Student lecture notes of Benjamin Peirce, 1797-1798

This collection contains approximately twenty-three handwritten lecture summaries on six leaves made by Harvard undergraduate Benjamin Peirce between September 1797 and November 22, 1798. The summaries generally provide a few sentences describing the topic covered and primarily pertain to lectures on English grammar delivered by Eliphalet Pearson, the Hollis Professor of Hebrew and other Oriental Languages. There are also summaries for single lectures by David Tappan, the Hollis Professor Divinity; Samuel Webber, the Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy; and John Snelling Popkin, the Greek Tutor from 1795 to 1798, and later the Eliot Professor of Greek Literature. There is also an undated summary of a lecture by Benjamin Waterhouse, the Hersey Professor of Theory and Practice of Physic.

Notes about cases heard as Justice of the Peace, 1784-1795

This small paper-bound notebook contains notes Winthrop made concerning the cases he heard between 1784 and 1795 as a Justice of the Peace for Middlesex County. These notes provide insight into the nature of crimes being committed in Cambridge in the post-Revolutionary period, as well as the names and occupations of those accused and their victims. The cases involved the following individuals, among others: Samuel Bridge, Benjamin Estabrook, Joseph Jeffords, Cato Bordman, John Kidder, Spenser Goddin, Jacob Cromwell, Benjamin Stratton, Mary Flood, Bender Temple, John Willett, Joseph Hartwell, Nathaniel Stratton, Amos Washburn, Francis Moore, Thomas Malone, Thomas Cook, and Amboy Brown. The cases involved a range of offenses, and occasionally Winthrop decided that a case exceeded his jurisdiction and forwarded it to the General Court or the Supreme Judicial Court.

Letter from Artemas Ward to Benjamin Stone, 1787 July 18

Artemas Ward wrote this letter to Benjamin Stone on July 18, 1787, expressing his concern about the expense of his son, Henry Dana Ward's, imminent studies at Harvard. Ward complains to Stone about his own debts and the failure of the government to honor their financial obligations to him, and he also expresses hope that the President of Harvard will allow his son to spend part of his time "keeping a school" during his freshman and sophomore years, thus earning an income sufficient to pay for his studies. Ward also suggests that it might be preferable that his son board with a respectable family, rather than live at the College.

Diaries of Benjamin Guild, 1776, 1778

These diaries of Benjamin Guild document his travels as a Presbyterian pastor in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The daily entries describe people Guild met and dined with, the food he ate (including strawberries, currants, watermelon, English cherries, and lobster), the funerals he attended, and the sermons he gave. Many entries relate to his health concerns (the ague and eye trouble), sleeping habits, and widespread public health concerns (including smallpox, dysentery, "nervous fevers," consumption, and "putrid fever"). The diaries also contain passing references to the activities of American, British, French, and German soldiers during the American Revolution; the invasion of Canada and battles occurring in New York are noted. In August 1778, after visiting Providence, Rhode Island, Guild comments on the disordered state of the city after American soldiers passed through it. He also recounts a visit by officers of the French fleet to the Harvard College library in September 1778 and describes his dinner on board the French man-of-war, Sagitaire. One entry describes an elaborate ball sponsored by John Hancock, held for French soldiers and "Boston ladies," and another refers to the "incursion" of Indians. Many of Guild's diary entries pertain to his work as a Harvard College Tutor; these entries describe his lectures at the College, meetings with colleagues, personnel decisions, and the examination of students. He also describes books he is reading and his opinions of them, the purchase and sale of books, and his desire to learn Hebrew and French. In addition, multiple entries refer to a man named Prince, who was perhaps Guild's slave. Prince sometimes accompanied Guild on his travels.

John Warren's copy of votes from a meeting of the Boston Medical Society, 1784 May 3

This document lists the eleven votes cast at a meeting of the Boston Medical Society on May 3, 1784. It was authorized as a "true coppy" by Thomas Kast, the Secretary of the Society. The following members of the Society were present at the meeting, all of them doctors: James Pecker, James Lloyd, Joseph Gardner, Samuel Danforth, Isaac Rand, Jr., Charles Jarvis, Thomas Kast, Benjamin Curtis, Thomas Welsh, Nathaniel Walker Appleton, and doctors whose last names were Adams, Townsend, Eustis, Homans, and Whitwell. The document indicates that a meeting had been held the previous evening, as well (May 2, 1784), at which the topics on which votes were taken had been discussed. The votes, eleven in total, were all related to the doctors' concerns about John Warren and his involvement with the emerging medical school (now Harvard Medical School), that school's relation to almshouses, the medical care of the poor, and other related matters. The tone and content of these votes reveals anger on the part of the members of the Boston Medical Society towards Warren. This anger appears to have stemmed from the perceived threat of Warren to their own practices, exacerbated by a vote of the Harvard Corporation on April 19, 1784. This vote authorized Warren to apply to the Overseers of the Poor for the town of Boston, requesting that students in the newly-established Harvard medical program, where Warren was Professor of Anatomy and Surgery, be allowed to visit the hospital of the almshouse with their professors for the purpose of clinical instruction. Although Warren believed that the students would learn far more from these visits, in regards to surgical experience, than they could possibly learn in Cambridge, the proposal provoked great distrust from the members of the Boston Medical Society, who accused Warren of an "attempt to direct the public medical business from its usual channels" for his own financial and professional gain.

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.

Student notebook of Benjamin Waterhouse: 1776

Volume containing notes taken in 1776 by Benjamin Waterhouse (1754-1846) on medical lectures given in Scotland by University of Edinburgh Professor Andrew Duncan (1744-1828). The lectures focused on pathology, with attention given to secretion, absorption, nutrition, excretion, circulation, and respiration. There are also notes on common medicines and their indications and contraindications, such as emetics, cathartics, diaphoretics, and diuretics.