March 10-May 31, 2025

HSHSL’s exhibit, “Groundbreaking: Spring Botanicals,” features illustrations by 18th-century botanists William Woodville and William Curtis from the library’s Pharmacy Historical Collection. The botanical illustrations were digitally enhanced and enlarged to highlight intricate details and vivid colors. 

The volumes featured in the exhibit were donated to the library in 1940 from the estate of August Kach, a graduate of the Maryland College of Pharmacy, class of 1882. His donation included 700 volumes, many of which remain in the library. HSHSL’s Pharmacy Historical Collection contains influential pharmacy and medical texts dating back to the 17th century. 

William Woodville, an English physician and botanist, published “Medical Botany: Containing Systematic and General Descriptions, With Plates of All the Medicinal Plants, Indigenous and Exotic, Comprehended in the Catalogues of the Materia Medica, as Published by the Royal Colleges of Physicians of London and Edinburgh,” from 1790 to 1794. This four-volume work, illustrated by James Sowerby, served as an important resource for early physicians. HSHSL holds a two-volume set. 

William Curtis, a botanist and entomologist from Alton, Hampshire, England, founded The Botanical Magazine; or, Flower-Garden Displayed in February 1787. The early magazine featured illustrations by Sydenham Edwards and James Sowerby, and continues publication today as Curtis’s Botanical Magazine.