1. Carey, Stewart, and Co, Receipt for subscription to the American museum, 27 January 1790

This small collection of manuscripts, 1764-1802, documents the education, medical career, and personal life of Thomas Ruston. Items in the collection relating to Ruston's medical education at the University of Edinburgh include notes on two lectures on the pulse delivered by William Cullen with drafts of three letters by Ruston describing his affairs, 1764-1765; petitions signed by the students of the university, protesting the lack of regulations in granting degrees, 1764; and an autograph letter of John Hope, professor of materia medica and botany, to Ruston, 1765.

The collection also includes professional correspondence concerning Ruston's appointment at the Devon and Exeter Hospital and printed letters from the Medical Society of Edinburgh's Committee on Publication and the Society Instituted in London for the Improvement of MedicaljKnowledge, 1779-1784. There are also a few bills and receipts, 1790-1802; three recipes, 1766 and 1784; a poem composed by Sir William Browne to celebrate the marriage of Ruston with Mary Fisher, 1771; and Ruston's commonplace book, 1799-1801, containing financial information, poems, observations on the weather, and a few diary notes.