Traditions & Culture of Collecting Articles by and about Collectors, Librarians, and Booksellers

History of Medicine Book Collecting

History of Science Book Collecting

James Atkinson

Jean Blondelet

Johann Friedrich Blumenbach

Herman Boerhaave

William Andrews Clark

Robert Child

Le Roy Crummer

Harvey Cushing

Bern Dibner

Sidney Edelstein

Herbert M. Evans

John F. Fulton

Fielding H. Garrison

William Harvey

Johan Hevelius

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Warren R. Howell

John Hunter

William Hunter

  • William Hunter, Book Collector, by Jack Baldwin
    Catalogue of an exhibition held at Glasgow University in 1983. The Hunterian Library contains some 10,000 printed books and 650 manuscripts and forms one of the finest 18th-century libraries to survive intact. It was assembled by Dr William Hunter (1718-83), anatomist, teacher of medicine, Physician Extraordinary to Queen Charlotte, and collector of coins, medals, paintings, shells, minerals, and anatomical and natural history specimens, as well as of books and manuscripts. Under the terms of Hunter’s will, his library and other collections remained in London for several years after his death—for the use of his nephew, Dr Matthew Baillie (1761-1823)—and finally came to Glasgow University in 1807.

K. Garth Huston, Sr.

Charles Thomas Jackson

Thomas Jefferson

Georg Kloss

Antonio Magliobechi

Augustus de Morgan

  • On the Difficulty of Correct Description of Books by Augustus de Morgan, originally published in 1853, with introduction by Henry Guppy. London: The Library Association, 1902. An article motivated to a certain extent by de Morgan's well-meaning desire to defend fellow mathematician Guglielmo Libri against charges of grand scale book theft in the long-running so-called "Libri Affair."

Sir Isaac Newton

Haskell F. Norman

Jeremy Norman

William Osler

Nicolas Claude Fabri de Peiresc

George A. Plimpton

Vittorio Putti

  • Vittorio Putti 1880-1940 by H. R. V. [Henry R. Viets] and R. B. O.
    From The New England Journal of Medicine, Vol. 223 (1940): 955-956.

William Read

A. S. W. Rosenbach

Bernard Rosenthal

Richard C. Rudolph

Henry Schuman

  • Seventy Noteworthy Medical Rarities (Several of Medico-Literary Interest) in Honor of the Seventieth Birthday of Dr. Harvey Cushing
    Schuman's Catalogue No. 5, Autumn 1939. This was the first catalogue that history of medicine specialist Henry Schuman issued after he moved from Detroit to New York. Dedicated to Harvey Cushing, it must have appeared just before Cushing's death in October, 1939. I bought this copy in 2010. Remarkably it turned out to be Schuman's marked office copy as it contains pencil notes readable on the PDF indicating which items were sold, duplicate copies that were in stock, other copies that Schuman could get, etc. Note that a fine copy of the 1543 Fabrica of Vesalius was priced $550. Though this and other prices in the catalogue seem ridiculously low today, in his time Schuman was the most expensive dealer in medical books.

Pierre Eugène du Simitière

William Smellie

Edward Clark Streeter

Erik Waller

Jacob Zeitlin


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