ARCHIVES OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS

A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO THE LIBRARY OF
THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS OF LONDON

LIBRARY FACILITIES

Address: Royal College of Physicians of London, 11 St Andrews Place, London NW1 4LE

Telephone: 071-935-1174
Enquiries: Ext 312
Librarian: Ext 374
Fax: 071-487 5218
Opening hours: Monday to Friday 9. 30 to 5.30
Except public holidays

The RCP Library specializes in the history of medicine (details below under HISTORY AND SCOPE).

Loans

Fellows, Members and Licentiates of the College and Members of the College’s Faculties and joint Faculties may borrow most books printed after 1899, in person or by post within the British Isles, the Library paying the outward patage. Recorded delivery must be used for the return of books by post. The Library also lends to and borrows from other libraries, directly or through the British Library’s Document Supply Centre.
The library is open for reference only to other bona fide research workers at the Harveian Librarian’s discretion. Enquiries may be made personally in the Reading Room on the second floor (an appointment is not essential, but sometimes helpful), or by letter or telephone

Microfilm and microfiche readers are provided and photocopying is available for books published after 1799, unless their physical condition prohibits it, and for most unbound material of any date. The microfilming .of material not suitable for photocopying and the making of photographs and slides can be arranged, although not normally at short notice as these facilities are not available on RCP premises.

HISTORY AND SCOPE

When the College was founded in 1518, the first President, Thomas Linacre presented some of his own books to form the basis of the Library. Further donations over more than a century gradually increased its size, until William Harvey gave his books and providing a building to house them in 1654.Besides medical books, Harvey recommended works ‘on geometry, geography, astronomy, music optics, natural history, physics, mechanics, travel and exploration’ as suitable additions. Most of the College’s Library perished in the Great Fire of London in 1666, but its intellectual range (not confined to medicine) was confirmed by the bequest of the library of the first Marquis of Dorchester (1606-80), which is still virtually intact. In 1823,Dr Matthew Baillie died leaving all his medical, chemical and anatomical books, mostly published during his lifetime, to the College.

Consequently it had the basis of a Library of current medicine and attention was given during the remainder of he nineteenth century to keeping it up to date by both donations and purchases. Nevertheless, William Munk was elected Harveian Librarian in 1857 mainly because of the interest he had shown in the history of the College and its Fellows. Thenceforward the Office was filled by Fellows interested in medical history so that this increasingly became the emphasis.

The collection of engraved portraits was established when Dr James Ditchfield gave his prints and drawings in 1891.Dr Arnold Chaplin, Harveian Librarian 1918-44, organized it and added considerably to it from his own collection.
In 1950 the College Library decided to confine itself to medical history with a bias towards biography. The decision was based on the strength of the historical and biographical collections and the number of portraits in various media that it already possessed, and on the existence of other libraries in London providing a current medical information service. Since then a number of gaps in its collection of classic medical texts have been filled, but acquisitions are now mainly in the area of recently published studies of persons and topics of medico-historical interest, especially those with particular relevance to the history of the RCP and its Fellows, and modern editions of classic medical books and papers. A small collection of current reference books - dictionaries, directories, yearbooks - is also maintained.

The Library takes and files several of the journals devoted to the history of medicine and science. Permanent files are not kept of most of the other journals on its current list of about 100 titles.

The Harveian Librarian, the College officer ( FRCP) in charge of the Library, is also (since November 1985) curator of the art collection.. He is responsible for ensuring the biographies of Fellows are written for the published Lives of the Fellows. (continuing William Munk’s The Roll of the RCP of London (3 vols,1878) and organizes the oral history programme on audio and video tape. He reports to Council and is advised by a Historical resources panel.

Under his supervision the day to day care of the Library is in the hands of a Librarian, and Archivist and other professional and secretarial staff. Under the Panel’s auspices evening meetings are held for the reading of short papers on medico-historical topics, at present twice yearly.

CONTENTS

There are over 50,000 printed books and pamphlets, including sets of old journals like Acta Eruditorum and the Philisophical Translations of the Royal Society, and complete sets of The Lancet and the British Medical Journal. Notable among just over 100 incunabula are; a rare edition of Simon Genuensis’ Clavis santionis (Pauda 1474); Rhases’ Liber dictus Elhavi (Brescia, 1486); Scriptores rei rusticae (Reggio, 1496) with Thomas Linac Linacre’s signature on the title-page; and John of Gaddesden’s Rosa angelica Pavia, 1492) with the autograph of Dr John Chambre, the first in order of the six physicians named in the Charter of Henry VIII founding the College.

Examples can be found on the Library of the work of most of the important early printers. Landmarks in the history of medicine of which the Library owns a copy include: Harvey’s Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis et sanuinis in animalibus (Franfurt, 1628); William Withering’s An account of the foxglove...(London 1785); Laënnec’s De l’auscultation médiate...(Paris 1819); and Sir Charles Sherrington’s The intergrative action of the nervous system (London 1906), Sir Francis Walshe’s annotated copy of the book which inspired his own career in neurology.

Manuscripts (including typescripts) are estimated at around 20,000, although these are harder to count owing to their variable nature as individual letters, bundles of minutes or bound volumes often made up from several different documents. They include a fourteenth century compilation of medical texts containing the rare surgery of Johannes Jamerius (fl. 12-13th cent.); Thomas Sydenham’s Medical observations (1669-c.1680); two manuscript volumes of William Hebereden the elder, based on his case records, which provided the material for his published Medical commentaries...; the Regulations and transactions of the Gloucestershire Medical Society instituted May 1778 to which Edward Jenner contributed; the case books (1845-580 of john Snow one of the earliest specialists in anaesthetics; and letters and papers in the hands of many others whose names are familiar to medical historians. More recent material included the scripts of ‘Radio doctor’ talks by the College Treasurer (1957-71), Dr R R Bomford.

Records of the activities of the RCP and its Fellows naturally form am important part of the archives. The minutes of committees and working parties continue to be transferred to the archives as files are closed. Files are kept on Fellow’s lives and frequently contain information supplementary to that published in ‘Munk’s Roll’. With a view to making these records as complete as possible, Fellows are urged to deposit in the Library details of their qualifications, career, awards and publications and to update them periodically.

Archives now include the audio and video tapes produced by the Library’s oral history programme. This started in 1969, in sound only, consisting Mainly of reminiscences of distinguished Fellows, and in 1986 a series on videotape, considerably broader in scope was begun in cooperation with Oxford Polytechnic.
SPECIAL COLLECTIONS

The Dorchester Library

This library was regarded by a contemporary as one of the finest in the land. It contains more than 3,000 volumes representing 2,101 titles, of which 192 are medical. A variety of other subjects are represented - philosophy, philology, history and geography, mathematics, navigation and the art of war, and it is particularly strong in law, both civil and canon. The Marquis of Dorchester was a member of Gray’s Inn as well as being thought the best unqualified medical practitioner in England. This collection accounts for the presence in the College of some prized non-medical volumes - the illuminated manuscript Wilton Psalter (c.1250), a copy of the first book printed by William Caxton (Bruges, c.1474), and the only recorded copy of the first printed book on dancing (Paris, c.1490). It also contains about 120 books that survived from the library of John Dee, the Elizabethan mathematician, astrologer and alchemist. The collection is now arranged as far as possible in the order of the manuscript catalogue of 1664 which came with it.

The Evan Bedford Library of Cardiology

This collection comprising more than 1,000 books and pamphlets, with substantial runs of three cardio logical journals, was given by the distinguished British Cardiologist, Davis Evan Bedford FRCP, in 1971. A catalogue, based on Dr Bedford’s own annotated catalogue was published in 1977.

Other historical collections administered by the Library

The Heberden Library of the British Society of Rheumatology and the Willan Library of the British Association of Dermatologists are housed in the College and are looked after by the Library staff on behalf of the societies’ honorary librarians

Medical Council on Alcoholism’s Library

This is now housed in the RCP Library, since the Council’s move into the ‘Medical Precinct’ close to the College.

PICTORIAL (MAINLY PORTRAITS)

The College possesses some 350 oil paintings, miniatures and sculptured busts and just over 100 commemorative medals. Old prints (engravings, mezzotints, lithographs, etc) provide around 4,500 more portraits of medical and scientific personalities and the collection of photographs, now numbering over 8,000, continues to grow mainly by gifts from Fellows of portraits of themselves. The H M Barlow collection of around 3,500 bookplates of medical persons and institutions is housed among the archives as are the original pathological drawings and water-colours made for Matthew Baillie. Richard Bright, Francis Sibson and Robert Lee.

The slides (now over 3,000) are mostly made by photographing items in the pictorial collections mentioned above, as well as text and illustrations in books and manuscripts in the Library. All persons entitled to borrow books (see LIBRARY FACILITIES above) may also borrow slides.

CATALOGUES

The card catalogue published works is in two sections, name and subject. The name catalogue includes persons and institutions as both authors and subjects. The subject catalogue is arranged by a modified version of the US National Library of Medicine’s ’Medical Subject headings’ and some older works. Pending its completion, it may be supplemented by reference to bibliographies, notably the Index catalogue of the Library of the Surgeon General’s Office, US Army (now the NLM) and Bibliography of the history of medicine. There are card indexes of bindings, autographs and bookplates in books, and of known previous owners of the Colleges books not covered by those three.

The full calendar of archives is on worksheets, although the card index to it, located in the reading Room, gives sufficient information to allow documents to retrieved directly from it. An old catalogue of autograph letters

letters and 1924 typescript volume A descriptive catalogue of the legal and other documents... cover mainly documents not yet included in the card index mentioned above. They and the worksheets can be got out when required. All parts of the archival catalogues, as at the end of 1983, were published on microfiche by Chadwyck-Healey Ltd in their series National inventory of documentary sources in the United Kingdom and updated versions will be issued from time to time.

A catalogue of the engraved portraits was published in 1952 and now has a small supplement on cards. A catalogue of the paintings and busts (with illustrations) was published in 1964, supplemented by a second volume in 1977. Some of the medals are described in the 1977 volume and most of them in the 1986 exhibition Medals-mostly medical. There are car catalogues of photographs and slides and portraits in books can be located in various ways.

EXHIBITIONS

Exhibitions are arranged each year on a variety of topics illustrating the resources of the Library and copies of the duplicated catalogues are sent o hose who apply to have them regularly. Smaller displays are arranged from occasional conferences and lectures and, time and resources permitting, for the monthly teach-ins for junior hospital doctors. Another occasional feature is an informal display and talk for a ‘firm’ of medical students organised jointly by the medical teacher and the College Librarian as a ‘historical ward round’.

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