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Library and Archives Fellowships, 2007-2008

Applications are invited for three short-term Visiting Fellowships to promote scholarly use of the Special Collections and Archives at King's College London.

The fellowships will be worth up to £2,000 each and are intended to meet the cost of travel to and accommodation in London during the tenure of the fellowship, which will normally be of one month.

Applicants, who should not be degree candidates, should submit the following:

• Curriculum vitae (2 pages maximum)
• Project proposal (3 pages maximum)
• Budget summary (1 page)

and should arrange for two letters of recommendation to be sent directly to the address below.

The project proposal should address the specific strengths of the Special Collections and Archives at King's College London and preference will be given to proposals in the fields of: travel and discovery; the history of science; the history of medicine; English and American literature; Hellenic studies; aspects of the First and Second World Wars.

Prospective applicants are advised to consult:

• The Special Collections web pages: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/specialcollections
  
• The online library catalogue: http://library.kcl.ac.uk
  
• The Archives web pages: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/archives
  
• The AIM25 web pages: http://www.aim25.ac.uk

Successful applicants will be assigned a "home" department and will have the opportunity to contribute to College life through lectures, seminars or presentations. They will be required to submit a brief report (up to 2,000 words) at the end of their tenure of the fellowship and to lodge with the College copies of any publications arising from the fellowship.

Fellowships will be awarded on the merit and significance of the project and on its relevance to the specific strengths of the collections.

Applications should be addressed to:

Office of the Principal
King's College London
James Clerk Maxwell Building
57 Waterloo Road
London SE1 8WA

E-mail: Julie.thomas@kcl.ac.uk

The closing date for applications is: 12 January 2007.

Awards will be made by 2 March 2007 and must be taken up by 1 March 2008.

Henry Vandyke Carter: anatomical artist

Gray's Anatomy is perhaps the best known medical textbook in the world. First published in 1858, its most recent edition (the 39th) appeared in 2005 and it remains unrivalled as an exposition of human anatomy. Yet the name of Henry Vandyke Carter (1831-1897), the man who not only created all the original illustrations but carried out with Henry Gray the dissections upon which they were based is little remembered today. The exhibition HB Carter & Sons, currently on display at Hull Maritime Museum, and the accompanying monograph of the same name, co-authored by Gordon Bell, Arthur Credland and Ruth Richardson, will, it is hoped, help to rectify this neglect.

Henry Vandyke Carter was the son and brother of watercolour artists but chose instead to pursue a medical career. He was working at St. George's Hospital when Henry Gray, then a lecturer at the same hospital, first proposed that they collaborate on a new manual of anatomy for students. As Ruth Richardson explains in her illuminating chapter on Henry Vandyke Carter, the resulting work, Anatomy descriptive and surgical, was immeasurably better than the other anatomical textbooks then available and its success was immediate. Carter, however, never received a single penny in royalties. By the time the Anatomy was published, he has left England for a surgical post in India, where he remained until his retirement, carrying out valuable research on the pathology of a number of diseases then prevalent in the Indian sub-continent.

Damage to the nerves of the arm, from: Henry Vandyke Carter On leprosy and elephantiasis. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1874. [St Thomas's Collection 21.h.9]

The Foyle Special Collections Library has lent two items from its collections to the exhibition HB Carter & Sons: a copy of the first edition of Gray's Anatomy (London: Parker, 1858) and a copy of one of Carter's later works, On leprosy and elephantiasis (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1874).

The exhibition HB Carter & Sons is on display at Hull Maritime Museum until 10 December 2006 and transfers to Scarborough Art Gallery in January 2007.

Further reading:

Gordon Bell, Arthur Credland and Ruth Richardson. H B Carter & Sons: Victorian watercolour drawing and the art of illustration. Pickering: Blackthorn Press, 2006 [Special Collections Reference ND1942.C1 BEL]

Exhibition News

Current exhibition
An exhibition entitled Medicine embodied will be held in the Weston Room, Maughan Library and Information Services Centre, Chancery Lane, from Monday 4 September to Friday 15 December 2006.

Drawing on a wealth of printed material from the historical library of St. Thomas's Hospital, the exhibition explores the rich and complex history of man's understanding of the relationship between the body and medicine. Philosophical and theological speculations about the body and the relationship of its components to each other, to disease and to a metaphysical higher purpose; theories of the relationship between environment and disease; assumptions about the relationship between physicians and surgeons; and conflicts over the possession of medical knowledge have all combined to make the history of medicine inextricably connected with wider social changes and intellectual developments. The history of medicine can be seen as a linear narrative from ignorance to knowledge, but that view would ignore the agendas, antagonisms and uncertainties which have engaged participants in medical debates.

The history and library of St. Thomas’s Hospital afford a vantage point from which the wider history of medicine and the body can be investigated. Items on display include the first medical work by an Englishman to be printed; Edward Jenner's published account of his development of the smallpox vaccine; copies of works by Florence Nightingale inscribed by their author; Somerset Maugham's first novel, drawing on his experiences as a junior doctor at St. Thomas's; and, in works by Hunter, Cowper and Gautier d'Agoty, some of the finest examples of medical illustration ever to be produced.

The exhibition will be open from 9.30 to 17.00, Monday to Friday. Entry to the exhibition is free. If you are not a registered user of the Maughan Library please note that admission is by ticket only; make sure that you print out and complete a copy of the exhibition ticket (below) before your visit. On arriving at the Maughan Library please present your ticket to the member of staff at the library entrance; you will also be asked to show some other form of photo ID and to sign the visitors' book.

If you are coming from outside King's you are advised to contact Special Collections staff on 020 7848 1843 or visit our web pages for the latest exhibition news before you travel. Please note that the exhibition will be unavailable on Thursday 16 November and Monday 11 December.

Exhibition ticket: Word format PDF format To open the file in PDF format you will need Adobe Reader software. This can be downloaded free of charge from Adobe's website.

Forthcoming exhibitions
In early 2007 an exhibition on the Holocaust will be held to mark the cataloguing of the H.G. Adler Collection, the former library of the poet, man of letters and survivor and historian of the Holocaust, H.G. Adler (1910-1988), which has been placed in the Foyle Special Collections Library. Later in the year a joint exhibition is planned with Lambeth Palace Library and the Guildhall Library to explore the riches of the Sion College Collection, ownership of which is now shared by the three libraries. Further details of these and other future exhibitions will be announced here in due course.

Back Up

New acquisitions

Among the items recently acquired by the Foyle Special Collections Library are:

November 2006

• Philippe Hecquet. Le brigandage de la chirurgie, ou la
  médicine opprimé par le brigandage de la chirurgie.À Utrecht: chez les Soeurs de Corneille-Guillaume le Fevre, 1738. [Rare Books Collection R128.7 HEC]

Philippe Hecquet graduated M. D. from Rheims in 1684, became a member of the Paris Faculty in 1694, and established himself as one of the pre-eminent physicians in the capital. This book gives a good impression of the hostility felt by physicians toward surgeons in France: the status of French surgeons during the eighteenth century was much enhanced. The Paris Faculty opposed the publication of this work, which accounts for it having been published in Utrecht. This book complements well our other holdings, which reflect the rise of surgery and surgeons in England and Scotland during the eighteenth century.

• Johann Heinrich Christoph Trefurt. Abhandlungen und Erfahrungen aus dem Gebiete der Geburtshulfe und der Weiber-Krankheiten. Gottingen: bei Vandenhoek und Ruprecht, 1844.[Rare Books Collection RG95 TRE]

This book, which was intended to be the first part of a series which was never completed, deals in a detailed way with the complications of childbirth. It contains three plates of surgical instruments, including one of a forceps. There are no other recorded copies on bibliographic databases of this work in Britain. It complements well our extensive holdings on childbirth and pregnancy during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

• Thomas Ignatius Maria Forster. Medicina Simplex, or, The pilgrims waybook, being an enquiry into the moral and physical conditions of a healthy life and happy old age. London: sold by Keating and Brown,…1832. [Rare Books Collection RC81 FOR].

This book, which has the author's inscription on the title page, is a work of popular medicine which is exactly contemporaneous with The Penny Lancet, of which the Foyle Special Collections Library has the only extant complete set. Both have a marked tendency to idiosyncratic viewpoints on medicine. Forster's preoccupations with practical research on atmospheric pressure (undertaken during ballooning expeditions), with the relationship between Roman Catholicism and medicine (he had converted in 1824), and with vegetarianism, are much in evidence here. Although he was one of the first popularisers of phrenology in Britain, his conversion to Catholicism had caused him to abandon it by 1832. The Foyle Special Collections Library possesses another medical tract by Forster, and a compilation of works by Algernon Sidney and John Locke which was edited by him.

October 2006

• J. R. Forsyth. The new domestic medical manual; being a practical and familiar guide to the treatment of diseases generally; on a simplified and condensed plan: containing the opinions of the most eminent practitioners ; with a variety of approved and popular prescriptions ; translated into English, for family purposes, also containing brief expositions of domestic surgery, with an adapted pharmacopoeia; for the use of clergymen, heads of families, captains of ships, travellers, &c. &c. with a variety of other useful information. London: Sherwood, Jones and Co., 1824. [Rare Books Collection RC81 FOR].

This handbook of popular medicine complements our other recent acquisitions in the same area. Of special interest is the list of "quack medicines", such as laudanum, which were commonly available from apothecaries. As the author says in his introduction, this list is included in order to inform about the contents of the drugs which were commonly consumed, not to tempt non-experts into making their own concoctions. Modern readers may be surprised at the remedy for a "sardonic laugh": two grains of opium!

• Mrs E.C.C. Baillie. A sail to Smyrna, or, An Englishwoman's journal. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1873 [Miscellaneous DR427 BAI]

Turkish cemetery, from: Mrs E.C.C. Baillie. A sail to Smyrna, or, An Englishwoman's journal. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1873 [Miscellaneous DR427 BAI]

The author, the wife of a clergyman, was a minor poet and prolific writer of religious and travel literature, who later converted to Catholicism. This book, which adds to our considerable holdings of Western observers' accounts of the Ottoman Empire, describes a visit made to Turkey in 1871. Mrs Baillie and her companions sailed from Liverpool to Smyrna, calling at Gibraltar and Malta en route, and spent most of their holiday in Constantinople itself. Her descriptions - of the archaeological and religious sites, of the Turkish people and their social customs, of the journeys by sea and land - reveal her to have been an astute and careful observer, and her good-humoured and open-minded response upon encountering a society so different from her own make her account a pleasure to read.

September 2006

• [Robert Kemp Philp]. The dictionary of medical and surgical knowledge and complete practical guide in health and disease for families, emigrants and colonists. London: Houlston and Wright, 1864. [Rare Books Collection RC81 PHI]

Robert Kemp Philp was a printer and activist in the Chartist movement. He co-edited a local Chartist newspaper in Bath, was elected to the executive committee of the National Charter Association, and fell out with the leading Chartist Feargus O'Connor over his support for Joseph Sturge's Complete Suffrage Union. From 1845, he began a career as a publisher of popular literature. In 1856 he started to write and compile popular manuals on subjects as varied as geology, gardening and the Bible, and a dictionary of useful knowledge.

This rare work reflects the spread of British colonisation from the late eighteenth century onwards, and the demand for medical information suitable to a tropical climate. It deals comprehensively with anatomy, diseases, therapeutics and popular superstitions. See the entry on "sighing", for instance:

According to a popular belief not yet wholly exploded, a person is supposed to lose a drop of blood with every sigh. Shakespeare alludes to this fallacy when he makes one of his characters talk about "blood-drinking sighs" .

August 2006

• Fold-out illustration of the nose, from: Laurenz Schmitz. Illustriertes Hauslexikon für Gesunde und Kranke. München: G. Schuh & Cie, 1904. [Rare Books Collection RC81 SCH]

  Laurenz Schmitz. Illustriertes Hauslexikon für Gesunde und Kranke. München: G. Schuh & Cie, 1904. [Rare Books Collection RC81 SCH]

This is a sumptuously produced manual of health care and anatomy for German families. It contains ten colour plates and six pop-up pictures illustrating various human anatomical features, such as the heart and the nose. The cover includes a spelling error. This is, therefore, a very rare copy and was probably never available for sale, accounting for its pristine condition.

July 2006

• Robert Vas Dias and John Wright. The guts of shadows. London: Permanent press / art first, 2003. [Miscellaneous Collection PS3572.A8 VAS]

Song of cities, from: Robert Vas Dias and John Wright. The guts of shadows. London: Permanent press / art first, 2003. [Miscellaneous Collection PS3572.A8 VAS]

This first edition of The guts of shadows was recently given to the library by the author Robert Vas Dias. It adds to our developing collection of contemporary artists' books. Our copy is number eleven of a special edition of 50 signed copies in slipcases. Only a further 100 copies of the standard edition were produced. It features 16 poems by Vas Dias and 14 complementary plates by John Wright. Wright's mixed media works are reproduced using a high colour inkjet printer and pigmented inks which creates a vivid, high quality reproduction of the original work. The plates and corresponding poems are displayed on folded leaves which have been bound by hand using traditional stab binding methods. Vas Dias's poems focus on urban life and with Wright's works create a haunting vision of the fragility of the urban landscape.

• Papus [Gérard Ancalet Vincent Encausse]. Mystères des sciences occultes: physiognomie - phrénologie - chiromancie ... magie - sorcellerie - principes fondamentaux des sciences occultes, par une initié. Paris: Libraire illustrée, [1894]. [Rare Books Collection BF1028 PAP]

This extremely rare and well illustrated work is a guide to the fascination of the nineteenth century with the emerging science of the mind, including such curiosities as phrenology and spiritualism, as well as cryptography and graphology.

June 2006

• Charles M. Gillham. Private journal: commencing on boarde [sic] HM Ship Implacable March 24th 1839 & ending Augst. 13th 1839 [manuscript]. [S.l.], 1839. [Rare Books Collection DA88.1G4 GIL]

The Foyle Special Collections Library has recently acquired the bound manuscript diary of Charles M. Gillham, an officer on board HMS Implacable. The diary covers the period from Sunday 24 March 1839 to Friday 13 September 1839 (this latter date is mistakenly given as 13 August in the diary). HMS Implacable was originally a 74-gun French ship-of-the-line, the Dugay Trouin, launched at Rochefort in 1800. She was involved in the Battle of Trafalgar but managed to escape after the battle, before being captured on 3 November 1805. She was then taken into the Royal Navy and renamed Implacable. In March 1839 she sailed from Plymouth to Lisbon and much of Gillham's diary is concerned with the pleasant time he spent stationed in this city. In July the Implacable set sail for Malta in a convoy. She was to see action off the Syrian coast in 1840, while supporting Turkey against Egyptian forces, but this falls outside the period of the diary. Gillham's duties while at Lisbon do not appear to have been onerous and he found plenty of opportunity to explore and enjoy the amenities of the city. He was a keen opera-goer and perhaps something of a bon-viveur (he reports frequently on his meals). Some pressed flowers found between two leaves of the journal suggest that he also took an interest in the botany of the countries he visited.

• Sir Kenelm Digby. Discours fait en une celebre assemblée …. touchant la guerison des playes, par la poudre de sympathie. De plus une dissertation sur le mesme sujet par le Sr Papin ... nouvellement traduite par le Sr Rault. Où sa composition est enseignée, & plusieurs autres merveilles de la nature sont dévelopées. A Roüen: Chez David Berthelin, M. DC. LXXIII [1673]. [Rare Books Collection PR3409.D5 D61]

Binding of: Sir Kenelm Digby. Discours fait en une celebre assemblée …. touchant la guerison des playes, par la poudre de sympathie. A Roüen: Chez David Berthelin, M. DC. LXXIII [1673]. [Rare Books Collection PR3409.D5 D61]

One of the things for Sir Kenelm Digby (1603-1665) is best remembered is his advocacy of the use of the "powder of sympathy". This was a remedy, which by its application to a weapon that had caused an injury would heal that injury. This book is an account of a lecture Digby gave to a learned audience on this subject at Montpellier in 1657, in which he attempted to give a scientific explanation of how sympathetic medicine might work. First published the following year, Digby's text was important in maintaining interest in sympathetic medicine and editions continued to be published in Europe until the last years of the eighteenth century. This edition also contains a treatise on sympathetic medicine by Nicolas Papin (d.1653).

The binding of this book is particularly noteworthy. It is bound in a vellum leaf from a medieval French manuscript concerning the translation of the works of Sophocles. It is in an attractive fifteenth century bâtard hand (see right).

• A collection of above three hundred receipts in cookery, physick and surgery ; for the use of all good wives, tender mothers, and careful nurses. By several hands. Published by Mrs. Mary Kettilby. London: printed for Henry Lintot, 1749. [Rare Books Collection TX151].

This book provides interesting insights into both the culinary and medical practices of the eighteenth century, an age when doctors were not trusted. Therefore, the market for all sorts of efficacious or dubious remedies was ready to be exploited. Two examples will suffice: "A certain and immediate Cure for a Bruise. Make a Poultis of Bran and Urine, apply it as hot as you can bear it ; if 'tis very bad, repeat it as it cools, and do it as soon as you can, to prevent its swelling, which the Air is apt to occasion." "To Cure Deafness and Noise in the Head. Put your own Urine into a Pewter-Dish, and cover it with another ; then put some Coals under ; and when 'tis hot, brush off the clear Water that hangs on the upper Dish with a Feather, and drop it into the Ear. This has done great Cures." The recipes include prawn soup and lobster loaves.

The library holds items on the same subject, including Eliza Smith's The compleat housewife (1742) [Rare Books Collection: TX151 SMI].

May 2006

• A selection of British ferns, from: Phebe Lankester. A plain and easy account of the British ferns. London: Robert Hardwicke, [1860] [Early Science Collection QK523 LAN]

  Phebe Lankester. A plain and easy account of the British ferns. London: Robert Hardwicke, [1860] [Early Science Collection QK523 LAN]

Phebe Lankester (1825-1900) was the wife of the public health reformer and scientist Edwin Lankester. Her son, Edwin Ray Lankester, was also a writer on scientific subjects and became Director of the Natural History Museum. Although by 1860 she had, with her husband, contributed numerous articles on scientific subjects to the Penny Cyclopaedia and the National Cyclopaedia, A plain and easy account of the British ferns was her first monograph publication. It is in fact a substantial reworking of a book of the same title by Edwin Bosanquet, which had first appeared in 1854, and re-uses the coloured plates of ferns that had appeared in that work. Complementing other nineteenth century works on British botany in the Foyle Special Collections Library, A plain and easy account of the British ferns reflects both the Victorian interest in ferns and the growing importance of the female author in the popular scientific writing. The book contains advice on forming a collection of ferns, as well as a comprehensive guide to the British ferns and their identification.

April 2006

Title page of: Pierre Jurieu or Louis de Monpersan. La politique des Jésuites, À Londres: [s.n.], 1688. [Rare Books Collection BX3723 POL]

• Pierre Jurieu or Louis de Monpersan. La politique des Jésuites, À Londres: [s.n.], 1688. [Rare Books Collection BX3723 POL]

This book is a controversial attack on the Jesuits. As such, it could not be published or printed in France. Contrary to the publication statement, the place of publication is Amsterdam, where many important French works during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were published. The authorship of the book is disputed and it is possible that it is a French translation of an attack on the Jesuits originally published in English in 1658.

The book retains its contemporary vellum binding and bears the inscription of Cosmo Gordon Lang, Archbishop of Canterbury (1928-1942).

March 2006

• All about etiquette, or, The manners of polite society for ladies and gentlemen. London: Ward, Lock & Co., [1889?] [Miscellaneous BJ1872 ALL]

All about etiquette, or, The manners of polite society for ladies and gentlemen. London: Ward, Lock & Co., [1889?] [Miscellaneous BJ1872 ALL]

This extremely rare item (only two other copies, both apparently earlier issues, are recorded in the UK) was recently given to the library by Miss Sarah Fletcher. An inscription on the title page suggests that its first owner was Honor Austen-Leigh (b. 1881), a great-niece of Jane Austen. The book is one of a series of "All about" instructive books published by Ward, Lock & Co. and priced within reach of the aspirational middle-class reader. It is divided into two parts, the first dealing with etiquette for ladies and the second with etiquette for gentlemen, and provides an illuminating glimpse of manners and social customs in late Victorian Britain. "Etiquette for ladies" covers such topics as paying and receiving calls, entertaining, courtship, horse riding and hiring servants and concludes with a chapter on "Bad practices" to be avoided, such as nail-biting and asking someone's age. "Etiquette for gentlemen", while covering much of the same ground, includes detailed guidance on carving at meals and serving wine, business etiquette and the manners of the smoking and billiard room. For gentlemen the "Bad practices" to be avoided include eccentricities of manner and dress and bad table manners.

• William Smith. Nouveau voyage de Guinée. Paris: chez Durand, Pissot, 1751 [Rare Books Collection DT543.27 SMI]

  An elephant from: William Smith. Nouveau voyage de Guinée. Paris: chez Durand, Pissot, 1751 [Rare Books Collection DT543.27 SMI]

William Smith was commissioned in 1726 by the Royal African Society to survey the West African coast. He spent nearly a year in West Africa, working in difficult conditions, and the results were published in his Thirty different drafts of Guinea (1730) and A new and correct map of the coast of Africa, from Cape Blanco … to the coast of Angola (1744). Smith wrote a narrative of his experiences, A new voyage to Guinea, also published in 1744, and our new acquisition is a copy of the 1751 first edition of the French translation of this work. Although Smith did not venture far inland, he did find time to record more than the bare topographical details of the West African coast and his account includes details of the climate, peoples and plant and animal life of the regions he visited. It is accompanied by a number of charming engraved plates, mainly of animals and birds.

• Sir Charles Wetherell. Substance of the speech of Sir Charles Wetherell, before the Lords of the Privy Council, on the subject of incorporating the London University. London: J.G. & F. Rivington, 1834 [Miscellaneous LF412 WET]

The lawyer and former Member of Parliament Sir Charles Wetherell (1770-1846) was a staunch anti-reformer. He had opposed the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 and the 1832 Reform Bill and was also bitterly opposed to any reform or expansion of the university system. Acting as counsel for the University of Oxford, he set out in this speech before the Privy Council his opposition to the "class of persons now calling themselves the University of London". This was University College London (UCL), which had been founded in 1826 and was still seeking a royal charter. King's College London had been founded three years later in 1829 with the full support of the Crown and the Church of England and with the aim of countering the "godless" tendencies and influence of UCL. It already had a royal charter. UCL's 1834 attempt to achieve chartered status, fiercely contested by the Church of England and the established universities of Oxford and Cambridge, was initially unsuccessful. In 1836, however, the new University of London would be founded as the overarching degree-awarding body for both UCL and King's.

• Ralph Broome. The letters of Simkin the second, poetic recorder of all the proceedings, upon the trial of Warren Hastings, Esq. in Westminster Hall. London: printed for John Stockdale, 1789. [Rare Books Collection DS473 BRO]

This is a collection of satirical verses on the trial of Warren Hastings which is, in fact, as much a comment on Hastings' chief Parliamentary accuser, Edmund Burke, as on the trial itself. It complements another work by the same author in our collection: An elucidation of the articles of impeachment prepared by the Parliament against Warren Hastings (1790). This book will be of interest to students of eighteenth century British politics, British colonial policy in the eighteenth century and of satirical poetry.

• Thomas Short. Discourses on tea, sugar, milk, made-wines, spirits, punch, tobacco, &c. With plain and useful rules for gouty people. London: printed for T. Longman and A. Millar, 1750. [Rare Books Collection RM215 SHO]

Thomas Short (c.1690-1772) practised medicine in Sheffield. In addition to being one of the most important writers on beverages in the eighteenth century, he conducted thirty years of research in the chemical analysis of mineral waters, some of which is included in this book. He also conducted researches into the effects of air on health. He was known for being an eccentric, and for holding porridge parties where his guests had to eat without any cutlery. It complements well our other holdings on beverages and also on mineral and spa waters, including a pamphlet by Thomas Short himself.

• John Woodward. Dr. Friend's epistle to Dr. Mead: render'd faithfully into English. Divided into proper chapters, with notes learned and unlearned. London: printed and sold by J. Roberts, J. Brotherton and W. Meadows, 1719. [Rare Books Collection: R128.7 WOO]

This is a satiric translation by the physician and geologist John Woodward (1665/1668-1728) of De Purgantibus, by the physician and scientist John Friend. (1675-1728). A bitter controversy had arisen between Woodward, on the one hand, and Friend and Dr. Richard Mead (1673-1754), on the other, about the best method of curing smallpox. Friend and Mead favoured purging ; Woodward vomiting. So vehement did this dispute become that it resulted in a sword fight between Mead in 1719. Woodward is alleged to have said that he preferred to die by Mead's sword than by his medicine. Woodward was, in turn, satirised by Pope in the Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus for possessing impractical learning.

• Theophilus Lobb. A compendium of the practice of physick: or the heads of a system of practical physick… London: printed for James Buckland, 1747. [R128.7 LOB]

This very rare book may have been intended for provincial apothecaries who were intending to practise as physicians. The book does not depart much from the orthodox emphasis on purgative remedies. There is a small appendix on smallpox inoculation.

January 2006

Jean-Baptiste Tavernier. Collections of travels through Turky into Persia, and the East-Indies. London: printed for M.P. [i.e. Moses Pitt], 1688 [Rare Books Collection FOL. DS7 TAV]

Jean-Baptiste Tavernier. Collections of travels through Turky into Persia, and the East-Indies. London: printed for M.P. [i.e. Moses Pitt], 1688 [Rare Books Collection FOL. DS7 TAV]

This is an English translation from the French of an important and influential account of six voyages and journeys to Asia undertaken between 1643 and 1682. Tavernier (1605-1689) amassed a fortune through the trade in precious stones, doing business with, among others, the Shah of Persia and the Great Mogul Aurangzeb, and was ennobled by Louis XIV, taking the title of Baron d'Aubonne. The geographical spread of Tavernier's account, which ranges from Georgia to Japan, together with his jeweller's close eye for detail (his eye-witness account of the construction of the Taj Mahal, for instance, is of particular interest), make this book an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the history of Asia and its relations with Europe. The book is copiously illustrated with fine plates and woodcuts and also contains maps of the countries visited.

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