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E.B. Krumbhaar Fund for Elsevier Imprints

Illustration from the cover of an old book.

Dr. E. B. Krumbhaar's gift to the Penn Library of approximately 1,600 volumes published by the Dutch firm of Elzevir and its branches between 1583 and 1712 includes more than 400 Leiden dissertations, most on medical and scientific subjects.

Elzevir publications were characteristically small and easily portable volumes. They fall into no single category. The collection includes classics, works of history, travel, description, philosophy, science, and imaginative literature, as well as occasional uncharacteristic large-format and heavily-illustrated treatises on (e.g.) fencing.

The Elzevir collection documents the ordinary range of seventeenth-century intellectual life.

Dr. Krumbhaar was one of the first chairs of the Penn Medical School Department of Pathology. His fund supports further acquisitions of Elzevir imprints.