Before the Newberry put the book on display, however, it did know a few things about it: They knew that it came from Stanton Friedberg, a prominent Chicago doctor who collected rare medical books and died in 1997. They knew it was likely a “commonplace book,” a kind of traveling reader’s diary, full of notes taken from whatever its author was reading. They knew at least two others wrote in the book, but the primary author wrote in it until he was quite old — the writing grows steadily shakier. They knew this author was likely male, as literacy among women in the period was rare. They knew Friedberg would have considered the book not magical but an evolutionary step in understanding medicine, from a time when our belief in magic and belief in emerging sciences sat side by side.