Thank you! Today is my last working day as Project Manager for ‘William Hunter’s Library: A Transcription of the Early Catalogues’. It has been a personally rewarding year in which I’ve worked with a fantastic team at the University of… Read More ›
Wellcome Trust
William Hunter’s Library: Provenance
Blog post by Michelle Craig, Project Assistant, William Hunter’s Library: A Transcription of the Early Catalogues and Leverhulme PhD Candidate Now the Hunterian Transcription project is ending, we can begin to take stock of the project’s goals and outcomes. The… Read More ›
William Hunter’s Library: the Shapes of Books
In this blog post, we will be looking at the variety of formats of Hunter’s printed books, and uncover the technical terms, which are commonly used to describe the books’ formats.
William Hunter’s Library: the Is and the Js
As all viewers of ‘Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade’ know, there is no ‘J’ in the Latin alphabet. In Hunter’s Trustees’ catalogue (and in the earlier catalogues compiled in Hunter’s lifetime), there is no separate section in MR 3… Read More ›
William Hunter’s Library: the Hs
H is for … The ‘H’ section alone could provide a snapshot for the books found in Hunter’s library as a whole. Medical works both ancient and modern are a theme throughout with Hippocrates, William Harvey, Albrecht von Haller, and… Read More ›
William Hunter’s Library: the Gs
One name dominates Hunter’s library catalogue in the ‘G’ section of William Hunter’s library: Galen.
Galen (129-c. 210) was a Greek philosopher-physician who summarised anatomical learning up to his time and added his own observations on human anatomy based on dissections of monkeys and pigs. Galen was influenced by the theory of the humours advocated by Hippocrates and other ancient Greek physicians.
William Hunter’s Library: the Fs
The 268 entries that are listed in Museum Records 3 again demonstrate the variety of books that William Hunter collected. As in other sections of his catalogue, we find that Hunter’s interests in anatomy and medicine are well represented. Another theme that emerges in this section is travel and exploration.
William Hunter’s Library: the Es
One of Hunter’s copies of Euclid’s Elements of Geometry was published in Venice in 1482 and features woodcut diagrams that illustrate mathematical equations. This was one of the 192 incunabula that Hunter purchased via his Paris agent at the sale of the library of Louis-Jean Gaignat, the late Receiver-General of Pleas at the Palace of Justice in Paris in 1769. Gaignat had died the previous year leaving a library of over 5,000 items. In addition to the 192 incunabula, Hunter bought eleven illuminated manuscripts and an assortment of other books. Euclides: Elementa geometriae. Venice: Erhard Ratdolt, 25 May 1482 is now Sp Coll Hunterian By.2.12.
Digitisation of Mental Healthcare Archives – complete!
The Digitisation of Mental Healthcare Archives project began in August 2014 and was a collaborative mass digitisation project between the Photographic Unit, Dumfries and Galloway Council and the NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde Archive, thanks to funding from the Wellcome Trust. The project’s aim was… Read More ›
William Hunter’s Library: the Bs
B is for… The ‘B’ section of Hunter’s library catalogue provides a good example of the mix of medical and non-medical books Hunter collected. Among medical authors we find members of the Danish medical dynasty, the Bartholins [Caspar the Elder (1585-1629),… Read More ›
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