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  • Matthiola incana (L.)W.T.Aiton Brassicaceae Distribution: The genus name commemorates Pietro Andrea Mattioli (1500/1–77), physician and botanist, whose name is Latinised to Matthiolus.. Incana means hoary or grey, referring to the colour of the leaves. Mattioli's commentaries on the Materia Medica of Dioscorides were hugely popular. Matthiola incana was first described by Linnaeus as Cheiranthus incanus, being changed to Matthiola by William Aiton, at Kew, in 1812. It is in the cabbage family. Commercial seed packets contain a mixture of single and double forms. The latter are sterile, but selective breeding has increased the proportion of double forms from the seed of single forms to as much as 80%. ‘Ten week stocks’ are popular garden annuals, flowering in the year of sowing, whereas ‘Brompton stocks’ (another variety of M. incana) are biennials, flowering the following year. Gerard (1633), called them Stocke Gillofloure or Leucoium, and notes the white and purple forms, singles and doubles. About their medicinal value he writes ‘not used in Physicke except among certain Empiricks and Quacksalvers, about love and lust matters, which for modestie I omit’. The thought of a member of the cabbage family being an aphrodisiac might encourage the gullible to take more seriously the government’s plea to eat five portions of vegetable/fruit per day. Photographed in the Medicinal Garden of the Royal College of Physicians, London.
  • Instruments of education (woodwork etc.); and eight episodes related to Rousseau's Emile in vignettes on the wall. Engraving by Giraud le Jeune after C.P. Marillier, 1788/1793.
  • A fat man wearing a coat and hat standing with his hand in his pocket; described as "un pizzicaruolo". Etching by A. Pond, 1741, after P.L. Ghezzi.
  • Chinese woodcut, food incompatibilities
  • Gentiana asclepiadea L. Gentianaceae. Gentian. Perennial herb. Distribution. Southern Europe and Caucasus. Named after Gentius, King of Illyria (the western Balkan Peninsula) in 181–168 BC. Gentius had a powerful navy of 270 warships (lembi) and like most kings of this era he fought constant wars, fighting with the Romans against Macedonia, and then changing sides only to be defeated and brought captive to Rome in 168 BC
  • A nun, traditionally identified as Suor Maria Celeste, daughter of Galileo Galilei. Oil painting.
  • A nun, traditionally identified as Suor Maria Celeste, daughter of Galileo Galilei. Oil painting.
  • A nun, traditionally identified as Suor Maria Celeste, daughter of Galileo Galilei. Oil painting.
  • A nun, traditionally identified as Suor Maria Celeste, daughter of Galileo Galilei. Oil painting.
  • Liberation of Jewish slaves: a woman and a young man embrace a bearded man dressed in robes, others travel on the road with camels. Engraving by C.H. Jeens after H. Le Jeune, 1847.