Rush's Boerhaave
Of all the books in the collection, this is the one that most completely contains the story the collection tells: Gerard van Swieten's commentary on Boerhaave's Aphorisms, the text through which Leiden's clinical medicine passed to Edinburgh and to Philadelphia; Benjamin Rush's own copy, with his armorial bookplate; and his inscription of May 9, 1788, to his student Samuel Powel Griffitts — Non donum sed debitum, not a gift but a debt.
Rush is said to have destroyed as many of his bookplates as he could find, and they are very rare. This one survived because he gave the book away before he changed his mind. Boerhaave, van Swieten, Cullen, Rush, Griffitts: the collection was built to show that chain, and this is the link that holds it.
(RUSH, BENJAMIN). SWIETEN, Gerard, L.B. Van- Commentaria in Hermanni Boerhaave
Rush's own volume of van Swieten's commentaries on Boerhaave, with his armorial bookplate and the gift inscription of May 9, 1788, to Dr. Samuel Powel Griffitts: 'Non donum sed debitum.' The book that carried Leiden's clinical medicine to Edinburgh and to Philadelphia, in the hands of the three men — Cullen's pupil, and his pupil's pupil — who carried it. The collection's cornerstone.