Medical Notebook

Notebook containing medical, theological and other miscellaneous matter.

On fo. 1 in very faded writing, a signature that seems to read J. MALLOCH. This is followed by "Libellus Emptus ... the 24 of february. Ex Libris Jacobj Mallock Anno Dominj 1676-7." In another hand in darker ink is written: "This was written in London A.D. 1676 by F.B.M.D." These notes, neither of which is in the handwriting of the writer of the text, make the problem of dating difficult. That the manuscript belongs to the second half of the seventeenth century is evident enough, not only from the script and orthography, but from various allusions in the text. The author was a clergyman as well as a physician as one passage specifically states (fo. 56). He is presumably the F.B., a Doctor of Medicine, mentioned on fo. 1, but if as is there stated he wrote the contents of the book in 1676, it is difficult to understand how a second owner came to buy the volume for his library in the same year, and still more difficult to explain how it is that there is a passage (MS/MSL/19/2) relating to events of two years later - October 1678 - when the writer was on board a slave-ship, sailing from Africa to America. Allowing for the difference in neatness and care bestowed upon various sections, there seems no doubt that the whole of the manuscript is written by the same hand.

The contents of the notebook's seven sections are listed in detail as separate catalogue entries (MS/MSL/19/1-7).