Our friends from the Harford County Historical Society came down for a tour last week and brought along some presents for us! They were de-accessioning some medical books which were not relevant to their collections and thought we’d be interested in them.
One in particular caught my eye. The book is “The Synopsis of the Course of Lectures on Materia Medica and Pharmacy, Delivered in the University of Pennsylvania, 1855.
What’s fascinating about this book is that about half of the pages are blank, so someone could amend the lectures with their own notes. Even more interesting is that the notes look to have been taken over a number of years by various students.
Some of the writing is the beautiful copperplate writing of the age, clearly done in a pen dipped in ink. Other writing is less beautiful and almost scribbled in pencil.
