George Mason IV's Medical Library
Many of the medical books in George Mason IV's library came from his uncle John Mercer. These works included William Salmon’s The English Herbal and Medicana Practica, Edward Strother's Essay on Sickness and Criticon Febrium, among other publications.[1] The probated estate of George Mason IV's youngest son, Thomas Mason of Prince William, County, records William Buchan's Domestic Medicine. For his part, George Mason V’s Last Will and Testament notably lists two volumes of “Materia Medica,” two volumes of Benjamin Bell’s System of Surgery, and Michael Underwood's Treatise on Diseases of Children.[2] It is likely that his father, the patriarch of Gunston Hall, bequeathed these books, a common practice amongst elite colonial Virginians.[3]
[1] A catalog entry listing the books of George Mason IV and John Mercer can be found at the Gunston Hall Plantation, Mason Neck, Virginia.
[2] Virginia and Maryland Probate Inventories from 1740-1810 can be sourced at "Probing the Past, a project of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, George Mason University and Gunston Hall Plantation with support from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities": https://chnm.gmu.edu/probateinventory/, accessed July 2017.
[3] Terry K. Dunn, Among His Slaves: George Mason’s Struggle with Slavery (Alexandria, VA: Commonwealth Books of Virginia, 2016), 45
Creator: Farhaj Murshed