Papers of Edgar Ashworth Underwood, 1911-1980. The surviving Underwood papers represent a far from complete record of his career. His correspondence is incomplete and his early career in public health glimpsed by a few notes and papers. The bulk of the collection is made up of the drafts, manuscripts and typescripts of his writings, some of which were never published. Underwood was a perfectionist and polished his work many times. However his immense work for a second volume of A History of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries of London (to follow Wall and Cameron's history and cover the period 1815 onwards) was never published and sadly the drafts appear to lack one chapter (chapter 15) which has evidently strayed. Similarly a great deal of labour was spent on a history of urology in the late 1950s and early 1960s and on a life of Edward Jenner but neither of these works was ever published, Underwood's failing eyesight inhibiting his researches. However, the collection is valuable in that Underwood meticulously researched and checked evidence and normally kept full records of his work: thus anyone interested in the history of medical education or the apothecaries for example should note the numerous transcripts and copies of administrative records and documents held by the Public Record Office, Guildhall, Royal College of Physicians and elsewhere.
Underwood , Edgar Ashworth , 1899-1980 , physician and medical historian
GB 0120 PP/EAU
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1911-1980