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Biographical material includes the draft of Mourant's autobiography, Blood and Stones published after his death in 1995, together with the correspondence and papers Mourant assembled while writing it. There is also documentation of Mourant's education at Victoria College Jersey and at Exeter College Oxford. The latter includes notes on lectures 1922 - ca 1926. Documentation of Mourant's career, honours and awards is patchy, although there is material relating to his search for employment in the early 1930s. There are pocket diaries spanning 1915-1982, with a fairly continuous sequence 1922-1961. Biographical material also includes extensive family and personal correspondence, much of which dates from or relates to the German occupation of Jersey or shortly thereafter. Mourant's other documented interests include his membership of the Methodist Church and his political affiliations, the League of Nations Union in particular.

There is a little material relating to Mourant's early career with the Geological Survey 1929-1931, miscellaneous material relating to Mourant's service with the MRC's Blood Group Reference Laboratory at the Lister Institute and the Nuffield (later Anthropological) Blood Group Centre at the Royal Anthropological Institute, London, and more extensive but uneven coverage of the Serological Population Genetics Laboratory. Although there is some documentation of the foundation of the Laboratory 1964-1965 and of its staff, the surviving material consists chiefly of correspondence and papers relating to Mourant's largely successful efforts to find continued funding for the Laboratory 1969-1977. Haematological research material, though not extensive, covers Mourant's work in a number of areas from research on blood serum in the mid-1940s to the mapping of blood groups in the 1960s and 1970s. There are early research notes, correspondence and papers relating to student and other expeditions undertaking blood group and physical anthropology research and some MRC material assembled by Mourant relating to projects in which he had an interest. The largest group of research papers, however, is maps and data produced during preparation of the second edition of The Distribution of the Human Blood Groups. There is a chronological sequence of drafts and correspondence relating to Mourant's publications, 1929-1991, with extensive material relating to editions of The Distribution of the Human Blood Groups and to The Genetics of the Jews (1978). There is also editorial correspondence relating to publishers and journals, chiefly invitations to review books or referee papers and an incomplete set of offprints. There is correspondence and papers relating to some of Mourant's lectures and broadcasts, most notably the lectures on blood groups given at the Collège de France, Toulouse, 1978-1979. Societies and organisations material is not extensive, and is confined to brief documentation of only a few of the societies and organisations with which Mourant was associated. It includes professional and geological bodies as well as haematological, biological and medical organisations. Visits and conferences material covers the period 1960-1987. It is not comprehensive, though there is also considerable documentation of Mourant's visits and conferences in the papers he assembled in the course of preparing his biography and with lectures material. Mourant's correspondence is extensive. Its complexity reflects Mourant's organisation of the material, the bulk of which was found in three main series: 'Foreign 1965-1977', 'Biological' and 'Geological', together with a fragment of a fourth series 'Home 1965-1977'. Principal correspondents include C.C. Blackwell, B. Bonné, O.J. Brendemoen, V.A. Clarke, L.L. Cavalli-Sforza, A. W. Eriksson, T.J. Greenwalt, J.K. Moor-Jankowski, T. Jenkins, W.S. Pollitzer, D.F. Roberts, J. Ruffié, D. Tills and J.S. Weiner.

Sir Henry Head's papers, 1891-1909, consist of his casebooks of patients with Herpes Zoster, with sketches and photographs, chiefly from Head's work at the London Hospital, 1891-1909, and his casebooks of patients with various diseases, with sketches and charts, from his work at the City of London Hospital for Diseases of the Heart and Lungs, Victoria Park, 1894.

The vast majority of the material relates to Dent's research and clinical interests and falls into four main categories: correspondence files; files created around the publication of papers; lecture notes and symposium papers; and case/research notes. There are also smaller quantities dealing with other aspects of his career, such as the administration of UCH Metabolic Ward. The papers thus reflect most of Dent's scientific and clinical interests. This research is mainly represented by the abstracted documentation which he kept with drafts of his published papers (see section E.1) and also by correspondence about cases and clinical case notes (see section C.5). To a lesser degree they also illustrate the work at the laboratory bench which underpinned much of this research. For example, a file of unidentified paper chromatograms has been preserved (C.2/10) to illustrate one of Dent's methods of working, as described by his colleague, Heathcote, and quoted in the Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 1978: 'Paper chromatograms were not to be thrown away. They were filed and, since the colours faded, the outline of each spot was drawn in and the intensity of the colour was indicated by a number.' The way in which Dent compiled a large series of files around drafts of scientific papers also illustrates the importance of the published paper to him as a stage in the research process. An incomplete collection of reprints of Dent's published papers may be found in section E.2 of the collection.

Papers of Patrick Alfred Buxton, 1908-1957, relate to his employment as Head of Entomology, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, 1927-1955, and notably include research notes, correspondence, maps, diaries and publications.

The correspondence, papers and diaries of Sir Charles Blagden. Blagden's papers are interesting on several levels, generally for his close contact with European men of learning, and his relationship with Sir Joseph Banks. Blagden's professional researches are represented by medical notes in the boxed sequence. These are grouped with papers on other subject interests, including linguistics, e.g. a draft Tahitian-English dictionary, compiled from conversations with Omai, whom Blagden inoculated after Omai's voyage to England with James Cook. Blagden's interest in antiquities and travel is documented by diary entries, as is his intercourse with fellow scientists, particularly those associated with the founding of the Royal Institution.

Although Barlow is best known for his original researches on infantile scurvy, there is very little material relating to that subject in the collection. There are manuscript drafts of his address to the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh and his Bradshaw Lecture on infantile scurvy (BAR/E1-2), but the bulk of the clinical and scientific component of the papers relates to other matters, particularly Raynaud's disease and erythromelalgia, diseases to which Barlow turned his attention later in his career.

Among Barlow's clinical papers is a notebook recording minutes of a 'Clinical Club', 1875-77 (BAR/D.2), whose members included, apart from Barlow himself, Sidney Coupland, Rickman Godlee, William Smith Greenfield, Robert Parker, and William Allen Sturge.

Most of Barlow's private patients' records have not survived, though there is an index to his private patients' books, covering the years 1876-1918 (BAR/F.1).

Scientific and clinical matters are also discussed in Barlow's correspondence, but again this is relatively thin for the period when he was active in research. Barlow's non-family correspondence has clearly been heavily weeded: there are few letters from patients, with the exception of some prominent individuals, such as Mary Curzon, wife of Lord Curzon, Randall Davidson, archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Salisbury and Lord Selborne, and in general it seems that while letters from important or well-known figures have survived those from individuals deemed less important have been discarded. Significant numbers of letters remain however from several of Barlow's regular correspondents, such as the poet, Robert Bridges, Lord Bryce, and William Page Roberts, dean of Salisbury, as well as medical figures like Sir William Jenner and Sir James Reid.

Barlow's personal papers and family correspondence have survived in bulk and form a rich source of material for both his private and family life, and his public career. There are travel journals and sketchbooks from his earlier years, mainly documenting visits to the Continent, 1869-83; correspondence with his parents, brother, wife and children, 1852-1940, including letters written by Barlow from Balmoral, where he served as royal physician intermittently between 1897 and 1899, an eye-witness account of the death of Queen Victoria in 1901 (BAR/B.2/4), and letters and telegrams from court in 1902 during the crisis of Edward VII's appendectomy; and commonplace and scrapbooks compiled in retirement, 1920-37. Also from this period are various temperance notes and addresses.

The archive also comprises letters and papers of Barlow's parents, 1842-87; of Barlow's wife, Ada, including letters from her brother and sisters in India, 1858-80, and to her daughter Helen studying in Darmstadt, Germany, 1905-6; of Barlow's sons, Alan, Thomas and Basil, including letters from the last-named while serving on the Western Front, 1916-17; and notably of his daughter Helen, including correspondence with Archbishop and Mrs (later Lady) Davidson, 1910-35, and letters from Sir John Rose Bradford and his wife while serving in the Royal Army Medical Corps in France, 1914-19. Helen Barlow's papers also include records of three charities with which she was associated: the University College Hospital Ladies Association, 1900-50, the Southwark Boys Aid Association, 1914-36, and the Quinn Square [Southwark] Social Centre Society, c. 1935-1951. Finally there is a handful of letters to Andrew Barlow, Sir Thomas's grandson, mainly relating to articles he wrote about his grandfather, 1955-81.