Facets

1788 CE

#13366

Les eaux minérales et thermales de Saint-Dominique. Tome 1 (All Published).

One of the earliest medical publications printed in Haiti. Duvivier, Bibliographie générale et méthodique d'Haiti, 2, p. 206.

2017 CE

#10539

Making medicines in early colonial Lima, Peru: Apothecaries, science and society.

1809 CE

#9064

Memoria sobre a canella do Rio de Janeiro offerecida ao Principe do Brazil nosso senhor: pelo Senado da Camara da mesma cidade no anno de 1798.

The earliest monograph on medicine published in Brazil. Digital facsimile from the U.S. National Library of Medicine at this link.

1822 CE

#9071

Memoria sobre a virtude toenifuga da romeira, com observações zoologicas e zoonomicas relativas á toenea, e com huma estampa.

On the use of a root medicine to treat tapeworms, roundworms and similar parasites. The author refers to cases from Portuguese Africa, India and Brazil, and gives clinical observations based on his own case studies, s…

1763 CE

#8288

Nicolai Josephi Jacquin Selectarum stirpium Americanarum historia, in qua ad Linneanum systema determinatae descriptaeque sistuntur plantse illae, quas in insulis Martinica, Jamaica, Domingo, aliisque, et in vicinae continentis parte, observavit rariores; : adjectis iconibus in solo natali delineatis. 2 vols.

Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

2013 CE

#8286

Nikolaus Joseph Jacquin's American plants: Botanical expedition to the Caribbean (1754-1759) and the publication of the Selectarum stirpium Americanarum historia.

1908 CE

#7444

Notes of a botanist on the Amazon & Andes, being records of travel on the Amazon and its tributaries, the Trombetas, Rio Negro, Uaupés, Casiquiari, Pacimoni, Huallaga, and Pastas; as also to the cataracts of the Orinoco, along the eastern side of the Andes of Peru and Ecuador, and the shores of the Pacific during the years 1849-1864. Edited and condensed by Alfred Russel Wallace..., with a biographical introduction, portrait, seventy-one illustrations and seven maps. 2 vols.

Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

1703 CE

#9542

Nova plantarum Americanarum genera.

Digital facsimile from the Biodiversity Heritage Library at this link.

1914 CE

#2020

Nuevo procedimiento para la transfusion de la sangre.

Agote was the first to transfuse citrated blood. Text in Spanish and French.

1759 CE

#1770

Observations on the changes of the air and the concomitant epidemical diseases, in the Island of Barbados.

Hillary included good accounts of lead colic and infective hepatitis, and probably the first description of sprue (celiac disease).

1916 CE

#2085

On the ‘vomiting sickness’ of Jamaica.

Discovery of the cause of the “vomiting sickness of Jamaica”: ackee poisoning.

1570 CE

#5372

Opera medicinalia.

Opera medicinalia 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 copie…

1853 CE

#8242

Palm trees of the Amazon.

Wallace's first book, printed in an edition of only 250 copies. Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

1988 CE

#8791

Passage of darkness: The Ethnobiology of the Haitian zombie.

1901 CE

#2040.1

Peru: The history of coca, “the divine plant of the Incas”.

The most comprehensive work on the coca plant and the history of its use by the Incas and their descendants. Reprinted, San Francisco, And/Or Press, 1974.

1758 CE

#13545

Petri Loefling... Iter Hispanicum, eller Resa til spanska länderna uti Europa och America förrättad infrän år 1751 til år, 1756, med Beskrifningar och ron öfver de märkvärdigaste växyer, utgifven efter dess frånfälle af Carl Linnaeus.

Edited by Carl Linnaeus after the early death of Pehr Löfling, who Linnaeus considered his most gifted disciple. This is the account of Löfling's mostly botanically oriented researches through Spain, Portuga…

1945 CE

#13061

Plantas medicinale aromaticas o venenosas de Cuba. 2 vols.

1615 CE

#1820.1

Quatro libros. De la naturaleza, y virtudes de las plantas, y animales que estan receuidos en el vso de medicina en la Nueua España, y la methodo, y correccion, y preparacion, que para administrallas se requiere con lo que el doctor Francisco Hernandez escriuio en lengua latina. : Muy vtil para todo genero de gente q[ue] viue en esta[n]cias y pueblos, de no ay medicos, ni botica.Traduzido, y aumentados muchos simples, y compuestos y otros muchos secretos curatiuos, por Fr. Francisco Ximenes....

Physician to Philip II of Spain, Hernández travelled to Mexico by order of the king, and studied the natural history of the region from 1570-77. His Works, which filled six folio volumes of text and 10 volumes …

1792 CE

#13323

Quinología o Tratado del árbol de la quina ó cascarilla:con su descripción y la de otras especies de quinos nuevamente descubiertas en el Perú....

Ruiz, a Spanish pharmacist and botanist, was appointed director of the Expedición Botánica al Virreinato del Perú, during which he traveled extensively through Chile and Peru along with botanists …

1868 CE

#1868

Recherches chimiques et physiologiques sur l’erythroxylum coca du Pérou et la cocaïne.

The author, formerly a surgeon in the Peruvian army, issued the first study of the pharmacological action of cocaine, containing the earliest suggestion of its use as a local anesthetic. Leclerc issued the commercial …

1826 CE

#13365

Recherches et expériences sur les poisons d'Amérique: Tirés des trois règnes de La nature, et envisagés sous les rapports de l'histoire naturelle, de la physiologie, de le pathologie et de la chimie, avec un essai sur l'empoisonnement par Les miasmes des marais, le mal d'estomac des nègres (cachexia Africana), et les maladies qui ressemblent aux empoisonnemens; pour servir à la toxicologie générale du continent d'Amérique et des Antilles.

1857 CE–1859 CE

#10514

Report on the United States and Mexican boundary survey: Made under the direction of the secretary of the Interior

Vol. 1, pt. by W. H. Emory. Vol. 1, pt. 2: Geological reports by C.C. Parry and Arthur Schott, notes by W. H. Emory; Paleontology and geology of the boundary by James Hall; Description of cretaceous and tertiary fossi…

1628 CE

#1821.1

Rerum medicarum Novae Hispaniae thesaurus, seu, Plantarum animalium mineralium Mexicanorum historia.

This summary of Hemández’s very extensive manuscript account of the natural history of Mexico (see No. 1820.1) was edited by N.A. de Recchi, and published at the expense of Prince Federico Cesi (1585-1630…

1993 CE

#10872

Rio Tigre and beyond: The Amazon jungle medicine of Manual Cordova-Rios

1997 CE

#9910

Sacred leaves of Candomblé: African magic, medicine, and religion in Brazil.

"Candomblé, an African religious and healing tradition that spread to Brazil during the slave trade, relies heavily on the use of plants in its spiritual and medicinal practices. When its African adherents were…

1567 CE

#9053

Secretos de chirurgia, en especial de la enfermedades de morbo-galico y lamparones, y asimismo la manera como se curan los indos las llgas y heridas, y otras pasiones en las Indias, muy útil y provechoso par España, y otros muchos secretos de chirugia hasta ahora no escritos.

Arias de Benevides travelled to the New World where he observed native remedies and reported them in this book. In the book he also described his performance in Mexico City (1561) of the first neurosurgical interventi…

1525 CE

#1800

Sumario de la natural historia de las Indias.

First known description of the medicinal plants of Central America. Oviedo first described chigoe (“jiggers”?) in this book. "The book is divided into 86 chapters, focused mostly on American flora and faun…

1519 CE

#9962

Summa de Geografia que trata de todas las partidas e provincias del mundo en especial de las indias e trata largamente del arte del marcar...

This was the first book on the Americas printed in Spanish. "Enciso was the first conquistadore to take up his pen with educational intent." In this general treatise on geography Enciso included a discussion of the fa…

1578 CE

#8023

Summa y recopilacion de cirugia, con un arte para sangrar, muy util y provechosa.

Second edition, Mexico, 1595: Summa y recopilacion de cirugia, con un arte para sangrar, y examen de barberos ... va añadido en esta segunda impresion el origen ... de las reumas. López de Hinojos…

1994 CE

#9937

Tales of a shaman's apprentice: An ethnobotanist searches for new medicines in the Amazon rain forest.

1672 CE

#7007

The American physician : or, a treatise of the roots, plants, trees, shrubs, fruit, herbs, etc., growing in the English Plantations in America ; ... whereunto is added a discourse of the Cacao-nut-Tree, and the use of its fruit ; with all the ways of making Chocolate

The earliest work in English on the medicinal virtues of North American tropical plants. Based on first-hand observations made in the West Indies, Evidence suggests that Hughes began his career in 1651 with a privatee…

1940 CE

#1811.1

The Badianus manuscript. (Codex Barberini, Latin, 241) Vatican Library. An Aztec herbal of 1552. Edited and translated by Emily W. Emmart.

The earliest complete Mexican medical text and the only medical text known to be the work of native Aztecs. Written by an Aztec physician named by the Spanish Martin de la Cruz, and translated into Latin by another na…

1843 CE–1859 CE

#7448

The botany of the Antarctic voyage of H. M. Discovery Ships Erebus and Terror in the years 1839-1843.

Part 1: Flora of Lord Auckland and Campbell's Islands (1843-45); Part 2: Flora of Fuegia, the Falklands, Karguellen's land, etc. (1845-47); Part 3: Flora of New Zealand. 2 vols. (1851-53); Part 4: Flora of Tasmania. 2…

1961 CE

#10854

The ethnobotany of pre-Columbian Peru.

"....based on analysis of 2200 wild and cultivated plant specimens with clearly defined archaeological contexts... Part I is a systematic ethnobotany with pertinent citations of the botanical and archaeological litera…

1990 CE

#13343

The healing forest: Medicinal and toxic plants of the Northwest Amazonia.

1998 CE

#13325

The journals of Hippolito Ruiz: Spanish botanist in Peru and Chile, 1777-1788. Translated by Richard Evans Schultes and Maria José Nemry von Thenen de Jarmillo-Arango.

1801 CE

#9897

The medical assistant, or Jamaica practice of physic: Designed chiefly for the use of families and plantations.

Digital facsimile from the U.S. National Library of Medicine at this link.

1731 CE–1747 CE

#9571

The natural history of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands: Containing the figures of birds, beasts, fishes, serpents, insects, and plants: Particularly, the forest-trees, shrubs, and other plants, not hitherto described, or very incorrectly figured by authors. Together with their descriptions in English and French. To which are added observations on the air, soil and waters: With remarks on agriculture, grain, pulse, roots &c. To the whole is prefixed a new and complete map of the countries treated of. 2 vols.

The only attempt to record the natural history of a region of America during the colonial period. Includes 220 fine handcolored etched plates after and by Catesby and mostly signed with his cipher, excepting plates 61…

1874 CE

#7443

The naturalist in Nicaragua: A narrative of a residence at the gold mines of Chontales; journeys in the savannahs and forests, with observations on animals and plants in reference to the theory of evolution of living forms.

In this book Belt first described "the mutualistic relationship of certain Acacias and the ant we now know as Pseudomyrmex spinicola. These are a species of red myrmecophyte-inhabiting neotropical ants which are found…

1841 CE–1849 CE

#7774

The North American sylva; or, A description of the forest trees of the United States, Canada, and Nova Scotia, considered particularly with respect to their use in the arts, and their introduction into commerce; to which is added a description of the most useful of the European trees. Illustrated by 156 coloured engravings. Translated from the French of F. Andrew Michaux ... With three additional volumes, containing all the forest trees discovered in the Rocky Mountains, the Territory of Oregon, down to the shores of the Pacific and into the confines of California, as well as in various parts of the United States. Illustrated by 122 finely coloured plates. 6 vols.

The first study of all the trees of North America. Digital facsimile of all 6 vols. from the Hathi Trust at this link.

1971 CE

#10858

The pre-Columbian mind: A study into the aberrant nature of sexual drives, drugs affecting behaviour and the attitude towards life and death, with a survey of psychotherapy in pre-Columbian America.

1993 CE

#9017

Tobacco and shamanism in South America.

A comprehensive ethnography of magico-religious, medicinal, and recreational tobacco use among native South American societies, based on a survey of nearly three hundred societies.

1579 CE

#1819.1

Tractado breve de anathomia y chirurgia.

Includes some of the first studies of the plants and botanic remedies of the New World. Second edition, Tractado breve de medicina (1592). This is an abridgement of manuscripts left in Mexico by Francisco Herná…

1694 CE

#8930

Trattado unico da constituiçam pestilencial de Pernambuco, offerecido a ElRey N.S. por ser servido ordenar por seu Governador aos Medicos da America, que assistem aonde ha este contagio, que o compusessem para se conferirem pelos Coripheos da Medicina aos dictames com que he trattada esta pestilencial febre.

The first scientific description of yellow fever in Brazil by the first European physician to treat the disease in Brazil, and perhaps in all of Latin America. It includes the description of the first autopsy of a yel…

1928 CE

#9271

Use of plants by the Chippewa Indians. Smithsonian Institution-Bureau of American Ethnology Annual Report 44.

Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

1992 CE

#13344

Vine of the Soul: Medicine men, their plants and rituals in the Columbian Amazonia.

1807 CE–1834 CE

#7452

Voyage aux régions équinoxiales du nouveau continent, fait en 1799, 1800, 1801, 1802, 1803 et 1804. 34 vols.

In 1799 Humboldt and Bonpland embarked on a six-year tour of research through South America and Mexico, a trip which would afterwards be called, justifiably, "the scientific discovery of America." The two amassed exha…

1825 CE

#2074

Wanderings in South America, the North-West of the United States, and the Antilles, in the years 1812, 1816, 1820, and 1824.

Waterton traveled to the Guyana region of South America to obtain curare. He provided a detailed description of its paralyzing effects, its preparation by distillation, and the blowpipe and darts used to deliver it. O…