Threat to Medical History collection at NIH

Dave Postles (pot@leicester.ac.uk)
Thu, 9 Mar 1995 09:14:40 +0000

I am passing on, as a matter of general interest to historians,
information about the History of Medicine Division that was provided by
CADUCEUS, the newsletter of the Association of Librarians in the History
of the Health Sciences. CADUCEUS cross-posted a message sent to EX
LIBRIS by Terry Belanger of the University of Virginia. This information
is a considerably shortened adaptation of the CADUCEUS posting.
The History of Medicine Division of the National Library of
Medicine (a part of the National Institutes of Health) oversees the
finest collection of historical medical materials in the United States,
including over 600,000 printed items and 75,000 pre-1801 items, a million
manuscripts, and extensive collections of prints, photographs and
historical audiovisuals. The HMD provides a wealth of specialized
cataloguing including the Bibliography of the History of Medicine,
Histline, and Online Images in the History of Medicine.
The NLM is considering disbanding the HMD and dispersing its
staff throughout the NLM. HMD would no longer maintain special
collections personnel.
This plan was recently submitted to Dr. Donald A.B. Lindberg, the
director of the NLM.
Letters to Dr. Lindberg/Director, National Library of
Medicine/8600 Rockville Pike/Bethesda, MD 20894/ lindberg@nlm.nih.gov
or to Harold Varmus, MD/Director, National Institutes of Health,
Building 1/Bethesda, MD 20892/varmus@od1em.od.nih.gov
would be helpful.

I would like to add some personal comments, as a frequent user of
the NLM. THe NLM began as the Surgeon General's library, and holds one
of the finest historical special collections in the country on any
subject. It may well be the best medical historical library in the
world. Moreover, its specialist staff has ensured that its catalogues
are widely available to both the public and to other libraries. Online
searching is provided at cost, which results in comparatively low rates
and great accessibility.
The maintenance of a historical medical collection of this
magnitude is a task that requires highly trained and very specialized
staff, familiar not only with Latin, the common medical language until
the last century, but with historical medical terminology and ancient
conceptualizations of disease. The skills of such a staff would not be
best utilized by sending them elsewhere in the library, nor could the
needs of specialist researchers be met by staff members who have no
historical training or experience.
Loss of this institution would be a disaster not only for medical
historians such as myself, but for all historians, for there are few
historical projects that could not be enriched by consulting the
materials held at HMD. But historians are not the only ones who would be
harmed. Loss of the HMD would be a loss of one of America's greatest
cultural treasures--one that has taken over two hundred years
of cooperative effort to create--and would diminish us all.

Margaret DeLacy

margaret@teleport.COM Public Access User --- Not affiliated with TECHbooks
Public Access UNIX and Internet at (503) 220-1016 (2400-14400, N81)