500th anniversary of the Linacre Lecture
2024 is the 500th anniversary of the foundation by Thomas Linacre of the Linacre Lecturership in Medicine. This was a stipendiary position held by a Fellow of St John’s until 1908, when College Council changed the form of the post and established instead the annual “Linacre Lecture” to be given by a leading research scientist in the general field of medicine. This year’s lecture was given by Professor Charles Swanton, Deputy Clinical Director of The Francis Crick Institute, on the subject of ‘Air Pollution and Lung Cancer Promotion’
Linacre was a renowned humanist scholar, counting men like Sir Thomas More amongst his close friends, and Erasmus and Prince Arthur (elder brother to Henry VIII) as his pupils. In 1509 he was appointed Physician to King Henry VIII; he is famous for being the driving force behind the foundation of the Royal College of Physicians and its first President. Like Lady Margaret Beaufort, his patronage of academic institutions embraced both Oxford and Cambridge, in both of which places he founded Readerships in Medicine.
The College Archives holds records relating to the lecture at both ends of the chronological spectrum: documents establishing the lecturership as well as audio recordings of the most recent lectures. The draft agreement of June 1524 is a fragile manuscript comprising five sheets of paper stitched together end-to-end and rolled up. The final indenture of agreement, dated August 1524, is a large parchment document in a beautifully clear hand, with four seals and the signatures of Linacre, Cuthbert Tunstall, Bishop of London and John Stokesley. Other archival evidence includes records relating to
Michaelmas 2024
VOLUME 8, ISSUE 1
the estates bequeathed by Linacre to fund the lecturership, and entries in the annual accounts of the stipend paid to lecturers. In 1908, Council stipulated that the lecturer be invited to the annual Feast for the Commemoration of Benefactors, a fitting mark of respect to Linacre and his foresight in providing a means for the most advanced thinking in medicine to be shared.
Too much monkey business?
Image: Agreement between the Master of St John's, Thomas Linacre and others for conveying property to the College to endow a lecture in medicine (SJGR/5/2/43/2).
Lynsey
The Old Library’s collection of rare printed books owes much to donations from individual Johnians, and as such has its eccentricities. One might tell inquisitive visitors about the book of magic tricks for children, or about the dubious pamphlet very much for adults, or about an item that’s been interesting the Special Collections Assistant recently: William Stewart Rose’s Anecdotes of Monkeys (1825; Ff.14.23). The volume was given to the Library by the Johnian mathematician Francis Puryer White (1912), who was Librarian from 1948 to 1961.
William Stewart Rose was admitted to St John’s in 1794; leaving sans degree, he became an MP and, worse, a poet. It has been suggested that he did not devote a great deal of effort to his political duties, and presumably this was what allowed him, in the
time between poems and translations, to compile 183 pages of monkey anecdotes, covering sailor monkeys, French monkeys, Chinese monkeys, a republic of monkeys, and much more on a monkey theme. If you really like monkeys, and if you’re keen on stories about them drinking gin, using currants as styling wax, and racing one another while mounted on cows, then this might be the book for you; for those with broader tastes in fauna, an interlude chapter on ‘Communities of Beasts, Birds, &c’ grants some pages to dog captains, rat governments, and hornets that have ‘adopted Adam Smith’s principles regarding division of labour’. Throughout the book runs the suggestion that monkey behaviour might find parallels in, and indeed be influenced by, human society. (As the comedian Stewart Lee notes, ‘A satire is when it’s the same as here but there’s animals in it.’)
Darby, Archivist
A monkey eating an apple inside an initial D, from f.44r of St John's College MS K.30.
Anecdotes of Monkeys is the work’s alternative title, the primary title being Apology Addressed to the Travellers Club. The Club in question, among whose founders was the Johnian Lord Castlereagh (1786), has survived since 1819 as meeting place for gentlemen (emphatically) whose travels have taken them over five hundred miles (in a straight line) from London, and as a venue for the entertainment of foreign dignitaries. Does the Apology poke
Meet the new Graduate Trainee
I joined St. John’s College Library at the beginning of August this year, almost immediately after graduating from the University of Sheffield with a BA in History. My specialisation was the medieval Mediterranean, focusing on the Islamic empires of the twelfth century Maghreb.
I volunteered at a local community library for most of my degree, so I had a pretty good
fun at the people and conversation likely to be found in such places, or align itself with them? Arguably the real apology should anyway have been reserved for cat lovers, who, after reading the story about the Irish monkey and the kittens, will probably feel it their duty as primates to be eaten by a tiger.
Adam Crothers, Special Collections Assistant
idea of what working in a library would be like. I’m still completely new to academic librarianship, though, and learning more every day!
I’m lucky to have such a wonderful team here to show me the ropes. I’m undertaking a few projects, including trying to improve on the Welfare resources we have available and reclassifying the General Interest novels section.
In my free time (outside of reading) I like to go climbing, both at indoor gyms and out in the countryside. I am still an indoor person at heart, though, so most of my time is spent at home playing games and annoying my cat, Bucket.
Milly Dahmoune, Graduate Trainee
Cambridge Archive Editions Online
Cambridge Archive Editions collection covers national heritage and political developments from the 16th to the 20th centuries for the following regions: Near and Middle East; Slavic, Balkan and Caucasus; East and Southeast Asia and North America. It comprises 141 titles, over 1,000 volumes with nearly 700,000 pages of primary resources and over 750 maps. The collection provides access to invaluable resources for student dissertations and for teaching and research.
The Cambridge Archive Editions Online are hosted on the East View Information Services platform You can view the collection there, search for individual titles on iDiscover or gain access via the A-Z databases or ebooks webpages.
Janet Chow, Academic Services Librarian
BorrowBox audio books
University staff and students now have access to over 300 audiobooks on the BorrowBox platform. These audiobooks include titles based on student requests made through the Libraries Accessibility Services and popular ebook titles, as well as free titles offered by BorrowBox. Titles can be searched on iDiscover. If they are available as audiobooks, the search result is marked with an ‘audio CD’ label. Alternatively, you can search BorrowBox on the A-Z databases webpage and browse the list of audiobooks. Up to five audiobooks can be borrowed at any one
time for a week. You can install the BorrowBox app from the App Store or Google Play. Once the app is installed on your device, search for Cambridge University Library in the ‘Library’ field and use your Raven credentials to log in.
The BorrowBox audiobook platform is managed by the Libraries Accessibility Service and the ebooks team. If you would like to request new material, please contact audiobooks@lib.cam.ac.uk
Want a tour of the College Library from anywhere?
A new Library tour video is now live, welcoming new arrivals for Michaelmas Term 2024 and returners alike. The video offers College members and visitors a floor-by-floor overview of Library resources. Exciting additions to the Library in recent years include: a growing General Interest section in the Ground Floor lobby; a popular silent pod for private study, meetings, and calls; and a refurbished AV room housing both classic and modern films and television on DVD and Blu-Ray with screening facilities. This is all in addition to the thousands of academic texts and journals available throughout the Library’s taught-subject collections, catering for all study and research needs.
For comments on this issue, and contributions to future issues, please contact Janet Chow. Email: jc614@cam.ac.uk; Tel: (3)38662
Janet Chow, Academic Services Librarian Alex Lawless, Library Assistant