[J. C. B. Grant [John Charles Boileau Grant], Scottish-Canadian anatomist, ('Grant's Dissector’).] Two Autograph Letters Signed to Professor David Waterston of St Andrews, with news of colleagues and reminiscences of University of Edinburgh.

Grant, who was Chair of Anatomy at the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine from 1930 to 1956, is best known for his textbook ‘Grant’s Dissector’, now in its sixteenth edition and used all over the world by medical students. Waterston was Bute Professor of Anatomy at the University of St Andrews from 1914 to 1942. In 1913, while Professor of Anatomy at King's College, London, he was the first authority to debunk the Piltdown Man hoax. Both letters are in good condition, lightly aged and folded for postage. Both signed ‘J C B Grant’. ONE (20 June 1939): 3pp, 4to. He begins by thanking him for a previous letter expressing appreciation for his ‘attempt at a book on Anatomy. The book has been reasonably successful - particularly in the United States and in Australia’, and he is ‘very hard at work now on a second edition’, to be published the following year. He reminisces about the past, with reference to the Mackenzie Waterston encouraged him to compete for at the University of Edinburgh Medical School, and the ‘Ghostlike’ ‘semi dark passages & store room’ containing ‘Sir William [Turner]’s Collection’. He finds the death of ‘Woollard’ [Herbert Henry Woollard, 1889-1939] ‘a great loss’. He urges him to visit Canada, and discusses their colleagues ‘Alex Gibson’, ‘Wm. Boyd’, ‘James Miller’ and ‘John Tait’. TWO (17 November 1940): 2pp, landscape 8vo. He was pleased to see Waterston’s ‘familiar handwriting’ in his letter about ‘Dr. Mitford’. The delay in replying was occasioned by a stay in hospital. His wife, who is ‘teaching in the department of Physiology’, ‘had Dr. Mitford to tea with some friends and we have met since’. He is sorry to hear that Waterston is not ‘contributing to the next Edition of Cunningham; your section was always so excellently done’. He has been asked ‘to revise the respiratory section and, of course, I have accepted. Professor Cunningham would be very proud of St Andrew were he alive today. I hope we may soon ourselves have cause to be proud of him [sic] again’.