FOR “SICK” BOOKS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 September 1938, Page 7

FOR “SICK” BOOKS

ESTABLISHMENT OF ITALIAN CLINIC. There has been opened in Rome, in the presence of the Minister of National Education, and of many Italian and foreign scholars, the Royal Institute of Book Pathology, which is claimed to be the first institution of the kind to be founded in Europe. This institute may be described as the clinic for sick books. ’ ... Books have always been subject to serious maladies, some of them even deadly, such as mould, bacteria and oxidisation. The need for the clinic, too, has recently made itself strongly felt, because for some time past a severe and inexorable affliction which has fallen upon the libraries has appeared in Sicily, and from there it has begun to creep northwards, invading Sardinia, Calabria, Puglia, the Marches and Umbria. It is represented by voracious termites which are devouring the books. Entire libraries, shelves and books and manuscripts alike have been attacked, and the work of destruction is accomplished in a matter of days. Technical experts are now conducting researches at the new institute on the structure and morphology of, and the changes in, printing and writing materials, and many experiments are being made; this is the scientific purpose of the institue. Othei - experts are devoting their time to restoration work. The institute has been equipped with biological, chemical and physical laboratories in which the various experiments and their successive applications are made. To give the visitor a comprehensive idea of the manifold causes which lead to the destruction of books, a special museum has been arranged wherein are demonstrated the incredibly large number of ways in which books receive damage. Here are exhibited Egyptian and Herculaneum papyri, codices and books which have survived fires, earthquakes and floods, books mutilated by numerous species of insects, volumes changed by mould, and so on. The evidence presented of how books are destroyed by disease and other enemies of the printed and written word is indeed impressive. The Institute of Book Pathology will shortly receive its first illustrious patient. This is the famous Bible of Borso d.’Estc, which is suffering from mould, a disease which, while not very serious, needs great care if it is to be properly cured.