This volume includes several printed and manuscript items related to the death of Caspar Wistar, in January 1818.

These photostats are selections from the original manuscript, which is a portion of a volume entitled "Letters, facts, and observations upon a variety of subjects." The topics include medicine, slavery, the African church, gossip and social events, the deaths of prominent Philadelphians, and Rush's philosophy on various subjects. Contains questions for Alexander McGillivray, on diseases, mortality, passions of Creek Indians.

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 volume contains short sketches of prominent American and European scholars, diplomats, and statesmen. "These short memoirs were composed in the heat of the summer of 1862; and the concluding page written on the 15th of August of that year, when I was about one month advanced in my ninety second year; my birthday being July 17th, 1771." Signed Saml. Breck. Persons discussed include Talleyrand Perigord; M. Volney; Rochefoucauld Liancourt; Louis Philippe, King of the French; Joel Barlow; William Bingham; Robert Morris; Alexander Hamilton; General Henry Knox; Doctor Benjamin Rush; Doctor Rush and William Cobbett.