{"id":656,"date":"2016-08-23T11:02:00","date_gmt":"2016-08-23T11:02:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/kingscollections\/?p=656"},"modified":"2021-10-20T08:49:24","modified_gmt":"2021-10-20T08:49:24","slug":"provenance-and-the-historical-medical-collections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/kingscollections\/2016\/08\/23\/provenance-and-the-historical-medical-collections\/","title":{"rendered":"Provenance and the historical medical collections"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"st-thoms-books\"<\/a>The medical books, pamphlets and periodicals held in the Foyle Special Collections Library<\/a> reflect the rich tradition of medical teaching and research across King\u2019s Health Partners. Many of these items have significant provenances relating to medical figures who have worked for, or been connected\u00a0with King’s.<\/p>\n

In this article, Brandon High, Special Collections Officer discusses\u00a0some of these that he has noted in his recent cataloguing.<\/p>\n

A 1716 treatise on the eye, written in Latin and\u00a0entitled\u00a0Tractatus de circulari humorum motum in oculis<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0is part of the St. Thomas\u2019s Historical Collection<\/a> and bears the inscription of the physician and popular versifier Nathaniel Cotton (1705-88). His principal claim to fame is that he looked after the poet William Cowper (1731-1800)\u00a0for two years in his private asylum during one of Cowper\u2019s bouts of mental illness. Cotton\u2019s treatment was apparently successful, as the regime in his asylum was humane, unlike the practices of some of the more notorious privately-owned \u2018madhouses\u2019 of that era. There are four other books in the historical medical collections with Cotton\u2019s bookplate or inscription.<\/p>\n

Other provenances in the historical medical collections with literary connections include the collection of books with the inscription of the St. Thomas\u2019s surgeon and King\u2019s professor of surgery Joseph Henry Green (1791-1863). Green was a close friend of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and was his amanuensis for several of his prose works. Joseph Henry Green\u2019s ideas on the role of medical practitioners in society paralleled those of Coleridge on intellectuals, and both agreed on the importance for social and political order of higher education institutions (like King’s) with strong connections to the Anglican Church.<\/p>\n

\"GH<\/a>A number of books which bear the bookplate of the psychiatrist George Henry Savage (1842-1921) are now in the Institute of Psychiatry Historical Collection <\/a>at the Foyle Special Collections Library. Savage was one of Virginia Woolf\u2019s doctors during her frequent periods of mental distress, and was very unfavourably portrayed as the psychiatrist Sir William Bradshaw in her landmark modernist novel Mrs. Dalloway<\/em> (1925), who lamentably fails in his duty of care for Septimus Warren Smith, a veteran of the First World War.<\/p>\n

The St. Thomas\u2019s Historical Collection also includes a limited edition copy of W. Somerset Maugham\u2019s first novel, Liza of Lambeth\u00a0<\/em><\/a>(1897), published to mark the fiftieth anniversary of its first publication. This novel is heavily based on Maugham\u2019s experiences as a St. Thomas\u2019s medical student, caring for pregnant women. He qualified as a medical practitioner, but never practised.<\/p>\n

All these provenances can be searched on the King\u2019s\u00a0Library catalogue <\/a>using the drop down menu and selecting\u00a0the \u2018Former owners, Provenance\u2019<\/strong> search option, and typing the name of the relevant person<\/p>\n

You can also read detailed guides to the medical collections and other Special Collections Special Collections homepage<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The medical books, pamphlets and periodicals held in the Foyle Special Collections Library reflect the rich tradition of medical teaching and research across King\u2019s Health Partners. Many of these items have significant provenances relating to medical figures who have worked for, or been connected\u00a0with King’s. In this article, Brandon High, Special Collections Officer discusses\u00a0some of … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Provenance and the historical medical collections”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":318,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[252,239,246,245,1],"tags":[281],"class_list":["post-656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-behind-the-scenes","category-fscl","category-historyofmedicinehealth","category-projects","category-uncategorized","tag-provenance","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/kingscollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/kingscollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/kingscollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/kingscollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/318"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/kingscollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=656"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/kingscollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1552,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/kingscollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656\/revisions\/1552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/kingscollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/kingscollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/kingscollections\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}