The Olin Library's ninth annual Morrison Lecture will take place on Wednesday, November 5, 2025, at 6:00 p.m. More details will follow, but this year we will welcome Dr. Kyra Krakos, Professor of Biology at Maryville University. Admission is free and open to the public.
Dr. Krakos's presentation, "Plants, Power, and Politics of the Last Medici Princess," outlines her fascinating research that has combined the study of pharmaceutical botany, history, and the deep mining of archival collections. Dr. Krakos has conducted an ethnobotanical study resulting in a collaboration between the Missouri Botanical Garden's plant library rare books collection, and the Medici archives. For the first time in history, the Medici archives are translating the mysterious medicinal recipes of Anna Maria Louisa, the last princess to rule Florence. This research examines the plants utilized in the concoction of those recipes, and how Princess Anna Maria Louisa used these strange medicines as a political tool in ruling as a lone female in the 16th and 17th centuries. (Spoiler: One of Anna Maria Louisa's pharmaceutical compounds required the ground skull of a man who had died a violent death.)
