Latest NLM Exhibit Looks Back on the Library’s History
The National Library of Medicine (NLM) announces Making the Greatest Medical Library in America. The latest online exhibition, Making the Greatest Medical Library in America, showcases a selection of 19th-century medical pamphlets that were once featured in NLM’s first exhibition, over 145 years ago.
On a quest to bring together and catalog the world’s medical knowledge, John Shaw Billings, an Army surgeon and book collector who oversaw the U.S. Surgeon General’s library (today known as NLM), acquired approximately 300 pamphlets from the private collection of the renowned French physiologist Claude Bernard in 1878. Later that year, in a letter to a medical journal, a visitor to the library recounted seeing the pamphlets on display. Making the Greatest Medical Library in America revisits this first reported exhibition to explore NLM’s long history of collecting, cataloging, and communicating quality medical information to researchers, publishers, librarians, educators, healthcare professionals and members of the public for generations.
The exhibition also spotlights the work of contemporary library professionals who cataloged, conserved, and digitized items from the Claude Bernard collection. These professionals helped preserve the history of medicine and NLM’s legacy as the institution approaches its third century.
Visit Making the Greatest Medical Library in America to learn more about this exhibit.
Army surgeon and book collector John Shaw Billings led the U.S. Surgeon General’s library (now NLM) from 1865 to 1895. During that time, the holdings of the library grew from a few thousand volumes to 116,847 books and 191,598 pamphlets.
John Shaw Billings, 1860s
Courtesy National Library of Medicine
French physiologist and one of the founders of experimental medicine, Claude Bernard was a commanding figure in the medical milieu of 19th-century Paris. Following his death, his private library of medical pamphlets was acquired by NLM.
Claude Bernard, c. 1875
Courtesy National Library of Medicine
In this pamphlet featured in the exhibition, Georgian physiologist Ivan Tarkhanov spent two years in Paris working in Claude Bernard’s laboratory. In this study, Tarkhanov observed injections into the blood and lymphatic vessels in the web of a frog’s foot, as shown in this illustration.
Des Prétendus Canaux Qui Feraient Communiquer les Vaisseaux Sanguins et Lymphatiques (So-Called Channels that Would Communicate Blood and Lymphatic Vessels), Jean Tarchanoff (Ivan Tarkhanov), 1875
Courtesy National Library of Medicine