An exceptional run, from 1724 [RICHARD MEAD] to 2003 [SIR PAUL NURSE], total of 116 volumes, in original, miscellaneous bindings of paper wrappers, cloth-backed boards or cloth, a few ex-library, all bar one in good to very good condition, the exception being RICHARD CATON, 1904, which is ex-library, internally some leaves marked by damp. Two Orations pre-date 1800, TWENTY-FOUR Orations are from the nineteenth century, the remainder from the twentieth and to date; there are TWELVE presentation copies. EIGHTEENTH CENTURY MEAD, Richard. 1724. 4to. LARGE PAPER. pp. (iv), 56. 3 plates. [another copy - Gottingen. 1748. 8vo. pp. (v), 6-74. 4 folding pls., disbound.]. NINETEENTH CENTURY: POWELL, Richard. 1809. 4to. pp. (iv), 28. DUNCAN, Andrew sen

HARVEIAN ORATIONS.

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*In 1656, William Harvey bequeathed a sum of money to the Royal College of Physicians and directed that an annual Oration should be delivered at the College, in Latin, and that it should include a commemoration of all the benefactors of the College by name. Alexander Sutherland did so deliver his Oration in 1863 but suggested that his successors should be allowed to use English. In addition, modern Orators have abandoned the habit of naming all benefactors since the list has now grown too long. See SIR GEORGE CLARK History of the Royal College of Physicians of London, v.I, p.299 - '[Harvey] made the College a parting gift. each year [there was to be] a general feast for all the fellows. Here Harvey shows that he valued the social life of the College as Dr. Caius had valued it. On the same day as the dinner there was to be a Latin oration. The orator was to be chosen by the two senior censors and the two senior elects, the same person never being chosen two years running. He was to deliver his oration publicly in the College, commemorating all its benefactors by name, with an exhortation to follow their examples, and another exhortation to the fellows and members to search and study out the secrets of nature by way of experiment. From [the orations] the learned world could judge how the College maintained its standards of civilised intellectual intercourse and professional service. For the historian they provide an illuminating series of considered, if usually very conventional, statements, sometimes accompanied by unconscious revelations.'.

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: An exceptional run, from 1724 [RICHARD MEAD] to 2003 [SIR PAUL NURSE], total of 116 volumes, in original, miscellaneous bindings of paper wrappers, cloth-backed boards or cloth, a few ex-library, all bar one in good to very good condition, the exception being RICHARD CATON, 1904, which is ex-library, internally some leaves marked by damp. Two Orations pre-date 1800, TWENTY-FOUR Orations are from the nineteenth century, the remainder from the twentieth and to date; there are TWELVE presentation ...