Blagden, Sir Charles (1748-1820)

The collection chiefly comprises material generated whilst Blagden was a student at Edinburgh University: notes of lectures, clinical notes of cases observed at Edinburgh Infirmary, commonplace books, dissertation drafts, lists of materia medica, etc. Also included are two papers addressed to the Royal Society.

1767-1780

19 volumes

The Blagden Collection has been deposited in the library at Wellcome Collection on permanent loan from R. G. Sherwood Hale of Mount House, Alderley, Glos., a descendant by marriage of John Blagden, High Sheriff of Gloucestershire, who married Ann Hale in 1779, and assumed the name of Hale on succeeding to the Alderley estates in 1784. It was presented June 1954.

Charles Blagden graduated M.D. at Edinburgh in 1768, and afterwards was a medical officer in the Army until 1814. He was elected F.R.S. in 1772, and Secretary to the Society in 1784. See the Dictionary of National Biography for further details.

At Wellcome Collection: Blagden's notes on the chemistry lectures of Joseph Black (1728-1799), also part of the Blagden collection of manuscripts, are held as MSS.1219-1227, part of the Library's collection of material relating to Black (MSS.1219-1233). The majority of the material relating to John Gregory (1724-1773) held as MSS.2612-2627 comprises notes by Blagden.

Database description transcribed from S.A.J. Moorat, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts on Medicine and Science in the Wellcome Historical Medical Library (London: Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 1962-1973).