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Manuscripts related to Linnaeus and his students

We find them in bound volumes, or as comments and notes in interleaved printed books, and of course also as unbound papers (personal and official letters, prescriptions, case notes, and much more). Some of the manuscripts have come down to us from Collegium Medicum, founded in 1663, others are even older. But the largest portion are from the eighteenth century. Abraham Bäck, physician and president of the Collegium, played an important part in this, as he corresponded with numerous practitioners and scholars all over Sweden and abroad. Another contributor was Anders Johan Hagströmer, first vice chancellor of Karolinska Institutet.

A well-represented genre in the collections consists of students’ lecture notes, be it from Linnaeus’ teachings, or professors in medicine in Uppsala and Stockholm during the 18th and 19th centuries. These inform us of the everyday educational activities at universities and hospitals, and also privatim, as part of personal instruction. Many of these volumes belong to the Swedish Society of Medicine, cared for by the Hagstromer Library since 1996. An interesting example is Pehr Osbeck’s notes from Linnaeus’ lectures in nosology 1746–1747: here we encounter Linnaeus’ ambition to systematize all illnesses in the same way as he had done with genera and species in nature. The 600-pages long volume is unique, as Linnaeus never published the full scope of these ideas in print. 

The twentieth century is also represented in the Hagströmer collections, for example through personal archives of important persons at Karolinska Institutet and Karolinska University Hospital. One of these archives holds the collected papers of Clarence Crafoord, professor in thorax surgery at Karolinska Institutet, acknowledged for achievements like the spiropulsator which was an early form of respirator, and the first successful pacemaker implant.