Page 12 - 2018 Spring Newsletter

SPECIAL COLLECTIONS

Decorated publishers’ bindings held sway until
the introduction of the dust jacket led to their
demise in the early twentieth century. They gave
rise to new forms of decoration and illustration
and attracted the best talent of the day.

The BOUND FOR THE PEOPLE exhibit,
January through April 2018, showcased examples
of rare book publishers bindings that are housed
in our Special Collections.

REMEDY FOR MENTAL STUPOR

Drinking too much coffee? Let Special Collections help with an
alternative remedy. This one appears in a sixteenth-century Aztec
herbal.

For Mental Stupor: He whose mind is in this condition should
drink the juice of the tlahtlocotic root crushed in warm water so
that he will vomit. A few days later both the bark and roots of the
flowers yolloxochitl and cacauaxochitl are to be crushed in water;
he is to drink the juice before lunch…His forehead, moreover, is
to be anointed with the brain of a stag and the feathers of a dove,
crushed and put in water, and human hair. On his neck he shall
carry the stone found in the stomach of the swallow.

The original manuscript was created in 1552 by two individuals
of Aztec descent. One, Martinus de la Cruz, was a physician;
the other, Badianus, rendered the former’s pharmacological
knowledge into Latin. The manuscript, decorated with pigments
made of native materials, is not only astoundingly beautiful, but an
important witness to Aztec medicine at the time of the conquest.
Though created in present-day Mexico by an artist and scribe of
Aztec descent, the original manuscript now resides at the Vatican
Library. Special Collections houses a facsimile made in 1940 and
edited by Emily Emmart.

For more details visit http://library.tcu.edu/spcoll

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