History of the RSM
Feature of the month - June
Rudyard Kipling
"Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind."
Sir John Bland-Sutton, the eminent surgeon and naturalist who served as President of the Royal Society of Medicine from 1920 until 1922, was a close friend of the poet, novelist and short story writer Rudyard Kipling (1865 – 1936).
Sir John died in 1936 and in 1938 his widow donated to the Society a copy of the 1654 edition of Nicolas Culpeper’s Pharmacopoeia Londinensis that had originally belonged to Kipling and which he had given, “in affection and admiration”, to Sir John as a gift.
The book contains Kipling’s distinctive and characteristic bookplate, and, pasted to the end board, is a letter from Kipling to his friend which reads:
“Dear John, Here are the eminent Nick Culpeper (sic) unvarnished views of the College of Physicians a few score years ago. I hope some of his expressions won’t shock your Pure Mind! There might, perhaps, arise a paper or some paragraphs in a lecture about it. Anyway, it shows an interesting old world. Best, Rudyard Aug 1/24.”
The book is now housed securely in the Society’s Library.