The Curiosi as Collectores: The Publications of the Academia Naturae Curiosorum, c. 1652–1706

During the first century of its existence, the Academia Naturae Curiosorum, otherwise known as the Leopoldina, embarked on two collective publication projects: an exhaustive encyclopaedia of materia medica composed of short, single-author monographs and the Leopoldina's journal, Miscellanea Curiosa. Although the curiosi modelled their journal in part on existing journals, such as the Philosophical Transactions, the journal's observationes had a distinctively novel type of authorship and approach, as well as a different subject matter: while the encyclopaedia of materia medica mostly dealt with things that were found regularly (albeit, in part, rarely) in nature, the Miscellanea Curiosa reads like a cabinet of curiosities on paper.