By Emma Laws, Cathedral Librarian
Earlier this year, I presented a talk at The Royal Society’s conference on ‘Libraries of Science’. This one-day event brought together science historians, book historians, academics, librarians and curators to highlight the role that libraries have played in collecting, preserving and disseminating scientific knowledge. It was an excellent opportunity to celebrate the legacy of Exeter’s founding physician, Thomas Glass, who bequeathed his medical books to the Exeter Cathedral Library in 1786, establishing one of the country’s largest institutional collections of science and medicine.
The story begins with Sir Alured Clarke, Dean of Exeter from January 1741 to May 1742. Previously, while a prebendary at Winchester Cathedral, Clarke had been instrumental in founding Winchester’s hospital – he had even drafted its constitution. During his short time as Dean of Exeter, Clarke proposed the idea for a hospital for Exeter and laid its foundation stone. He appointed Thomas Glass as one of six founding physicians.
Born in Tiverton, Thomas Glass studied medicine at Leiden under the great Hermann Boerhaave before returning to Devon, initially to Tiverton and then to Exeter in 1740. He was a founding member of the Exeter Medical Society and became President of the hospital in 1785. In his will, drawn up in 1783, Glass bequeathed his substantial library of medical books to the Dean and Chapter of Exeter with the requirement that it must: “permit any physician being an inhabitant of the city of Exeter to have recourse to them at proper times in the library…”. His act of generosity introduced a new public readership to the Exeter Cathedral Library and established a legacy that continues today.
Thomas Glass would surely have been delighted to think that nearly 250 years later, students at Exeter University Medical School would still be coming to the Exeter Cathedral Library to consult his books. In fact, we are a course provider of one of the University’s fourth year longitudinal studies in Medical Humanities – this year’s students have just submitted their final assignments, and we are looking forward to hearing their presentations at the conference in June. Medical Humanities courses give students an opportunity to develop a broader and more compassionate frame of reference when treating people. As the course handbook suggests, “Humanities help us to understand what a human being is, and why they matter.” Our module, ‘What Can History Tell Us?’, runs for a year and introduces medical students to the material history of their chosen profession and to the giants of medical history on whose shoulders they stand.