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- Collection: Harvard Medical Library
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The physician's pulse-watch
English physician Sir John Floyer invented a watch to measure the rate of the pulse and here translates some relevant portions of the Specimen medicinae Sinicae("The Chinese art of Feeling the Pulse is describ'd; and the Imitation of their Practice…
The principles and practice of medicine
In the first edition of his monumental textbook, Sir William Osler advocates the use of acupuncture for sciatica and, as here, lumbago "in acute cases, the most efficient treatment…. I can corroborate fully the statements of [Sydney] Ringer,…
Scientific Exhibit in the New Buildings of the Harvard Medical School
During the course of the AMA meeting, demonstrations, lectures, models, photographs and slides, and other anatomical, pathological and scientific exhibits were all mounted in the amphitheaters, laboratories, and museum galleries of the new buildings.…
Hymn 283
The so-called "Harvard Hymn" was sung by the Alumni Chorus at the Academic Session of the Dedication on September 26th. It was composed by John Knowles Paine, the University's late professor of music.
Invitation to Tea
Each afternoon during the American Medical Association's meeting in Boston, a musical tea was held on the new Medical School Quadrangle.
Map of Boston
Published in the May 5th issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association, this map for attendees of the meeting graphically demonstrates the distance of the new Medical School campus from the center of Boston.
Insensibility during Surgical Operations Produced by Inhalation
On October 16, 1846, at Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. John Collins Warren performed the first public operation on a patient under ether anesthesia administered by dentist William T. G. Morton. Dr. Henry Jacob Bigelow witnessed the event and…
Autopsy of Dr. John Collins Warren (1778-1856)
John Barnard Swett Jackson was Harvard Medical School's first professor of pathological anatomy and first curator of the Warren Anatomical Museum. He published catalogues of the specimens in the museum of the Boston Society for Medical Improvement…
Memoranda Book of J. Mason Warren (1811-1867)
Before J. Mason Warren departed to pursue his medical studies in Europe, Dr. John Collins Warren composed for him a volume of miscellaneous advice, suggesting lectures to attend and eminent physicians to meet, and charging him with certain…
Catalogue of the Library of Dr. John Collins Warren (1778-1856)
Dr. John Collins Warren began his own book collection while in Europe in 1799, and added to it many medical titles when he inherited his father
Account Book of John Collins Warren (1778-1856)
These personal accounts from 1822 and 1823 show the salary which Dr. John Collins Warren earned for the professorship of anatomy and surgery at Harvard Medical School and the fee charged for training of individual pupils. The account book also…
Pedigree of the Family of Warren
Shortly before his death, Dr. John Collins Warren (1778-1856) researched and published Genealogy of Warren with Some Historical Sketches (Boston : John Wilson and Son, 1854), tracing his family from its earliest origins down through the birth of his…
Photograph Album of J. Collins Warren
Following in the tradition of his father and grandfather, John Collins Warren-usually known as "Coll"-studied medicine at Harvard and then completed his education in England, France, and Germany.
This album of carte-de-visite style photographs was…
Correction of Midfacial Deformities
Published in 1971 in Surgical Clinics of North America, this article, written by Joseph E. Murray , M.D., Lennard T. Swanson, D.M.D., Melvin Cohen, D.M.D., and Mutaz B. Habal, M.D., illustrates the interdisciplinary nature of the diagnosis and…
The Surgical Treatment of Facial Injuries
Among Dr. Kazanjians important contributions to the literature of plastic surgery is the textbook, The Surgical Treatment of Facial Injuries. Co-authored with Dr. John M. Converse, this textbook is considered a classic work in the field. This diagram…
Somnia Danielis
The Somnia Danielis [“Daniel’s Dreams”] is a work on the interpretation of dreams; it originated in the eighth century.
Catalogue of Books in the Boston Medical Library, and the Rules and Regulations concerning the Same (1808)
The copy of the 1808 Catalogue belonged to Dr. John Collins Warren, who held the office of Librarian at this time. The emendations probably represent an inventory of the collection, along with printing corrections for a subsequent edition in 1810.
Library of the Massachusetts Medical College
Harvard Medical School established a library of its own in 1816. This pamphlet of rules was printed and distributed to students following the collection's unification with the Boston Medical Library in 1819.
Catalogue of Books in the Boylston Medical Library (1824)
Before the formation of the Boston Medical Library, Harvard's Boylston Medical Library was the principal local collection not in private hands. The collection remained with the University in Cambridge after the Medical School removed to Boston in…
An act to protect the sepulchres of the dead.
Photostat copy of the State of Massachusetts' "An Act to Protect the Sepulchres of the Dead." Act was approved by the Governor on March 2, 1815.
An act in addition to "An act more effectually to protect the sepulchres of the dead, and to legalize the study of anatomy in certain cases"
Photostat copy of "An act in addition to "An act more effectually to protect the sepulchres of the dead, and to legalize the study of anatomy in certain cases""
John Warren to Secretary of War William Eustis regarding an opening at the Boston Marine Hospital
Two page letter from John Warren to Secretary of War William Eustis regarding an opening at the Navy's Boston Marine Hospital. Warren remarks that he hopes that the new appointee would employ favorable teaching conditions for the faculty and students…
Aberrant visual projections in the Siamese cat
In 1981, Harvard researchers David H. Hubel and Torsten N. Wiesel shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine with Roger W. Sperry of Caltech for their discoveries relating to information processing in visual systems. This article on the Siamese cat,…
A hebdomadal reminiscence of diurnal events
James Arthur Emmerton (HMS 1858) of Salem used this diary every Sunday to record his experiences a student at Harvard Medical School from 1855 through 1857. He then returned to it to document life in the 23rd Massachusetts Volunteers during the…
A history of George W. Murray, and his long confinement at Andersonville
A pattern-maker in Springfield before the outbreak of the Civil War, George W. Murray was taken prisoner, along with his three elder brothers, after the battle of Spotsylvania and confined to the infamous Confederate prison at Andersonville. He…
Fundamental psychological conceptions
To complement the oral history interviews of its C. G. Jung Biographical Archive, the Library collects actively in Jungian-related publications, such as this volume of transcripts of a series of lectures on dream analysis and the mind. A revised…
Adventures of a deaf-mute
Another specimen of mendicant literature is this pamphlet by carpenter William B. Swett, recounting his explorations in the mountains of New Hampshire. Proceeds from its original printing were devoted to the Boston Deaf-Mute Mission, but Swett's…
A book of the records of inoculation for the kine pock
A colleague and friend of Harvard's Benjamin Waterhouse, Sylvanus Fansher (1770-1846) successfully vaccinated over 35,000 individuals in New England, New York, and New Jersey before 1816. This register, maintained by the town council of Providence,…
Royal Jennerian Society for the Extermination of the Small-pox
Following the discovery of Edward Jenner, the Royal Jennerian Society was formed at the London Tavern on January 19, 1803. Under the patronage of the Prince and Princess of Wales, the society's goal was to promote the eradication of smallpox through…
Intern : now you are the physician!
Intern was developed by two physicians based on their experiences on the house staffs at Duke University and Johns Hopkins. The object of this unusual board game is for the intern to be the first to admit, diagnose, and treat all of his or her…
Compulsion, the key to collectivism
Following U.S. Senate Committee on Education and Labor hearings on a proposed National Health Bill in 1946, the National Physicians Committee produced this pamphlet to warn against the danger of compulsory health care as a threat to the American way…
The natural method of cureing the diseases of the body, and the disorders of the mind depending on the body
This copy of the second edition of George Cheyne’s work on disease is a rare and notable survivor of the disastrous Harvard fire of 1762. On the night of January 24th, during a storm of snow and high wind, Harvard Hall, containing the…
Aristotelous
This is a rare early Greek edition of the collected medical and scientific works of Aristotle and contains texts on birth and death, youth and old age, respiration, divination, sleep, and memory.
Curso de botanica medica
This is a second edition of Durañona’s basic textbook for the study of medicinal plants and their uses.
Address to students in physic
Two years after the opening the Medical School, this account, published by the Harvard Corporation in the Boston magazine, described the progress of the new institution. Anatomical study under John Warren was one of the foundations of the curriculum,…
Newspaper clippings concerning the Tewksbury Investigation
A state almshouse for paupers at Tewksbury was founded in 1852. In the 1880s, charges of theft and abuse of the inmates–including the sale of bodies of the deceased to Harvard and other medical schools for anatomical dissection–were…
On the importance of the study of anatomy. From the Westminster Review, with some additional remarks
This pamphlet on anatomy and dissection laws is attributed to English sanitary reformer, Thomas Southwood Smith, who would later perform the anatomical dissection of Jeremy Bentham in 1832. The "additional remarks," included in the reprinting of the…
Course outlines for anatomical lectures and dissections
This notebook was used by John Warren as Assistant, later Associate, Professor of Anatomy, to record the daily outline of lectures and dissections for first and second-year students, from 1911 to 1916. The pages displayed record Warren's notes on…
Fine structure of an unusual intracellular supporting network in the Leydig cells of Amblystoma epidermis
The Department of Anatomy preserved a set of reprints of articles by its members for over fifty years. The article displayed here illustrates research with the electron microscope. This is the first article published by Elizabeth D. Hay from her…
Warren's handbook of anatomy
The lineal descendant of John Warren and John Collins Warren, John Warren (1874-1928) received a degree from the Medical School in 1900; he became a professor of anatomy at Harvard and was noted for his dissection work. During the last years of his…
Drawing of the head and neck, lateral view
This is one of the several hundred original drawings produced by H. F. Aitken and eventually published in Warren's handbook. The text accompanying this illustration states, "The side of the skull has been cut away; the brain has been removed leaving…
Henry Jacob Bigelow at age 23
Image of Henry Jacob Bigelow in Paris in 1841.
A Journal of the Harvard Medical School Unit to the American Ambulance Hospital in Paris, Spring of 1915 / by Elliott Carr Cutler. [S.l.] : [s.n.] 1916?
Harvard's first involvement in World War I was staffing the American Ambulance Hospital in Neuilly during the spring of 1915; it was the second unit dispatched from the United States to the hospital. The Harvard Unit had a surgical staff, under…
Plate 1 from De l'auscultation médiate
Rene Theophile Hyacinthe Laënnec (1781–1826) was a French physician who invented the stethoscope in 1816. This illustration of his design for a monaural stethoscope is from his book about auscultation, called De l'auscultation médiate.
A Treatise on Etherization in Childbirth, Title Page
The title page from A Treatise on Etherization in Childbirth, by Walter Channing, MD.
Dr. Channing was Professor of Midwifery and Medical Jurisprudence and Dean of the Faculty at Harvard Medical College. In 1832, he became a founder and chief…
A Treatise on Etherization in Childbirth, Page 1
First page of A Treatise on Etherization in Childbirth, by Walter Channing, MD. Dr. Channing was Professor of Midwifery and Medical Jurisprudence and Dean of the Faculty at Harvard Medical College. In 1832, he became a founder and chief physician of…
A Treatise on Etherization in Childbirth, Page 126
Page 126 from A Treatise on Etherization in Childbirth, by Walter Channing, MD, depicting a design for an ether delivery devise. Dr. Channing was Professor of Midwifery and Medical Jurisprudence and Dean of the Faculty at Harvard Medical College. In…
Insertion of nasopharyngeal airway
Figure 23 from Obstetrical Anesthesia, Its Priciples and Practice by Bert B. Hershenson, MD demonstrates the proper placement of an endotracheal tube.
Laryngoscope placement in a newborn
Figure 33 from Obstetrical Anesthesia, Its Priciples and Practice, Bert B. Hershenson, MD demonstrates the first step in intubating a newborn—placement of the laryngoscope.