The unfinished project. Museum efforts for the publication of the “Bonpland Archive”

Abstract

The archive of the French naturalist Aimé Bonpland arrived at the Museum of Pharmacobotanics in mid -March of 1905. This heterogeneous collection of documents presents diaries of travel, drawings, maps and books, among other materials. Since they entered the museum, the documents that today make up the Bonpland file, were subject to a rigorous organiza- tion and cataloging work. Dr. Juan A. Domínguez –director of the Museum– and Eugenio Autran –collaborator and cura- tor of the herbarium– developed an editorial project for value and gradual publication. This project, since 1905, circulated through different commissions of the Faculty of Medical Sciences, but for different circumstances it never achieved the attention of the authorities, nor did it achieve sufficient funds to be carried out as proposed. In 1914 the project resurfaced as possibility and slowly began to be published in the “Trabajos del Instituto de Botánica y Farmacología” with the intention of carrying out the project raised by Dominguez and Autran. This editorial effort included a total of four facsimilar volumes and other associated works that culminated in 1940. However, other inconveniences were emerging over the years, so again the objectives set failed to be completed. This work lists the vicissitudes involved in the publication of these documents and the importance that, for science and scientists of the time, aroused the appearance of these publications.