Smart, Thomas Wake (b. 1806), general practitioner, Cranborne, Dorset

British Medical Almanac (edited by William Farr) for 1838, owned by Smart, with annotations, on unprinted pages, dealing with interesting medical cases, events in Smart's own life (his marriage in late December 1837 and the birth of his daughter in October 1838), natural history, meteorology and local historic events such as the arrival of a coach link to the railway or a party in Salisbury to mark the coronation of Queen Victoria. ff.1-5 blank. f.6 personal notes on Smart's marriage and his weight. ff.7-140 printed almanac. The calendar section (ff.10-31r) includes interleaved blank leaves used by Smart for manuscript notes; these comprise the even-numbered ff. from f.12 to f.32. Another such leaf has probably been removed between ff.10-11. ff.141-143 manuscript notes by Smart, mainly on articles in the medical press. ff.144-146 blank.

1837-1843

146 ff.

Purchased from Mr. H.J. Symons, January 1980.

Smart was the son of Robert Smart, also a medical practitioner in Cranborne; he trained as a surgeon-apothecary, passing as L.S.A. and M.R.C.S. in 1827.

The volume has been the subject of a article, "A medical almanack in the Wellcome Institute Library" by Claire Cross, Friends of the Wellcome Institute newsletter, no. 15 (Summer 1998), pp.8-9e

Database description transcribed from Richard Aspin and Christopher Hilton's typescript supplement to S.A.J Moorat's Catalogue of Western Manuscripts