ABSTRACT
The Wellcome collection of Greek manuscripts falls into two parts, one created in the eighteenth century, the other largely in the twentieth. They indicate different methods and priorities of collecting as well as the different purposes for which they were bought. Since 1984, there have been no new acquisitions of Greek manuscripts. But one did get away: in 2005 the British Library decided not to bid for an interesting Phillipps manuscript of Galen’s Therapeutics to Glaucon and other texts that had been on loan there for some time, and suggested that the Wellcome should acquire it. Access to manuscripts also depends on the quality of their catalogues. The catalogue of The Medical Society of London manuscripts was published in 1932 by Warren R. Dawson, an antiquarian greatly interested in Egyptology. His expertise, it must be said, was in more modern manuscripts and archives, and at times the complexity of many of The Medical Society of London Greek manuscripts defeated him.
