The Wellcome Historical Medical Library : a brief account of its history, scope and purpose.

  • Wellcome Historical Medical Library.
Date:
1954
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: The Wellcome Historical Medical Library : a brief account of its history, scope and purpose. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    SEVENTEENTH CENTURY BOOKS SPECIAL COLLECTIONS Shakespearean scholars associate with Hamlet; Bullein's Bulwarke of Defence against all Sicknesse (1562); Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy (1624); Caius on the Sweating Sickness (1552), the first original description of a disease in the English language; and the same author's De Canibus Bhtannicis (1570), the first monograph on the dog; Crooke's Microcosmographia (1615); Elyot's Castel of Healthe (1539); Gale's Chirurgerie (1563); the Gemi- nus version of Vesalius (1545, 1553, 1559); the first, suppressed, issue of the London Pharmacopoeia (1618); Gilbert's De Magnete (1600); Moulton's Mirror of Healthe (1539 ?); Roesslin's Byrth of Mankinde (1540, etc.); the anonymous Seyng of Urines (1530, etc.); Turner's New Herbal (1551); Sir William Vaughan's Approved Directions for Health (1612); Vicary's English- man's Treasure (1586); Vigo's Surgical Works (1586), with the signature on the title-page of William Clowes, the celebrated Elizabethan surgeon. The Library contains more than 10,000 books printed in the seventeenth century. As well as the great medical landmarks such as Harvey's De Motu Cordis (1628), the foundations of modern science which were laid in that period are represented by first editions of Bacon, Galileo, Kepler, Descartes, Newton and Boyle. From the seven- teenth century onwards all important advances in medicine and science are signalled by original texts. Apart from the classic works of Heberden, Hunter, Jenner, Lister, Pasteur and Roentgen, the Library has a wealth of less well-known clinical and scientific material, including a wide range of early periodicals, which awaits the notice and study of the historian. The Library is very rich in special collections, for example: Voyages and Travels (especially those containing early