Published in UAB Insight, Fall 2007
Holdings Include 13,000 Rare Medical Texts
The pale, leather-bound first edition of Andreas Vesalius’s De Humani Corporis Fabrica Liborum Epitome (On the Workings of the Human Body) rests inconspicuously on a shelf in the Reynolds Historical Library. This groundbreaking volume of human anatomy — published in 1543, dedicated to Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, and believed to be illustrated by Titian’s pupil Jan Stephen van Calcar — is surrounded by thousands of other rare works of medical literature of immense historical value.
In addition to De Fabrica, UAB’s collection contains many other volumes related to the famous Flemish-born anatomist, including his later works, books by his teacher, and volumes by his pupils and other anatomists of the period, many of whom embraced his ideas.
“Vesalius was the first to emphasize human dissection and an understanding of the body as a structure filled with organs arranged in three-dimensional space,” explains Associate Director for Historical Collections Michael A. Flannery. “Before Vesalius, most ideas on human anatomy came from the first-century physician Galen, who based his teachings primarily on animal dissection.”
The library boasts other major works that laid the groundwork for modern medicine: a 1628 printed volume by William Harvey, Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus (An Anatomical Exercise on the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Living Beings), a text that offered the first proof that the heart pumps blood through the body and a selection of works by the celebrated 16th century surgeon Ambrose Paré, who developed many surgical methods based on ideas introduced in De Fabrica.
Other important works include one-of-a-kind incunabula, extremely rare handwritten books produced before 1501. The library holds more than 30 incunabula, including Arnold of Villanova’s Brevarium Practicae Medicinae (1485) and A Commentary on the Ninth Book of the Al’ Mansuri written by Tolbiel ben Samuel in the early 15th century.
“We hold one of only five original copies of the first medical book ever published in America — The English Physician by Nicholas Culpeper [1708],” says Flannery, who edited a reprint with an introduction and details on the brews and concoctions used for medical treatment in the early days of the North American colonies.
The Reynolds Library also holds a collection of the correspondence of famous health care figures. Among these handwritten treasures are letters written by Louis Pasteur, Florence Nightingale, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr, Sir William Osler, and George and Martha Washington.
Laying the Foundation
On February 2, 1958, eminent radiologist Lawrence Reynolds, MD, (1889-1961) officially dedicated his collection of more than 5000 rare books and letters to UAB to form the core of the Reynolds Historical Library, which is now recognized as having one of the finest and most valuable collections of medical literature in the world.
Reynolds was born in the small Alabama town of Ozark. “His love of books began in his youth, when he read to his physician father, who lost his sight in old age,” Flannery says. “In his later years, Reynolds spent much time and money amassing exceptional works of medical literature.”
Although Reynolds was an Alabama native, his career took him away from the state permanently, and with a number of institutions seeking to acquire his valuable collection, its donation to UAB was by no means certain.
Reynolds completed his undergraduate education at the University of Alabama. He received his MD degree from John’s Hopkins Medical School in 1916 and was the first radiology resident at Johns Hopkins Hospital. After 2 years of World War I military service in France, he spent 3 years as a roentgenologist at Harvard Medical School and Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston. Reynolds joined Harper Hospital in Detroit, Michigan in 1922 and remained there until his death.
Wayne State University, the University of Michigan, Yale University, and others lobbied for the collection, but ultimately, Flannery says, “Reynolds’ Alabama roots motivated him to return something of great value to his native state.”
The Collection Grows
Flannery notes that since Reynolds’ original contribution to UAB, the library’s holdings have expanded to include almost 13,000 works. A major area of concentration is Civil War medicine, a collection that began with substantial support and expertise from former UAB Department of Surgery Chair Arnold G. Diethelm, MD, an ardent champion of the library.
“The medical and surgical history of the Civil War is laid out in published memoirs of Union and Confederate physicians and soldiers, original copies of official medical handbooks and guides, and a massive three-volume set of The Medical and Surgical History of the War of Rebellion [1870-1888] — the most comprehensive summary of Civil War medicine available,” Flannery says. More recent acquisitions include books related to diseases common to the South — malaria and cholera, for example.
UAB Historical Collections
The university’s commitment to the medical humanities has continued, with the library and related areas growing to become “a more powerful resource for medical history and research than anything Lawrence Reynolds could have imagined 50 years ago,” Flannery says.
In 1996 the Reynolds Historical Library evolved into the UAB Historical Collections, which encompasses three distinct entities — the Reynolds Library, the Alabama Museum of the Health Sciences, and the UAB Archives. The museum holds instruments, specimens, and models that represent the practice of medicine around the world for the past 700 years and intricately carved male and female ivory figurines, or anatomical manikins, each with removable upper trunks that expose the viscera. “The figurines were most likely made during the 17th and 18th centuries to show internal differences between the sexes,” Flannery says. The UAB Archives is a repository for original documents pertaining to UAB as well as materials related to the history of health sciences in Alabama.
Flannery credits much of this growth to strong supporters who include Diethelm; former UAB presidents S. Richardson Hill Jr, MD, and Charles A. McCallum Jr, DMD, MD; founder of UAB’s Division of Rheumatology Howard L. Holley, MD; School of Medicine Dean Emeritus and UAB Distinguished Professor James A. Pittman, MD; and former Reynolds Library Associates Chair Wayne H. Finley, MD.
“This collection is more than just a window into history — it represents a constellation of medical humanities supporting activities that enrich our understanding of all of medicine,” says Flannery, who recalls the official 1958 dedication inscribed on the entrance of the library:
Each time one of you reaps from the great minds of the past the desire for finer achievements in your profession and nobler development of your own character, the Reynolds Library will have been rededicated.
For more information:
Michael Flannery
1.800.UAB.MIST
mist@uabmc.edu