Seeing Is Believing: 700 Years of Scientific and Medical Illustration

As Leonhart Fuchs noted in the introduction to his great herbal of 1542, pictures "can communicate information much more clearly than the words of even the most eloquent men." Scientific and medical illustration can even allow a reader to "see" information that cannot actually be seen. Seeing Is Believing presents a selection of nearly forty scientific and medical illustrations drawn primarily from the collections in The New York Public Library's four research centers, augmented by materials from The New York Academy of Medicine and from a private collector. These fascinating images -- some in full color -- open a window on the primarily Western science of earlier centuries and on the artistry and skill that gave visual expression to those ideas. The book also includes a brief description of the principal illustration processes, a list of suggested reading, and a complete checklist of the exhibition that this publication complements.