Boston Medical Library

The Boston Medical Library of Boston, Massachusetts, which evolved into the "largest academic medical library in the world," was originally organized to alleviate the problem that had emerged due to the scattered distribution of medical texts throughout the city.Early historyIn 1875, the Society for Medical Observation, the Society for Medical Improvement, the Treadwell Library at the Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Public Library all had volumes of information that needed to be more accessible to physicians. This was the second attempt to create a medical library in the city; the first attempt was in 1805. This second library was incorporated with the first "as an independent institution under the control of the profession as a whole". James Read Chadwick, a gynecologist, collected books, pamphlets, and medical periodicals and make this material accessible to the practicing physician. It later became the later the Boston Medical Library (BML). Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Parkman Professor of Anatomy and Physiology at Harvard, served as the BML’s first president and writer Librarian.The Francis A. Countway Library of MedicineIn 1960, the BML and the Harvard Medical Library combined their collections, to be housed in a new building named for Lever Brothers executive Francis A. Countway, whose sister, after his death, gave $3.5 million of his fortune toward the library.