Karen Reeds, Independent Researcher
Rutgers University, Bishop Lecture
Time: 4:00pm
Location: Scholarly Communication Center Teleconference Lecture Hall Fourth Floor, Archibald S. Alexander Library, 169 College Avenue, New Brunswick, NJ
Dr. Reeds will draw on examples of early herbals in the Libraries’ rare book collections to examine the continuing appeal of these medical books across the centuries. Why is the ancient Greek physician Dioscorides still cited as an authority on the uses of medicinal plants? What do the markings and dried plants in early printed herbals tell us about the ways doctors, patients, pharmacists, gardeners, and botanists have used these books from the Renaissance to our own day? What accounts for the resurgence of interest in herbals and the practice of herbal medicine in recent years?
This year’s Bishop Lecture coincides with the opening of a major exhibition entitled The Art of Healing: Early Herbals from the Rutgers University Libraries. This exhibition is a collaboration between Special Collections and University Archives, Rutgers University–New Brunswick, and the History of Medicine Special Collections at the George F. Smith Library of the Health Sciences, Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences. The books on display range from sixteenth-century editions of Dioscorides to Elizabeth Blackwell’s beautifully-illustrated A Curious Herbal (1739) to self-treatment guides from nineteenth-century America, as well as early editions of classic European herbals by Otto Brunfels, John Gerard, and Nicolas Culpeper, among others.
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=> For more information about the lecture or exhibition, please contact {encode="hperrone@rulmail.rutgers.edu" title="Fernanda Perrone"}, Exhibitions Coordinator, by email or at 848-932-6154.