University Times

Georgia Duker, at left, a faculty member in cell biology and physiology, and James R. Johnston, a faculty member in medicine, view the Harry Potter exhibit in Falk Library.

Harry Potter may be a fictional character, but some very real medieval figures have contributed to the schooling of J.K. Rowling’s young wizard.

Lectures and library exhibits on campus this month dig deeper into the scientific roots underlying some of the magic and wizardry made famous in Rowling’s popular series. (See details below.)

As part of a Feb. 22 opening reception, Stephen Greenberg of the National Library of Medicine’s History of Medicine Division discussed the history of the traveling exhibit “Magic and Monsters in the Stacks: How Harry Potter Came to the National Library of Medicine.”

Several copies of the exhibit have been traveling to libraries across the nation since 2009 with itineraries that are booked through 2012.

Greenberg traced the exhibit’s history to a hot summer day in 2008 when he was called upon to find a rare book for a visiting group of middle-schoolers.

He selected a treatise ascribed to 14th-century alchemist Nicolas Flamel who, in the book with Albus Dumbledore, is credited with creating the philosopher’s stone in the first “Harry Potter” novel.

“He was a real guy. The kids didn’t know that, but they know it now. They were really excited. So were our exhibition people,” Greenberg said.

Although the National Library of Medicine collection contains only books that are related to medicine in some way, he estimated that a few thousand had connections to concepts and characters featured in the “Harry Potter” series.

Within a few days, the library’s exhibition staff had pulled together an initial exhibit, “Do Mandrakes Really Scream?” (see www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/mandrakes) and later developed the traveling exhibit that features magic, potions, monsters, herbology and fantastic creatures referenced in the “Harry Potter” series.

“Rowling never makes a mistake when it comes to alchemy or to creatures. Sometimes she injects her own stuff, but when she pulls something out of history, she got it right,” Greenberg said.

In a scene from Rowling’s initial novel, Harry and Ron Weasley buy chocolate frog confections that include wizard trading cards. Some of the people featured on the cards — Dumbledore, Alberic Grunnion and Hengist of Woodcroft, for instance — are inventions of Rowling’s own imagination. Others such as Circe, Morgana and Merlin are mythical or literary characters.

Still others were real.

Heinrich Agrippa was a 15th-century numerologist. Paracelsus, who lived at the turn of the 16th century, was “one of the great nuts of the history of medicine,” Greenberg said.

Born Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, he chose the moniker Paracelsus to show himself greater than his predecessor, the physician Celsus. An anti-establishment contrarian of his time, he claimed he carried the elixir of life with him in the pommel of his magic sword. In portraits he always is represented with his hand on the pommel of the sword, Greenberg noted. Despite some unorthodox claims, “You can’t quite dismiss him,” Greenberg said, citing Paracelsus’s important contributions to medicine and pharmacy. He pioneered the use of metals in pharmaceuticals and is credited with the notion that “all medicines are poison, it’s just a matter of the dosage,” Greenberg said.

The National Library of Medicine exhibit also contains images of creatures from Conrad Gesner’s 16th-century bestiary “Historiae Animalium,” including famous illustrations of an owl and a unicorn. Humanoid representations of mandrake roots come from a 15th-century work, “Hortus Sanitatis.” The roots were believed to possess not only medicinal powers, but magical ones as well. When pulled from the ground, mandrakes were said to emit a fatal scream.

Early distillation equipment is pictured in works by Ambroise Pare, a French barber surgeon whose illustrated writings feature treatises on alchemy and monsters as well as instructions for distillation of various essences and compounds.

“This was a very important step in the history of chemistry — something Paracelsus was very interested in — taking something and distilling the essence of it,” Greenberg said. Vital essences have a spiritual connotation as well, he noted.

Another medieval textbook on the art of distillation, Hieronymus Brunschwig’s “Liber de Arte Distilland,” features hand-colored woodcuts, some of which are pictured in the traveling exhibit. The book also is part of a separate National Library of Medicine online digitization project that enables a close-up view of the work. (See http://archive.nlm.nih.gov/proj/ttp/books.htm.)

The first “Harry Potter” book was published in 1997 as “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” in England, and as “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” in the United States. A decade later, the seventh and final book of the series, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” had an initial press run of 44 million copies.

“I don’t know if Harry Potter will survive as a classic into the next century,” Greenberg said. “But I think the Harry Potter mentality strikes a chord with us as individuals. There’s something about people like Harry, who is the outsider in two worlds. He’s not really at home with the Dursleys and he’s not really at home at Hogwarts. He doesn’t know all the stuff that Hermione and Ron do.  … But there’s something a little special about Harry. We would like to believe in magic. We’d like to believe there is something special in magical stones and potions and such. It’s kind of fun.”

For more information on the exhibit, visit www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/harrypottersworld.

—Kimberly K. Barlow

Harry Potter exhibits

Two Harry Potter-themed library exhibits are on display on campus through March 26.

At the Health Sciences Library System’s Falk Library in Scaife Hall is the National Library of Medicine’s traveling exhibit, “Harry Potter’s World: Renaissance Science, Magic and Medicine.”

Exhibit hours are 8:30 a.m.- 9 p.m. weekdays and 9:30 a.m.-1 p.m. Saturdays.

A rare books exhibition is on display outside Rooms 271 and 363 in Hillman Library during regular library hours. “Renaissance Science & Magic — the World of Harry Potter” features a collection of secondary scholarly works that Harry Potter might have found useful while attending the Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Witchcraft.

Harry Potter lectures

Co-sponsored by the C.F. Reynolds Medical History Society and Pitt’s Health Sciences Library System in conjunction with the National Library of Medicine’s traveling exhibit is a lecture set for 6 p.m. March 15, “The World of Harry Potter: Medieval Medicine, Science and Magic,” presented by Robert Morris University English studies faculty member Sylvia Pamboukian.

Another lecture, “Harry Potter and the Ultimate In-Between: J.K. Rowling’s Portals of Power in the Harry Potter Series,” presented by Pitt English lecturer Lori M. Campbell, is set for 2 p.m. March 24.

Both talks take place in Scaife Hall lecture room 5.