Order Catalogue
The purpose of this exhibition, curated by Philip Oldfield, was to pay tribute to Dr. Drake as a book collector and historian of pædiatrics, and to display some of the most significant works from his outstanding collection. The T.G.H. Drake Collection is one of the most comprehensive libraries on the history of pædiatrics in the world. Consisting of approximately 1500 printed books and pamphlets, it is particularly rich in pre-1800 imprints, and includes five incunabula. Among the fifty or so sixteenth-century works are early printings of the writings of the ancient medical authorities (Hippocrates, Celsus, Galen), of the mediæval physicians of Byzantium (Oribasius, Ætius, Paul of Ægineta), and of the Islamic lands (Rhazes, Avicenna, Avenzoar). The Collection also boasts the first works on pædiatrics printed in German (Metlinger), English (Rhösslin, Phaer), French (Vallambert), and Dutch (Blankaart). Other major landmarks of pædiatrics, often in several editions, are also to be found in the Collection. The literature devoted to rickets from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is especially rich. The lengthy debate on inoculation against smallpox in the eighteenth century, leading up to Edward Jenner's development of the technique of vaccination, is well documented. There are also important clinical accounts, many of them first descriptions, of such infant diseases as whooping-cough, chicken-pox, diphtheria, meningitis, mumps, and poliomyelitis.