Douglass' advertising pamphlet for his artificial limbs makes a point that, unlike the Salem leg, "these limbs have never been dependent upon the Government for their support, but are thoroughly established on the real and intrinsic merits of the…
The injuries and amputations of Civil War soldiers fostered a booming industry in the manufacture and marketing of artificial limbs. The Salem Leg Company—Dr. Edward Brooks Peirson was the president of its board—achieved early prominence due to its…
The 16th century treatise, La singolare dottrina of Domenico Romoli of Florence, describes food and herbs, recipes, and diet for the use of the "scalco" or Renaissance house steward in Italy. This copy includes two plates of cooking apparatus which…
This unusual copper engraving is one of the earliest printed representations of the human skeleton, predating Andreas Vesalius' De humani corporis fabricaby nearly half a century. Only two other specimens are known.
The engraving appears to be only…
Although the use of extracts from the foxglove in cases of dropsy had been common, William Withering was the first to analyze preparations of the plant scientifically and so isolated digitalis. Withering's An account of the foxglove describes over…
Robert Willan's observations on the history of smallpox as well as his detailed records of the diseases he saw and treated in London from 1796 to 1800 would have been of considerable interest to the physicians of Boston. Here, Willan discusses the…
Harvard professor James C. White was also a graduate of the Medical School. In 1898, at a meeting of the Vienna Club, he read these extracts from a diary he kept while at Harvard from 1853 until 1855. His entry for October 8, 1853, notes, “Many…
In contrast to the bitter controversies of the previous decade, the 1880s saw the distinct medical factions in Boston making tentative overtures to one another. In April 1886, Dr. Vincent Y. Bowditch, president of Harvard's Boylston Medical Society,…
An illustration of the thirty-five phrenological faculties, as seen in Samuel Roberts Wells' How to read character : a new illustrated hand-book of phrenology and physiognomy, for students and examiners : with a descriptive chart. This particular…
During the trial of John White Webster, Nathan Cooley Keep was called to identify the dental remains which were found in the basement of Harvard Medical School. Here Keep outlines the distinctive peculiarities of the teeth and lower jaw and…
Some of the problems associated with the early smallpox vaccination work are highlighted in this manuscript of Benjamin Waterhouse. Without an adequate way to preserve the active virus at high temperatures, Waterhouse often found its efficacy…
Renowned for his expertise in pathological analysis, Dr. John Collins Warren was approached by the Massachusetts General Hospital to report on the authenticity of an Egyptian mummy which had been donated to the hospital in 1823. The examination
This record of the practice of Dr. John Collins Warren documents the treatment of some of his surgical patients and more unusual cases. The casebook records a number of operations for cataract, lithotomies, and cranial injuries, as well as…
Shortly before his death, Dr. J. Mason Warren began to assemble the manuscript case reports and correspondence of his father, intending to publish this material as a record of Dr. John Collins Warren's years of experience in clinical surgery. That…
These are some of the earliest translations into Latin of Chinese medical texts on the pulse written by Wang Shuhe of the third century. The translations, though here edited by Andreas Cleyer and published anonymously, were made by Michel Boym…
Thought to be one of the earliest cases of surviving conjoined twins, the Chulkhurst sisters, known as the Biddenden maids, reputedly lived until 1134, although there is considerable uncertainty about the accuracy or even reality of their story. As…
This trade catalog from an English publishing house and a prospectus for Charles Bell's Surgical Observations are inserted at the flyleaf of the Boston Medical Library's copy of Samuel Young's Minutes of Cases of Cancer and Cancerous Tendency (London…
The early 19th century saw the rise of the medical journal as an outlet to disseminate news of discoveries, book reviews, and matters of interest to physicians. It also heralded the beginning of the proliferation of medical publishing. As part of its…
The Herbolarium describes the medicinal uses of common herbs and plants with woodcut illustrations of each. The work was once attributed to the medieval physician Arnaldus de Villanova (d. 1311) because of this imaginative frontispiece depicting a…
This broadside sheet was printed during an epidemic of plague in the German city of Augsburg in the early 1470s. The woodcut depicts Saints Sebastian and Roch (accompanied by an angel), comforting those struck down by the plague. Prayers to the two…
Chiromancy or palmistry is the study of the lines and shapes of the human hand to determine an individual's characteristics and analyze past, present, and future events. Books on the subject were among the most popular incunables produced. This brief…
The Hortus sanitatis [Garden of Health] was a popular compendium of plant and herb lore during the Middle Ages. This is the first Latin edition, and twenty others were printed in Latin before 1547 attesting to its popularity. In addition to botanical…
Probably the most popular medical work of the fifteenth century, the Latin Regimen sanitatis [Rule of Health] was translated into almost every European language following its first appearance in print in 1480. Nearly forty different editions were…
This unusual album of carte-de-visite photographs was assembled by Dr. Samuel Gregg, the first homeopathic practitioner in Massachusetts. In addition to photographs of Gregg, the album contains portraits of many of the homeopaths of New England,…
This unusual album of carte-de-visitephotographs was assembled by Dr. Samuel Gregg, the first homeopathic practitioner in Massachusetts. In addition to photographs of Gregg, the album contains portraits of many of the homeopaths of New England,…
This unusual album of carte-de-visitephotographs was assembled by Dr. Samuel Gregg, the first homeopathic practitioner in Massachusetts. In addition to photographs of Gregg, the album contains portraits of many of the homeopaths of New England,…
This unusual album of carte-de-visitephotographs was assembled by Dr. Samuel Gregg, the first homeopathic practitioner in Massachusetts. In addition to photographs of Gregg, the album contains portraits of many of the homeopaths of New England,…
This unusual album of carte-de-visitephotographs was assembled by Dr. Samuel Gregg, the first homeopathic practitioner in Massachusetts. In addition to photographs of Gregg, the album contains portraits of many of the homeopaths of New England,…
This unusual album of carte-de-visitephotographs was assembled by Dr. Samuel Gregg, the first homeopathic practitioner in Massachusetts. In addition to photographs of Gregg, the album contains portraits of many of the homeopaths of New England,…
This unusual album of carte-de-visitephotographs was assembled by Dr. Samuel Gregg, the first homeopathic practitioner in Massachusetts. In addition to photographs of Gregg, the album contains portraits of many of the homeopaths of New England,…
This unusual album of carte-de-visite photographs was assembled by Dr. Samuel Gregg, the first homeopathic practitioner in Massachusetts. In addition to photographs of Gregg, the album contains portraits of many of the homeopaths of New England,…
After a course of cupping, blistering, and taking the waters at the German spa of Wiesbaden, the unnamed subject of this diary sought relief from his rheumatism by coming under the care of Samuel Hahnemann in Paris in 1838.
During the 1880s, Holmes was involved with the fund-raising appeals for the Medical School’s Boylston Street building. As part of the centennial celebration and dedication of the new building in 1883, he delivered this oration, tracing the…
The original of this photograph is preserved in an album of the members of the Boston Society for Medical Improvement, compiled in 1872. Holmes was elected to membership in the society in 1836, just after his graduation from Harvard Medical School.
The variety of subjects allied to phrenology under the Fowler brothers is illustrated by this volume of their popular periodical. In addition to biographical sketches of prominent individuals, cranial analyses, and news of the progress of the…
This unsigned obituary is one of several articles devoted to J. G. Spurzheim printed in The Boston Medical and Surgical Journal at this time. Note the prominent medical figures, including Drs. John Collins Warren, James Jackson, Walter Channing, and…
John Wales January enlisted in Company B of the 14th Illinois Cavalry and was captured in July, 1864. The reverse of the original print of this photograph gives January's account of his sufferings as a prisoner of war and the amputation of his own…
Inscription inside reads: "This medicine case is one of the articles which belonged to the late 1st Lieut. Alfred R. Glover, who was killed in battle, June 14th, 1863, at Port Hudson, La., and was afterward returned to his home."
Issued twice monthly from November, 1863, to August, 1865, the Bulletin reported on the work of the Commission and the local sanitary fairs, accounts of battles and the experiences of prisoners of war, and provided a regular means to report on the…
Issued twice monthly from November, 1863, to August, 1865, the Bulletin reported on the work of the Commission and the local sanitary fairs, accounts of battles and the experiences of prisoners of war, and provided a regular means to report on the…
Robert John Thornton published this detailed account of smallpox vaccination cases as an attack on Dr. Benjamin Moseley (1742-1819) and other opponents of Edward Jenner's work. In 1800, Moseley, a member of the Royal College of Physicians, suggested…
Many copies of the New guide to health and the Thomsonian materia medica contain, as does this one, certificates attesting to the holder's right to use Thomsonian preparations as a member of the Friendly Botanic Society. By 1840, Samuel Thomson had…
First published in 1822, Thomson's New guide to health (later known as The Thomsonian materia medica) was the cornerstone of the Thomsonian botanical medical movement and went through thirteen editions by 1841. Many editions were prefaced, as here,…
The Thomsonian botanical movement, like homeopathic medicine, developed its own culture of authorized druggists and agents and published books and a number of short-lived periodicals, including this one from Boston.
During the Massachusetts Homoeopathic Hospital Fair, this newsletter of anecdotes and poetry, The Pellet, was printed and sold each day. The Fair itself raised $72,000 and prompted the formation of the homeopathic medical school at Boston University.
The first published poems of Oliver Wendell Holmes were printed in the six issues of a monthly Harvard undergraduate student magazine, The collegian, from February through July, 1830. Some of his poems then appeared in Illustrations of the…
This popular manual of domestic homeopathic practice—dedicated to Samuel Gregg—went through five editions. Its author, John A. Tarbell, also published the Pocket homœopathist and edited the Quarterly homœopathic review and…
English physician Edward Stafford compiled this book of basic recipes for medical disorders such as madness, vertigo, and the king’s evil for John Winthrop (1588-1649), the governor of Massachusetts.
Published while Spurzheim was touring in America, the Outlines of Phrenology was phenomenally popular, passing through four separate editions by 1834. The Outlines gives a brief overview of the theory behind phrenology, discusses the basic…
On January 23, 1889, Oliver Wendell Holmes presented his book collection of over 900 volumes to the Boston Medical Library, with holdings ranging over four centuries, from the most current publications back to the beginnings of printing. A copy of…
While a professor of anatomy and physiology at Columbian College in Washington, D.C., Thomas Sewall published these two lectures to students—one of the earliest attacks on phrenological doctrine—based on his study of the brain's…
Recto: "We gave our wealth for those who gave their health for us."
Verso: "In commemoration of the great central fair for the U.S. Sanitary Commission held at Philadelphia, June 1864."
The first German edition of Hartmann Schedel's famous Nuremberg Chronicle traces the history of the world through six ages, from the Creation to 1493, concluding with the Apocalypse. Michael Wolgemut and Wilhelm Pleydenwurff designed maps, city…
Commissioned by William T. G. Morton, Trials of a public benefactor attempts to provide support for his claim to precedence in the discovery of ether anesthesia. Here, as part of the story, Oliver Wendell Holmes coins the term in a letter to Morton…
This encyclopedia of a ninth-century archbishop is the oldest incunable in the Boston Medical Library collection. The De sermonum proprietate contains chapters on subjects as diverse as the earth, animals, precious stones and metals, heretics,…
This book of prophecies attributed to the fourth-century martyr, Methodius, was probably composed by a fifteenth century monk, Wolfgang Aytinger, to arouse animosity between Christians and Muslims. Although not specifically medical, the De…
The Jackson fund allows for the acquisition of both historical and contemporary works in Latin American medicine, and the Countway now holds a complete run of this bioethical journal from 1996 until the present.
At the end of Nicolaus Perottus' De generibus metrorum appears one of the most famous documents in the history of medicine, ethics, and education: the first printing of the Iusiurandum, the Hippocratic Oath. While certainly not composed by…
Columbia to left, waving American flag. At her feet, an eagle, shield with arrows, and boxes and barrels that are marked NW, NW SV and N.W. SAN COM. The sun setting behing mountains, artillery park, and lake with ships and monitor.
Once physician to the King of Portugal, Garcia de Orta travelled to India in order to escape the Inquisition, and remained there the rest of his life. He taught in the faculty of medicine at Lisbon in the early 1530's; in 1534, he settled in Goa,…
This is one of the pamphlets printed in reaction to the Holmes lecture on homeopathy. In responding to Holmes' criticism of the use of infinitesimal doses, Charles Neidhard states, "We, with many Homœopathic physicians, have never believed in…
This first American publication on acupuncture was translated from the French by Franklin Bache, a great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin, "believing … that a short treatise on Acupuncturation, from the growing importance of the remedy, and the…
This mid-19th century broadside advertises a course of phrenological public lectures and head readings tied to an array of subjects such as somnambulism and biology.
In 1880, Bostonian Loring Moody, familiar with Galton’s work, issued a circular to form an Institute of Heredity, part school, part library, to promote lectures and interest in addressing social ills through eugenic principles. The circular…
This tale of a Civil War soldier, George Dedlow, who loses both his arms and his legs but continues to experience sensation in his missing limbs the phantom limb phenomenon was written by Silas Weir Mitchell and grew out of his experience with…
In 1821, Philadelphia physician John Kearsley Mitchell met and examined Aké, a Chinese youth with a partially-formed parasitic twin protruding from his stomach, and sent back this first-hand report from Canton.
In this radical work, Washington physician, William Duncan McKim, proposed moving beyond sterilization of the “very weak and the very vicious” to liquidation by the state through the use of carbonic acid gas. In his chapter “A…
The Massachusetts Medical Society formed its own library in 1782. Although the Boston Medical Library surpassed it in size, this record of the library's circulation from the mid-1820s indicates several of the Boston Medical Library…
Printed as part of the published proceedings of the Society, this list of fellows from 1872 is the last to include homeopathic members such as Israel Tisdale Talbot, David Thayer, and Herman L. H. Hoffendahl, prior to their expulsion in June 1873.…
Dr. James Krauss (1866-1939) received his medical degree magna cum laude in 1889 and practiced in Boston, specializing in genito-urinary medicine and surgery
Following the reorganization of the Medical Fraternity as the Medical Society, the members used this volume to record changes in the by-laws. New members added their signatures upon admission to the society through 1881.
On April 15, 1964, at the 124th annual meeting, the members of the Massachusetts Homeopathic Medical Society voted 10-5 to dissolve their organization.
Formed by Samuel Gregg and a handful of other pioneer practitioners, the Massachusetts Homeopathic Fraternity met monthly at the homes of its members to discuss cases and exchange information. It came to have over eighty members and eventually…
This edition of a directory of local institutions, societies, and charitable organizations contains the earliest entry for the Boston Medical Library and a list of its officers and Trustees.
In the summer of 1915, Geraldine Kemmis Martin (b. 1887) traveled to Paris as an operating nurse with the Harvard Unit of the American Ambulance Hospital and assembled an album of photographs of her colleagues and experiences in World War I. The…
De Lapidibus was one of the most popular works of scientific and medical lore current in the Middle Ages. Translations into French, Spanish, Irish, Hebrew, and English are known, while over 125 Latin manuscripts have survived. This is one of only…