

ULISSE ALDROVANDI (1522-1605) Monstrorum historia. Typis Nicolai Tebaldini 1642-1657 (colophon dated 1658) Vol. I: [8] 748 [28] pp.; Vol. II: 159 [7] pp., illus. 35.4 cm.

Aldrovandi and Konrad Gesner (see No. 307) were the most important zoologists of the sixteenth century. Aldrovandi, a native of Bologna, first studied law but eventually changed his field to medicine. Accused of Lutheranism in 1549, he was sent to Rome for trial but was later released by the Inquisition. He returned to Bologna where he studied botany and became professor of natural history and philosophy at the University in 1560. He was successful in persuading the University to start a botanical garden and became its first director. He also established a museum of natural history at Bologna which is still in existence. He was the author of an enormous thirteen-volume encyclopedia of biology of which only four volumes appeared during his lifetime. The remaining volumes were prepared from his manuscripts by his pupils and published by the university senate. He invested much of his own money in the project and employed many artists and engravers during the thirty years that he worked on it. This work on the history of monsters was part of the encyclopedia and is an exhaustive treatise on the deformities of humans, animals, fish, insects, and plants. There are several hundred excellent woodcuts in the book and, like a number of other works of the period, many depict abnormalities that are not consistent with the facts.

See Related Record(s): 307

Cited references: Osler 1769; Waller 10725; Wellcome 172

Gift of John Martin, M.D.