Gift to Name History of Medicine Collections at Duke Honors Legacy of Dr. Josiah Charles Trent

Undated photo of Dr. Josiah Charles Trent (1914–1948)

The Duke University Libraries have received a $3 million gift from Duke Trustee Emerita Rebecca Trent Kirkland ’64, M.D.’68 along with her three sisters to name the History of Medicine Collections in the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library in honor of their father, Dr. Josiah Charles Trent ’34 (1914–1948). The gift recognizes Dr. Trent’s extraordinary legacy as Duke’s first division chief of thoracic surgery, a distinguished historian of medicine, and a visionary collector whose passion helped establish one of the nation’s most important medical history collections.

Dr. Kirkland and her sisters—Mary Duke Trent Jones ’63, P’91, P’95, GP’28, Sarah “Sally” Elizabeth Trent Harris ’63, P’86, P’88, P’90, P’94, GP’20, and Barbara Biddle Trent Kimbrell—are the children of Dr. Trent and Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans (1920–2012). A renowned philanthropist, civic leader, and member of Duke’s founding family, Mary Semans donated her late husband’s medical library to Duke University in 1956. That gift laid the foundation for what would become the History of Medicine Collections in the Rubenstein Library, now internationally recognized for their depth and interdisciplinary scope.

Like their parents, all four Trent sisters were raised with a deep appreciation for scholarship, service, and the arts. Also like them, they grew to have varied and longstanding ties across the university.

The four Trent sisters in 1946 (left to right: Mary, Sally, Rebecca, and Barbara). Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans Family Papers, Rubenstein Library.

Dr. Kirkland’s service to Duke has included membership on the Duke University Board of Trustees (1995–2007) and the Duke University Health System Board of Directors (2002–2013). In recognition of her contributions, she received the Distinguished Service Award from the Duke Medical Alumni Association in 1992 and the Duke University Medal for Distinguished and Meritorious Service in 2012, the university’s highest honor.

“The Josiah Charles Trent History of Medicine Collection gifted to Duke in 1956 was a decades long project of our parents, Joe and Mary Trent,” Kirkland said. “They wanted to make their collection accessible to benefit students of history, science, and medicine. Naming Duke’s growing History of Medicine Collections for our father emphasizes that the preservation and the study of history are critical for our future. It is timely to remember George Santayana’s words which were embossed on a plaque over the fireplace in our home library: ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it’ (The Life of Reason, 1905).”

With this new gift—a portion of which is a charitable bequest—the History of Medicine Collections in the Rubenstein Library will permanently bear Dr. Josiah Charles Trent’s name, honoring both his scholarly vision and the enduring commitment of his family to Duke.

The Trent sisters today (left to right: Sarah “Sally” Elizabeth Trent Harris, Barbara Biddle Trent Kimbrell, Rebecca Trent Kirkland, and Mary Duke Trent Jones). Courtesy of Dr. Rebecca Trent Kirkland.

“Josiah Charles Trent’s life was all too brief, but his intellectual curiosity and love of learning were boundless,” said Joseph A. Salem Jr., Rita DiGiallonardo Holloway University Librarian and Vice Provost for Library Affairs. “It is deeply meaningful that the collections he and his wife built with such care—and that they so lovingly entrusted to Duke—will continue to educate and inspire future generations in his name. We are profoundly grateful to the Trent sisters for this extraordinary and transformative gift in their father’s honor.”

Born and raised in Oklahoma, Josiah Charles Trent came to Duke as an undergraduate, where he studied English, history, and premedical subjects. He received his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1938, the same year he married Mary Duke Biddle. After completing internship training at Henry Ford Hospital in Michigan and serving as an instructor in surgery at the University of Michigan Hospital, Trent returned to Duke, where he completed his residency and, in 1946, was appointed associate professor of surgery and chief of the Division of Thoracic Surgery.

Despite a demanding clinical career and a prolonged battle with cancer, Dr. Trent remained deeply engaged in academic, cultural, and humanitarian pursuits. He authored more than 40 clinical and historical articles and was active in bibliographic and scholarly societies. He also served on the board of Lincoln Hospital in Durham, reflecting a strong commitment to community health and public service.

Alongside his medical work, Dr. Trent was an avid and discerning book collector. Working closely with his wife, he assembled a remarkable library that reflected the interdisciplinary nature of medical history and its connections to science, art, literature, and society. After his untimely death from lymphoma at age 34, Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans ensured that his vision would endure. “Despite the cloud of illness which hung over him for years, my husband never ceased to be enthusiastic about his library,” she wrote in 1956. “Considering what he amassed and collected during one short decade, I felt a total obligation and the desire to do my absolute best for the future of those books.”

Today, the Rubenstein Library’s History of Medicine Collections comprise more than 20,000 rare and unique medical books and 4,000 manuscripts, along with photographs, prints, ephemera, medical instruments, and artifacts dating from the twelfth through the twenty-first centuries. Collection strengths include surgery, anatomy, human sexuality, pediatrics, psychiatry, materia medica, and cardiology. Together, these materials bring historical perspectives to contemporary health issues and support interdisciplinary teaching and research at Duke and around the world.

Ivory anatomical manikin (17th or 18th century). The Trent History of Medicine Collections hold the largest number of such manikins in North America.

Virtually every milestone work in medical history is represented in Dr. Trent’s collection, among them first editions of Andreas Vesalius’s De humani corporis fabrica (1543) and William Harvey’s De motu cordis (1628); manuscripts by Benjamin Rush, an eighteenth-century physician and signer of the Declaration of Independence; the largest collection of ivory anatomical manikins in North America; and the only known copy of The Four Seasons, a set of seventeenth-century engravings with movable flaps illustrating human anatomy and the stages of life. Yet it was William Beaumont’s Experiments and Observations on the Gastric Juice and the Physiology of Digestion (1833)—a Christmas gift Dr. Trent received as a young intern—that sparked his collecting efforts. “The book appeared innocuous enough,” he later wrote, “but actually carried the deadly virus of bibliomania.”

That mania for book collecting extended beyond medicine. Dr. and Mrs. Trent also collected literary works and manuscripts, most notably those of American poet Walt Whitman. In 1943, they donated their Whitman collection to Duke, including four first editions of Leaves of Grass (1855), along with extensive manuscripts and correspondence. Given in honor of their four daughters, that early gift helped establish Duke as home to one of the world’s most significant Walt Whitman collections.

Dr. and Mrs. Trent also collected literary works and manuscripts, like this rare first edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (1855).

Visitors can experience the richness of Duke’s medical history holdings in the Josiah Charles Trent History of Medicine Room, part of the Mary Duke Biddle exhibit suite in the Rubenstein Library. Open seven days a week, the space features rotating exhibitions on topics related to the history of medicine, reflecting the generosity, intellectual curiosity, and collecting interests of Dr. Trent, Mary Duke Biddle Trent Semans, and their family.

“This incredible gift allows us to continue to grow and strengthen our collections, outreach, programming, and much more,” said Rachel Ingold, Curator of the History of Medicine Collections. With this new gift, the Duke University Libraries reaffirm their commitment to preserving and expanding these collections for future generations. The naming of the Josiah Charles Trent History of Medicine Collections ensures that Dr. Trent’s legacy—as physician, scholar, collector, and Duke alumnus—will remain central to Duke’s mission of advancing knowledge and understanding the human experience of health and disease.

Visitors can experience the richness of Duke’s medical history holdings in the Josiah Charles Trent History of Medicine Room in the Rubenstein Library.

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