Radiology Documents Given to Med School

Lloyd E. Hawes, lecturer on Radiology at the Medical School, has just given the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine at Harvard the largest historical collection of radiological literature and equipment in the country.

The collection contains over 1000 books and more than 100 manuscripts, including nine letters of Dr. Wilhelm C. Roentgen, discoverer of the X-ray. It also includes an assortment of early scientific equipment, such as X-ray tubes dating back to the 1890's.

Richard Wolfe, Rare Books Librarian in the Countway Library, said the material would be used both as historical documentation to review the literature of radiology and as practical information. He said some of the material is not out of date, and can be studied from a clinical viewpoint.

Wolfe said that Hawes had offered to collect material for the Countway Library in 1963, when the library was under construction. He said that Hawes had compiled a list of 10,000 historical radiological documents to collect, and that he had "been filling in the gaps" in the library's collection since 1963.