Material Texts and Medical Libraries in the Digital Age

Abstract

The College of Physicians of Philadelphia was founded in 1787; the College Library was founded a year later. At the time of its founding, as for hundreds of years prior, a library was an essential medical workplace, the site of knowledge production, more significant than an anatomy theater, and much more so than the workrooms that were evolving into the spaces called laboratories. Over its 225 years, the College Library has been at the heart of Philadelphia medicine; and, as the discipline of the history of medicine has developed, the Library has become a crucial resource for historians of medicine, . . .