Orbis Pictus Research Articles

Book Notes

David L. Cowen. Pharmacopoeias and Related Literature in Britain and America, 1618-1847. Variorum Collected Studies Series. Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate Variorum, 2001. ix + 296 pp. Ill. $105.95 (0-86078-842-3). "Medical discoveries, medical theories, and medical systems most certainly have their place in medical history," writes David Cowen in the preface to this collection, "but these studies make it evident that the materia medica and pharmacotherapy were what the practice of medicine was all about" (p. vii). The collection includes the following publications: "The Edinburgh Pharmacopeia" (reprinted from Med. Hist., 1957); "The Edinburgh Pharmacopoeia," (reprinted from The Early Years of the Edinburgh Medical School, ed. R. G. W. Anderson and A. D. C. Simpson, 1976); "Expunctum est Mithridatium" (reprinted from Pharmaceut. Historian, 1985); "The Edinburgh Dispensatories" (reprinted from Pap. Amer. Bibliog. Soc., 1951); "The Influence of the Edinburgh Pharmacopoeia and the Edinburgh Dispensatories" (reprinted from Pharmaceut. Historian, 1982); "A Note on Pharmaceutical Literature and the Introduction of the New Chemical Nomenclature" (reprinted from Beiträge zur Geschichte der Pharmazie, 1981); "The Spread and Influence of British Pharmacopoeial and Related Literature" (reprinted from Veröffentlichungen der Internationalen Gesellschaft für Geschichte der Pharmazie, 1974); "America's Pre-Pharmacopoeial Literature" (reprinted from Amer. Inst. Hist. Pharm., 1961); "The Boston Editions of Nicholas Culpeper" (reprinted from J. Hist. Med. & Allied Sci., 1956); "'Zum Dienst des gemeinen Mannes, insonderheit für die Landleute': The Domestic and Veterinary Medicine Books Printed in Colonial North America and the United States in the German Language" (from Orbis Pictus: Kultur- und pharmaziehistorische Studien, 1985); "Deigendesch's Nachrichters Rossartznebüchlein" (reprinted from J. Amer. Vet. Med. Assoc., 1981); "The Folk Medicine of the Pennsylvania Dutch" (reprinted from Folk Lore and Folk Medicine, ed. John Scarborough, 1987); and "The New York Hospital and Its Pharmacopoeia" (reprinted from New York State J. Med., 1973). The Editors Christine Hillam, ed. Dental Practice in Europe at the End of the Eighteenth Century. ClioMedica, vol. 72. Wellcome Series in the History of Medicine. Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi, 2003. 518 pp. Ill. $150.00, €135.00 (cloth, 90-420-1268-4); $61.00, €55.00 (paperbound, 90-420-1258-7). This collection of essays emerged from conferences held in Germany, England, and Paris from 1992 to 1993. Contributors and their subjects or essay titles are as follows: Pierre Baron, dental practitioners in France; Anne Hargreaves, "Dentistry in the British Isles"; Frank Huisman, "Itinerant Dentists and Patent Remedies [End Page 930] in the Dutch Republic"; Judit Fornai, dental practice in Hungary; Thomas Nickol and Curt Gerhard Lorber, "Germany between 1780 and 1810"; Thomas Nickol, "German Dental Literature around 1800" and "The Availability of Dental Care in Halle: A Local Study"; and Peter Schröck-Schmidt and Curt Gerhard Lorber, biographical sketches of German dental practitioners. Six appendices contain detailed information about individuals offering dental treatment in France, Britain, and Germany, along with French sources of information and an alphabetic list of German dental literature published between 1775 and 1820. The Editors Jennifer K. Walter and Eran P. Klein, eds. The Story of Bioethics: From Seminal Works to Contemporary Explorations. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2003. xv + 248 pp. $29.95, £21.50 (paperbound, 0-87840-138-5). Recent interest in bioethics as a field has come from two directions, write the editors in their preface: a historical interest in its origins, and an interest in its purpose and potential. The essays in this book, which the editors identify as seminal, "are premised on the notion that these two threads are interwoven . . . ." (p. ix). Part 1, "Theories in Bioethics," comprises "From Medical Ethics to a Moral Philosophy of the Professions," by Edmund D. Pellegrino; "The Origins, Goals, and Core Commitments of The Belmont Report and Principles of Biomedical Ethics," by Tom L. Beauchamp; "Principles of Biomedical Ethics: Reflections on a Work in Progress," by James F. Childress; "Revisiting A Theory of Medical Ethics: Main Themes and Anticipated Changes," by Robert M. Veatch; and "The Foundations of Bioethics: Rethinking the...

Reading Corner for Children: Choosing the Best in Nonfiction: The Orbis Pictus Award Winners

This article identifies the books honored as the best among children’s nonfiction published in 2003.

Reading Corner for Children: The 2003 Orbis Pictus Award Winner and Other Recommended Nonfiction Books

Reading Corner for Children: The 2003 Orbis Pictus Award Winner and Other Recommended Nonfiction Books

Reading Corner For Children: The 2002 Orbis Pictus Award Winner and Other Outstanding Nonfiction Books

The Orbis Pictus Committee discusses the 2002 Award winning books and nine other nonfiction titles.

Reading Corner for Children: Outstanding Nonfiction Choices for 2000

This issue’s column features the 2000 Orbis Pictus Award winners, honor books, and honorable mentions.

Outstanding Nonfiction Choices for 1998

Offers brief descriptions of 20 outstanding nonfiction for children, including the 1999 Orbis Pictus Award winner, and four Orbis Pictus honor books as well as a number of other outstanding nonfiction titles dealing mainly with history and biography.

Outstanding Nonfiction Choices for 1997

Presents descriptions of (1) the 1997 winner of the Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children (“An Extraordinary Life: The Story of a Monarch Butterfly”); (2) the 5 Orbis Pictus Honor Books; and (3) 12 other outstanding nonfiction titles selected by the award committee, 6 dealing with history and biography and 6 dealing with the natural world.

Ptolemy’s Chorographia in the New World: Revelations from the Relaciones Geográficas de la Nueva España of 1579–1581

The art‐historical issue raised here concerns some forgotten formal sources for a distinctive cartographic format once commonly informing European map‐making, and the specific proposition examined here in some detail is ‘chorographic’ description. Our immediate point of departure are those maps called pinturas which accompanied the Relaciones Geográficas de la Nueva España (Mexico) of 1579–81. Modern students of the history of cartography recognize that current knowledge of classical map‐making is highly speculative for the lack of any significant surviving examples. Even though the physical products are largely missing, we do know some classical terms for regional to world maps: tabula, forma, figura mundi, orbis pictus, or orbis terrarum descriptio, to which I would like now to add another term, tabulae chorographicae, making reference to a variant cartographic convention for which by far the most complete description is to be found in Ptolemy’s Geography (I, 1). From antique textual references, mainly ekphrasis (descriptions) of lost frescoes with landscape scenes, plus some scanty surviving, specifically cartographic evidence, mostly Roman, precise conclusions can now be drawn about that ancient representational mode – the tabulae chorographicae– which, besides describing the fossilized cartographic technique employed in the Mexican pinturas of c. 1571, likely represents an unrecognized functional precedent for the medieval orbis pictus.

From Orbis Pictus to Topophilia : The World in a Book

From Orbis Pictus to Topophilia:The World in a Book Hilary Thompson (bio) To capture the world of nature and to satisfy the public's desire to know about the world we inhabit is the aim of every encyclopedia. To do the same for children was the goal of Johannes Amos Comenius in the first printed picture book for children, Orbis Sensualium Pictus (1658), translated into English by Charles Hoole as Visible World: or, A Picture and Nomenclature of all the chief Things that are in the World; and of Men's Employment therein (1672). The urge to order the world into a place that can be presented in a book is still with us. For example, Yi-Fu Tuan explores our love of place exhaustively in his Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes and Values (1974). Like Comenius, he appreciates that our response to place is a physical as well as an aesthetic one: "Perception [of place] is an activity, a reaching out to the world" (12). Between the twentieth-century perception of place and the seventeenth-century approach to place lies Dr. John Trusler's rationalist reinterpretation of Orbis Pictus for a late-eighteenth-century child, The Progress of Man and Society (1791). An examination of Comenius's work in its assorted incarnations may help to illumine how our sense of place has changed over the past three centuries, particularly between the 1777 reprint of Hoole's translation and the 1791 reworking. Comenius, Hoole, and Truster display their understanding of visual images in a print-oriented culture by using woodcuts and wood engravings to augment their texts. They know that we cannot separate our visually oriented culture from our perception of place. As Tuan explains: Although all human beings have similar sense organs, how their capacities are used and developed begin to diverge at an early age. As a result, not only do attitudes to environment differ but the actualized capacity of the senses differs, so that people in one culture may acquire sharp noses for scent while those in another acquire deep stereoscopic vision. Both worlds are predominantly visual: one will be enriched by fragrances, the other by the acute three-dimensionality of objects and spaces. (12) Comenius, Hoole, and Truster all emphasize the need to explore visual images when using the visual medium of print. And all relate the depth of cognitive learning to the sensual perception available to the reader. In his Preface to his 1672 translation, Visible World, Hoole emphasizes that sensual perception is the basis of knowledge and, indeed, of a sound life. He tells us that "to exercise the senses well about the right perceiving the differences of things, will be to lay the grounds for all wisdom, and all wise discourse, and all discreet actions in one's course of life" (3). Thus Hoole, patterning his work on that of Comenius, produces a book which will orient a child to his place in the world: And if we had Books, wherein are the Pictures of all Creatures, Herbs, Beasts, Fish, Fowles, they would stand us in great stead. For pictures are the most intelligible books, that Children can look upon. They come closest to nature; nay, saith Scaliger, Art exceeds her. (Conclusion to Preface) With these attitudes, Hoole follows Comenius in creating an ordered view of a world that is perceived by the senses. Such perceptions, in turn, create cultural values in child readers. Comenius and Hoole use the same woodcuts. But in 1727 (reissued 1777) the illustrations to Hoole's translation were updated, changing the pictured clothing from the seventeenth-century large collars and caps (for girls and women) and knee-length trousers and capes (for boys and men) to draped gowns, hats with feathers, wigs, naval hats, and coats. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Comenius, "The Master and the Boy," Orbis Sensualium Pictus translated by Hoole as Visible World (1672) One thing is constant: all editions begin and end with a woodcut of a teacher and a pupil (Figure 1). In the seventeenth-century editions the teacher and his pupil stand in the foreground facing the reader. Their bodies turn to one another in...

Medieval Mappaemundi and Ptolemy's Chorographia

Current knowledge of Classical map-making is highly speculative for the lack of any significant surviving examples. In order to recreate (lost) antique cartographic types, historians have based their reconstructions on later medieval models, the mappaemundi. It is commonly supposed that these wholly Christian world-maps apparently represent schematic and didactic variations on earlier pagan Classical cartographic traditions. Even though the physical products are largely missing, some Classical terms for maps are known: tabula, forma, figura mundi, orbis pictus, or orbis terrarum descriptio. To these I propose another term, tabulae chorographicae, making reference to a variant cartographic convention for which by far the most complete description is to be found in Ptolemy's Geography (I, 1). Following a description of cartographic conventions, the essay considers antique textual references (mainly ekphraseis of lost frescoes) and scanty surviving physical evidence, mostly Roman, in order to draw precise conclusions about that ancient representational mode--the tabulae chorographicae--which could represent an unrecognized functional precedent for the medieval orbis pictus.

A New “Picture of the World”: The NCTE Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children

NCTE’s Orbis Pictus Award celebrates nonfiction works for children. In this article we learn about the award and about what makes good nonfiction books.

Books as educational media for small children in Czechoslovakia

The development and tradition of Czech books for children reflect the great inspirational value of the heritage of Comenius’ humanist thought. Comenius’ Orbis Pictus one of the first books specifically addressed to children. This paper reviews the publishing programmes and cooperation between the artists shaping the contemporary identity of children's books in Czechoslovakia. This is followed by an outline of the main trends and policies seeking to maintain good standards in children's literature and correspondingly supportive institutional backing. Information on the methodological aspects of bookoriented education at nursery school level is provided. Future prospects for books and their educational uses conclude the paper.

Digging for Literacy

Digging for Literacy Barbara Rosen (bio) Wooden, Warren W. Children's Literature of the English Renaissance. Edited, with an introduction, by Jeanie Watson. Lexington, Kentucky: The University Press of Kentucky, 1986. A sad tale's best for winter: I have oneOf sprites and goblins . . . .There was a man—. . . .Dwelt by a churchyard: I will tell it softly;Yond crickets shall not hear it. So says little Mamillius to his pregnant mother in The Winter's Tale; but like so many children of Shakespeare's day, he dies before he can tell out his story. Yet even if he had lived to grow up and write his memoirs, we should never have known the interrupted story, for it would not have crossed his mind to record it. Peter Laslett, in The World We Have Lost, suggests how badly our view of childhood, and of children, is skewed by the lacunae in the documents we study: In the pre-industrial world there were children everywhere . . . The perpetual distraction of childish noise and talk must have affected everyone almost all the time, except of course the gentleman in his study or the lady in her boudoir . . . There is something mysterious about the silence of all these multitudes of babes in arms, toddlers and adolescents in the statements men made at the time about their own experience. How can we recreate this male-recorded history to include, not only the physical presence of children, but the sounds of play, the songs and stories that filled the air around them? At the beginning of Children's Literature of the English Renaissance, a posthumous collection of articles by Warren W. Wooden, Jeanie Watson quotes from Wooden's grant application to the American Council of Learned Societies a description of the book he planned to write. "My study will mine the riches of English Renaissance literature, including both works written for children and those appropriated or "adopted" by children, with the hope of establishing a canon of children's literature from the invention of printing down to 1700." We have in this book nine articles in different critical modes, explorations of the field, and attempts to establish the parameters for his ambitious project. Most of these articles were initially delivered as conference papers, where the emphasis is on provoking discussion and response; the volume presents readers with speculations as well as evidence, propositions to be validated by future research. The articles are printed in chronological order of subject, but it seems more rewarding to note their inter-connections and consider them as bearing on a projected whole. At the beginning of the age of print, the only books directed at children were instructional. School texts posited a teacher; books of manners or religion, ostensibly addressed to children, also were meant for a parent, who would filter through to the child those precepts of which he approved. In his first article Wooden artificially groups Comenius with Caxton and Foxe, because he sees in Caxton's Aesop's Fables and Foxe's Book of Martyrs the first stumbling attempts to make picture an integral part of text—an idea brilliantly fulfilled in Comenius's Latin textbook Orbis Pictus. Surprisingly Wooden discusses only two volumes designed exclusively or primarily for children—Orbis Pictus and Bunyan's strange little book of Country Rhimes for Children. Bunyan, unlike Comenius, seems to address children (or "artificial Babes") who must either teach themselves or rely on adults outside the classroom for help; the introductory lessons in reading and numbers (which would be needed for Bible reference) are seen as mere preparation for the moral lessons. In simple, awkward rhyming verse Bunyan teaches the child how to reflect upon himself and upon the world around him; seen rightly, a pig, a candle or an egg can all instruct. Wooden argues that in judging only from later cut, re-arranged and illustrated versions, critics have failed to understand or appreciate Bunyan's planning for a child reader, and that the rarity of the first edition suggests popularity and heavy use. A much greater challenge to the critic arises over that large body of Renaissance literature addressed to a dual audience of adults and children. Though...

An Eighteenth-Century Slovene version of Komensy's Animal Alphabet: Some Observations

One of the treasures of the Narodna in Univerzitetna Knjiinica in Ljubljana is the trilingual dictionary, in two parts, Latin-German-Slovene and German-Slovene-Latin, compiled by Father Hippolytus of the Order of Friars Minor. 1 which for reasons that are not fully explained was returned by the printer and still remains in manuscript. with the exception of the title page and a few specimen pages which were set up in 1711.2 A possible cause of its failure could have been Hippolytus' decision to revise his Slovene orthography, bringing it into line with that advocated by Adam Bohoric. This entailed such a plethora of corrections as to make the text a printer's nightmare. On the other hand Anton Slodnjak suspected the Jesuits of opposition to the original publication in view of a prejudiced and unfavorable assessment of the dictionary by Martin Naglic, a Jesuit grammar-school teacher, in 1776. when a later proposal for publication was rejected. As one of a number of appendices to the dictionary Hippolytus included Latin. German and Slovene versions of one of the most popular and successful school textbooks of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, namely. Jan Amos KomenskY's Orb is sensualium pictus, a title frequently abbreviated to Orbis pictus or world in pictures.,,3 The first edition, published in Nuremberg in 1658, had parallel texts in Latin and German, enabling the classical language to be taught by the medium of the vernacular. The course consisted of a series of one hundred and fifty thematically arranged lessons designed to introduce the basic facts and vocabulary of each topic. One of the innovations in technique was the lavish use of illustrations, separate items in the woodcuts being numbered and identifiable by numbered words in the text. There are no illustrations in Hippolytus' manuscript, but this is not to say they would not have been incorporated in a printed version. In a preface to the 1658 edition Komensky himself emphasizes the advantages of his technique, claiming that the book provided an easier way to learn reading than anything known earlier. Of particular value, in his view. was the symbolical (alphabetum symbolicum) given at the start of the course, where each individual letter was accompanied by a picture of a living creature or natural phenomenon with which the sound could be associated. Simply by looking at the appropriate illustration the learner would recall the phonetic value of the letter. Hippolytus' manuscript presents the Latin, German and Slovene texts in three parallel columns. There is the same division into 150 thematic lessons, preceded by the same invitation from the teacher to the pupil and the same animal alphabet (vivum et vocale alpha be tum ). and followed by the same postscript in which the teacher compliments his young charge on acquiring a basic knowledge of the languages studied, and encourages him to read more widely. The lay-out of the parallel texts and the existence of numerous versions in other languages suggest that we have here a rich field for comparative lexical and other linguistic studies. The present article will compare Hippolytus' Slovene with four other versions of the animal alphabet and assess their relative pedagogical efficiency. In the preliminary meeting of teacher and pupil, the latter expresses his willingness to learn, whereupon he is told, First of all you must learn the simple sounds of which human speech is constituted, sounds which animals can make, your tongue can imitate and your hand can paint. Then we shall go out into the world and inspect all things. Here you have

Chinese Literature for Children

Chinese Literature for Children Nellvena Duncan Eutsler (bio) Chinese Popular Literature and the Child, by Dorothea Haywood Scott. Chicago: American Library Association, 1980. Dorothea Haywood Scott in her Chinese Popular Literature and the Child provides a valuable service for the Westerner recently attracted to Chinese literature. The book provides an articulate overview of Chinese literature, with background material for those who wish to explore further the long traditions of literature for children. Chinese popular literature had its beginnings between 1765 and 1123 B.C. and is thus the longest unbroken literary tradition in the world, with a wider audience than any other. Chinese literature reflects the historical changes within its culture: a diversity of minority peoples and their various dialects, invasion from without and turmoil from within, and everchanging political philosophies. Through various media the literature has been preserved from ancient times, and Scott recognizes their literary process as a "story of change within continuity." Scott considers Chinese children's literature in the light of the Chinese system of education. She points out that Chinese thought and pedagogy reflect the influence of sages such as Confucius, Mencius, the Buddhist monks, and the Taoists. She notes the impact caused by differences between scholarly classical writing and colloquial language. The Chinese, who have long been aware of the difficulties posed by these differences, have initiated recent language reforms that have revolutionized the style of Chinese writing; their literature now reaches a much wider audience. Their entire educational process had for centuries inhibited learning by its stylistic and classical requirements. At last the words of Feng Meng-lung, the late Ming Dynasty author and scholar quoted by Scott, have been heeded: "In this world literary minds are few but rustic ears are many." [End Page 183] In order to appreciate and understand Chinese children's literature, we must understand the traditions which shaped China's attitudes toward their children. Not until early in the twentieth century did China recognize the special needs of her children, although Chinese children had access to printed stories centuries before the English or American child had access to a book. Oral traditions have been as influential for Chinese children as for children from other cultures. By 960 A.D. the storytellers had become a highly professional body of public entertainers. Their prompt books served as the basis for later novels. Although, as Scott points out, there are no traditional collections of Chinese myths and legends, myths are found imbedded in the whole body of early Chinese literature. Chinese classics provide central sources in the Orient as do the Old Testament, Perrault, Grimm, and others in the Western world. As in the tradition of Western children's literature, Chinese children had their primers (the Thousand Character Classic and the Three Character Classic) and their early picture books (the Fifteenth Century Illustrated Chinese Primer, the earliest known extant copy of which is dated 1436). They had these books long before western civilization had Babes Booke in manuscript form (1430), or Caxton's Aesop's Fables (1484), or a hornbook (1540), or Orbis Pictus (1658). Scott does not discuss the omission of fables, but she explains that older literary collections contain few stories about animals. This evidence seems odd, since animals play an important role in Chinese myths. In her chapter on "Myths, Legends, and Symbols," however, Scott discusses animal legends and the Chinese use of animal symbolism. It is a shame that when she notes the nine resemblances of the dragon, she lists only "the horns of a deer, the neck of a snake, the scales of a carp," and leaves the reader with "and so on" for the others. Scott calls fifteenth-century Chinese novels "folk epics," in spite of the fact that Ch'ên Shou-Yi in his Chinese Literature: A Historical Introduction (1961) points out that China "is the only outstanding nation with a literary attainment completely devoid of an epical tradition." Ch'ên Shou-Yi explains this phenomenon by arguing that China's ideal human type has been the sage and not [End Page 184] the hero. Perhaps fifteenth-century novels, in spite of their length, would better be labeled fantasies in the tradition of Hans...

Orbis Pictus, by John Amos Comenius. A facsimile of the first English edition of 1659, introduced by John E. Sadler. London: Oxford University Press, 1968, 450 pp., (35s = $4.20)

The name Jan Amos Komesky (Latinized as John Amos Comenius) and the title of his famous children's book, Orbis Pictus will probably be known to few, if any, readers of Pediatrics. And yet he and his book did more to take the drudgery out of learning to read than anyone else for at least 200 years. The busy practitioner will properly ask who Comenius was and why the book he wrote more than 3 centuries ago (1656) is worth this review.

Effects of Pictures on Learning to Read, Comprehension and Attitudes

If fish were to become scientists, the last thing they might discover would be water. Similarly, researchers have too often failed to investigate important aspects of their environment because being immersed in it, they fail to notice certain components of it; or, having noticed a component, they simply assume that it must be that way. One such example from reading is the ubiquitous use of illustrations in books for beginning reading instruction. Today nearly all children are taught to read from books containing pictures. In this country this practice goes back at least to 1729 when the New England Primer incorporated pictures with the text. In Europe during the 1650's, Comenius used pictures in his Orbis Pictus to teach reading. Only occasionally does one find a writer (Dechant, 1964) questioning the use of pictures or a published reading series, such as the Bloomfield and Barnhard (1963) readers, attempting to teach reading without pictures. Teachers usually accept the fact that beginning reading texts have pictures without wondering what effect pictures have on learning to read.

CLAVES GEOPOLÍTICAS EN TORNO AL CONFLICTO DEL ATLÁNTICO SUR

La escalada del conflicto en Atlántico sur ha redefinido la naturaleza del mismo. Tres claves geopolíticas ayudan a comprender de forma integral lo que hoy ocurre en esa zona del planeta: lucha por recursos naturales (especialmente petróleo y riqueza ictiológica en menor medida), proyección antártica y control efectivo de los espacios territorial, aéreo y marítimo de las islas. La escalada del conflicto ofrece una extraordinaria singularidad, el enfrentamiento de dos orbis pictus enteramente diferenciados. Por un lado, el ejercicio del poder según se ha entendido históricamente, con capacidades políticas, diplomáticas y militares por el lado británico, y la opción argentina por una política exterior y de defensa de carácter pacifista. La larga falta de inversión en el sector Defensa invitan a preguntarse si tal opción es por necesidad o por convicción.

An incomplete Orbis Pictus of comenius, the Pansophiae Diatyposis of comenius, plans of comenius for his stay in England

An incomplete Orbis Pictus of comenius, the Pansophiae Diatyposis of comenius, plans of comenius for his stay in England

An Incomplete "Orbis Pictus" of Comenius Printed in 1653

An Incomplete "Orbis Pictus" of Comenius Printed in 1653