Old herbals, new readers: 29th annual Bishop Lecture

The annual Louis Faugères Bishop III lecture, which typically features diverse topics on book and manuscript collecting, printing history, and the use of rare books and manuscripts by scholars. In its twenty-ninth iteration, Karen Reeds draws on examples of early herbals in the Libraries’ rare book collections to examine the continuing appeal of these medical books across the centuries. Why is the ancient Greek physician Dioscorides still cited as an authority on the uses of medicinal plants? What do the markings and dried plants in early printed herbals tell us about the ways doctors, patients, pharmacists, gardeners, and botanists have used these books from the Renaissance to our own day? What accounts for the resurgence of interest in herbals and the practice of herbal medicine in recent years?Filmed at the Teleconference Lecture Hall of the Scholarly Communications Center, Alexander Library, Rutgers University on April 9, 2015