Book of the Month: Winslow’s Anatomy (1776)
This book, An Anatomical Exposition of the Structure of the Human Body (5th ed. London, 1776), by Jacob Benignus Winslow, is a comparatively recent addition to Dun's Library. It was discovered by the Librarian in an antique book dealers shop in Blackrock, Co. Dublin in 1994.
The interest in this particular volume lies in the MS inscription on the fly leaf which indicates that the book was owned by 'Samuel Gordon Jnr, 26 Nth. Frederick St., Dublin' in November 1836.
Samuel Gordon (1816-1898) was President of the College from 1875 to 1877. His presidency is especially remembered for the first admission of women to the College. In a biographical essay in Cameron's History of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, we read: The Dublin Street Directory of 1835 shows that Mr Belton, a surgeon, lived at 26, North Frederick Street. This clearly identifies the book as having been owned by Gordon when he was a medical student.
Jacob Benignus Winslow (1669 – 1760) was a Danish anatomist who became professor of physic, surgery and anatomy at the University of Paris. His classic work on anatomy was first published, in French, in 1732 and translated into English the following year and was to go through several editions. It is acclaimed as the first treatise of descriptive anatomy which disregarded previous hypothetical explanations. As such, it was to remain a standard textbook on the subject for many years, even being used by the young Samuel Gordon a century after its first publication in English.
Robert Mills, RCPI Librarian
'Dr. Gordon entered Trinity College at an unusually early age. On the 29th October 1835, he was apprenticed to Mr. Belton, a Fellow of the College, and took up his abode in that gentleman's house, North Frederick Street'.