By Kelsey Koym, Archivist and Special Collections Librarian
Introduction
This blog post is about the provenance of McGovern Historical Center’s copy of the first edition of Andreas Vesalius’ De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem (De Humani), or “On the Structure of the Human Body in Seven Books,” published in 1543. Before this investigation, McGovern was not sure what year the TMC Library was gifted the book and had little information about this copy’s background. This post will highlight the research process behind how it took several resources (and a considerable amount of time) to piece together what we can say for certainty about the provenance of McGovern’s De Humani, and what is also speculated.
Provenance of McGovern’s Copy: The Starting Point
It is not a mystery of who gifted McGovern’s copy of De Humani, as we do have a bookplate that states the donors’ name. However, it was unclear what year McGovern came into possession of the work, and where the book came from before the item was gifted.
There are two provenancial documents that are kept with McGovern’s De Humani. One of these is a book plate that lists the names of the donors. In the bookplate the donors are listed as “Dr. And Mrs. Hampton C. Robinson.” Yet, the book plate does not give the year that the artifact was given to the Friends of the Texas Medical Center Library.
Alas, the donor names gave us a clue to check the donor card catalogue.
McGovern still has the Donors section of the original card catalogue that identifies the donors of different gifts to the TMC Library and what would later become McGovern Historical Center.
Unfortunately, the year our copy was donated, was not on the card catalog! This was not a dead end because I still needed to examine the other provenancial document that we had with our copy of De Humani.
The Letter from Ida W. Schuman
The document is ambiguous, but it appears to be correspondence from someone named Ida W. Schuman regarding the specific copy of McGovern’s De Humani. It would have been helpful to have had Dr. Robinson’s side of the correspondence, but that correspondence nor his papers were ever donated to McGovern. Clues from the letter would help me get closer to knowing who Dr. Robinson may have purchased the book from, and when it was donated.
The letter itself is not dated, but there is a citation listed in the letter dated ‘1953.’ This gave the year 1953 as a tentative starting date for when the book may have been purchased and/or donated.
(Side note: The article the citation refers to is about two different copies of the 1543 De Humani; not McGovern’s copy. The article discusses two copies that survived World War II, and the descriptions of the two copies from the citation’s article are definitely not the same as our copy. This is inferred from the fact that the description of McGovern’s De Humani matches the description from Ida W. Schuman’s letter, and the descriptions of the copies from the article do not fit our copy in terms of binding and pagination details.)
The name “Ida W. Schuman” is on the top left corner of the provenancial document, so this was the breadcrumb I followed. I ran a search in various databases through TMC Library on “Ida Schuman” because McGovern did have not any information or collection regarding this person. What I found gave me my ending date for when McGovern’s copy of De Humani was either purchased and/or donated.
The article I found on Ida Schuman was essentially her obituary that was published in the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences. According to Thomson (1977) Ida W. Schuman was in the rare book business with her husband Henry Schuman, and they specialized in the selling of rare medical books. Ida wrote in the letterhead the address of her and her husband’s rare book business “2211 Broadway” in their correspondence with their clients (Thomson, 1977, p. 431). This is the same address that is listed on the provenancial document that McGovern received with our copy of De Humani.
Based on these details from the obituary and from the provenancial letter, I am confident that the Ida W. Schuman from the letter and the one in the article where one and the same. According to Thomson (1977), Ida Schuman passed away in July 1977 after her husband, who passed away in 1962. Since I highly doubted Dr. Robinson would have received a letter from the deceased, my ending date range for when the book was either purchased and/or donated was 1977.
So, I turned to the Library’s early Accession logs to see if past TMC Librarians had possibly logged this accession between 1953-1977.
A Side Quest Narrows the Date Range
From McGovern’s Collection IC 001 Houston Academy of Medicine-Texas Medical Center Library records, we have accession logs of what journals, books, and donations were additions to the Library’s collection. These journals predate even the creation of the McGovern Historical Center. The earliest accession log dates to 1927.
Based on the date range I had (i.e. 1953-1977), I looked through 3 accession logs that spanned between the years 1953-1961, which took 3.5 hours. I emphasize this because whenever using primary resources, it can take a considerable amount of time to find a singular data point such as a year that a book was donated. Unfortunately, we do not have the accession logs for after January 1961.
These logs are fascinating and include the donation of one of McGovern’s earliest rare book collections, The Burbank-Fraser Collection on Arthritis, Rheumatism and Gout. Yet, I still found no entry for when the De Humani was donated to the TMC Library. This lead me to believe that the book must have been donated sometime after January 1961, since this is where the accession logs end. This further narrowed the date range of when the book was donated, so now I was looking between the years January 1961 -July 1977.
Back to the Book Plate
So, I backtracked to the Book Plate.
“Who” the book was gifted to is a clue because the book plate says, “Honoring Friends of the Texas Medical Center Library,” and, “This Volume has been placed in the permanent collection of The Texas Medical Center Library Through Friends of the Texas Medical Center Library.” This means that the Friends of the Texas Medical Center Library had to exist, and according to the Articles of Incorporation from IC 090, the Friends of the Library didn’t legally exist until 1960.
This reaffirmed that McGovern’s copy of De Humani was donated possibly between the years of January 1961- July 1977, since the gift was not logged into the accession records, and was donated specifically to The Friends of the Texas Medical Center Library.
This information helped me run a search in McGovern’s website AToM, where I used the search parameters I had gathered, and narrowed the search with the date range 1961-1977. That’s when I finally found a primary resource in our own collections that named the exact year McGovern’s copy of De Humani was donated.
At Last We Know the Year
The Texas Medical Center Library Annual Report from 1961 from collection IC 001 Houston Academy of Medicine-Texas Medical Center Library records, held the answer. In this report Dr. Hampton C. Robinson is listed as an ex officio member of the Library Committee and his title is President of the Houston Academy of Medicine.
The Texas Medical Center Library Annual Report (1961) states:
The first issue of the Library Door, a quarterly publication of the Friends, appeared in the autumn and the second issue in the winter. Much interest in the library has been stimulated, and donations amounting to about $20,000 have been received by the Friends. The most notable donation to the library through the Friends was the gift by Dr. and Mrs. Hampton C. Robinson of a rare first edition of De Humani Corporis Fabrica by Andreas Vesalius (1543)(p.7).
We were all excited to have a primary resource in McGovern’s collection that verified the year that we received the first edition of De Humani. Yet, we were still interested in the story behind where Dr. Hampton C. Robinson purchased the book and when he did.
Always Look for a Newspaper Article
So, we dug into Newspapers.com to see if there were any news articles about the donation to the Library, and thanks to Archives Assistant, Alethea Drexler, we started to get a clearer picture.
According to a Houston Post article published on November 25, 1961 by Jean Walsh, Dr. Robinson purchased the first edition of the Vesalius in 1954. Dr. Robinson and his wife Louise Fenton Robinson presented the gift to the Houston Academy of Medicine (the TMC Library) in appreciation to the group who created The Friends of the Texas Medical Center Library (Walsh, 1961).
Although the article does not say that Dr. Robinson purchased the book from Henry and Ida Schuman, it does say that Henry Schuman of New York ‘recently’ set the value of the book at $9,500 (Walsh, 1971, para. 11-12). With the Houston Post article mentioning the Schuman’s, plus the provenancial document with Ida W. Schuman’s letterhead that contains a bibliographical description matching our De Humani copy; it is strongly believed that the Schuman’s either sold the copy to Dr. Robinson or assisted in him ascertaining the copy.
Looking ahead to the next post?
In the next and final post of this series, I will dive into the life of Andreas Vesalius and the world he lived in during the Early Modern Period. I will look more at the illustrations and analyze the imagery through a historical and artistic lens.
Check out the first installment of this series if you have not already.
References
Library Committee of the Texas Medical Center Library, Parker, V. (1961-1962). Texas Medical Center Library Annual Report 1961. [Report]. IC 001 Houston Academy of Medicine-Texas Medical Center Library records, McGovern Historical Center, Texas Medical Center Library.
Schuman, I. (circa 1953). Immortale Opus. [Letter from Ida Schuman to Dr. Hampton C. Robinson][Letter]. McGovern Historical Center, Texas Medical Center Library.
THOMSON, E. H. (October 1977). Ida W. Schuman, 1912–1977. Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 32(4). 430–431, https://doi.org/10.1093/jhmas/XXXII.4.430
Walsh, J. (November 25, 1961). Gift of Dr. and Mrs. Robinson Library at Med Center is Given Rare Addition in Anatomy Book. Houston Post. 19.