The Warren Family
In 1928, the library of Harvard Medical School received a magnificent bequest from Dr. John Warren (1874-1928) of 2,000 medical books, pamphlets, and manuscripts, assembled by five generations of the Warren family of Boston. Originally shelved in cabinets in an alcove on the second floor of Gordon Hall, beneath the Warren Anatomical Museum, the Warren Library is now one of the special collections housed at the Countway Library of Medicine. Ranging from the earliest days of printing to the start of the 20th century, the Warren Library contains some of the rarest and most significant works in the history of medicine and surgery, including titles by Andreas Vesalius, William Harvey, William Hunter, Joannes de Ketham, John Hunter, Ambroise Paré, and Celsus, along with ten incunables.
Both a working professional collection and a leisure-time resource, the Warren Library reflects the tastes, occupations, and preoccupations of its owners. Dr. John Collins Warren contributed a significant collection of pamphlets related to the development and use of ether as an anesthetic—hardly surprising given his role as the surgeon in the groundbreaking first public operation at the Massachusetts General Hospital in 1846. The published writings of the Warrens themselves—from Dr. John Warren’s A view of the mercurial practice in febrile diseases (1813) to editions of his great-great-grandson’s textbook, An outline of practical anatomy (1924)—are all represented in the collection. A number of Warren Library books bear presentation inscriptions from their authors to members of the family. A small handful even have a succession of family signatures on their title-pages or flyleaves, as the books passed from one generation to the next, over the course of a century and a half. Many of the volumes also carry versions of the distinctive Warren bookplate with the family’s coat of arms depicting a rearing lion on a shield. This device became the basis for the seal of Harvard Medical School.
For more about the Warren family, check out A Family Practice: The Warrens of Harvard Medical School.