Includes bibliographical references and index.

Commentaries on Aristotle's De Anima -- Epitome -- Isagoge -- Artificial teledioptric eye -- Langenburg Manuscript -- Rare plants of the Amsterdam Medical Garden -- Anatomy of the human body -- Examples of Chinese medicine -- Anatomical charts for the new acupuncture -- First: Science-Anatomy -- Complete study of human anatomy -- Obstetric tables -- Nurse postcards collection -- International nurse uniform photograph collection -- Midwife dolls -- White's physiological manikin -- Sinhala Palm-leaf medical manuscripts -- China illustrated -- Charles Darwin collection -- Manners, customs, and dresses of the Hindoos -- Travels in the interior districts of Africa -- Sūtra of great liberation -- Marvels of things created -- Complete notes on the dissection of cadavers -- New book on anatomy -- Anatomical essay on the movement of blood -- Drawings of arteries -- Atlas of topographic anatomy -- Palmistry entertaining of praetorius -- On human conception and generation -- Monstra -- On the united Siamese Twin -- Facts connected with James Carey -- Symptoms in schizophrenia -- Clinical collection on dermatology and syphilology -- One hundred case histories of falcadina disease -- Inquiry into causes and effects of variolae vaccine -- Atlas of skin diseases -- Stereoscopic skin clinic -- Stereoscopic pictures for cross-eyed children -- Biomicroscopy of the eye -- Life and education of Laura Dewey Bridgman -- Mayerle's lithographed international test chart -- Experimental surgery drawings -- Atlas of colored plates -- Mesmerism scrapbooks -- Dental cartoons -- Dental hand silhouette gift album -- Marshall W. Nirenberg papers -- Mechanics of the human walking apparatus -- Man and sunlight -- Rodney -- Wonder in us -- Health and hygiene puzzle blocks -- Huber and Tuber and Corky the killer -- Chinese anti-TB flyers -- Chinese public health slides -- Elementary hygiene for the tropics -- Malaria pinup calendars -- Commandments for health -- St. Elizabeths magic lantern slide collection -- Disease warning sign collection -- Easy to get -- Civil War surgical card collection -- Florence Nightingale collection -- First aid on the battlefield -- Plastic reconstruction of the face -- Mess kit and silver chev -- Russo-Japanese war photo album -- Hitler as seen by his doctors -- Medical report of atomic bombing in Hiroshima -- Anti-germ warfare campaign posters -- Selected dictation of curious records -- Catalogue of educational material -- Materia medica animalia -- Book of receipts of all sorts -- Medical trade card collection -- Scope magazine -- Studies in the nervous system -- Molecular structure of nucleic acids -- The X ray -- The doctors: a satire in four seizures -- Dance of death.

With more than 17 million items, dating from the eleventh century to the present, the National Library of Medicine, founded 175 years ago, is the world's largest medical library- America's home to a rich worldwide heritage of objects from rare early medical books to disturbing, precise nineteenth-century surgical illustrations to delightful mid-twentieth-century animated cartoons. Despite more than a century and a half of classification and cataloging, buried in the sheer mass of this collection are wondrous items largely unseen by the public and obscure even to librarians, curators, and historians. The individual objects brought to light in this book glow with beauty, grotesquery, wit and/or calamitous tragedy. Each hidden treasure included in this volume has been specially selected and is accompanied by a brief essay by a distinguished scholar, artist, collector, journalist, or physician. Delivered from the obscurity of the library's massive archive, these marvels speak to us, charm us, repulse us, amaze us, inform us, and intrigue us- and present a tantalizing glimpse of some of the precious and remarkable objects to be found within one of the world's great hidden treasures: the National Library of Medicine. -- publ.

Also issued online.

digitized 2012 NLM permanence rating: Permanent: Unchanging content pda DNLM.