Dr James ‘Paraffin’ Young made a fortune in the Scottish shale-oil industry and became a great benefactor to his alma mater. After becoming President at Anderson’s University in 1868 he established the Young Chair of Technical Chemistry. He gathered an impressive collection of early printed books on the history of chemistry that he bequeathed to the Chair. The Young Collection contains books and manuscripts dating from the 15th to the 18th centuries on alchemy, chemistry and early science.
‘Hic est Draco caudam suam devorans.’
Here is the dragon that devours his own tail.
These pages are from 'Atalanta Fugiens', an alchemical emblem book containing fifty woodcut images accompanied by poems and music in the form of ‘fugues’. It is regarded as one of the earliest examples of multimedia, using different forms to express complex alchemical ideas. The symbol of a snake or dragon devouring its tail, an ouroboros, stands for infinity or wholeness.
Item reference: Michael Maier, Atalanta Fugiens (1618), Young Collection (GIF created by Carol Stewart).
Young, James, and John Ferguson. Bibliotheca Chemica : a Catalogue of the Alchemical, Chemical and Pharmaceutical Books in the Collection of the Late James Young of Kelly and Durris ... / Glasgow: J. Maclehose and Sons, 1906.
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