Other Donors
In addition to the generosity of William Norton Bullard, a number of other donors have increased the incunabula collections of the Boston Medical Library and the Harvard Medical Library over the years.
One of the first fifteeners acquired by the Boston Medical Library was the 1491 edition of the Fasciculus medicinae, the gift of Dr. John Homans (1836-1903), who purchased the volume at auction and then donated it to the collection in 1893. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894) was also a significant early contributor to the Boston Medical Library's collection, donating a 1489 edition of the Aphorisms of Maimonidesand a 1490 Venetian printing of Avicenna's Canon medicinae. Most of the Harvard medical incunables are part of the bequest of Dr. John Warren (1874-1928), a collector of rare anatomical works and the last physician in direct descent from the famous Boston family of surgeons and teachers.
Other physicians and collectors who have augmented the collections include John Farquhar Fulton, William Gordon Lennox, Frederic Thomas Lewis, Jacob James Longacre, Henry Rouse Viets, and Paul Dudley White. A number of choice items were acquired from the estate of Wilfrid M. Voynich, a renowned antiquarian book dealer. A significant number of the Boston Medical Library incunables, along with some early manuscript items, were acquired through an endowment established by the Godfrey M. Hyams Trust in 1930 for the purchase of rare medical Judaica in honor of Solomon M. Hyams.