Thekoukou55 - Untitled

Ralph Fiennes

Ralph Fiennes in Maid in Manhattan

The White Countess

Science Saturday

This week we present Conversations on Chemistry: In Which the Elements of that Science are Familiarly Explained and Illustrated by Experiments and Plates, written anonymously by the English author Jane Haldimand Marcet (1769-1858). The first edition of the book was published in 1805, with many subsequent editions in both England and the United States. Here in Special Collections we hold an 1809 edition published in New Haven from Sidney’s Press for Increase Cooke & Co., and an 1830 edition published in Harford for Cooke & Co. The 1809 edition has illustrations that are based on drawings by Jane Marcet.

Jane Marcet (maiden name Haldimand) and her husband, Swiss physician Alexander Marcet were very involved in the literary and scientific circles in London. Alexander was a fellow of the  Royal Society, and Jane attended many lectures there with him. Jane Marcet is known for popularizing scientific principles, especially the works of chemist Humphry Davy, whose lectures Jane attended. As is clearly shown by the many reprintings, Jane Marcet’s Conversations on Chemistry was wildly popular. The book was framed as a conversation between a teacher Mrs. B and her two pupils, Emily and Caroline. In the preface to the 1809 edition, Jane Marcet explained she wanted to write a book on chemistry especially to educate women on the subject because it was something that really caught her own interest. Jane wrote:

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Here's a really beautiful publisher's binding on a 1902 edition of Fairyland of Science. The end paper with a Pegasus and the title page were definitely worth sharing too. This book was written by Arabella Buckley for a young audience to learn about science through imagination and story telling.

The fairyland of science, 1902. by Arabella B. Buckley.

Women from three different countries training to become doctors at Women's Medical College of Philadelphia in 1885. From left to right: Dr. Anandibai Joshi (from India), Dr. Kei Okami (from Japan) and Dr. Sabat Islambouli (from Syria). All were among the first women to practice Western medicine in their respective countries.

How can you ever smile as if your life hadn’t capsized?

May 12th is International Nurses Day!

We have a few nursing materials in our collections such as Chemistry for Nurses (1914), pictured above, and Applied Chemistry for Nurses (1926).