This diary is a journal of a trip from Philadelphia by stage to Pittsburgh, then afoot through Franklin, LeBoeuf, and Erie to the Huron River; thence by boat to Detroit, where he remained 26-29 July, when he set out by canoe for Michilimackinac. Included are descriptions of Detroit, plants, animals, springs, Indian mounds, and notes on goitre.

Norman Leonard Jacobs was an engineer and surveyor with the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway in Canada. The collection consists of his correspondence with Bessie Frank (later Anathan), an acquaintance from Pittsburgh. Jacobs wrote of daily life in Canadian cities, interactions with First Nations tribes, and daily hardships encountered in the field (extreme cold, snowblindness, and lack of food), but also spoke of his work with pride and enthusiasm. In addition to the letters, Jacobs wrote twenty-eight pages of a "Diary of a Tenderfoot." Also included in the collection are two photobooks and various loose photographs, which display various aspects of camp life, details of work sites and landscape, as well as First Nations families, camps, and modes of transportation.

This item contains entries about prominent people (primarily accounts of their deaths); Philadelphia events and gossip; the Pennsylvania Hospital; questions for Meriwether Lewis on Indian physical history, medicine, morals, and religion; and his views on marriage, religion, physicians, etc. Also includes meeting with Captain Wells and Little Turtle; speculations on Indian skin color at the equator.

This autobiography relates Rush's experiences in college and medical school; his meetings with notable doctors; his life in Scotland, England, and France; his medical views; the military and politics during the Revolutionary War; and brief sketches of personalities of that period.

A physician, natural historian, and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Benjamin Smith Barton (1766-1815) was one of the central figures in Philadelphia's early national scientific establishment. Having received his medical training in European universities, Barton was appointed Professor at the University of Pennsylvania in 1789, lecturing on botany, materia medica, natural history. A prolific author, he established his reputation as one of the nation's preeminent botanists through his botanical text book The Elements of Botany (1803), but his contribtions to zoology, ethnology, and medicine were equally noteworthy. Barton's monograph on the "fascinating faculty" of the rattlesnake and his efforts in historical linguistics (New Views of the Origin of the Tribes and Nations of America, 1798) were widely read, and his Philadelphia Medical and Physical Journal (1804-1809) was one of the nation's first medical journals and an important outlet for natural historical research. The Barton Papers offer a comprehensive view of the professional work of Benjamin Smith Barton from the time of his return to the United States in 1789 until his death. The collection is divided into five series: Correspondence, Subject Files, Bound Volumes, Graphic Materials, and Printing Plates. The collection includes a particularly valuable series of botanical, medical, and natural historical drawings collected by Barton for research, reference, and publication. Among the many artists represented are William Bartram, Frederick Pursh, Pierre Turpin, and Benjamin Henry Latrobe.