{"id":6616,"date":"2026-08-21T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stevenallain.co.uk\/Blog\/?p=6616"},"modified":"2026-08-18T23:31:04","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T22:31:04","slug":"scifri-a-body-of-knowledge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevenallain.co.uk\/Blog\/scifri-a-body-of-knowledge\/","title":{"rendered":"#SciFri: A Body of Knowledge\u00a0at the Royal College of Physicians"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As you may have seen from the recently #MuseumMonday post, I visited the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) Museum<\/a>, which is located in in Regent\u2019s Park. While I was there, I visited the temporary exhibition A Body of Knowledge<\/em> which offered an opportunity to explore an aspect of the College\u2019s history that can easily be overshadowed by its more visually dramatic medical collections. Rather than concentrating on anatomical specimens, surgical instruments, portraits or other material evidence of medical practice, the exhibition turned attention towards books. If you know me, then you know I love books! The subject of this exhibition was the RCP Heritage Library and, more particularly, the 500-year history of collecting, preserving, using and interpreting books within the College. <\/p>\n\n\n

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The information board that welcomes you to the exhibition<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The exhibition’s central premise was that a library is considerably more than a storehouse of information. In this context, books reveal what physicians wanted to know, what they believed, what they considered worth preserving and how they understood their relationship with the wider intellectual world. The RCP has maintained a library continuously since its foundation in 1518, and its holdings have consequently developed alongside medicine itself. The collection provides an unusually long record of changing medical knowledge, but it also records the changing interests, ambitions and identities of the physicians who created it. This made A Body of Knowledge<\/em> an important complement to the RCP’s permanent museum displays. The College’s museum is particularly effective at presenting the material history of medicine through objects: anatomical tables, instruments, silverware, portraits and other artefacts (see my previous post for more information). The exhibition demonstrated that books are equally material objects. Their bindings, paper, type, illustrations, annotations, ownership marks and evidence of use can all tell stories. <\/p>\n\n\n

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A home for the books documenting the history of the RCP library with some examples of the texts in the collection<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The history of the RCP Library begins with the foundation of the College itself. Established by royal charter in 1518 under Henry VIII, the RCP rapidly developed the characteristics of a learned institution. The possession of books was central to that identity. Physicians required access to authoritative medical texts for their education and professional practice, while a substantial library also demonstrated the intellectual status of the College. The library was built substantially through gifts of books and money from Fellows and members. Consequently, it was never simply a centrally planned collection assembled according to a single policy. Instead, it became a reflection of individual interests. Physicians donated books that they considered valuable, and their choices introduced subjects far beyond the narrowly medical. The resulting collection therefore provides a portrait not only of medicine but of the intellectual worlds occupied by physicians across five centuries. This is one of the exhibition’s most interesting themes. A physician’s library might contain medical texts alongside works on philosophy, theology, natural history, languages, geography, mathematics, astronomy and literature. Such eclecticism reminds us that the boundaries between academic disciplines were considerably less rigid in earlier periods. A physician could simultaneously be a clinician, scholar, natural philosopher, collector and participant in broader intellectual networks.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Am I the only one that enjoys looking at medieval books and wondering who had previously flicked through the pages?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The library consequently became a physical representation of the ideal of the learned physician. Possessing and reading books was part of being a member of an intellectual profession. The exhibition demonstrated that the history of the RCP’s library is therefore inseparable from the history of what it meant to be a physician. One of the most important functions of the library was educational. Before the modern abundance of journals, online databases and digital resources, books were essential tools through which physicians acquired and consolidated knowledge. The exhibition asked visitors to consider what doctors actually read and how that reading shaped medical practice. This is particularly significant when considering physicians trained in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Medical education remained strongly influenced by the classical authorities, particularly Hippocrates and Galen. Students were expected to acquire a detailed understanding of established medical theory, but this intellectual inheritance was increasingly supplemented by new observations and publications. The RCP’s collections provide evidence of this transition. Physicians could consult traditional texts while simultaneously encountering new anatomical discoveries, botanical observations, descriptions of diseases and alternative theories of the body. The library therefore preserves the tension between inherited authority and new knowledge that characterised early modern medicine.<\/p>\n\n\n

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It is also important to acknowledge the donors that have helped made the RCP library what it is<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The exhibition’s title, A Body of Knowledge<\/em>, is particularly appropriate in this context. Medical knowledge was literally constructed through books. Anatomical diagrams, descriptions of symptoms, case histories, pharmaceutical recipes and theoretical discussions allowed observations to be recorded, compared and transmitted between generations. Books made knowledge portable and durable. The exhibition also encouraged visitors to recognise that medical books were not necessarily passive sources of information. They were tools that physicians actively used. Annotations, marginalia, underlining and other marks of ownership demonstrate that readers engaged with their books, sometimes challenging, correcting or supplementing the printed text. One of the most revealing aspects of an historic library is evidence of how its books were read. A pristine book can tell us about its production, but an annotated book can tell us about its reader. Notes in margins, changes to text, inserted material and other interventions transform books into records of intellectual activity. The RCP collection contains evidence of this kind of engagement. The books preserve traces of generations of readers, allowing researchers to investigate not only what physicians possessed but what they actually studied. This is especially valuable for understanding periods in which formal records of education and reading habits are limited.<\/p>\n\n\n

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A closer look at some of the donors that made significant contributions to the growth of the RCP library<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Annotations can also reveal disagreement. A physician might question an established claim, add an observation from personal experience or cross-reference another author. Such interventions provide glimpses into the process by which medical knowledge was evaluated and developed. This is one reason why the preservation of original books is so important. A modern digital reproduction can reproduce the words and images of a volume, but it may not fully communicate the physical evidence of its use. The position of a note, the pressure of a pen, the colour of an ink and the relationship between annotation and printed text can all contribute to interpretation. A Body of Knowledge<\/em> consequently demonstrated that the library is an archive of intellectual behaviour as well as an accumulation of texts. The exhibition also made a strong case for considering books as objects. Early printed books can be beautiful examples of craftsmanship, containing elaborate bindings, woodcuts, engraved illustrations, decorative type and carefully designed pages. Their production required the collaboration of printers, publishers, illustrators, binders and other specialists. This material dimension is particularly evident in the RCP’s rare book collections. Some volumes are imposing objects whose physical scale reflects their importance. Others are comparatively small and portable, designed to be carried and consulted by physicians away from a permanent library.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Now that is a book! Tables of the Skeleton and Muscles of the Human Body<\/em> by Bernard Siegfried Albinus (1749) provides almost life-size depictions of the body<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The distinction between a book as an information source and a book as an artefact is important for museum interpretation. Visitors can easily regard books as containers of text and therefore overlook their physical characteristics. Yet the physical form of a book can reveal its intended audience, cost, function and cultural status. The exhibition’s displays of open books encouraged close visual inspection. Instead of seeing a row of anonymous volumes on shelves, visitors encountered individual objects with distinctive identities. The pages became displays in themselves, revealing illustrations, typography, diagrams and handwritten interventions. This approach also helped connect the library with the wider museum. The RCP’s anatomical tables, medical instruments and other objects demonstrate how physicians investigated the body. The books reveal how those investigations were recorded, communicated and debated. A particularly strong feature of the exhibition was its refusal to treat the library as a purely medical collection. The RCP’s books reveal the extraordinary breadth of intellectual interests among its members. This eclecticism is historically important. Physicians were often interested in subjects that today might be regarded as separate academic disciplines. Natural history, botany and medicine, for example, were closely connected. Understanding medicinal plants required botanical knowledge; understanding disease could require knowledge of climate and geography; and understanding the body involved anatomy, philosophy and natural history.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The RCP Library also has a collection of items linked to the printing and binding of books, such as typesets, finishing stamps and binding tools<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The library therefore reflects a period when knowledge was interconnected. Physicians could move between subjects because the intellectual world had not yet developed the sharply defined disciplinary boundaries familiar today. This broader context also helps explain the presence of books in languages other than English. The exhibition explored physicians reading in multiple languages, demonstrating that medical knowledge was international. Latin remained fundamental to learned communication, while works in Greek, Arabic and other languages provided access to important traditions of medical and scientific scholarship. One particularly notable item highlighted by the exhibition was an Arabic edition of Avicenna’s Canon of Medicine<\/em>, printed in Rome in 1593 and heavily annotated. Its presence illustrates the international circulation of medical knowledge and the importance of Islamic scholarship to the European medical tradition. Research presented alongside the exhibition examined the Elizabethan physician Lancelot Browne and his Arabic books, shedding new light on early English engagement with Arabic-language knowledge. Such examples challenge simplistic narratives in which medical progress is portrayed as exclusively European or as a straightforward movement from ignorance to modern science. The history preserved in the library is considerably more interconnected.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Not all of the books in the collection are anatomical. Some like Insectorum sive minimorum animalium theatrum<\/em> by Thomas Moffett (1634) are zoological in nature <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Another theme was the changing medical curriculum. The books held by the RCP can be used to reconstruct what physicians were expected to know at different points in history. In earlier periods, students encountered a curriculum dominated by classical medical theory. Galenic concepts of anatomy, physiology and disease remained highly influential. Yet the publication of new anatomical works gradually transformed the intellectual environment. Illustrated anatomical books were especially important. Images allowed complex structures to be communicated in ways that written descriptions alone could not achieve. They helped standardise anatomical knowledge and gave readers access to representations of structures that they might not otherwise have been able to observe directly. The exhibition connected books with the development of observation-based medicine. As physicians increasingly valued direct examination, measurement and anatomical investigation, books became repositories for new forms of evidence. This relationship between image and knowledge is particularly apparent in the RCP’s anatomical atlases. The exhibition’s associated programme invited visitors to look inside the library’s largest and most spectacular book, an anatomical atlas dating from 1749. Such an atlas demonstrates that books could function almost as laboratories on paper. They brought together observations, illustrations and explanatory text, enabling readers to study the human body without having a specimen physically in front of them.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Linked to the gardens within the Royal College of Physicians, the RCP also has its own herbarium!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Perhaps the most compelling aspect of A Body of Knowledge<\/em> was the story of the library itself. Its history has not been one of uninterrupted stability. The collection has experienced fire, neglect, financial difficulties, changes of location and wartime damage. The survival of the library is therefore a story of rescue as much as collecting. The greatest catastrophe came with the Great Fire of London in 1666. The RCP’s premises and much of its library were destroyed. The loss was devastating, but the collection was subsequently rebuilt, in part through donations. Among the most significant contributors was Lady Grace Pierrepont. Her seventeenth-century donation of books played a major role in re-establishing the library after the Great Fire. The exhibition’s associated Making Visible<\/em> installation brought this history to greater prominence by displaying a portrait of Lady Grace Pierrepont in the Dorchester Library for the first time. The survival story is important because it demonstrates that heritage collections do not simply survive automatically. They survive because individuals and institutions make decisions to protect, collect, conserve and sometimes rescue them. The exhibition therefore presented the library as a living historical survivor. Its contents have been shaped not only by the interests of physicians but also by accidents and crises.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Perhaps one of the most important books in all of anatomy: De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem<\/em> by Andreas Vesalius (1543)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The exhibition did not present the library’s history as an uncomplicated story of intellectual achievement. The RCP itself describes the story as one involving “curiosity, commitment and exploration” but also exploitation, neglect, rescue and survival. This is an important acknowledgement. Historic collections inevitably reflect the inequalities of the societies that produced them. Wealth, professional status, colonial networks and access to education all influenced who could acquire books and whose knowledge was preserved. The provenance of individual books can therefore be as significant as their contents. A volume may have passed through several owners before entering the RCP, and those ownership histories can reveal networks of physicians, collectors and institutions. The study of provenance is increasingly important within museum and library collections because it encourages institutions to examine how objects were acquired. It can expose forgotten histories of ownership and reveal relationships between collecting and wider systems of power. A Body of Knowledge<\/em> thus moved beyond a celebratory narrative of collecting. The library’s survival is impressive, but survival does not mean that every aspect of its history is uncomplicated. As a collector of books (among other things), it certainly gave me some ideas and spoke to me on a level where I could appreciate the history of the collection.<\/p>\n\n\n

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A number of interesting books the collection including Philosophi\u00e6 Naturalis Principia Mathematica<\/em> by Isaac Newton (1687) and Historia Naturalis de Avibus<\/em> by John Jonston published between 1650 and 1653 as part of his larger Historia Naturalis Animalium<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The exhibition’s most important broader argument concerns professional identity. Physicians have historically regarded themselves as members of a learned profession, and the library has helped sustain that identity. The presence of an impressive library within the RCP communicated that physicians were scholars as well as practitioners. Books represented learning, authority and intellectual discipline. A doctor was expected not merely to treat patients but to possess knowledge of the literature underpinning medical practice. This helps explain why the library remains central to the College’s ceremonial life. The Dorchester Library, designed as a focal space within Sir Denys Lasdun’s RCP building, continues to embody the value the College places on learning. Its contents are also used by students and researchers from around the world. The juxtaposition of historic books with Lasdun’s modern architecture is particularly effective. The building dates from the twentieth century, while many of the books date from centuries earlier. Together they express continuity rather than contradiction: an institution can embrace modern architecture and scientific medicine while preserving its intellectual heritage.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Some of the RCP Library is on display throughout the rest of the collection, such as this copy of Mathematical Collections and Translations<\/em> which was a two-volume work compiled and translated by Thomas Salusbury, published between 1661 and 1665<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The exhibition also invited reflection on the changing nature of medical information. The physicians who built the RCP Library depended on physical books because they had no alternative. Contemporary doctors work within an environment dominated by online journals, electronic databases, digital libraries and rapid information exchange. This transformation makes historic libraries increasingly valuable. When access to information becomes instantaneous, it is easy to forget how difficult it was to obtain reliable knowledge in earlier periods. A historical medical book embodies a very different information economy. The contrast is particularly striking in relation to the RCP’s current library services. Modern RCP members and Fellows have access to electronic journals, ebooks, databases and literature-searching resources. The historic library therefore represents one end of a continuum whose other end is today’s digital knowledge environment. Yet the exhibition suggests that books have not become irrelevant. Their physicality provides evidence that digital resources cannot reproduce completely. They preserve the marks of individual readers, the history of their ownership and the material conditions under which knowledge was produced. As many of you know, I still prefer physical copies of books and journals, which is why I house a vast collection of them. There is nothing quite like the tactile nature of flicking through a book to find the information that you are looking for.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Elsewhere are the books that Salusbury translated, including Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo<\/em> by Galileo Galilei (1632) seen at the centre of this display<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The real achievement of A Body of Knowledge<\/em> was to make a library visible. Libraries are often difficult museum subjects because their contents can appear static. Thousands of books on shelves may be impressive, but without interpretation it can be difficult for visitors to understand why they matter. The exhibition solved this problem by concentrating on stories. Instead of attempting to display the library comprehensively, it used selected books to explore larger questions: How did doctors learn? What did they read? Who donated books? How did knowledge move between cultures? How were books used? What happens when a library is destroyed? Whose contributions have been forgotten? And how does a historic library remain relevant in a digital age? These questions make the exhibition much more than a display of rare books. The title itself is effective because it operates on several levels. ‘Body’ refers directly to the RCP’s medical identity and to the human body that has been central to its work. ‘Knowledge’ refers to the intellectual content of the library. Together, the phrase suggests that medicine is a body of accumulated knowledge, constantly constructed, revised and transmitted. The title also subtly reverses the relationship between medicine and books. A medical library contains knowledge about the body, but the library itself can be understood as a ‘body’ of knowledge: an accumulated organism that grows, changes and survives.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Let us ponder how the books in the RCP Library link back to the herbarium. These are specimens of Strophanthus kombe<\/em>, a plant used to treat heart failure. Historically, how would this information have been collated and disseminated in an age before the internet or telecommunications? You’ve guessed it, books!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

For visitors familiar with the RCP’s more spectacular objects, A Body of Knowledge<\/em> provided an opportunity to encounter a quieter but equally important dimension of the institution. The Prujean Chest can immediately communicate the violence and practical realities of early surgery; the anatomical tables offer an extraordinary physical record of human anatomy; portraits provide faces and personalities. Books operate differently. Their significance develops through close inspection and contextual understanding. The RCP’s Heritage Library contains more than 50,000 titles spanning approximately 550 years, and its current rare books librarian, Katie Birkwood, has been responsible for the care of the collection since 2012 and served as lead curator of A Body of Knowledge<\/em>. The exhibition demonstrated what can be achieved when a library collection is treated not simply as a research resource but as a museum collection with stories to tell. In an age when medical information can be accessed almost instantaneously through digital devices, the exhibition also provided a valuable opportunity to reconsider the meaning of a library. The physicians of the past depended upon physical books to construct their understanding of the human body and the diseases that affected it. Those books remain as material witnesses to that process. Although A Body of Knowledge<\/em> closed at the RCP on 23 July 2026, its central argument remains relevant: understanding the history of medicine requires more than studying discoveries and treatments. It requires understanding the knowledge systems that made those discoveries possible and the people who preserved them. The RCP’s five-century-old library is therefore not simply a collection of historic books. It is an enduring record of how physicians have sought to understand the world, themselves and the human body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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