Notes on Lectures at Harvard Medical School

Notes on Lectures at Harvard Medical School

James, William, 1842-1910

Harvard Medical School

Lecture notes

Although he never practiced as a physician, William James—philosopher and psychologist best known for The Varieties of Religious Experience(1902)—received a degree from Harvard Medical School in 1869 and taught physiology during the 1870s. This notebook was used by James as a Harvard student just after the Civil War, as he attended the lectures of Henry J. Bigelow, Henry I. Bowditch, and other members of the medical faculty.

In a letter from this period to his sister, Alice, James claimed he had just attended a lecture “which I could not understand a word of, but rather enjoyed the sensation of listening to for an hour.” Here William James—though his attention is clearly wandering—has taken notes on the lectures of Charles Edouard Brown-Séquard on writer’s palsy and other diseases of the nervous system.

Excerpt from the lecture notes of William James

James, William, 1842-1910

1866-1867

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Harvard Medical Library Archives Collection (CB 1869.42)

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excerpt (1 page)

English

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Gift of Mrs. Bailey Aldrich to the Harvard Medical Library, 1942