Digitized Medical Books: National Library of Medicine Releases "Turning the Pages" iPad App

From NLM:

The National Library of Medicine, a component of the National Institutes of Health, announces the release of a new Turning the Pages “app” for the iPad. The application is free and features selections from three rare books from the Library’s collection. All three books first appeared on NLM’s Turning the Pages kiosks and Web site over the past three years. The new app allows iPad users to have an up-close virtual experience with these rare treasures. The animated books, scanned at high resolution, are accompanied by texts, written by experts in their fields, which put the books and images into context.

One of the featured works is a 19^th century Japanese surgical manuscript by noted physician Hanaoka Seishu, the first surgeon to use anesthesia in an operation. Another book included in the app is Hieronymus Brunschwig’s De Arte Distillandi, printed in Strasbourg in 1512. The work contains numerous hand-colored woodcuts showing physicians, alchemists and their laboratories in Early Modern Europe. The third book is an early Persian manuscript by medieval natural historian al-Qazwini entitled “The Cosmography,” which includes colorful hand-drawn illustrations of zodiac constellations, animals, and plants from the Islamic world of the period.

The app is free.

Direct to iTunes Preview Page

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