This is the catalogue that Watt prepared of his own very carefully chosen medical library, and published for the use of his students. Because Watt chose the roughly 1000 books with great care the library is representative of the best information available to medical students in Scotland at the beginning of the 19th century. Reprinted in A bibliography of Robert Watt, M.D., author of the Bibliotheca Britannica. With a facsimile edition of his Catalogue of medical books and with a preliminary essay on his works: A contribution to eighteenth century medical history, by Francesco Cordasco (Detroit: Gale Research, 1968).

Probably the second book on whooping cough, written after two of Watt's children died from the disease. After vaccination for smallpox was introduced, Watt found, as he had expected, that the number of deaths from that disease was reduced, and he expected to find a relative reduction in pediatric mortality as a whole. However, he found that no such reduction had occur, as children continued to die from other diseases. This result placed him in direct conflict with advocates for vaccination who hoped to show that curing smallpox would reduce deaths overall. Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

This bio-bibliographical encyclopedia of English and foreign literature includes many articles on physicians from the ancient world up to Watt's time, and is an extraordinary achievement for one man. Typically the first sentence summarizes the author's life and death, followed by listing of writings more or less detailed. Watt's comments on specific editions and translations indicate a remarkable familiarity with the history of medical literature, and occasionally with the rarity of certain editions. The work has been estimated to include citations of more than 200,000 books, pamphlets and periodicals on the widest range of subjects. The first and second volumes contain an alphabetical listing of over 40,000 authors and their biographical details. Full length titles of works, date and place of publication, and information on translations and subsequent editions are provided for each author. The entries covering the earliest printed texts contain details of British and foreign printers. Volumes three and four provide an encyclopedic index to volumes one and two. The works are listed within 30,000 subject areas, in chronological order of publication. Subjects, authors and titles are fully cross-referenced using an ingenious indexing system. Robert Watt devoted 25 years of his life to the Bibliotheca's compilation. He studied classical languages and philosophy at Glasgow University. Later he became a student of anatomy and theology at Edinburgh, and practised as a physician. His interest in the history of medicine led him to begin compiling the Bibliotheca, which he extended to include works on law, history, language, philosophy, science, technology, travel and geography, and classical literature. Digital facsimile from the Hathi Trust at this link.