The Rockefeller Institute Quarterly 1957, Vol.1, No. 4 the Rockefeller University
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Rockefeller University Digital Commons @ RU The Rockefeller Institute Quarterly The Rockefeller University Newsletters 12-1957 The Rockefeller Institute Quarterly 1957, vol.1, no. 4 The Rockefeller University Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.rockefeller.edu/ rockefeller_institute_quarterly Recommended Citation The Rockefeller University, "The Rockefeller Institute Quarterly 1957, vol.1, no. 4" (1957). The Rockefeller Institute Quarterly. Book 2. http://digitalcommons.rockefeller.edu/rockefeller_institute_quarterly/2 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the The Rockefeller University Newsletters at Digital Commons @ RU. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Rockefeller Institute Quarterly by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ RU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE ROCKEFELLER VOLUME 1 NUMBER 4 DECEMBER 1957 LIBRARY OF A SCHOLAR Die Alpen, one of the first works to present mountains to the public as objects of senti- ment and interest rather than of horror. BEQUEATHED TO THE INSTITUTE And before he was ten it is said that he had sketched out a Chaldean grammar! THEBOOKS which he had collected and names in the history of medical science, One of the delights of Dr. Cohn's old treasured throughout his life were be- often in first editions: Celsus, Thomas books, however, is that works from quite queathed by the late Dr. Alfred E. Cohn Bartholinus, G. Borelli, Malpighi, Leu- unexpected sides of well-known men are to the Rockefeller Institute where he spent wenhoek, Richard Lower, Mead, and occasionally included. D'Alembert, for ex- most of his scholarly career. This magnifi- many others. Vesalius and Harvey are rep- ample, the mathematician and philoso- cent collection, numbering about 6,000 resented only by facsimiles, but a magnifi- pher, whom most of us remember for his volumes spanning a wide range and depth cent double crown folio volume of the work on dynamic equilibrium, is repre- of human knowledge will occupy the drawings from Vesalius' work is included sented by a treatise published in I 779 on greater part of the library of Abby Aldrich that is almost as great a treasure as the the theory and practice of music based on Rockefeller Hall. Here they will be avail- 16th century first editions. This limited the style of Rameau. Perhaps it was M. able to our faculty and students and to edition of 430 copies was printed by the d'Alembertls opening sentences that took visiting scientists as a part of the social and New York Academy of Medicine and the Dr. Cohn's fancy, for they express the two- cultural center at the Institute which Abby Library of the University of Munich in fold interest in art and science that char- Aldrich Rockefeller Hall and Caspary Hall I 93 5 from the original woodblocks cut for acterized his own life: "One can consider provide. Vesalius in the early I 6th century by a music either as an Art which has for its The bibliophile in us would devote an student of Titian. They were recently dis- object one of the principle pleasures of the entire issue to the books of special interest covered in the Library of the University of senses or as a science by which that Art is in the library, but this is clearly out of the Munich. reduced to principles. It is the double point question. We will content ourselves with a Dr. Cohn's own interest in cardiovascu- of view from which it is proposed to treat few paragraphs that will to some extent lar research is evident among his rare vol- it in this book." characterize the collection as a whole, umes. Albrecht von Haller, for example, Another mathematician and philoso- mentioning only a few volumes of special the father of experimental physiology, is pher, RenC Descartes, is included, not interest. Roughly Dr. Cohn's books could represented in the collection by a volume only with a first edition of his Principia be divided into three classes : perhaps I 50 of two memoirs, Sur Le Movement du Sang Philosophiae (Amsterdam, I 644) and a old and rare volumes of scientific and med- et Sur les EfFets de la Saignke, published in I 658 edition of the Meditations, but with ical interest, published in the I 6th, I 7th I 756. It is here that we find the first mod- his Treatise on Man and the Formation of and 18th centuries; several times this ern statement that the beat of the heart is the Foetus in an edition of I 677. It was number of works in medical science from intrinsic to its own muscle and not derived here that the founder of analytical geome- the 19th and 20th centuries that were from an external nervous impulse. The try and the enunciator of the dictum more directly connected with his profes- title page and frontispiece of this interest- "cogito ergo sum" set forth his views on sional life; and finally, general works in ing little book are reproduced here. It is man as being an automaton : ". .it is un- literature, philosophy, history, art, politics, likely that Cohn found Haller especially necessary to conceive in it [the body ma- and those many other subjects that reflect interesting for, like Cohn himself, he not chine] any soul-whether vegetative or the universal interests of that rare individ- only made distinguished contributions to sensitive-or any principle of motion, or ual, a truly cultured man. vascular studies but was something of a of life, than its blood and its spirits agi- Dr. Cohn's rare volumes include some literary figure as well. Mountaineers re- tated by the heat of the fire which burns of the major works of many of the great member Haller as the author of the poem, continually in its heart, and which is in no wise essentially different in nature from Chain of Philosophical Reflexions and .In- Coleman's Ice Ages, Recent and Modern. all the fires which are met with in inani- quiries Concerning the Virtues of Tar The third group of books, of general in- mate bodies." This "fire which burns per- Water, and divers other subjects connected terest, on the other hand contain many petually in the heart" was a topic of the together and arising one from another. surprises and delights. It begins with Dr. times, thanks in large part to the work of Right Rev. Dr. George Berkeley, Lord Cohn's school texts from nearly 60 years Descartes' contemporary in England, Rob- Bishop of Cloyne, London, 1744). Here, ago, his Hall and Knight Higher Algebra, ert Boyle, Several of Boyle's books are in- 90 years later, we find Berkeley still pon- his Ganot's Elements of Natural Philoso- cluded in the Cohn collection. One of dering Boyle's demonstrated connection phy, his Fraser and Squair French Gram- these (New Experiments, Touching the between flame and life but the book is mar, and Goodwin's Greek Grammar, text- Relation betwixt Flame and Air: And par- more noted today as the source of certain books of a scholar's education at the turn ticularly betwixt Air, and the Flamma Vi- important and clarifying modifications of of the century. However, we find that in talis of Animals) reminds us how much his subjective idealism. I 899 he also bought a copy of Ernest Seton three hundred years have added to our The more recent scientific works in the Thompson's Wild Animals I Have Known, knowledge of living phenomena and how Cohn library are neither surprising nar and his rare books include a Greek and little we understand today of Boyle's and bibliographically exceptional and we will Latin edition of Aesop's Fables published Descartes' Flamma Vitalis. not pause long to describe them. A medical in I 685. The thread of animal stories is It is difficult for us to imagine in this man of classical interests, Cohn none-the- still visible in a charming little volume, day of thermonuclear weapons and serious less was interested in thy less conventional The Book of the Bear, Being Twenty-one discussion of manned flights to the moon how bold the New Philosophy of experi- mental science seemed in the days of Fran- cis Bacon and the founders of the Royal DEUX Society. We can scarcely believe that the MEMOIRES men of the Royal Society were severely criticized as an undignified and, in a sense, SUR LE subversive lot. Another volume in Cohn's MOUVEMENT DU SANG, library, Bishop Thomas Spratt's History of ET SUR LES EFFETS DE LA SAIGNEE, the Royal Society published in 1667 in defense of the Society, gives us a glimpse FONDESSUR DES EXPERIENCES Faites rur des Animaux : into these tempestuous times. In his dedi- PAR MONSIEUR cation to Charles 11 (who had given the ALB. DE HALLER, Royal Society its Charter only five years Prqdent a2 In SocietC RoyaIe d.Sciences de earlier) Spratt, in justification of the G~TTINGUE,Membre de PAcadP- worth of the Society's aims and methods, mie Royale der Scimces de P A R I s , LON- DRES, BERLIN,STOKHOLM, gc. observed %@$+ ...That a higher degree of Reputation is $:HYWC* due to Discoverers, than to the Teachers *!$a of Speculative Doctrines, nay even to Con- A LAUSANNE, querers themselves. Nor has the true God himself omitted Chez MARGMIC.B o u s QU B T & Comp. Etjwndd PARIS, to show him his value of Vulgar Arts. In Cha D A v I D , Rue & vis-A-vis la Grille dm the whole History of the first monarchs of Mathurins. .> , . .. the World, from Adam to Noah, there is rhc~MARC-MICl~tiI.