Commonplace book of Hector Orr, 1789-1804

Hector Orr began recording entries in this commonplace book during his first year as a student at Harvard and continued writing in the volume sporadically until 1804. The entries written while he was a student, from 1789 to 1792, include themes written on the following topics: Time, Discontent, Patriotism, Virtue, Conscience, Patience, Avarice, Compassion, Mortality, Self-knowledge, Benevolence, Morning, Anger, Profanity, Bribery, Autumn and Winter, Hermitage, Conscience and Anticipation. He also wrote detailed entries about the forensic disputations in which he and his classmates participated, explaining both the affirmative and negative positions. One of these disputations involved discussion of the Stamp Act, which was then quite recent history. Orr's entries about the disputations list the names of students involved and specify their position in the argument.

Index of Harvard graduates in the classes of 1642-1772, (manuscript notebook), ca. 1772-1791

Notebook containing an alphabetical index of Harvard graduates from 1642 to 1772. The author is unidentified, but the handwriting appears to be that of Harvard President Samuel Langdon (president from 1774 - 1780). The names are arranged alphabetically by surname. Each entry includes the graduate's name, additional degrees (Master, STD, MD, etc.), the year of graduation, and an asterisk if the individual was deceased. The asterisks are included for some graduates who died in 1791, indicating the work was created and updated between 1772 and 1791.

Student notes from medical lectures by Benjamin Rush, undated

The volumes contain student notes on a course of medical lectures given by Dr. Benjamin Rush (1746-1813) while he was Professor of the Institutes of Medicine and Clinical Practice at the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, likely in circa 1800-1813. The notes indicate Rush often referenced the works or teachings of contemporaries such as Scottish physicians William Cullen, John Brown, John Gregory, and Robert Whytt, and Dutch physician Herman Boerhaave. He frequently included anecdotes and case histories of his own patients, as well as those of other doctors, to illustrate his lecture topics. He also advised students to take notes on the lectures after they ended to allow them to focus on what they were hearing. Volume 1 includes notes on: physician conduct during visits to patients; human and animal physiology; voice and speech; the nervous system; the five senses; and faculties of the mind. Volume 2 includes notes on: food, the sources of appetite and thirst, and digestion; the lymphatic system; secretions; excretions; theories of nutrition; differences in the minds and bodies of women and men; reproduction; pathology; a table outlining the stages of disease production; “disease and the origin of moral and natural evil”; contagions; the role of food, drink, and clothing in producing disease; worms; hereditary diseases; predisposition to diseases; proximate causes of diseases; and pulmonary conditions. Volume 3 includes notes on: the pulse; therapeutics, such as emetics, sedatives, and digitalis, and treatment of various illnesses like pulmonary consumption, kidney disease, palsy, and rheumatism; diagnosis and prognosis of fever; treatment of intermitting fever; and epidemics including plague, smallpox, and yellow fever, with an emphasis on the yellow fever outbreaks in Philadelphia in 1793 and 1797.