The cultures of medical and scientific practice in America have formed a collecting focus for the Clements Library for several decades. Current collecting interests include natural history during the early national period, the study and teaching of medicine during the 19th century, and "sectarian" (i.e. non-allopathic) as well as main stream schools of medicine during the 19th century.

Scope and contents:

The American Science & Medicine Collection is comprised of miscellaneous letters, manuscripts, and documents pertaining to the study, teaching, and practice of medicine and the sciences in America. The oldest item in the collection is a student's transcript of Nathaniel Morton's influential text on natural philosophy, Compendium Physicae, taught at Harvard from the late 1680s through the mid-1720s, however the majority of items date between 1810 and 1870. Although the scope is very broad, there is a minor emphasis upon natural history -- particularly botany -- and scientific and medical practices often considered "pseudo-scientific" today. There is very little relating to the applied sciences, engineering, or technology.

Several smaller sub-collections included within the American Science & Medicine Collection are described separately, including physicians' casebooks, the lecture notes of medical students and instructors, and miscellaneous items relating to practicing physicians and scientists.

Related collections:

The collections of the Manuscripts Division include an important series of letters of Humphry Marshall, a self-trained Quaker botanist active during the 18th century, and a substantial collection of letters and documents of David Bates Douglass, a civil and military engineer during the 1820s-1840s who maintained an interest in natural history. The papers of Samuel Latham Mitchill contain the personal correspondence of a prominent American intellectual of the early Republic, and John W. Monette's manuscripts concern the physical geography of the Mississippi Valley.

Among several collections of letters of practicing physicians in the Manuscripts Division are the papers of Marcus Ahlenfeld, George Bill (a psychic physician), John W. Clark, John Eaton, the Farley family, the Fenno-Hoffman family, Sylvester Graham, the Kane family, the Langstroth family, John V. Lansing, William S. Leonard, Antonio Maden, Samuel J. and William Mixter, James B. Price, T. Larkin Turner, the Warder-Haines family, and the Wilson family. The Schoff Civil War Collection contains the papers of a number of Civil War surgeons, including George Barr, George Martin Trowbridge, . The papers of several nurses are also included, most notably Cornelia Hancock, Helen Noye Hoyt (both Civil War), Dorothy Arnold and Emma and Kate Lansing (World War I), M.H. Staats, Betty van den Bosch, and Lillian Ostrand (World War II).

Provenance:

Acquired individually and in groups, 1930 to present.

cat. 7/98 rsc

Subject index to the American Science & Medicine Collection

Back to brief guide

Return to:

Home

Manuscripts

Collections

Staff

Regulations

[ Books ][ Manuscripts ][ Maps ][ Music ][ Photographs ][ Prints ][ Reader info ][ Women's History ]