Building a Collection

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The Bullard Incunabula Collection at the Boston Medical Library, 1953

Assembled over the course of a century through purchase and donation, the Boston Medical Library's "library that never was" owes its existence and excellence, in large part, to the support, determination, and collecting expertise of Dr. William Norton Bullard. A native of Newport, Rhode Island, Bullard was a graduate of both Harvard College and Harvard Medical School. He specialized in neurology, becoming the physician for diseases of the nervous system at Boston City Hospital and the staff neurologist at Children's Hospital. He was also a founder and trustee of the State Hospital for Epileptics. In 1906, Dr. Bullard and his family established the Bullard Professorship of Neuropathology at Harvard Medical School.

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Dr. William Norton Bullard

In 1900, Dr. Bullard married Mary R. Reynolds, and together they began to assemble one of the world's most extraordinary private collections of early medical books, concentrating at first on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century titles, then turning later to the acquisition of incunabula. Dr. Bullard worked to build a collection with at least one edition of every medical work produced in the fifteenth century. In 1927, he established the Bullard Loan Collection of Incunabula at the Boston Medical Library, then donated his sixteenth- and seventeenth-century items the following year. At his death in 1931, Dr. Bullard bequeathed his incunabula—at that point over 200 titles—to the BML in conjunction with an endowment of $50,000 to be used for the acquisition of books and manuscripts predating 1700. This fund allowed the Library to continue to purchase choice items for its incunabula collection through the 1950s. The acquisition of over 500 of the fifteeners—more than half the collection—can be traced to the gift or bequest of Dr. Bullard.

Building a Collection