Held at: Historical Medical Library of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia [Contact Us]19 S. 22nd Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the Historical Medical Library of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in their reading room, and not digitally available through the web.
Book manuscript, written about 1750 in Pali-Sinhalese on the prepared leaves of a talipot palm. It is a copy of the famous work on Sinhalese medicine originally compiled several centuries before. The painted wooden covers decorated with the sacred bo tree symbols are old, but the binding cord is modern after an early type by a native artist.
Item was donated with a contemporary stylus of the type that could have been used to write the text on the palm leaves. (Museum catalog number 961-MISC)
Reference:
Wade, Ella. "A Curator's Story of the Mütter Museum and College Collections." Transactions and Studies of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia. Fourth Series 42, no.2 (October 1974): 152.