New Treasures : Recent Acquisitions at the Center for the History of Medicine

The Countway Library is built from gifts—gifts large and small, made over many years. It was the generosity of Sanda Countway in 1958 which provided over three million dollars for a building and allowed Harvard Medical School and the Boston Medical Library to ally their collections, forming the largest academic biomedical library in the country.

The collections of the Countway reflect the generosity of two centuries. John Collins Warren, James Jackson, and other members of Harvard's early faculty began to donate books to form a medical library for the students in 1816. In 1889, just a few years after the foundation of the Boston Medical Library, Oliver Wendell Holmes contributed his personal collection of over 900 rare medical works, laying the cornerstone for a remarkable historical collection. The Godfrey M. Hyams Trust presented the Boston Medical Library with $25,000 in 1930 to build and maintain a collection of rare books and manuscripts on Jewish medicine and science, and the core of the library's renowned collection of incunables was the bequest of over 200 titles from William Norton Bullard in 1931. The medical and surgical library of the Warren family was bequeathed to Harvard by John Warren in 1928, the George Burgess Magrath Library of Legal Medicine was established by a gift of Frances Glessner Lee in 1933, and the Historical Collection in Radiology has its origins in the donation of the personal collection of Lloyd E. Hawes in 1969. Even the Warren Anatomical Museum now here in the Countway was a gift of John Collins Warren to Harvard University in 1847. These are just a few of the major donations which have built and augmented the collections over the past two hundred years.

Such generosity is not just a thing of the past, though, and extraordinary gifts continue to enhance the already glittering assortment of books, manuscripts, prints, photographs, artwork, artifacts, and specimens preserved in the library, archives, and museum collections at the Countway's Center for the History of Medicine. All the items on display in this exhibit, New Treasures, were acquired by the Countway between the rededication of the library in 1999 and 2009. Many are gifts from individuals and members of the faculty, while others have been acquired by purchase with funds and donations made by generous contributors and friends, and this exhibit honors the thoughtfulness and generosity of all these donors. From the earliest printed medical works to modern scientific research notebooks, ranging from the treatment of smallpox to responses to the AIDS epidemic, and embracing such diverse areas as embryology, teratology, psychiatry, hematology, surgery, disability, student life, and humor, these new treasures of the Countway are notable and worthy additions to the existing collections and help to further our mission to promote research and scholarship in the history of medicine and increase the understanding of the role medicine plays in the larger society.