[Student essay on vice], 1770 September 1

One leaf containing a handwritten essay on the proposition that "all Sinners, whatever Hopes they may have of Happiness, will hereafter be unhappy & miserable." The essay begins with an epitaph from Agamemnon: A Tragedy by Scottish poet James Thomson: "Vice always leads, however fair at first, to Wilds of Woe." The verso is dated September 1st 1770.

[Excerpt from the poem "Winter"], undated

One leaf containing a handwritten copy of a section of the poem "Winter" by Scottish poet James Thomson (1700-1748). The excerpt begins "'Tis done! dread Winter spreads his latest Glooms," and ends, "And one unbounded Spring encircle all."

Letter from James Winthrop to William Bentley, 1806 March 31

Two folio-sized leaves containing a one-page handwritten letter from Winthrop to Bentley discussing world geography and asking for news about the African expedition of Scottish explorer Mungo Park (1771-1806).

Sermons : manuscript, 1709-1722

64 sermons on verses from John, Proverbs, Revelations, Matthew, and other books of the Bible, with notation of dates and places delivered in and around Boston.

Student lecture notes on anatomy and surgery, and medical notes, of Lyman Spalding, 1795

Contains notes taken by Harvard student Lyman Spalding (1775-1821) from lectures on anatomy and surgery delivered by Harvard Professor John Warren (1753-1815) in 1795, as well a section entitled “Medical Observations,” which includes entries on “Vernal Debility,” or diseases occurring in the spring, and lung function. It is unclear if these are Spalding’s own writings or transcriptions from a published work. There is also text transcribed from “Elementa Medicinae,” published in 1780 by Scottish physician John Brown.

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.

Kitab al-amthal =: seu proverbiorum Arabicorum centuriæ duæ : ab anonymo quodam Arabe collectæ & explicatæ

cum interpretatione Latina & scholiis Iosephi Scaligeri et Thomæ Erpenii.