On this page you can learn more about the various medical manuscripts in our western post-1500 collection. You may also be interested in the Medicine section of our western medieval manuscripts collection.
MS 22
MS 22 is a copy of a treatise on skeletons created by John Speed (1595-1640), written in his own hand. It describes two skeletons that Speed donated to St John’s College Library—where they resided until the 17th century.
MS 236
MS 236 is a treatise on medicine, apparently written in Leiden in 1737. It was once owned by the physician John Merrick, M.D. (Fellow of St John’s College Oxford, d. 1757).
MS 327
MS 237 includes a late 17th/ early 18th c. collection of medical recipes, and a course on chemistry and notes on anatomy. It was once owned by the physician John Merrick, M.D. (Fellow of St John’s College Oxford, d. 1757).
MS 239
MS 239 is a fair copy of an eighteenth-century treatise on anatomy. It includes sections on the bones and the muscles.
MS 251
MS 251 comprises two booklets, one on pharmacy and the other on diet and nutrition. They form volumes 5 and 6 of the notebooks bequeathed to St John’s College by the antiquary, John Pointer (1668-1754), and are written in his hand.
MS 296
MS 296 is an album of 56 letters of medical correspondence mainly written to Dr. Richard Higges of Coventry, from a variety of correspondents, including Thomas Willis (1621-1675, neurologist), Richard Lower (1631-1691, physiologist), and John Radcliffe (1650-1714, physician & philanthropist).
MS 339
MS 339 comprises eight sheets bearing medical recipes in English and Latin, of various sizes dating from the late 16th and early 17th centuries.
MS 366
MS 366 is a copy of the statutes of the London College of Physicians (later the Royal College of Physicians), possibly produced in the mid-late 17th century.