The Library of Jonathan Knight (1789-1864) *

In 1940 Dr. Arthur Jackson of the faculty of the Yale School of Medicine brought to our attention the existence of a group of medical books in a barn in Litchfield, Connecticut. They belonged to a Litchfield resident named Mr. Joseph Cowan. Upon enquiry it was discovered that Mr. Cowan was the adopted son of Dr. J. Knight Bacon, whose mother was a daughter of Jonathan Knight, who at the age of twenty-four was appointed Professor of Anatomy when the Medical Institution of Yale College opened its doors in 1813. Dr. Harold S. Burr wrote an illuminating account of Jonathan Knight and his role in the founding and subsequent growth of the Medical Institution in 1929k but at that time was unable to ascertain the fate of his library. Dr. Burr was impressed by the fact that Knight seemed extraordinarily well informed on all phases of medical knowledge of his time and the assumption was that he had access to the latest publications. Knight himself stated that by 1838 the Library of the Medical Institution had a thousand volumes, but it seemed evident that in the early years of his professorship Knight must have had available an extensive personal library. Dr. Burr found that many early copies of the Medical and Surgical Register now in the Yale Medical Library bear Knight's signature, but nothing else from his library appeared to have found its way into the Yale collections. There was considerable excitement, therefore, when it was discovered that the books in the barn in Litchfield bore Jonathan Knight's signature. They had apparently remained in the family since the time of Knight's death, but since no member of the present generation of descendents had followed medicine, Mr. Cowan had expressed a desire to dispose of the books. Unfortunately, several months before we heard of the collection a man representing himself as a bookseller had made off with a part of the library with the understanding that he would later pay Mr. Cowan on a commission basis. The "bookseller" has never been heard from again.2 The belief that Knight had closely followed the literature of medicine was fully vindicated by a study of the books that still remained in Mr. Cowan's