A Millennium of Medical Books - Dr. Paul Potter

CBBAG SWO Chapter & Western Archives present: "A Millennium of Medical Books" by Paul Potter, Professor Emeritus, History of Medicine.
Six medical books kept in the Jason A. Hannah Collection of Western's ARCC, dating from between 512 (a facsimile) and 1588 AD, will be examined as evidence for the important role the book played in the development and transmission of medical knowledge and practice over a thousand-year period. Questions of their production, circulation, historical context, and scientific significance will be discussed, as well as various technical and economic aspects of their textual form and illustration. Five of the actual books will be available for direct inspection.
About the Speaker:
Dr. Potter is a physician and (Emeritus) Hannah Chair in the History of Medicine at Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry at Western University, from 1974 to 2011 (37 years). He received his BSc and MDCM from McGill University and his DPhil from Kiel University. Paul is a classist and a leading expert on Hippocrates. He has translated 7 (seven) books of Hippocrates’ invaluable texts for the Loeb Classical Library (Harvard University Press), which provide essential information about the practice of medicine in antiquity and about Greek theories concerning the human body. His latest translation was just published in July 2022; that book was Ancient Medicine. Airs, Waters, Places. Epidemics 1 and 3. The Oath. Precepts. Nutriment. See here for the listing of Paul’s 7 books and Loeb Classical Library page is here: www.hup.harvard.edu/results-l....
About the Hannah Collection at Western Archives:
The Special Collections at Western Libraries -- located in the Archives and Research Collections Centre (ARCC) in Weldon Library, main campus Western University, London, Ontario -- includes rare books, monographs, and serials with several noteworthy “named special collections,” one of which is The Hannah Collection on the History of Science and Medicine. The Hannah Collection contains books acquired through annual grants from the Hannah Institute for the History of Medicine (AMS) as support for the Hannah Professor program from 1974 to 1999. During this period, Prof Paul Potter, as Hannah Chair, was an integral part in the building of this impressive collection, due to his astute guidance on acquisitions to fill major gaps in Western’s holdings in this field.
Western’s History of Medicine (HoM) Collection is one of the most extensive rare book collections in the field in Canada. It is among the top 5 in the country (keeping company with comparable collections at McGill, U of Toronto, UBC, and Queen’s University).
The HoM collection at Western has several sources, including:
- All the current books acquired by Western’s Medical Faculty since its inception in 1881
- Historical books acquired and donated by Dr J.W. Crane, Professor of Pharmacology at Western from 1914 to 1946
- Historical books acquired and donated by Dr Lloyd G. Stevenson, a UWO medical graduate in 1944 and historian of medicine at Western (1950-54), McGill (1954-1963), Yale (1963-68), Johns Hopkins (1968-1983) as Director of the Institute of the History of Medicine and the William H. Welch Professor.
- Books acquired through annual grants from the Hannah Institute for the History of Medicine (AMS) from 1974 to 1999
- Notable donations from individual alumni such as Dr Robert Haines
Notable treasures in this collection include:
- The anatomical atlases of Vesalius, Eustachius, Albinus, and others dating from the 16th Century
- The extensive collection of Charles Darwin material donated by Dr. Robert Haines including the first edition of The Origin of Species
- The collection of Hippocrates editions in Greek beginning from the first edition (1526)
- The large collection of French Encyclopédies which contain many medical articles
-Many Canadian works by writers such as William Osler, Fredrick Banting, J.B. Collip
To learn more about Western Archives visit: www.lib.uwo.ca/archives/
To inquire about the books in this presentation or others email: [e-mail]
To learn more about CBBAG please visit: www.cbbag.ca/
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