Letter from James Winthrop to William Bentley, 1784 February 8

Two folio-sized leaves containing a two-and-a-half-page handwritten letter from Winthrop to Bentley with a lengthy discussion on a recent comet and related calculations.

Letter from James Winthrop to William Bentley, 1784 February 16

Two folio-sized leaves containing a three-page handwritten letter from Winthrop to Bentley regarding comet calculations and a short criticism of the sermons of Samuel Cooper (1725-1783).

Letter from James Winthrop to William Bentley, 1784 March 13

Two folio-sized leaves containing a two-page handwritten letter from Winthrop to Bentley briefly mentioning book purchases and discussing Joseph Priestley's Disquisitions relating to matter and spirit.

Letter from James Winthrop to William Bentley, 1784 March 22

Two octavo-sized leaves containing a three-page handwritten letter from Winthrop to Bentley discussing the Royal Society's Philosophical Transactions.

Letter from James Winthrop to William Bentley, 1784 April 6

Two folio-sized leaves containing a two-page handwritten letter from Winthrop to Bentley discussing Joseph Priestley's Disquisitions relating to matter and spirit, and possible references to astronomical phenomena in mythological stories. Winthrop briefly mentions a 1769 Harvard student poem attributed to his classmate Jonathan Williams Austin (1751-1779; Harvard AB1769).

Letter from James Winthrop to William Bentley, 1784 April 11

One folio-sized leaf containing a two-page handwritten letter from Winthrop to Bentley discussing the case of "Capt. H." whose ship was "legally condemned by the French Court.

Letter from James Winthrop to William Bentley, 1784 May 15

One octavo-sized leaf containing a brief one-page handwritten letter from Winthrop to Bentley with a complaint about not receiving the Salem Gazette.

Letter from James Winthrop to William Bentley, 1784 May 17

Two octavo-sized leaves containing a two-and-a-half-page handwritten letter from Winthrop to Bentley discussing Alexander Pope and mythology, and a brief criticism of John Moore's A view of society and manners.

Letter from James Winthrop to William Bentley, 1784 June 12

Two folio-sized leaves containing a two-and-a-half-page handwritten letter from Winthrop to Bentley discussing mythology, a reference to the writing of David Hoar, and miscellaneous news.

Letter from James Winthrop to William Bentley, 1784 June 18

Two folio-sized leaves containing a two-and-a-half-page handwritten letter from Winthrop to Bentley discussing "the disturbances & murders at the Southward," the disciplinary case of Charles Ferguson of Charleston, Carolina who entered with the Class of 1786, and criticism of a new, unidentified Harvard Corporation member, likely John Lowell (1743-1802; Harvard AB 1760) who was elected to the Corporation in April 1784.

Letter from James Winthrop to William Bentley, 1784 July 9

Two octavo-sized leaves containing a two-page handwritten letter from Winthrop to Bentley discussing the Charles Ferguson disciplinary case.

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.