Longstanding AOS member Nadeem Toodayan was recently awarded the 2023-2024 Archives Fine Book Collectors Prize for Young Australians. The national prize was awarded for his competition-winning essay describing his collection of historical medical books, including his extensive collection of Osleriana. Nadeem joined the Book Collectors Society of Australia (BCSA) in February 2023 following an online discussion with affiliated colleagues concerning the fate of Leslie Cowlishaw's (1877-1943) history of medicine library – William Osler personally met with and introduced Cowlishaw to the curator of the Bodleian Library in 1915 as a very learned "bibliophile from the bush." It was at a meeting of the BCSA late last year that Nadeem first learnt of the Archives Fine Book Collectors Prize. He submitted his entry just in time before the end-of-year deadline and was delighted to be notified on his 35th Birthday that he had won the prize! Through connections with the BCSA, the Fellowship of American Bibliophilic Societies recently picked up on and published Nadeem's prize-winning essay on their website: https://www.fabsocieties.org/an-oslerian-obsession-or-broodings-of-a-brisbane-bibliophile.
An Oslerian Obsession, or, Broodings of a Brisbane Bibliophile
I am not infrequently introduced by family members to visitors as a hoarder of books. My mother thinks I’m crazy about them. But I for one cannot see what all the fuss is about, as mine is but a modest and mostly well-kept collection. I can draw on any required volume from my library in an instant, have only a few duplicate editions, and have rarely if ever lost books purchased for my personal use. Onlookers may consider my fondness for books extravagant but there really aren’t even that many of them – last I counted, a measly five hundred or so flanked the shelves.
Over the past ten years or so, I’ve assembled a small, personalised library focusing mainly on medical biography and the history of scientific medicine. Broadly considered, all the books in my library have been acquired either for i) their historic scientific or clinical significance, ii) the author’s significance, or, iii) the content’s direct relation to my historical medical researches. Seasonal additions to the library often follow significant medical anniversaries, as I would routinely purchase books relating to the subject of my reminiscences. Most of the medical biographies in my collection were acquired this way, and I would try to supplement each of these with works of the individual biographee wherever possible.
My one great specialty is Osleriana, or books by, about, and relating to the leading nineteenth-century humanist-physician and medical educator, William Osler (1849-1919). It would be difficult for me to talk in measured terms about the abiding influence of Osler’s life and work in medicine on my own career attitudes and professional outlook, but suffice it to say that after over ten years of devouring anything and everything written by or about Dr Osler, I have now compiled what is to the best of my knowledge, one of the most complete collections of Osleriana in Australia. I remember looking into the Royal Australasian College of Physician’s (RACP) History of Medicine Library some years ago, seeking to inspect their Osler holdings. I was both dismayed and delighted with what I found: dismayed that one of the country’s most significant public repositories of historical medical texts appeared to have been so woefully deficient in Osleriana; delighted with the realisation that my own collection was apparently more expansive than that of the RACP!
My book collecting journey began during my medical school years (2007-2011), wherein I was drawn, by some inexplicable force, to examine the lives and contributions of those who had helped shape the profession. I started out, innocently enough, as a forager of the original printed works of eponymously commemorated doctors like Addison, Hodgkin, and Cushing – names known to every medical student, primarily through the diseases they described. And when I say “printed works”, I mean “I myself printed”, that is, I would download the freely available original works online, and then print and bind them for private use. It wasn’t long before I had tracked down Thomas Addison’s (1793-1860) 1855 essay on the Supra-Renal Capsules, Thomas Hodgkin’s (1798-1866) 1832 article on the Absorbent Glands and Spleen, and Harvey Cushing’s (1869-1939) 1932 monograph on The Basophil Adenomas of the Pituitary Body. I was completely enthralled by the clinical mastery and literary erudition of these works, reading them several times over. Little did I know at this time that it was possible to purchase the originals.
I acquired Michael Bliss’ (1941-2017) paperback biography of William Osler: A Life in Medicine (1999) shortly after graduating in 2011. This was one of the first medical biographies I ever bought and really got me to know better the great physician-bibliophile whom I had known about in medical school mostly as the celebrated namesake for “Osler’s nodes” and some other syndromes. Judge of my delight, when about five years later I received a beautiful hardcover presentation copy of the same volume signed by the author! Today this is a centrepiece display item in my private study. It wasn’t long after reading Bliss’ biography that I decided I must purchase Cushing’s original Pulitzer Prize winning Life of Sir William Osler (1925), which was published only five years after Osler’s death. I hadn’t yet got into the habit of buying originals and therefore settled for an attractive Gryphon Editions reprint of the biography.
This introduced me to the company’s “Classics of Medicine” series, which appealed to me greatly. I lapped up several desirable leather volumes, including the seminal works of many distinguished medical authors like Virchow, Lister, Laennec, Willis, Hunter, Boerhaave, Kaposi, and many, many more. And so the roots of my own historical medical library first began to take hold. These modern gilt-edged and gold embossed leather remakes of the originals make for a dazzling display, more especially if flooded in a glass cabinet with well dispersed artificial light – as I was so lucky to have installed for me by my resourceful twin-brother. I still remember our shared satisfaction on first switching on the lights in the darkened room, as:
doubly fair the Aldine pages seem,
Where, broadly gilt, illumin’d letters gleam1
But what good are all these facsimiles without the originals? And what good is an original without a first edition? And what good is a first edition without a dust wrapper? And what good is all of that without the author’s inscription? Year by year, the “bibliomania” virus slowly set in, and I found it increasingly difficult to resist increasingly frequent purchases. Some of these purchases still stand out in my memory. I will relate a few illustrative examples. Very early on in my writing career, I authored an amateur centenary monograph on Jonathan Hutchinson (1828-1913) and with my brother’s assistance, uploaded an online video tribute to YouTube for the anniversary. I was very pleasantly surprised, quite some years later, to receive an unsolicited message from a fellow YouTuber, asking if I’d like to purchase a full set of Hutchinson’s historical ten-volume Archives of Surgery (1889-1900) which had been neglected in his home and was about to be disposed of. I couldn’t believe my luck! Such complete editions are almost impossible to come by today, except in very specialised historical medical libraries. I later got hold of a few more of Hutchinson’s works but the full set of the Archives is undoubtedly one of the most prized items in my collection.
“When anything turns up which is anomalous or peculiar, anything upon which the textbooks are silent, and the systems and cyclopaedias dumb, I tell my students to turn to the volumes of Mr. Hutchinson’s Archives of Surgery.” -William Osler, 4th July 1900.2
Many an inspired book collector will have waited impatiently for their online purchases to arrive from overseas. These are always exhilarating to receive, but imagine opening something much more valuable than what was originally advertised. This happened to me when I purchased at almost negligible cost, a small specially-bound offprint copy of William Gowers’ (1845-1915) 1894 Dynamics of Life lecture. The book was inconspicuously advertised with remarks to the effect of “previous owner’s name on verso.” Imagine my gratitude to find that the book was actually an inscribed presentation copy to Gordon Morgan Holmes (1876-1965) – the prolific Irish neurologist who standardised the modern neurological clinical examination. Another outstanding neurologist-writer represented in my collection is Macdonald Critchley (1900-1997) who was once Gordon Holmes’ house physician. I well remember wanting to buy much more than I could afford of Critchley’s own historical library when it went up for sale a few years ago, but “responsibly” chose only a limited number of items. I’m still not sure if I made the right decision. Opportunities like that come once in a lifetime!
At the time of his death in late December of 1919, William Osler had amassed a remarkable collection of some 7800 volumes pertaining to the history of medicine and science. He bequeathed his collection to his alma mater of McGill University in Montreal where it now constitutes one of the world’s premiere medical history libraries. I am not remotely as ambitious in my collecting tendencies or goals but sympathise entirely with the ideal of Osler’s Library – a well organised and catalogued tribute to the history of medicine and science. Like all good bibliophiles, I instinctively understood Osler’s January 1911 bibliomania confession to the International Association of Antiquarian Booksellers in London:
You see here before you a mental, moral, almost, I may say, a physical wreck—and all of your own making. Until I became mixed up with you I was really a respectable, God-fearing, industrious, earnest, ardent, enthusiastic, energetic student. Now what am I? A mental wreck, devoted to nothing but your literature. Instead of attending to my duties and attending to my work, in comes every day by the post, and by every post, all this seductive literature with which you have, as you know perfectly well, gradually undermined the mental virility of many and many a better man than I.3
Osler went on to remark that “I will have in the next generation at any rate a deep and lasting revenge” when some of his own medical books would become antiquarian collectables – which he considered would be worthless! I and many others have wilfully facilitated the good physician’s desired recompense.
References
1. Ferriar J. The Bibliomania. An Epistle, to Richard Heber, Esq. Philadelphia: Hawthorne Press, 1866, p. 13.
2. Osler W. An Address on the Importance of Post-Graduate Study: Delivered at the Opening of the Museums of the Medical Graduates College and Polyclinic, July 4th, 1900. Br Med J. 1900 Jul 14; 2(2063): 73-75. Quoted on page 73.
3. [Unsigned, Osler W.] The International Association of Antiquarian Booksellers [at the Criterion Restaurant, Piccadilly Circus, Thursday, January 26, 1911]. The Bookseller, 3 February 1911, pp. 143-146. Osler’s remarks are quoted on pages 144-145.