This collection includes correspondence, research data, reviews of grant proposals, organizations participated in, laboratories worked for, and student recommendations. The correspondence in the collection dates primarily to the 1960s-70s, when Mildred Cohn worked at the University of Pennsylvania and at the Institute for Cancer Research in Philadelphia, later renamed, Fox Chase Cancer Center. The letters are professional in content, discussing biochemistry, molecular biology, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) experiments. The letters also concern lectures and participation in conferences and symposia, and there are materials relating to recommendations for students and colleagues for positions and promotions. Dr. Cohn's interest and involvement in the issue of women in science is presented, of particular note, her work with the University of Pennsylvania's Gender Equity Committee. The notebooks, by Cohn, her colleagues and students, contain extensive experimental data.

This collection contains primarily professional correspondence and papers, but there is substantial material concerning Shryock family history. Most of the collection relates to Shryock's intellectual and social life at the University of Pennsylvania, Duke University, and Johns Hopkins University-- institutions where he made contributions as a professor of history and especially as a medical historian.

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.