Autobiography of Dr Karl Ernst von Baer

their holdings of multiple copies. A handful of later lists are included, the most substantial from the seventeenth century being that of John Nidd, dated 1659, with a high proportion of medical books. Where the books were bequeathed to College libraries, as Nidd's were to Trinity and Andrew Perne's to Peterhouse, those still to be found on the College shelves have been identified. The owners form a cross-section of the academic community from the Masters of Colleges to their butlers and cooks, and the collections range from large libraries such as that of Thomas Lorkin, the Regius Professor of Physic, for example, illustrating his acquisition of the latest continental publications and acquaintance with the works of Paracelsus, to the few books of Alice Edwards, widow of David, MD, described as living "comfortably, if untidily (a battledore and a rolling pin were found among her linen)". Such light touches enliven the introductions to individual inventories in which Dr Leedham-Green provides brief biographies and often summarizes the other goods represented in the inventories. Relevant artefacts, such as maps, pictures, and instruments, are included in the transcripts, and this generous practice extends to the entire medical equipment of the "shop" of Robert Pickering, MD (1551), which is, however, omitted from the index of instruments in volume 2. The difficulties ofidentifying books, not to mention editions, from entries in inventories, often highly abbreviated and written down from dictation, are notorious, and Dr Leedham-Green has been conspicuously successful. In the second volume, which doubles the price, but possibly not the usefulness, ofthis work, there is a thorough author-title index with references to Adams, STC, and other bibliographies and catalogues. The valuations of the copies are repeated here and provide matter for speculation, although representing the estimates of the appraisers rather than the books' actual prices; does the variation in price of Vesalius' De humani corporisfabrica from 7s. in 1589 to 1 3s.4d. two years later reflect the condition of the copies? The author-title index is supplemented by a curious classified list of authors in an arrangement derived from Gesner's Pandectae. A guide directly to the subject coverage of the individual lists, however rough, would have been a great advantage, as would an alphabetical index of the owners (they are listed by date of death, in order of matriculation, and by college affiliation). The final production of this monumental labour of fourteen years was facilitated by …