Gassendi by Mellan 1637

A detail from an engraving of the scholar, priest and astronomer Pierre Gassendi by his collaborator the engraver and artist Claude Mellan. From the Met collection.

Image © 2000–2014 The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Primum Non Nocere — Above All, Do No Harm!

This motto is often used to describe the moral obligations of medics (though it isn't the Hippocratic Oath).

The earliest solid reference found so far for the motto is from 1879:

The maxim that our first duty is to do no harm — primum non nocere — is not intended to reduce us to the rank of simple spectators; it is to stimulate us to attain greater accuracy in diagnosis, greater skill in treatment, and quicker perception of indications.

Stimson LA. On abdominal drainage of adherent portions of ovarian cysts as a substitute for completed ovariotomy. Am J Med Sci. 1879;78: pp. 88-100.

For a full history of the motto see; Cedric M. Smith, ‘Origin and Uses of Primum Non Nocere — Above All, Do No Harm!’, The Journal of Clinical Pharmacology,  Vol. 45 (4), (2005), pp. 371–377.

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Old Postcards

A huge collection of old postcards HERE.

San Francisco below.

Château de Blérancourt. Bastille day 1989.

Reconstruction of the Worlds largest flying bird

A great piece here in the Guardian about the reconstruction of the worlds largest flying bird from fossilised remains.

The paper includes the following clear illustration, complete with scale-bar.

 

Skeletal reconstruction of P sandersi with a California condor (lower left) and royal albatross (lower right) for scale. Illustration: Liz Bradford/PNAS  

Full paper HERE.

Apollo Image archive: Apollo 17 Mission CSM during rendezvous

NASA Image. Apollo-17 Hasselblad Magazine AS17-145/D - high resolution image HERE.

The Pantograph. 1653

The Pantograph was invented by Christoph Scheiner in about 1603, but his book on the subject, Pantographice, was not published until 1631. 

The following image is from a later reduced Italian version -Prattica del parallelogrammo da disegnare, which was published in Bologna in 1653.

Image from HERE

Hokusai. The old man, mad about drawing

Image from HERE.