Oxford medicine THE NEWSLETTER OF THE OXFORD MEDICAL ALUMNI OXFORD MEDICINE . JULY 2010
Saving Oxford Medicine The Medical Sciences Division in collaboration with the Bodleian Library is embarking on an ambitious project designed to create a lasting archive of the personal papers of the most important Oxford medical doctors of the 20th and 21st centuries. The aim is to ensure the scientific legacy of this golden period for Oxford medicine is preserved for the benefit of future researchers, and to help Oxford explain and communicate the great contribution of its medical scientists. Since its earliest days, when great commentaries on Hippocrates and Galen were given by the early donors, the Bodleian Library has counted medical manuscripts among its most important collections. For over four hundred years, the Library has acquired the medical manuscripts of other collectors (such as Kenelm Digby), and has enriched its medical holdings with the personal and working papers of Oxford Faculty — including, for example the papers of Sir Henry Wentworth Acland, Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford 1858–94 — as well as the papers of other medicine-related organisations, such as the Oxford Medical Club. That giant of Oxford Medicine, Sir William Osler (1849–1919) was an habitué of, and major donor to, the Bodleian and was given special privileges as a reader. Osler presented it with (among more obvious donations of books and manuscripts) a wonderful clock that still strikes the most melodious tones on the half-hour. The story of Oxford as a major player in world medicine can also be told in part by the Bodleian’s Library of Commonwealth and African Studies, which looks after the papers of many individuals engaged in colonial medical service, the many medical missionary organisations based in Oxford, as well as significant institutional archives, such as the Overseas Nursing Association. The readers of this publication hardly need to be reminded that over the past twenty or thirty years the University's Medical Sciences Division has grown to be one of the world’s greatest centres for medical research and teaching, and is today the largest of the University's five academic divisions. But the preservation of the personal
and academic papers of the great medical doctors who made that spectacular growth possible has not happened in a strategic way, and the papers of some major medical players have been lost. The Bodleian and the Medical Sciences Division now intend to rectify this situation with a major project which will aim to raise awareness of the issue among the medical community, undertake a thorough survey of potential archives, and begin the process of establishing a major resource which documents the rise of Oxford’s medicine. The project will also provide access to the materials via the internet (as well as in the Bodleian itself), establish the basis for an ongoing collecting of papers, and lay the foundations for exhibitions, publications, websites and other ways of communicating with both the Oxford Medical Alumni and the general public about the extraordinary story of Oxford medicine. Currently the papers created by the Oxford Medical Faculty are distributed among departments located on several sites around Oxford, and are also located in the homes of retired Faculty members — whether in paper form or in digital form, on personal computers. This represents a significant proportion of the records of contemporary and recent medicine in Oxford, and poses a preservation challenge to the University. Fortunately the Bodleian has one of the most experienced archival teams in the world, and has the ability to manage a project on this scale. The Library is keenly aware that more must be done to ensure that archives documenting contemporary and recent medical research at Oxford will be preserved and made accessible to future historians alongside the Library's historic holdings. Physical collections are vulnerable in the context of new building projects and the unending and necessary quest for staff and lab space, as for example in the case of a small but important collection identified at the Dunn School of Pathology. But we are also concerned about components of this material that exist only in digital forms and are therefore vulnerable to physical decay and technological obsolescence.
David Weatherall
Contents A New Course in Biomedical Sciences
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Letter from the President .3 In the news . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4 Patients' Experiences of Health and Illness . . . . . . .7 The Human Genome Project – 10 years on Obituaries Events
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