Print and Medicine

The impact of print on five centuries of Western medicine illustrated by books from the College Library Collections

This exhibition was part of wider celebrations to mark 500 years of printing in Scotland. Further information on these is available at: http://www.500yearsofprinting.org

On 15 September 1507, King James IV of Scotland granted the country’s first royal licence for printing to the Edinburgh merchant Walter Chepman and his business partner, the bookseller Androw Myllar. The first book with a known date from Chepman and Myllar’s printing press was John Lydgate’s vernacular poem ‘The Complaint of the Black Knight’, printed on 4 April 1508 near what is now Edinburgh’s Cowgate.

Printing came to 16th century Scotland from France whence Androw Myllar, already an Edinburgh bookseller, brought the technique and type.

To mark the quincentenary of printing in Scotland, a College exhibition explores the relationship between print and medicine, drawing on the magnificent collection of the College Library, the first of its kind in Scotland.

The first part of the exhibition Print & Medicine uses six early printed works on medicine, published between 1478 and 1664, from the College’s collections to illustrate the some of the achievements of early printers. Images from this part of the exhibition together with some additional explanatory material have been incorporated in a web-exhibition which is accessible by following the link below.

• launch the web-exhibition Print and Medicine