All posts tagged Rare Books

Portrait of Octavia Hill

Octavia Hill and the Royal Commission on the Poor Law and the Unemployed (1905-09).  LSHTM Rare Books Blog Series No. 6. January 2023

The Royal Commission on the Poor Law and the Unemployed was set up in 1905 to review the system of poor relief provision and consider alternative ways to tackle unemployment. Twenty people were appointed to the Commission including Octavia Hill (1838-1912) and Beatrice Webb (1858-1943).  However, after four…

Read more

Under the lens : London’s water examined in the 1853-4 cholera pandemic. LSHTM Rare Books Blog series No. 4. May 2022.

Figure 1:  Colourful organisms in a sample of the water supplied by the Southwark & Vauxhall Company to St. Thomas’s Hospital in 1854 as seen under the microscope (Hassall 1855a : page 248, Plate 19).

This illustration of a microcosm of the natural world in London’s water in…

Read more

Observations on Smallpox by the 9th Century Persian Physician Rhazes (865-925) : LSHTM Rare Books Blog series No. 3.

This is the latest in the LSHTM Rare Books Blog, featuring Rhazes (full-name: Muhammad ibn Zakariyā al-Rāzī). Rhazes made notable contributions to many areas of medicine. His manuscripts, carefully preserved down the centuries, were among the first medical books printed in Europe in the 15th century. After translation into Latin Rhazes’s writings became widely disseminated and were to influence the future direction of western medicine.  

Read more

History and politics of vaccination

Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) : LSHTM Rare Books Blog series No. 2

Figure 1: Portrait of A.R. Wallace

ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE (1823-1913) : British naturalist, humanist, geographer, social critic… and anti-vaccination activist(!)

Alfred Russel Wallace was one of the founders of evolutionary biology. In 1858 he and Charles Darwin jointly proposed a theory for the process of evolution by natural…

Read more

Henry Vandyke Carter (1831-1897): LSHTM Rare Books blog series No. 1

HENRY VANDYKE CARTER (1831-1897) : author of On Leprosy and Elephantiasis,  and the artist for Gray’s Anatomy. 

Gray’s Anatomy is a classic medical textbook, used by doctors, anatomists and medical artists.  Yet, despite Henry Gray’s (1826/27-1861) scholarly text running to 720 pages…

Read more

Work Experience in LSHTM Library and Archives

By Mia Annesen-Wood

Firstly, I would just like to thank the whole LSHTM Library and Archives team for being so welcoming and friendly. It has been a wonderful experience to both observe and play a small role in the work they do here, I am so grateful for the…

Read more

Turning old books into e-books: our rare books go digital

The Internet Archive have started to publish high resolution scans of the School’s 19th century books and pamphlets on their site. The files can be downloaded and viewed in a variety of file types including PDF, EPUB and Kindle.

Maybe you’d like to read the Report from the…

Read more

Wellcome to digitise the Library’s 19th Century literature

The School Library has been selected to contribute to the UK Medical Heritage Library digitisation project, joint funded by the Wellcome Library and JISC. The project aims to create high quality digital scans of 19th century medical books and pamphlets which will be available for everyone to use under a…

Read more

Gems of the Collection: Women in Public Health & Tropical Medicine

Gems of the Collection celebrates International Women’s Day with a display of items from the Library & Archives celebrating women in public health and tropical medicine.

12 March 2014
12.00-2.00pm
South Courtyard (next to the Manson LT)

Library and archives staff will be available to show…

Read more