Consists mainly of reproductions of manuscripts and some printed material by or about mainly 16th- and 17th-century Italian scientists, amassed and indexed by Howard B. Adelmann in the course of his research on the history of anatomy, embryology and histology. Materials focus especially on 17th-century Italian anatomists Marcello Malpighi and Hieronymus Fabricius ab Aquapendente, but also include Giorgio Baglivi, Francesco Redi, Lorenzo Bellini, Donato Rossetti, Henry Oldenburg, Giovanni Domenico Cassini, Johannes Bohn, Vincenzo Busacchi, Giovanni Domenico Guglielmini, Albrecht von Haller, Luigi Ferdinando Marsili, Giambattista Morgagni, Antonio Francesco Ghiselli, Giovanni Alfonso Borelli, and others.

Includes also original autograph letters by Marcello Malpighi (6 items) and Gaetano Atti (3 items); manuscript Tractatus in libros de generatione (17th century), on reproduction, sensation, and the theory of knowledge; typescript bibliography of the works of Fabricius; typescript with pencilled notes on manuscripts by Malpighi; notes and drafts for Adelmann's biography of Malpighi; and glass slides including portraits of Malpighi. Libraries where unbound photocopies were made are not identified; wood blocks and their origin are also unidentified.

Additional bound photocopies (cataloged individually) include works by and about Malpighi, and works by Ulisse Aldrovandi, Thomas Bartholin, Lorenzo Bellini, Georges Cuvier, Luigi Ferdinando Marsili, Giambattista Morgagni, Lorenz Oken, Francesco Redi, and others.