Michael Bernhard Valentini

Michael Bernhard Valentini

Front page of Museum Museorum (2nd ed., 1714) by Valentini

Michael Bernhard Valentini (26 November 1657 – 18 March 1729) was a German doctor and a collector. After obtaining his doctorate in 1686 in Giessen he became Professor of Medicine in that city and personal physician to the Margrave of . He had an important Cabinet of curiosities and was the author of Museorum Museum, the first study of collections in Europe. In 1720 he published a work on the comparative anatomy of vertebrates. He was elected a Member of the Royal Society on 10 November 1715 and was also a Member of the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher (Leopoldina) and the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin.

Partial list of publications[]

Armamentarium naturae systematicum, 1709

• 1714 : Museum Museorum full title Museum Museorum, oder vollständige Schau-Bühne aller Materialien und Specereyen, nebst deren natürlichen Beschreibung... Aus andern Material-Kunst- und Naturalien-Kammern, Oost- und West-Indischen Reiss-Beschreibungen Frankfurt, heirs of Johann David Zunner and Johann Adam Jungen. Volume 1 deals with descriptions of plants, animals, minerals and metals and their commercial and medical uses. Volume 2 covers rocks and minerals, fossils, tropical plants, shells, unicorns and monstrosities and has a section on coins. A separate appendix, Ost-Indianische Send-Schreiben, is a compilation from Georg Eberhard Rumphius, Engelbert Kaempfer, Willem ten Rhijne, Andreas Cleyer and other naturalists on the rarities, mostly botanical, of the East Indies. Volume 3 is devoted to experiments in physics and natural science.
• 1719 : Viridarium reformatum, seu regnum vegetabilis Das ist eingerichtet und-Neu-buch vollständiges Kräuter, Worinnen alfo noch nicht geschehen Weise, als Kräutern Vegetabilien CRF, Sträuchen, Bäumen, Bluhmen Erd-und anderer Art Gewachsen, Krafft und beschreiben werden Würckung dergestalter , dass man dieses Werck statt einer Botanischen Bibliotheca haben, jedes zu seiner rechten Haupt Kraut-Art bringen, dessen Nutzen auch in der deutlich Artzney umständlich und finden ... (Anton Heinscheidt, Frankfurt am Main).

-These two volumes contain many illustrated plates from various botanical works for the Florilegium novum and Florilegium and renovatum auctum of Johannes Theodorus de Bry (1561–1623) and others.

• 1720 : Amphitheatrum zootomicum (Frankfurt am Main).

References[]

• Robert Mortimer Gascoigne (1987). A Chronology of the History of Science, 1450–1900, Garland (New York): xi + 585 pp (ISBN 0-8240-9106-X)

Online sources[]

Museum museorum (digitized by Lund University Library)