From Cave Paintings to the Internet A Chronological and Thematic Database on the History of Information and Media 1550 to 1600 Timeline

Melchior Schedel, grandson of the 15th century Nuremberg physician, writer, and book collector, Hartmann Schedel, sells about 370 manuscripts and 600 printed works from Hartmann Schedel’s library to Johann Jakob Fugger.

Fugger sold his library to Duke Albert V of Bavaria in 1571.

Hartmann Schedel is best known as the author of the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493). His library, one of the largest formed by an individual in the 15th century, is mostly preserved in the Bayerische Staasbibliothek in Munich.

Michael Servetus (Miguel Servet, Miguel Serveto), Spanish theologian, physician, cartographer, and humanist, having exchanged unfriendly correspondence with John Calvin concerning theological disputes, publishes secretly in Vienne, France, his book entitled Christianismi restitutio.

This work on the reform of Christianity developed a nontrinitarian Christology which Calvin and the Catholic church considered heretical.  On pp. 168-73 the book also contained the first printed description of the lesser or pulmonary circulation of the blood. The lesser circulation had previously been discovered by Ibn-Al-Nafis in his commentary on the anatomy of the Canon of Avicenna published in manuscript in 1268, but this was not rediscovered until the 20th century. (Re Ibn-Al-Nafis see J. Norman (ed) Morton's Medical Bibliography 5th ed. [1991] no. 753.)

"On 16 February 1553, Servetus, while in Vienne, was denounced as a heretic by Guillaume Trie, a rich merchant who had taken refuge in Geneva and was a very good friend of Calvin, in a letter sent to a cousin, Antoine Arneys, living in Lyon. On behalf of the French inquisitor Matthieu Ory, Servetus as well as Arnollet, the printer of Christianismi Restitutio, were questioned, but they denied all charges and were released for lack of evidence. Arneys was asked by Ory to write back to Trie, demanding proof. On March 26, 1553, the letters sent by Servetus to Calvin and some manuscript pages of Christianismi Restitutio were forwarded to Lyon by Trie. On April 4, 1553 Servetus was arrested by the Roman Catholic authorities, and imprisoned in Vienne. He escaped from prison three days later. On June 17, he was convicted of heresy by the French inquisition, 'thanks to the 17 letters sent by Jehan Calvin, preacher in Geneva, 'and sentenced to be burned with his books. An effigy and his books were burned in his absence" (Wikipedia article on Michael Servetus, accessed 02-05-2009).

Numerous accounts of Servetus' execution state that he was burned along with the entire edition of his book. Even if that was not the case virtually the entire printing of 1000 copies was destroyed, as only three copies of the original edition survive— Richard Mead's copy in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, a copy in the Imperial Library, Vienna, and a copy lacking the title page and the first 16pp., said to be John Calvin's personal copy, in the library of William Hunter at the University Library, Edinburgh.   (J. Norman (ed). Morton's Medical Bibliography 5th ed. [1991] no. 754.)

♦ Though Servetus escaped execution with his books, he was arrested in Geneva a few months later after having attended one of Calvin's sermons, and he was sent to trial. On October 24, 1553 Servetus was sentenced to death by burning for denying the Trinity and infant baptism. When Calvin requested that Servetus be executed by decapitation rather than fire, Farel, in a letter of September 8, chided Calvin for undue leniency, and the Geneva Council refused his request. On October 27 Servetus was burned at the stake just outside Geneva with what was believed to be the last copy of his Christianisimi restitutio chained to his leg. Historians record his last words as: "Jesus, Son of the Eternal God, have mercy on me." (Adapted from the Wikipedia article on Michael Servetus).

Italian cryptologist Giovan Battista Bellaso publishes La Cifra del Sig. Giovan Battista Bel[l]aso, describing a text autokey cipher that will be considered unbreakable for four centuries. "He suggested identifying the alphabets by means of an agreed-upon countersign or keyword off-line. He also taught various ways of mixing the cipher alphabets in order to free the correspondents from the need to exchange disks or prescribed tables.

"In 1550 Bellaso "was in the service of Cardinal Duranti in Camerino and had to use secret correspondence in the state affairs while his master was in Rome for a conclave. Versed in research, able in mathematics, Bellaso dealt with secret writing at a time when this art enjoyed great admiration in all the Italian courts, mainly in the Roman Curia. In this golden period of the history of cryptography, he was just one of many secretaries who, out of intellectual passion or for real necessity, experimented with new systems during their daily activities. His cipher marked an epoch and was considered unbreakable for four centuries. As a student of ciphers, he mentioned among his enthusiasts many eminent gentlemen and ‘‘great princes’’. In 1552, he met count Paolo Avogadro, count Gianfrancesco Gambara, and the renowned writer Girolamo Ruscelli, also an expert in secret writing, who urged him to reprint a reciprocal table that he was circulating in loose-leaf form, in print and manuscript. The table was to be duly completed with the instructions. Copies of these tables exist in contemporary private collections in Florence and Rome" (Wikipedia article on Giovan Battista Belaso, accessed 12-22-2008).

The Sacred Congregation of the Inquisition issues from Valladolid, Spain its first list of prohibited works--a list of censored Bible editions arranged aphabetically by place of printing: Censura Generalis contra errores, quib[us] recentes haeretici sacram scripturam asperserunt, edita a supremo senatu Inquisitionis adversus hereticam pravitatem & apostiasiam in Hispania, & aliis regnis & dominis Cesarea Magestatis constituto.

Breslauer & Folter, Bibliography: Its History and Development (1984) no. 19.

Otto-Henry, Elector Palatine, (German: Ottheinrich), Count Palatine of Palatinate-Neuburg from 1505 to 1559 and prince elector of the Palatinate from 1556 to 1559, formally establishes the Bibliotheca Palatina about this time.

At its peak this library included about 5000 printed books and "3524 manuscripts." The library expanded with important manuscripts acquired from the collection of Ulrich Fugger (d. 1584), notably the illustrated Sachsenspiegel.

"Joseph Scaliger considered this Fugger Library superior to that owned by the Pope; the manuscripts alone were valued at 80,000 crowns, which was a very considerable sum for the 16th century" (Wikipedia article on the Bibliotheca Palatina, accessed 11-23-2008).

Brother Juan Diez, a companion of Hernando Cortès (Hernán) in the conquest of New Spain, publishes the Sumario Compendioso in Mexico City at the press of Juan Pablos.

The Sumario Compendioso was the earliest treatise on mathematics published in the western hemisphere, and also the first textbook on any subject besides religious instruction to be printed outside of Europe.

In his introduction to The Sumario Compendioso of Brother Juan Diez, the Earliest Mathematical Work of the New World (1921), a facsimile and translation, David Eugene Smith writes of the existence of possibly four copies including one (incomplete) in the Biblioteca Nacional at Madrid, which he used for his edition, and a copy in the British Library.

"Not again in the sixteenth century did the Mexican printers publish any work on mathematics, except for a brief Instrucción Nautica which appeared in 1587. The press was generally true to its early purpose to issue only books relating to the conversion of the native inhabitants to the way of the cross" (Smith, introduction cited above, 6).

To check the spread of the Protestant Reformation, the Catholic Queen Mary and King Philip grant a royal charter to the Worshipful Company of Stationers of London, thereby concentrating the entire printing business in the hands of the members of the Stationers Company.

"The Stationers' charter, establishing a monopoly on book production, ensured that once a member had asserted ownership of a text (or "copy") no other member would publish it. This is the origin of the term 'copyright'. Members asserted such ownership by entering it in the "entry book of copies" or the Stationers' Company Register."

The Stationers Company charter was confirmed two years later by Queen Elizabeth, but this time with the goal of suppressing Catholicism.

Albrecht V, Duke of Bavaria acquires the library of the humanist, orientalist, philologist, and theologian, Johann Albrecht Widmannstetter. This is the origin of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, München.

"Albert was a patron of the arts and a collector whose personal accumulations are the basis of the Wittelsbach antique collection of Greek and Roman antiquities, the coin collection and the Wittelsbach treasury in the Munich Residenz; some of his Egyptian antiquities remain in the collection of Egyptian art. His personal library has come to the Bavarian State Library in Munich, inheritor of the Wittelsbach court library.

"Like an American millionaire of the Gilded Age, he bought whole collections in Rome and Venice; in Venice, after tiresome drawn-out negotiations with the aged Andrea Loredan, he purchased the Loredan collection virtually in its entirety: 120 bronzes, 2480 medals and coins, 91 marble heads, 43 marble statues, 33 reliefs and 14 various curiosities, for the sum of 7000 ducats; 'they were all exported from Venice secretly at night in large chests'. At the same time, squabbles among the heirs of Gabriele Vendramin thwarted him in his attempt to purchase the single most important collection in Venice and paintings and antiquities, drawings by the masters and ancient coins. To house his antiquities he commissioned the Antiquarium in the Munich Residenz, the largest Renaissance hall north of the Alps.

"He appointed Orlando di Lasso to a court post and patronized many other artists; this led to a huge burden of debts (½ Mio. Fl.)" (Wikipedia article on Albert V, Duke of Bavaria, accessed 01-03-2010).

Using the print technology that it hopes to control, the Sacred Congregation of the Inquisition, in charge of censorship for the Catholic Church, begins publication in Rome of the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (List of Prohibited Books). This was updated through 32 editions, the last of which appeared in 1948.

“The various editions also contain the rules of the Church relating to the reading, selling and censorship of books. The aim of the list was to prevent the reading of immoral books or works containing theological errors and to prevent the corruption of the faithful. The list was not simply a reactive work. Catholic authors had the possibility to defend their writings and could prepare a new edition with the necessary corrections or elisions either to avoid or to limit a ban . . . . Pre-publication censorship was encouraged.”

In the year of his death Italian physician and surgeon Realdo Colombo publishes De re anatomica libri XV in Venice. 

Colombo is best known for his discovery of the pulmonary or lesser circulation, i.e., the passage of blood from the right cardiac ventricle to the left via the lungs. Although this discovery was first published in the Historia de la composicion del cuerpo humano (1556) by Colombo's friend and former pupil Juan Valverde de Hamusco, the evidence in both Valverde's and Colombo's accounts indicates that the discovery was Colombo's, made through his vivisectional observations of the heart and pulmonary vessels. Colombo's account of the pulmonary circuit was preceded by that in Michael Servetus's Christianismi restitutio, and by the thirteenth-century account of  Ibn al-Nafis. However, because Servetus's Christianismi restitutio (1553) was completely supressed, and Ibn al-Nafis' work was not published in print until the early 20th century, there is no evidence that either was available to Colombo at the time.

Colombo's observations of the heart also enabled him to gain a more correct understanding of the phases of the heartbeat, generally confused by his predecessors, who erroneously likened the heart's action to the expansive action of a bellows. Although overshadowed by his discovery of the pulmonary circulation, Colombo's observations of the heartbeat apparently directly inspired Harvey's vivisectional studies on the heart, which in turn led to his discovery of the greater circulation.

Colombo evidently died during the printing of his work, since in most copies his original dedication letter to Pope Paul IV (who also died while the work was in progress) has been replaced with a dedication to Pope Pius IV by Colombo's two sons, mentioning their father's recent demise. According to tradition, the work was to have been illustrated by Michelangelo; however, Michelangelo left no drawings or any other evidence that he ever seriously considered the task, and we can only speculate as to what sort of artistic masterpiece he might have produced. Colombo's book was published without illustrations except for the woodcut title, which was inspired by that of Vesalius's Fabrica. Schultz (p. 103) points out that the dangling right arm of the cadaver in the title-page woodcut recalls Donatello's bas-relief, The Heart of the Miser.

Schultz, Art and Anatomy in Renaissance Italy (1985) 102-104. Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 501.

French painter, sculptor, etcher, engraver, and geometrician, Jean Cousin the Elder, publishes Livre de perspective in Paris at the press of Jean Le Royer. The folio volume includes a woodcut title device, a frontispiece of platonic solids and 58 geometrical diagrams (16 full-page, 5 double-page) by Jean Le Royer and Aubin Olivier. The frontispiece of the platonic solids is one of the finest examples of mannerist book illustration.

“According to the printer’s introduction, leaf A3v, Le Royer received from Cousin the text and ‘les figures pour l’intelligence d’iceluy necessaries, portraittes de sa main sus planches de bois,’ and he himself cut most of Cousin’s blocks and completed others which his brother-in-law, Aubin Olivier, had started. Several of the diagrams are extended into landscapes with figures. . . . Le Royer held the title of king’s printer for mathematics. Cousin is known to have been a successful painter and designer of stained glass windows. . . . His considerable reputation as a designer of woodcuts for the Paris printers has been developed chiefly by comparison of details from this volume” (Mortimer, Harvard College Library Department of Printing and Graphic Arts, Catalogue of Books and Manuscripts Part I. French Sixteenth Century Books (1964) no. 157, quote from pp. 195-97). 

Physician, botanist, bibliographer, and naturalist Konrad Gesner (Gessner) publishes In hoc volumine continentur Valerii Cordi Simesusij annotationes in pedacij Dioscordis . . . Stirpium lib. IIII. posthumi . . . Sylva . . . De artificiosis extractionibus liber . . . Compositiones medicinales. His accedunt Stocchornii et Nessi in Bernatium Helvetiorum ditione montium . . . Conradi Gesneri de hortis germaniae liber recens . . . omnia summo studio atque industria doctis. atque excellentiss. viri Conr. Gesneri medici Tigurini collecta, & praefationibus illustrata.

Containing descriptions of about 500 plants, Valerius Cordus’s Historiae stirpium represents the earliest effort to systematize botanical description; Cordus has been called the inventor of phytography. “To read [Cordus’s] description of plants after those of his predecessors and contemporaries is like entering a new world. Each description follows a regular pattern and almost always includes, in this order, the characteristic features of stem and leaves, the flower and time of flowering, the fruit and seeds, the number of loculi in the fruit, the lines of dehiscence, the appearance and the number of rows of seed, the root, whether annual or perennial, taste and smell, and habitat. Cordus thus established in principle the basis for scientific plant description and his transforming influence is evident in most of the leading botanists who followed him” (Morton, History of Botanical Science, p. 126). Gesner, who was sent the manuscript of Historiae stirpium several years after Cordus’s death, recognized the revolutionary nature of Cordus’s work, describing it as “truly extraordinary because of the accuracy with which the plants are described” (Greene, Landmarks of Botanical History, 373).

Cordus’s De artificiosis extractionibus liber, a treatise on the preparation of both simple and compound drugs, published for the first time in this work, contains the first written and published account of the synthesis of sulfuric ether (sweet oil of vitriol)  from sulfuric acid and alcohol on ff. 226v-229r. Cordus is credited with having discovered sulfuric ether circa 1540, four years before his premature death at the age of 29. Paracelsus also wrote about ether in the 1540s; however, his brief discussion of ether was not published until 1605. There is also some speculation that the Arabs, who were the first to distill alcohol and sulfuric acid, may have synthesized ether as early as the 10th century, though no record of this has survived. Cordus described ether's high volatility and noted correctly that “ether promotes the flow of mucous secretion from the respiratory tract and that it affords relief from whooping cough” (Faulconer & Keys, Foundations of Anesthesiology, 267). Cordus also listed several other ailments for which ether was recommended, although he did not mention its soporific effects.

Cordus was the son of German physician and botanist Euricius Cordus, who was the first to establish botany on a scientific basis in Germany. Valerius studied botany and pharmacy under his father and at Wittenburg University, where he gave lectures on the Materia medica of Dioscorides and performed original botanical and pharmacological research based on his own observations (a novelty at the time). Valerius Cordus’s promising career was cut short by his death at the age of 29, but he left a number of works in manuscript which were published after his death, partly from finished manuscripts and partly from notes taken by his students.

The first of Cordus’s works to be published were Pharmacorum omnium . . . vulgo vocant Dispensatorium pharmacopolarum (Nuremberg, 1546; Germany’s first official pharmacopeia), and his Annotationes . . . in Dioscoridis de materia medica, which was included in Pedanii Dioscoridis . . . de medicinali materia libri sex (Frankfurt, 1549; ed. Walther Hermann Ryff), and also appeared in Euricius Cordus’s Botanologicon (Paris, 1551). The Annotationes includes descriptions of the opium poppy and of mandrake (mandragora), a plant containing several narcotic alkaloids (see ff. 66-67). Mandrake’s soporific and anesthetic properties were known in the ancient world, and both mandrake and opium were key ingredients in the medieval “spongia somnifera,” a sponge soaked in a decoction of several herbs which was applied to the patient’s nostrils in order to produce surgical anesthesia. This method of anesthesia was largely ineffectual, however, and went out of use before the end of the 17th century. The publication of Cordus’s remaining works was largely due to the efforts of Gesner. The published volume contains the first editions of four works—Historiae stirpium libri IV; Sylva . . . ; De artificiosis extractionibus liber; and Compositiones medicinales—as well as the third edition of the Annotationes. To this collection Gesner added two works of his own, including De tulipa turcarum, the first scientifically accurate account of the tulip, which had been introduced to Europe only a few years earlier. Gesner also was responsible for issuing Cordus’s Stirpium descriptionis liber quintus in 1563.

Italian physician and anatomist Gabriele Fallopio (Fallopius) publishes Observationes anatomicae in Venice: a work of 232 leaves printed in the comparatively small octavo format, with no illustrations.

Observationes anatomicae was the only work Fallopio published before his death from tuberculosis at age thirty-nine, and is thus the only one that can be said to be fully authentic. The remainder of Falloppio's works were edited for publication from his lecture notes, and may represent more or less than the author's original intent. The Observationes was not an all-inclusive textbook of anatomy but rather a detailed critical commentary on Vesalius's De humani corporis fabrica (1543), in which Falloppio attempted to correct the earlier work's errors and add material that Vesalius had overlooked; for this reason, there was no need for illustrations. The large amount of new material included Falloppio's investigations of primary and secondary centers of ossification, the first clear description of primary dentition, numerous contributions to the study of the muscles (especially those of the head), and the famous account of the uterine ("Falloppian") tubes, which he correctly described as resembling small trumpets (tubae). He also gave to the placenta and vagina their present scientific names, provided a superior description of the auditory apparatus (including the first clear accounts of the chorda tympani and semicircular canals), and was the first to clearly distinguish the trochlear nerve of the eye. Vesalius responded positively to Fallopio's work with his posthumously published Examen on Fallopio (1564).

Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 757.

Physician, naturalist, and bibliographer, Conrad Gessner (Gesner) issues his Prologomena in Galenum, in tres partes divisa in volume one of Cl [audius] Galeni Pergameni [Opera] Omnia, quae extant, in Latinum sermonem convers published in Basel by Hieronymus Froben and Nicolaus Episcopius. 

Gessner's work on the many and complicated writings of the second century CE physician, Galen of Pergamon, was the first bio-bibliography, and Gessner's most developed bibliography, covering Greek editions, Latin editions, lost works, writers on Galen, and a classified bibliography of Galen's writings. The bio-bibliography occupies 37 unnumbered leaves, following the title to volume 1, and Gesner's two unnumbered leaves of dedication, dated February 1562. (α†^4-6,β†⁶, γ†⁶, A†-C†⁶, D†⁴).

Besterman, Beginnings of Systematic Bibliography 2nd ed (1940) 19-20, no. XXIX.

After hearing of Roman Catholic Maya who continue to practice "idol worship," Bishop Diego de Landa orders an Inquisition in Mani, Yucatan, ending with the ceremony called auto de fe.

"During the ceremony a disputed number of Maya codices (or books; Landa admits to 27, other sources claim '99 times as many') and approximately 5,000 Maya cult images were burned. The actions of Landa passed into the Black Legend of the Spanish in the Americas" (Wikipedia article on Diego de Landa, accessed 11-30-2008).

"Such codices were primary written records of Maya civilization, together with the many inscriptions on stone monuments and stelae which survive to the present day. However, their range of subject matter in all likelihood embraced more topics than those recorded in stone and buildings, and was more like what is found on painted ceramics (the so-called 'ceramic codex'). Alonso de Zorita wrote that in 1540 he saw numerous such books in the Guatemalan highlands which 'recorded their history for more than eight hundred years back, and which were interpreted for me by very ancient Indians' (Zorita 1963, 271-2). Fr. Bartolomé de las Casas lamented that when found, such books were destroyed: 'These books were seen by our clergy, and even I saw part of those which were burned by the monks, apparently because they thought [they] might harm the Indians in matters concerning religion, since at that time they were at the beginning of their conversion.' The last codices destroyed were those of Tayasal, Guatemala in 1697. . . " (Wikipedia article on Maya Codices, accessed 11-30-2008).

Probably because they were sent out of Mexico before the inquisitorial destruction, three codices and possibly a fragment of a fourth, survived. These are:

• The Madrid Codex, also known as the Tro-Cortesianus Codex;
• The Dresden Codex;
• The Paris Codex, also known as the Peresianus Codex;
• The Grolier Codex, also known as the Grolier Fragment"
  

By Letters Patent of the thirteen year old Charles IX of France (Mantes September 10) it is forbidden for any French printer to print without permission, under penalty of being hanged or strangled.

Italian physician and anatomist Bartolomeo Eustachi (Eustachius) publishes in Venice his Opuscula anatomica, with annotations by his relative and disciple Pier Matteo Pini. It includes 8 engraved full-page text illustrations probably drawn by Eustachi and Pier Matteo Pini, and engraved by Giulio de Musi. Pini also prepared the 168 pages of annotations to Eustachi's anatomical treatises. The illustrations are on the unnumbered pages between pp. 1-20 (first series). These plates are the first 8 in the series of 47 anatomical plates that Eustachi and Pini prepared in 1552, and the only ones of that series published during Eustachi's lifetime.

In 1562 and 1563 Eustachi wrote a series of anatomical treatises on the kidneys (De renum structura), the organ of hearing (De auditus organis), the venous system (De vena quae azygos graecis dicitur) and the teeth (De dentibus), which he issued together under the title Opuscula anatomica. The treatise on the kidney, the first work devoted specifically to that organ, showed a detailed knowledge of the kidney surpassing any earlier work; it contained the first account of the adrenal (suprarenal) gland and a correct determination of the relative levels of the kidneys. The treatise on the ear provided the first post-classical account of the Eustachian tube, while the work on the azygos vein contained the first description of the thoracic duct and of the valvula venae in the right ventricle of the heart, the so-called "Eustachian valve." In his treatise on dentistry Eustachi was the first to study the teeth in any great detail: basing his work on the dissection of fetuses and stillborn infants, he gave an important description of the first and second dentitions, described the hard outer tissue and soft inner structure of the teeth, and attempted an explanation of the problem (not yet completely solved) of the sensitivity of the tooth's hard structure. This last work was also issued separately; it bears its own title-leaf dated 1563. 

Had Eustachi's full series of forty-seven anatomical copperplates been published at the time of their completion in 1552, Eustachi would have ranked with Vesalius as a founder of modern anatomy. However, it is quite probable that because of the growing fame of Vesalius' Fabrica (1543, 1555), Eustachi did not consider publication of his remaining plates, or his accompanying manuscript, De dissensionibus ac controversiis anatomicis, worthwhile. The remaining thirty-nine plates were lost for over a century after Eustachi's death but were rediscovered in the hands of a descendant of Pier Matteo Pini by papal physician, cardiologist, and epidemiologist Giovanni Maria Lancisi, who edited them for publication, and published them, along with the previously published eight plates, under the title of Tabulae anatomicae (Rome, 1714). Eustachi's unpublished manuscript did not survive.

Eustachi's plates are stylistically different from other sixteenth century anatomical studies, as they were produced without the conventional sixteenth-century decorative accompaniments and were framed on three sides by numbered rules providing coordinates by which any part of the image could be located. The publisher of the 1714 edition provided an unnumbered plate with graduated scales to be cut out and used as a location aid. The images are generic figures, composites of many anatomical observations, and are mathematically as well as representationally exact. Choulant, History and Bibliography of Anatomic Illustration (1920) 200-202. Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) nos. 739-40.

Dutch physician and demonologist Johann Weyer publishes De praestigiis daemonum, et incantationibus ac veneficiis, libri V.  In this celebrated exposé of the witchcraft delusion Weyer presented one of the first scientific approaches to the study of mental illness. Defying the authorities of the Inquisition and the doctrines of the Malleus maleficarum (noticed in this database), Weyer asserted the most witches were actually suffering from mental illness. He backed his claim with careful descriptions of a number of case histories from his own clinical experience, containing some of the earliest references to purely psychological treatment. To emphasize the superstitious ignorance of doctors who adhered to demonological theory, Weyer analyzed the effects of the stupefying and hallucinatory drugs used in sixteenth-century medicine, attributing many aspects of witchcraft to their effects. He recognized the relationship between a highly suggestible temperament and mental instability, and described the phenomenon of mass contagion of mental illness.

Like many innovators during the sixteenth century Weyer held positions relative to witchcraft and demonology that were both traditional and new.

"While he defended the idea that the Devil's power was not as strong as claimed by the Christian church in De Praestigiis Daemonum, he defended also the idea that demons did have power and could appear before people who called upon them, creating illusions; but he commonly referred to magicians and not to witches when speaking about people who could create illusions, saying they were heretics who were using the Devil's power to do it, and when speaking on witches, he used the term mentally ill" (Wikipedia article on Johann Weyer, accessed 02-28-2009). 

Weyer "was the first clinical and the first descriptive psychiatrist to leave to succeeding generations a heritage which was accepted, developed, and perfected into an observational branch of medicine. . . . He reduced the clinical problems of psychopathology to simple terms of everyday life and of everyday human, inner experience" (Zilboorg & Henry, A History of Medical Psychology [1941] 228). 

Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 2209.

Georg Willer, a bookseller in Augsburg, issues the first catalogue of the Frankfurt Book Fair. This is the first comprehensive book catalogue issued in Germany. The quarto pamphlet of 10 leaves lists 256 books under the title of Novorum Librorum quos Nundinae Atumnales, Francoforti Anno 1564 celebratae, Venales Exhibuerent.

"The catalogues of the Frankfurt Book Fair, initiated by the Augsburg bookseller George Willer in 1564, represent the first international bibliographies of a periodic character, attempting to list every six months all new publications issued in Europe, and they can be considered the prototype of today's Books in Print. The books are arranged by subject; for the first time, place, publisher, and date are always mentioned" (Breslauer & Folter, Bibliography: Its History and Development [1984] no. 24). 

Breslauer and Folter noted that in 1984 there was no copy of the first edition of Willer's catalogue in the United States.

Ivan Fedorov (Fyodorov) issues at Moscow the first dated book printed in Russia. It is the Apostol (Acts and Epistles of the Apostles).

In 1565 Fedorov  issued the Chasovnik, a Book of Hours. This was the earliest Greek Orthodox liturgical work printed in Russia.

Foirm na n-Urrnuidheadh (The Form of the Prayers), Bishop Séon Carsuel's (John Carswell's) translation into Gaelic of the Book of Common Order or "Knox's Liturgy", is published in Edinburgh at the press of Roibeard (Robert) Lekprevik. This was the first work printed in either Scottish or Gaelic, or any of the Goidelic languages.

"Its language has been characterised as 'exuberant, highly decorated classical common Gaelic', and helped forward the message of Scottish protestantism from the English-speaking south-east of the country into Gaelic-speaking Scotland. It was written in the traditional orthography of Irish Classical Common Gaelic, and Donald Meek has suggested that if it were not for Carsuel's training in this form of literacy and his decision to use it, Scottish Gaelic today may be employing, like the Manx language, a script with orthographic rules more similar to English and French than traditional Irish.

"It was also ground-breaking in its use of prose for non-heroic material, 'the first to use this type of formal Classical [Gaelic] prose'. And Carsuel had indeed complained in his work about earlier Gaelic writings, slamming the

'. . . darkness of sin and ignorance and design of those who teach and write and cultivate Gaelic, that they are more designed, and more accustomed, to compose vain, seductive, lying and worldly tales about the Tuatha De Danann and the sons of Mil and the heroes and Finn MacCoul and his warriors and to cultivate and piece together much else which I will not enumerate or tell here, for the purpose of winning for themselves the vain rewards of the world.'

"In the late 19th century, his skeleton was dug up; the skeleton measured seven feet in length, making Carsuel an extremely tall man by the standard of any era or geographical location (Wikipedia article on Séon Carsuel, accessed 12-11-2009).

Of the first edition of  Foirm na n-Urrnuidheadh, only three copies—all imperfect—are known to exist. One is in Edinburgh University Library.

Archbishop of Canterbury Matthew Parker secures license from Queen Elizabeth to seek out "auncient records or monuments" from the former libraries of the monasteries suppressed by Henry VIII, and from old cathedral priories  converted to the use of the Church of England.

"He thus had first choice of many hundreds of manuscripts of the very highest importance. This was the earliest major antiquarian collection ever asssembled in England, long before those of Thomas Bodley (1545-1613) or Robert Cotton (1571-1631), which became the foundations of the libraries of the Bodleian in Oxford and, eventually, the British Library in London" (de Hamel, The Parker Libary: Treasures from the Collection [2000] 8).

Printer Pedro Ocharte, born Pierre Ocharte in Rouen, France, working in Mexico City, issues Opera medicinalia by the Spanish physician, Francisco Bravo. Ocharte had married the daughter of Juan Pablos, the first printer in the New World, and inherited his equipment. Opera medicinalia includes a woodcut title border and a few botanical woodcuts, including images to distinguish the false sarsaparilla of Mexico from the true Spanish sarsaparilla of Dioscorides. It was the first medical book printed in the Western Hemisphere, and its botanical images were the first illustrations of plants printed in the Western Hemisphere.

Of the original edition only two copies are known, of which the only complete copy is at the Universidad de Puebla, Mexico. In 1862 American bookseller and bibliographer Henry Stevens purchased an incomplete copy at the sale of the library of Guglielmo Libri in London. This he resold to the American collector James Lennox. This copy is preserved in the New York Public Library.

In 1970 London antiquarian booksellers Dawsons of Pall issued a facsimile of the complete Universidad de Puebla copy with a companion volume of commentary by Francisco Guerra. The two volumes were printed on hand-made paper by J. Barcham Green, Ltd. and bound in parchment by Zaehnsdorf in London. The edition was limited to 250 hand-numbered copies.

English merchant, and later Lord Mayor of London Henry Billingsley publishes The Elements of Geometrie of the Most Ancient Philosopher Euclide of Megara.

Billingsley's work was the first English translation of Euclid. The title confused Euclid of Alexandria with the Greek Socratic philosopher, Euclid of Megara. The two were frequently confused during the Renaissance. Billingsley's translation included a lengthy preface by the mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, occultist, navigator, imperialist, consultant to Queen Elizabeth I. John Dee, which surveyed all the branches of pure and applied mathematics of the time. Dee also provided copious notes and other supplementary material.

Billingsley's translation, renowned for its clarity and accuracy, was made from the Greek rather than the well-known Latin translation by Adelard of Bath and Campanus of Novara.  Victorian mathematician, bibliographer and historian of mathematics Augustus De Morgan suggested that the translation was solely the work of Dee, but in his correspondence Dee stated specifically that only the introduction and the supplementary material were his. Proof that Billingsley made the translation himself is available in Billingsley's copy of the 1533 Greek editio princeps of Euclid bound with the 1558 Basel edition printed by Hervagius which reprints the Adelard-Companus Latin translation from the Arabic first printed in 1482 and the Zamberti Latin translation from the Greek first printed in 1505. Billingsley's copy is preserved in Princeton University Library.

"On the title-page is the autograph signature 'Henricus Billingsley,' in a most beautiful antique hand. Throughout the volume are very numerous corrections, additions and marginal notes, all in Billingsley's peculiar and beautiful writing. I dare hazard that no Lord Mayor, since his time, has ever written so charming a hand. By reading what he has done, it immediately appears that though he had the Adelard-Campanus Latin before him, yet he gave his special work to a careful comparison of Zamberti's Translation with the original Greek, and the corrections he has actually made sufficiently prove his scholarship and render entirely unnecessary De Morgan's suppositious aid from Dr. Dee, while, on the other hand, they establish the conclusion about the translation to which De Morgan's sagacity had led him, that 'It was certainly made from the Greek, and not from any of the Arabico-Latin versions' (Halsted, "Note on the First English Euclid," American Journal of Mathematics II [1879] 46-48).

♦ A special feature of Billingsley's edition are pasted flaps of paper that can be folded up to produce three dimensional models of the propositions in Book XI, making it one of the oldest "pop-up" books.

The Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana (The Laurentian Library of the Medici) in Florence, Italy, designed by Michelangelo, is opened to the public.

The catalogue of the private library of the Augsburg physician, Jeremias Martius (c. 1535-1585,) may be the first printed catalogue of any library.

Dutch physician, anatomist and comparative anatomist Volcher Coiter publishes Externarum et internarum principalium humani corporis partium tabulae . . . .  in Nuremberg. It includes 9 engravings (the first 4 on 2 leaves), all but 2 signed "V. C. D." for "Volcher Coiter delineavit," signifying that they were drawn by the author. The last 2 plates, of the human skeleton, were after the first and third skeleton figures in Vesalius's Fabrica.  The woodcut historiated initials in the work were  from the "Puttenalphabet" by Hans Weiditz, cut in Augsburg in 1531. 

A student under Gabriele Falloppio, Bartoloemo Eustachi , and Ulisse Aldrovandi, Coiter made several important contributions to the study of human anatomy, and was the first to elevate comparative anatomy to the rank of an independent branch of biology. His Externarum et internarum principalium humani corporis partium tabulae is a collection of ten short works, among which are the first monograph on the ear (De auditus instrumento); the earliest study of the growth of the skeleton as a whole in the human fetus (Ossium tum humani foetus . . .); the first descriptions of the spinal ganglia and musculus corrugator supercilii (in Observationum anatomicarum chirurgicarumque miscellanea); and Coiter's epochal (although unillustrated) investigation of the development of the chick in ovo (De ovorum gallinaceorum generationis. . .), based upon observations made over twenty successive days. This last was the first published study of chick embryo development based upon direct observation since the three-period description (after three, ten and twenty days of incubation) given by Aristotle in his Historia animalium two thousand years before.

Coiter was one of the first physicians to draw the illustrations for his own publications, and to take credit for them in print. It is believed that Vesalius may have done some of the simpler illustrations for the Fabrica; however, none of the Fabrica images are signed, and questions concerning their authorship have led to centuries of speculation and debate. Coiter's illustrations of the adult skeleton and skull, after Vesalius, are superior in anatomical detail; and his sketches of fetal skeletons are original. Cole, History of Comparative Anatomy, illustrates a copy of this work with the title-page dated 1572, but the majority of copies probably appeared in 1573, as most of the references cite the later date. Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 496.

Archbishop of Canterbury Matthew Parker donates his library of about 480 manuscripts and about 1000 printed books to the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

"He was an avid book collector, salvaging medieval manuscripts dispersed at the dissolution of the monasteries; he was particularly keen to preserve materials relating to Anglo-Saxon England, motivated by his search for evidence of an ancient English-speaking Church independent of Rome. The extraordinary collection of documents that resulted from his efforts is still housed at Corpus Christi College, and consists of items spanning from the sixth-century Gospels of St. Augustine to sixteenth century records relating to the English Reformation.

"The Parker Library's holdings of Old English texts accounts for nearly a quarter of all extant manuscripts in Anglo-Saxon, including the earliest copy of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (c. 890), the Old English Bede and King Alfred´s translation of Gregory the Great´s Pastoral Care. The Parker Library also contains key Anglo-Norman and Middle English texts ranging from the Ancrene Wisse and the Brut Chronicle to one of the finest copies of Chaucer´s Troilus and Criseyde. Other subjects represented in the collection are music, medieval travelogues and maps, bestiaries, royal ceremonies, historical chronicles and Bibles. The Parker Library holds a magnificent collection of English illuminated manuscripts, such as the Bury and Dover Bibles (c. 1135 and c. 1150) and the Chronica maiora by Matthew Paris (c. 1230-50)" (Parker Library on the Web [Beta] accessed 11-27-2008).

Hieronymous Wolf, humanist, and librarian to Johann Jakob Fugger, publishes Catalogus Graecorum librorum manu scriptorum Augustanae bibliothecae.

Wolf's slim pamphlet of only 6 leaves lists 126 Greek manuscripts presented by Fugger to the City Library of Augsburg, Fugger's native city. It may be considered the first printed catalogue of a portion of a public library.

Breslauer & Folter, Bibliography: Its History and Development (1984) no. 25.

Eliezer ben Isaac Ashkenazi, a printer from Prague, settled in Safad (Safed) in northern Palestine (now Israel). The first book that he issued there was Lekah Tov, a Hebrew commentary on the Book of Esther, by Yom Tov Zahalon.

This was the first book printed in the Middle East. In his introduction Zahalon expressed his delight in the founding of a press in this Holy City of the Holy Land and urged authors to have their works printed there; however the press issued only six books.

French lawyer, Conseil du Roi (privy councillor), and mathematician François Viète (Franciscus Vieta) publishes Canon mathematicus seu ad triangula. Cum adpendicibus.

Viète's numerous mathematical works were written during two brief periods of leisure from his career as a lawyer to the French courts of Henry III and Henry IV. His Canon mathematicus, the earliest of his published mathematical works, was the first of his studies on trigonometry.

"Here he gathered together the formulas for the solution of right and oblique plane triangles, including his own contribution, the law of tangents. . . . For spherical right triangles he gave the complete set of formulas needed to calculate any one part in terms of two other known parts, and the rule for remembering this collections of formulas, which we now call Napier's rule. He also contributed the law of cosines involving the angles of an oblique spherical triangle" (Kline, Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times [1972] 239-240).

In addition, Viète called for a reform in the expression of fractions, in which decimal fractions would replace the sexagesimal fractions then used in astronomy, physics and mathematics.

Viète's work consists of two parts: "Canon mathematicus," containing a table of trigonometric lines with some additional tables; and "Universalium inspectionum ad canonem mathematicum" (with separate title), giving the computational methods used in the construction of the canon and explaining the computation of plane and spherical triangles. Viète had originally planned to include two more parts devoted to astronomy, but these were never published.

Canon mathematicus was remarkably advanced typographically for its time. It is also very rare: privately printed in a small edition, its scarcity was compounded by Viète's displeasure over its many misprints, which caused him to withdraw from circulation all the copies he could recover.

Dibner, Heralds of Science, no. 105.  Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 2151.

Ivan Ivan Fyodorov, Fedorov or Fedorovych (Russian: Iва́н Федоров) prints the first complete Slavic Bible. 

It is known as the Ostog Bible (Ukrainian: Острозька Біблія; Russian: Острожская Библия), because it was printed on the estate of the Ukrainian/Lithuanian prince, Konstanty Wasyl Ostrogski (Belarusian: Канстантын Васiль Астрожскi Lithuanian: Konstantinas Vasilijus Ostrogiškis Ukrainian: Костянтин-Василь Острозький) at Ostog, Ukraine.

"The Ostrog Bible is unique among Church Slavonic Bibles in that the Old Testament was translated not from the (Hebrew) Masoretic text, but from the (Greek) Septuagint. This translation, comprising seventy-six books of the Old and New Testaments, was based on the Gennadius Bible and a manuscript of the Codex Alexandrinus. Some parts were based on Francysk Skaryna's translations.

The Ostrog Bibles were printed on two dates: 12 July 1580, and 12 August 1581. The second version differs from the 1580 original in composition, ornamentation, and correction of misprints. In the printing of the Bible delays occurred, as it was necessary to remove mistakes, to search for correct textual resolutions of questions, and to produce a correct translation. The editing of the Bible detained printing. In the meantime, Fyodorov and his company printed other biblical books. The first were those which did not require correcting: the Psalter and the New Testament.

"The Ostrog Bible is a monumental publication of 1,256 pages, lavishly decorated with headpieces and initials, which were prepared especially for it. From the typographical point of view, the Ostrog Bible is irreproachable. This is the first Bible printed in Cyrillic type. It served as the original and model for further Russian publications of the Bible. The importance of the first printed Cyrillic Bible can hardly be overestimated. Prince Ostrogski sent copies to Pope Gregory XIII and tsar Ivan the Terrible, while the latter presented a copy to an English ambassador. When leaving Ostroh, Fyodorov took 400 books with him. Only 300 copies of the Ostrog Bible are extant today" (Wikipedia article on Ostrog Bible, accessed 01-03-2010).

Pope Gregory XIII issues a papal bull, Inter gravissimas, the founding document of the Gregorian calendar. It will be printed on March 1.

Father Ruggiere, a missionary in China, has his Catechism printed in the Chinese language at Tchao-kin.

Printed by wood blocks, Ruggiere's Catechism was the first book printed by Europeans in China. 1200 copies were printed of which only two seem to have survived.

Pope Gregory XIII founds a Maronite College in Rome to train European missionaries in various oriental languages, and to train oriental Christians in the languages of Europe.

The Maronites translated books from Latin into Arabic and Syriac. To undertake the printing of Arabic and other oriental languages, Gregory appointed Cardinal Ferdinando de Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, director of what came to be called the Medici Press. Medici placed Giovan Battista Raimundi in charge of the press, within ten years they issued elegantly produced editions of Avicenna, Euclid and other works in Arabic.

"In the 18th century, amazingly enough, many of the books printed by Raimondi were still in the Palazzo Vecchio stacked in wardrobes. An inventory taken at the time shows that 1,039 copies of the Arabic-Latin Gospels, 566 of the Arabic Gospels, 810 of the Avicenna, 1,967 of the Euclid, 1,129 of the Idrisi, still remained unsold, along with several other titles. But early in the 19th century - the Age of Enlightenment - the government sold the remaining books for a derisory sum to a bookseller who destroyed the bulk of them to increase the rarity of the remainder. The remaining type and matrices wound up in the Pitti Palace, where Napoleon was able to loot them at his ease when he conquered Italy. In 1808 Napoleon ordered the punches and matrices to be taken to Paris, where they were used to print Arabic proclamations for distribution in the Near East. Eight years later, after Napoleon's exile, they were brought back to Florence" (http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/198102,/arabic.and.the.art.of.printing-a.special.section.htm, accessed 01-29-2009)

François Grudé de la Croix du Maine publishes Premier Volume de la Bibliothèque du Sieur de la Croix-Du-Maine. Qui est un catalogue général de toutes sortes d'Autherus, qui on escrit en François depuis cinq cents ans & plus.

This was the first French national bibliography.

"The authors, numbering three thousand, as the title states, are arranged in the aphabetical order of their first names, but a list of their surnames is given in the preliminaries. Their short biographies are followed by the lists of their works and bibliographical data, as far as known to the author. Vol. II, a subject index, and vol. III, Latin works by French authors never appeared as Grudé was assassinated [as a Protestant sympathizer in 1592.

"The work contains an auto-bibliography of several hundred works on French history of which none has survived, earning Grudé in some quarters the title of impostor" (Breslauer & Folter, Bibliography: Its History and Development [1984] no. 29).

Grudé also includes a proposal for a Royal National Library with a number classification system similar to the modern decimal classification system. On p. 511 there is a woodcut which may be the earliest printed representation of a bookcase.

French diplomat and cryptographer Blaise de Vigenère publishes Traicté des chiffres ou secrètes manières d'escrire. 

Vigenère's book described a text autokey cipher that became known as the Vigenère cipher because it was misattributed to Vigenère in the 19th century. The actual inventor of the text autokey cipher was Giovan Battista Bellaso (1563).

The Star Chamber issues a decree consolidating and amplifying the regulation of printing in England.

In Le diverse et artificose machine, elegantly published from his home in Paris, Agostino Ramelli describes and illustrates, among numerous remarkable inventions, a revolving book wheel. It is one of the earliest "information retrieval" devices. Ramelli writes:

"This is a beautiful and ingenious machine, very useful and convenient for anyone who takes pleasure in study, especially those who are indisposed and tormented by gout. For with this machine a man can see and turn through a large number of books without moving from one spot. Moveover, it has another fine convenience in that it occupies very little space in the place where it is set, as anyone of intelligence can clearly see from the drawing.

"This wheel is made in the manner shown, that is, it is contructed so that when the books are laid on its lecturns they never fall or move from the place where they are laid even as the wheel is turned and revolved all the way around. Indeed, they will always remain in the same position and will be displayed to the reader in the same way as they were laid on their small lecturns, without any need to tie or hold them with anything. This wheel may be made as large or small as desired, provided the master craftsman who constructs it observes the proportions of each part of its components. He can do this very easily if he studies carefully all the parts of these small wheels of ours and the other devices in this machine. These parts are made in sizes proportionate to each other. To give fuller understanding and comprehension to anyone who wishes to make and operate this machine, I have shown here separately and uncovered all the devices needed for it, so that anyone may understand them better and make use of them for his needs." (Ramelli, The Various Ingenious Machines of Agostino Ramelli. A classic Sixteenth-Century Illustrated Treatise on Technology. Translated from the Italian and French with a biographical study of the author by Martha Teach Gnudi. Techical annotations and a pictorial glossary by Eugene S. Ferguson [1987] 508-9)

Sir Robert Cotton begins collecting original manuscripts.

Cotton's library of about 1000 manuscripts has been called the most important collection of manuscripts ever assembled in Britain by a private individual, though Matthew Parker's library might be a close second. Among Cotton's many treasures were the Lindisfarne Gospels, two of the contemporary exemplifications of Magna Carta, and the only surviving manuscript of Beowulf.

"The Cottonian Library was the richest private collection of manuscripts ever amassed; of secular libraries it outranked the Royal library, the collections of the Inns of Court and the College of Arms; Cotton's house near the Palace of Westminster became the meeting-place of the Society of Antiquaries and of all the eminent scholars of England; it was eventually donated to the nation by Cotton's grandson and now resides at the British Library.

"The physical arrangement of Cotton's Library continues to be reflected in citations to manuscripts once in his possession. His library was housed in a room 26 feet (7.9 m) long by six feet wide filled with bookpresses, each with the bust of a figure from classical antiquity on top. Counterclockwise, these are catalogued as Julius (i.e., Julius Caesar), Augustus, Cleopatra, Faustina, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian. (Domitian had only one shelf, perhaps because it was over the door.) Manuscripts are now designated by library, bookpress, and number: for example, the manuscript of Beowulf is designated Cotton Vitellius A.xv, and the manuscript of Pearl is Cotton Nero A.x" (Wikipedia article on Sir Robert Cotton, accessed 11-22-2008).

Writing under the anagrammatic pen name of Thoinot Arbeau, French cleric Jehan Tabourot publishes Orchésographie. Et traicte en forme de dialogve, par leqvel tovtes personnes pevvent facilement apprendre & practiquer l'honneste exercice des dances. Par Thoinot Arbeau demeurant à Lengres. 

Tabourot's manual, written in the form of a dialogue between a dancing master and his student, provides critical information on social ballroom behavior and on the interaction of musicians and dancers for this period. The book includes an early dance notation system that correlates the music to the dance steps.

"Orchésographie discusses a full spectrum of late Renaissance dance including the galliard, pavane, branle, volta, morisque, gavotte, allemande, and courante" (Library of Congress, Dance Instruction Manuals, where you can page through a virtual facsimile of the 1589 printing at this link, accessed 04-05-2009).

Italian Architect Domenico Fontana publishes Della transportatione dell'obelisco Vaticano. . . . in Rome at the press of Domenico Basa. The folio volume contains 2 engraved titles, both signed by Natal Bonifacio, 35 full-page and 3 double-page engravings. It describes one of the greatest engineering feats of the Renaissance -- the removal of the Vatican obelisk from its old location behind the sacristy of St. Peter's, where it had been since the reign of Caligula, to its present location in the center of the Piazza of St. Peter. The problem of transporting this 327 ton and fragile stone tower had occupied Italian engineers for many years, so that when Pope Sixtus V appointed a council to consider ways and means of moving the obelisk, nearly 500 men came to submit their plans.

The honor went to Domenico Fontana, the pope's official architect, who proved to the council the feasibility of his proposal by making a scale model in lead. Fontana erected a framed tower of timbers surrounding the obelisk and then by means of ropes attached to the tower raised the obelisk from its pedestal, and afterward lowered it so that it should rest on a wooden platform. This platform he had had drawn on rollers to the new site, where the tower was re-erected and the great stone raised from its horizontal position on the platform to the vertical and set on the new base.  The project required 900 men, 75 horses and untold numbers of pulleys and lengths of rope.

The plates also illustrate many of the buildings and designs that Fontana executed for Pope Sixtus V; they constitute the only record of his work that Fontana left. 

Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 812.

Physician and bibliographer Pascal Lecoq (Paschalis Gallus) publishes Bibliotheca medica. Sive catalogus illorum, qui ex professor artem medicam in hunc usque annum scriptis illustrarunt.

This was the first systematic medical bibliography with an annotated list of 1224 authors who wrote in Latin, and lists of French, German, and Italian writers, and other material.

Breslauer & Folter, Bibliography: Its History and Development (1984) no. 32.

Physician and bibliographer Israel Spach publishes Nomenclator scriptorum medicorum. Hoc est: elenchus eorum qui artem medicam suis scriptis illustrarunt, secundum locos communes ipsius medicinae in Frankfurt.

This was the first attempt at a medical subject bibliography, arranged under very broad subject headings with indexes of authors and subjects.

The collection, recording, and publishing of medical statistics in the form of Bills of Mortality began in England as a result of the epidemic of plague in 1592-93.

"The epidemic of plague, which reached its height in the year 1593, began to be felt in London in the autumn of 1592, and is said to have caused 2000 deaths before the end of the year. On the 7th September, soldiers from the north on their way to Southampton to embark for foreign parts had to pass round London 'to avoid the infection which is much spread abroad' in the city. On the 16th September, the spoil of a great Spanish carrack at Dartmouth could be brough no farther than Greenwich, on account of the contagion in London; no one to go from London to Dartmouth to buy the goods. It was an ominous sign that the infection lasted through the winter; even in mid winter people were leaving London: 'the plague is so sore that none of worth stay about these places.' On the 6th April 1593, one William Cecil who had been kept in the Fleet prison by the queen's command, writes that 'the place where he lies is a congregation of the unwholesome smells of the town, and season contagious, so many have died of the plague.' From a memorial of 1595, it appears that the neighbourhood of Fleet Ditch had been the most infected part of the whole city and liberties in 1593; 'in the last great plague more died about there than in three parishes besides.' The epidemic does not appear to have reached its height until summer. . . .

"Of that London epidemic a weekly record was kept by the Company of Parish Clerks, and published by them beginning with the weekly bill of 21st December, 1592. The clerk of the Company of Parish Clerks, writing in 1665, had the annual bill for 1593 before him, with the plague-deaths and other deaths in each of 109 parishes in alphabetical order, and the christenings as well. For the next two years, 1594 and 1595, he appears to have had before him not only the annual bills but also a complete set of the weekly bills of burials and christenings according to parishes. The same documents were used by Graunt in 1662, and had doubtless been used by John Stow at the time when they were published. The originals are all lost, and only a few totals extracted from them remain on record. . . .

"The London plague of 1592-93 called forth two known publications, an anonymous 'Good Councell against the Plague, showing sundry preservatives. . . to avoyde the infection lately begun in some places of this Cittie' (London, 1592), and the Defensative' of Simon Kellwaye (April, 1593). The dates of these two books show that the alarm had really begun in the end of 1592 and the early months of 1593" (Creighton, A History of Epidemics in Britain [1891] 352-53).

The earliest surviving copy of the Bills of Mortality is:

True bill of the vvhole number that hath died At London : printed by I.R[oberts]. for Iohn Trundle, and are to be sold at his shop in Barbican, neere Long lane end, [1603]

1 sheet ([1] p.) ;c1⁰. STC (2nd ed.), 16743 1-3.

Having been founded in 1587, Leiden University Library issues the first printed catalogue of its holdings: Nomenclator autorum omnium, quorum libri vel manuscripti, vel typis expressi exstant in Bibliotheca Academiae Lugduno-Batavae (List of all Authors whose Books, Whether Manuscript or Printed, are Available in Leiden University Library).

This was the first published catalogue of any institutional library.

Bookseller and bibliographer Andrew Maunsell publishes The First Part [the Seconde Parte] of the Catalogue of English printed Bookes.

Maunsell produced the first trade bibliography of English books, giving author, translator where applicable, a title full enough to ensure definite identification, format, and printer or bookseller and date. It listed those books printed in the preceding fifty to sixty years and which were still available from publishers and booksellers. The first part, consisting of 123 pages, listed theology--excluding anti-Reformation literature. The much shorter second part, consisting of 27 pages, listed "the Sciences Mathematicall, as Arithmetick, Geometrie, Astronomie, Astrologie, Musick, and the Arte of VVarre, and Nauigation; and also of Phisick and Surgerie."

In his Beginnings of Systematic Bibliography (2nd ed 1940) Theodore Besterman characterized Maunsell's work as the one in which a "a real technique of book-description is made use of for the first time" (p. 29). The Catalogue is also an alphabetical subject bibliography, with the larger subjects sub-divided and in each section works arranged alphabetically by author's surname—one of the earliest uses of the surname for indexing.

In his dedication to "Worshipfull the Master, Wardens, and Assistants of the Companie of Stationers and to all other Printers and Booke-sellers in generall" Maunsell wrote of learned men that

"have written Latine Catalogues, [Conrad] Gesner, Simler, and our countrman John Bale. They make their Alphabet by the Christen name, I by the Sir name; They mingle Diuinitie, Law Phiscke, &c. together, I set Diuinitie by itselfe; They set downe Printed and not Printed, I onely Printed, and none but such as I have seene. . . Concerning the Books which are without Authors names called Anonymi, I have placed them either upon the Title they bee entiuled by, or else upon the matter they entreate of, and sometimes upon both, for the easier finding of them."

Maunsell then explained his cross-indexing system, and how it should be used throughout the work.

Breslauer & Folter, Bibliography: Its History and Development (1984) no. 36.

Using Korean printing equipment brought back by Toyotomi Hideyoshi's army in 1593, and type cast by the order of Tokugawa Ieyasu before he became shogun, the Japanese print an edition of the Confucian Analects at the order of Emperor Go-Yōzei. This document is the oldest surviving work of Japanese printing by moveable type.

Despite the appeal of moveable type, the Japanese decided that the running script or semi-cursive style of Japanese writing was better reproduced using woodblocks, and by 1640 woodblock printing was adopted for nearly all purposes in Japan. 

Physician Israel Spach publishes Nomenclator scriptorum philosophicorum atque philologicorum in Strassburg.

Covering the works of over 4,000 authors arranged under 400 subject headings, including esoteric subjects like gladiatorial combat, glory, and sobriety, with an emphasis on contemporary writers, this was the most significant subject bibliography of the sixteenth century. It became a model for subsequent subject bibliographies.

Breslauer & Folter, Bibliography: Its History and Development [1984] no. 39.

Conte Ottavio Ruini edits and has published in Bologna, with a dedication to Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini,  Dell'anotomia [sic], et dell'infirmita del cavallo [Book ii: Dell'infirmita del cavallo] by il marchese Carlo Ruini, Bolognese aristocrat, senator, and high-ranking lawyer. 

Ruini's work, was the first book devoted exclusively to the structure of an animal other than man. Following the example of Vesalius, Ruini stressed the importance of "artful instruction" about all parts of the horse's body, the diseases that afflict them, and their cures. The first part of his work gives an exhaustive treatment of equine anatomy, with especially good accounts of the sense organs; it is illustrated with sixty-four full-page woodcuts, of which the last three, showing a stripped horse in a landscape setting, were clearly inspired by the Vesalian "musclemen" plates.

The second part of the work deals with equine diseases and their cures from a traditional Hippocratic-Galenic standpoint. Some scholars, basing their arguments on Ruini's description of the horse's heart and blood vessels, believe that Ruini was active in the discovery of the greater and lesser circulatory systems. This is unlikely, but it is probable that he was one of many at that time who had a notion of the circulation of the blood.

Ruini's work appeared shortly after his death. The unusual rarity of the first edition might be partially explained by fact that a portion of the sheets of the first edition were reissued the following year byprinter Gaspare Bindoni in Venice. Copies of this second issue, which is also rare, contain a cancel title and a different dedication leaf changing the dedication to César, Duke of Vendôme, natural son of Henry IV.

Cole, History of Comparative anatomy, 83-97. Hook & Norman, The Haskell F. Norman Library of Science and Medicine (1991) no. 1858.

The first book auctions with lot numbers and printed catalogues took place in Holland. The first book auction with a printed catalogue took place in Leiden in 1593, though no catalogue survives. 

The earliest surviving catalogue of a book auction was issued by Christophorus Guyot in Leiden: Catalogus Librorum Bibliothecae Nobilissimi Clarissimique viri piae memoriea D. Philippi Marnixii. The sale took place in the house of the widow of the owner of the library,  Filips van Marnix, heer van Sint-Aldegonde.

Marnix was a Dutch and Flemish writer and statesman and the probable author of the text of the Dutch national anthem, the Wilhelmus.

"Less known to the general public is his work as a cryptographer. St. Aldegonde is considered to be the first Dutch cryptographer (cfr. The Codebreakers). For Stadholder William the Silent, he deciphered secret messages that were intercepted from the Spaniards. His interest in cryptograhpy possibly shows in the Wilhelmus, where the first letters of the couplets form the name Willem van Nassov, i.e. William 'the Silent' of Nassau, the Prince of Orange, but such musical games -often far more intricate- were commonly practiced by polyphony composers since the Gothic period." 

Only two copies survive. Breslauer & Folter, Bibliography: Its History and Development (1984) no. 40.