Abstract - L.&A. Birkenmajer Institute for the History of Science of the Polish Academy of Sciences

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A single volume of a handwritten Bible of Czech provenance is located at the Archdiocesan Archives of Gniezno. The Bible was created in 1414 and its signature is BK Ms 142. This article presents and analyses the book in comparison with the rest of the library manuscripts present at the Archdiocesan Archives. The Czech Bible is a part of a small subset of biblical codices and an equally small group of Czech codices. The article concludes with a few research questions, connected to, among others, a paleographic study and the examination of the traditions of the biblical texts.
The aim of the article is to reconstruct the status of a human embryoin the Old Testament within the context of Ancient Middle East cultures. Thestarting point of the conducted research is the refl ection on the Old Testamentaryview of a human being, It also discusses law codifi cation: Babylonian, Hittite,and Assyrian. The analysis of views concerning nasciturus in the given study isinextricably connected with a social patriarchal system that dominated amongall the cultures of the ancient Middle East. A comparative approach to the issueallows a greater understanding of the genesis of the refl ection on the status ofa human embryo.
The article concerns the life and work of Anna Tomaszewicz-Dobrska, the first woman practising medicine in the Kingdom of Poland. Her character, although indisputably important for the history of medicine and the history of emancipation, is little known. The only biography of Tomaszewicz-Dobrska, written by Zbigniew Filar, was published in 1959. In addition to presenting facts from her life, the article raises issues related to the pioneers of medical studies from today’s Poland, the situation of female students at foreign universities in the 19th century, as well as the state of medical knowledge in the field of reproductive health at that time.
The article is a biography of one of the three eminent physicians of the Napoleonic era, René-Nicolas Dufriche Desgenettes. It covers his studies and the time he served in the army, his personal affairs and encounters with Polish soldiers. The article also discusses his scientific achievements in combating pandemic diseases and raising the hygienic standards of the army life.
The article is concerned with life and work of Rudolf Ranoszek (1894–1986). Ranoszek was the forefather of Hittitology in Poland. In 1954 he became the director of the Ancient East Philology Institute at the Philological Department of Warsaw University. In his studies, Professor Ranoszek analyzed the links between Asia Minor and Aegean civilization. He was interested in the history and religion of the Ancient Middle East. He conducted research on the Linear B on Crete.
The article presents the history and development of telegraphs inventedby the Scottish inventor and engineer Alexander Bain. The telegraph andits subsequent versions were known as I–V telegraphs. They were created beforethe invention of Morse’s telegraph and were soon replaced by it, as they wereconsiderably slower in transmitting the messages. One of the variants of I–Vtelegraphs was used in Austrian railways between the years 1846–1850. On theNorthern Railway (Kaiser Ferdinand Nordbahn), including on the route fromVienna to Bochumin, Bain’s telegraphs remained in use until 1886.
In the Polish historiography of mathematics Piarist Bernard Syruć(Siruć) is unanimously considered as the fi rst Polish author of work on differentialand integral calculus (Propositiones ex Analysi Infi nitorum, Romae 1755). However,in the same year the works of two other authors: another Piarist Samuel Chróścikowskiand one Pasquale de Petra were published in Rome. These works had thesame title and, what is particularly astonishing, their content was exactly identicalwith that of the previously mentioned work of Syruć. The article tries to clarify thispuzzling issue. It is suggested that the works of Syruć, Chróścikowski and Pasqualede Petra could have been a result of some public examination involving many graduates.In the eighteenth century, public examinations carried out in the religiouscolleges, were common form of demonstrating acquired knowledge and skills.
Out of 130 posthumous inventories of Polish nobles living in Zakroczym Land, 18 included books. Those inventories require a lot of strenuous and not always successful attempts to identify the work mentioned in the inventory; however, they allow us to determine what type of books were popular among people and what intellectual, cultural and practical needs they fulfiled. In most of the cases, the books were concerned with religion, law and politics. Different books also included knowledge on administrative functions or farming. Others were concerned with advice on oratory skills. One exception among the discussed inventories is the one belonging to Czesław Ignacy Łempicki, a member of a well-respected local noble family. His book collection is an example of the emergence of new phenomena, i.e. widening geographical knowledge and the development of secular novels and different life models.
Thanks to the discovery made by Jacek Puchalski and Elżbieta Maruszak, both working at the University of Warsaw, Polish academia was presented in 2016 with “Kurs bibliografii” by Łukasz Gołębiowski (1779–1849), a Polish librarian and scientist. In his book, Gołębiowski included his advice on scientific descriptions of medieval manuscripts. The article analyses the educational aspects of the manuscriptological advice included in the book, as well as his proposed method of describing medieval manuscripts. Gołębiowski also made excerpts from the medieval manuscripts stored in the Public Library of the University of Warsaw, which do not exist anymore. Those excerpts are published in the form of annexes with a scientific commentary.
This somewhat archaic title points to a particular historical period presented in the articles. The article is concerned with technological developments used to transmit writing and images over a long distance and the systems used from the times of Alexander Bain to those used approximately a hundred years ago. It showcases different methods of image analysis on the side of the sender and the methods of image saving on the side of the receiver.

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