Woyt's Schatz-Kammer
| Description |
This thick volume was a best-seller in its time. Part medical dictionary, it provided eighteenth-century German doctors and medical students with Latin terms and their German equivalents and definitions. It is also a massive compendium of recipes and healing remedies, based on the use of herbs, minerals, and metals. The author, German physician Johann Jacob Woyt, studied in Königsberg, Leipzig, and graduated from Copenhagen in 1697. In 1706, he was named professor of medicine at the University of Königsberg but died just three years later, in 1709. This enormously popular work went through at least sixteen editions, first published the same year that the author passed away. This volume at Kent State University Libraries’ Special Collections & Archives is a copy of the very rare second edition published in 1716; this is the only copy held by a library outside of Europe. In fact, copies of all the earlier editions are scarce, which seems like a contradiction for a popular work. There must have been hundreds of copies produced during the run of the sixteen editions published between 1709 and 1767. Why are they now so scarce and hard to find? It's possible that this practical text was so heavily used by doctors and healers, who may have brought it with them out on the road, that many of the copies simply wore out, fell apart, and were lost in that way. And this may not have been a title that book collectors sought out for preservation in their private collections. Did it possibly fall out of favor or become outdated at some point in time, causing people to dispose of their copies? These are all interesting possibilities that could be studied further. And this topic also begs the question: will today’s multiple-edition college textbooks be considered “rare books” in the future, 300 years from now? |
| Author/Photographer |
Woyt, Johann Jacob, 1671-1709 |
| Publisher |
Friedrich Lankisch der Jüngere Erben |
| Date |
1716 |
| Extent |
8 unnumbered pages, 1,035 pages, 55 unnumbered pages ; 21 cm (4to) |
| Institution |
Kent State University |
| Repository |
Special Collections and Archives |
| LC Classification Number |
R121 .W59 1716 |
| Portion Digitized |
Title page and frontispiece |
| Access Rights |
This digital object is owned by Kent State University and may be protected by U.S. Copyright law (Title 17, USC). Please include proper citation and credit for use of this item. Use in publications or productions is prohibited without written permission from Kent State University. Please contact the Department of Special Collections and Archives for more information. |
| Duplication Policy |
http://www.library.kent.edu/special-collections-and-archives/duplication-policy |
| DPLA Rights Statement |
http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
| Format of Original |
book |
Credits
Curated by Kathleen Siebert Medicus with guest contributors