Willem Piso (1611-1678) served from 1636 to 1644 as a doctor in the Dutch colony in Brazil. As a pioneer of tropical medicine and pharmacology, he studied herbal medicine of the indigenous peoples and supported their health practices. In the jungle, he set out in search of medicinal plants and thus gained the reputation of being the first European to gain an understanding of the indigenous
The Rhine ports of Basel around 1920
Approximately 10 per cent of Switzerland’s total volume of foreign trade is currently transacted through the three Rhine ports in the city and region of Basel. Around 30 to 40 percent of mineral oil reaches Switzerland via the Rhine ports (Wikipedia, 2011). The maps,
Internment camps in Switzerland
Around 50,000 French, Belgian and Polish soldiers and civilian refugees fleeing from the Wehrmacht crossed the Swiss border in Neuchatel Jura in June 1940. They were disarmed and detained in camps. The map detail depicts the internment camps on 3 July 1940. The French
View from Weid near Zurich
In around 1880 Heinrich Keller draws a detailed panorama of the City of Zurich from Weid, depicting a seemingly rural, loosely built-up urban area. However, signs of progress are already visible. The Swiss Northeastern Railway line runs on a mighty causeway and over a
Carl Gustav Jung: the red book before The Red Book
The Red Book, a red leather-bound document by Carl Gustav Jung about his long-term process of self-discovery following a series of professional and personal set-backs, such as the estrangement from his teacher Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), was not publicly accessible until its publication in
Musaeum hermeticum (Frankfurt, 1678)
The Musaeum hermeticum reformatum et amplificatum was published 1678 in Latin in Frankfurt. As the title suggests, this is the revised version of an earlier edition of Lucas Jennis, which was published in 1625 and is very rare. The Musaeum tries to assemble in a
The stuff crime novels are made of: Heinrich Khunrath’s Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae (Hanau, 1609)
By their very nature, texts on alchemy are largely inaccessible, difficult to comprehend and often have an obscure edition history – and none more so than Heinrich Kunrath’s Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae. As Umberto Eco writes, while the posthumous Hanau edition of this work was
Island with literary potential
The small island Isla Robinson Crusoe or formerly Mas a Tierra or Juan Fernandez is located in the Pacific Ocean, about 600 kilometers west of the Chilean mainland. It is part of an archipelago which was discovered in 1574 by the Spanish seafarer Juan Fernandez and later named after
Lifting off like a pelican? The SB-2 Pelikan aircraft and its rusty start
During the Second World War, the Swiss government actively included ETH Zurich in its plans to promote an autonomous national aviation industry in Switzerland. The Federal Office of Aviation (now the Federal Office of Civil Aviation (FOCA)) commissioned Professor Eduard
Glow with the Flow: William Hamilton’s Campi Phlegraei (Naples, 1776-1779)
As a British diplomat at the court of the Kingdom of Naples, Sir William Hamilton (1730-1803) had an ideal location to study the volcanoes of the region. Several times he climbed Mount Vesuvius and witnessed the violent and dangerous outbreaks of the time. To capture his observations of