New Acquisitions

Damien Ihrig, MA, MLIS
Curator, John Martin Rare Book Room

For the next few newsletters, I will highlight books acquired over the last year. They represent the culmination of the efforts of many people to find, research, collect, and describe the books, including my predecessors, UI Libraries staff at various levels, booksellers, other libraries, private collectors, and even Dr. Martin himself. And, of course, the acquisition of our books is made possible by the generous original endowment by Dr. Martin. The life and times of the type of book we have here at the John Martin Rare Book Room will be a topic for a future newsletter, but for now, I would like to focus on the first of our new books.

The author of our first book, which is described below, is Theodor Schwann, a German physician-scientist who made several substantial contributions to the understanding of animal and human physiology. Born in 1810, his family had the means to secure him a quality education and undergraduate premedical training at the University of Bonn. It was there that he met Johannes Peter Müller, his mentor and employer during the early part of his career. Müller is considered the founder of modern German scientific medicine.

Schwann eventually earned his MD from the University of Berlin but chose to continue his scientific research with Müller. He was a prolific researcher, carrying out experiments both for Müller and on his own. The new microscopes of the day allowed him to see animal cells in much greater detail and describe never before seen structures. As we will see with this month's book, this plays an important role in Schwann's most influential work.

Among Schwann's discoveries and contributions to physiology are the classification of yeast as a living creature, the term metabolism, the discovery and description of pepsin (a digestive enzyme produced in the stomach), and the eponymous Schwann cells of the nervous system (the main non-neural cells of the Peripheral Nervous System - i.e., they do not produce electrical impulses). He is also the inventor of many of the instruments used to conduct his experiments, as well as other medical instruments, such as a portable respirator. Perhaps most notably, he had a long and influential teaching career that affected the lives and careers of generations of 19th-century physicians and scientists.

We are always excited to get new books, and this one is no exception. Please check out the description of the book below. I hope you enjoy learning about it as much as I have. As always, please contact me if you have any questions about anything from our newsletters.

Stay well and happy reading!

Book of the Month

THEODOR SCHWANN (1810-1882). Mikroskopische Untersuchungen über die Uebereinstimmung in der Struktur und dem Wachsthum der Thiere und Pflanzen. [Microscopical researches into the accordance in the structure and growth of animals and plants] Printed by Georg Reimer in Berlin in 1839. First edition. 270 pages. 21 cm tall.

Schwann was an energetic and talented researcher, inventor, and teacher. He is recognized for many contributions to medical science. Easily his greatest contribution, though, is this foundational work on extending cell theory to animals. Working for his mentor, Johannes Peter Müller, in 1837 the 27-year-old Schwann was using the most powerful microscopes of the day to examine and describe various types of animal cells.

In one of those wonderful moments of scientific serendipity, he happened to be dining with his close friend the botanist, Matthias Jakob Schleiden, when they began to discuss plant cell nuclei. Schwann quickly realized he had seen similar structures in animal cells and that animal cells must function similarly to plant cells: as foundational structures for all living things. Schwann and Schleiden worked together to confirm this. Schwann extended the research with several more experiments on a variety of animal tissues, 

eventually publishing Mikroskopische in 1939.

By the middle of the 19th century, his two main conclusions, that cells are distinct, but function as the foundational, organizational structures for all living things, became the accepted description for the basic structural components of life. His third conclusion about the formation of cells was not supported by further experimental evidence and was eventually discarded. Regardless, Schwann's work created the foundation upon which rested the important discoveries of the next century in biology and the medical sciences.

The volume we have was rebound with brown cloth. Pasted to the cloth binding are fun marbled papers, and the outside edges of the text block are decorated with a speckling of red. Inside, the paper is in good shape, although there is clear staining and rippled pages that indicate the book got very wet at some point. Someone took good care to stabilize, clean, and rebind it, although the original binding was lost to us along the way.

If your German is a little rusty, you are in luck! We also have an English translation by Henry Smith from 1847. If you are interested in seeing these or other items mentioned in earlier newsletters, please contact Damien Ihrig at damien-ihrig@uiowa.edu or 319-335-9154 to arrange a visit in person or over Zoom.