According to the report of the Council of Education for the year 1844-1845, there was a dire need to bring out textbooks in the “vernacular language for the pupils of the military school”. This particular textbook, in English and Hindoostanee, as Urdu was known back then, “was undertaken for the military class attached to the medical college”. The only vernacular works of medicine printed till then included the Arabic version of Hooper’s Anatomist Vade-Mecum and a Bengali translation of an anatomy manual.

The Atlas of Anatomical Plates of the Human Body, typewritten in English and Urdu, was printed in Calcutta by Bishop’s College Press in 1849. The atlas was authored by Dr Frederic John, an assistant surgeon for the Bengal army. This textbook is included in a collection of rare books housed in the library of the Anjuman Taraqqi Urdu in Gulshan-i-Iqbal. The atlas with its detailed and colourful illustrations of organs of the human body originally belonged to Maulvi Abdul Haq, founder of the Anjuman, and was placed in his personal library in Delhi before partition. Mohammad Maroof, librarian at the Anjuman, says when Maulvi Abdul Haq’s house came under attack during partition riots several of his books were also damaged but he managed to save some books which he later on donated to the Anjuman.