About The Library Collection

The Bakken Museum´s library collections include approximately 11,000 books, journals, and manuscripts. The subject of the collections is the history of electricity and magnetism with a focus on their roles in the life sciences and medicine. Thus, it includes works in early physics (natural philosophy) and early works on magnetic cures, electrotherapeutics, electrophysiology, and their accompanying instrumentation. The library also possesses a fine collection of primary sources in mesmerism, animal magnetism, and hypnotism, and works documenting the history of para-psychology, psychical research, and phrenology. Additionally, there are some important early works on anatomy, physiology, neurology, acupuncture, and medicinal herbs.

Although primary sources date from the 13th century, the collecting emphasis is on the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. Significant holdings include many of the writings of Hauksbee, Nollet, Franklin, Mesmer, Galvani, Volta, Matteucci, Du Bois-Reymond, Marey, and Einthoven, to name some of the most well-known. Also of interest to researchers are collections of 19th-century medical and electro-medical ephemera (about 300 advertisements, programs, postcards, broadsides, circulars, and pamphlets) and miscellaneous scientists´ letters from the 18th-20th centuries.

While the manuscript collection is not large, there are several fine items, a couple of which deserve special mention here:   the Mesmerism and Animal Magnetism manuscripts collection, 1784-1787, which consists of fifty-six items of correspondence between the leaders of the French mesmerist movement in Paris and their disciples in Amiens, including letters, contracts, circulars, receipts, membership lists, and notebooks.   A few of these are featured on our online Mesmer book exhibit.   Another is Paul Richer’s Paralysies et contractures hysteriques; mémoire presenté au concours de l’année 1883 pour le prix fondé par M. Bernard de Civrieux.   In one volume, it includes handwritten text and illustrative material consisting of several drawings, photographs, myograms, and printed and drawn charts, graphs, and diagrams.   The book was published in Paris , by O. Doin, in 1892 (a copy of which is also held in the library).

There is a collection of about 400 trade catalogues and price lists representing the products of nearly 250 companies. Most of them were published during the period of 1850-1930, although there are a few from the second half of the 18th c. These catalogues offer for sale electrical apparatus, scientific instruments, and surgical and medical equipment (including electro-medical apparatus). Several countries´ products are represented, including England, Germany, France, Holland, Italy, Spain, Portugal, the Scandanavian countries, and the U.S.A. These catalogues provide technical descriptions, clear illustrations, directions for use, and prices for a wide range of instruments and accessories.

A support collection of histories, biographies, and reference works is located in the library´s reading room. Books from the library do not circulate and there is no open browsing of the research collection (the stacks are closed). Readers are welcome to browse in the secondary and reference sections.