Blog

Most of the recently digitised documents from the National Library of Medicine in Prague comprise printed theses defended at the Faculty of Medicine of the Prague university between 1682 and 1749. The manuscripts are represented by a medical anthology from the 18th century (T 277), including recipes, descriptions of the medicinal effects of plants, a treatise on bloodletting and other texts, and by a veterinary anthology from the 17th–18th centuries (T 333).

The Museum of the Jindřichův Hradec Region provided access to six manuscripts and four early printed books in 2018. The manuscripts contain Czech- and German-language prayer books from the second half of the 18th century. A part of them are handwritten copies of printed books, with some even having their scribe or the place of their later use listed. The digitised printed books comprise collections of German prayers by Martin of Cochem and their Czech translations. The oldest of them comes from the printing workshop of Marie Barbora Svobodová from 1738, while the other three were editions were printed by Hynek (Ignác) Vojtěch Hilgartner in Jindřichův Hradec in the second half of the 18th century.

The National Library of the CR has provided access to some medieval manuscripts. The oldest of them comes from the 12th century, but most of them were not written until the late Middle Ages. In terms of content, the works include the Bible and its exegeses (those whose authors have been identified comprise e.g. the manuscript III.F.18 by Nicholas of Lyra or the concordance of the Gospels by Mikuláš Biskupec of Pelhřimov in III.F.5), but also patristic and medical works (the extensive compendium by Gilbert of England in III.H.20), preaching, legal and ancient literature (Ovid’s works in III.H.24a–III.H.24c). Some manuscripts are interesting not only for their content but also for their information on former owners: the owner of the codex III.G.1 was Vojtěch Raňkův of Ježov, who had probably acquired it during his work in Paris; the manuscript III.E.34 is one of the few manuscripts that have been preserved from the library of the Reček College (Collegium sanctissimae Mariae) of the Prague university.

Národní technická knihovna zpřístupnila v roce 2018 devět starých tisků. Nejstarším z nich je italský překlad Eukleidova díla, vytištěný v Benátkách v roce 1585 (A 232); z Basileje z roku 1678 pochází pojednání o trigonometrii Georga Friedricha Meyera s četnými dřevořezy (A 241). Ostatní tisky vznikly v 18. století, převážně v Německu a jeden další rovněž v Itálii. Po obsahové stránce jde o texty matematické, ale také o prezentace vynálezů, které měly sloužit k pobavení.