Digital library lets you virtually pull books off the shelf

Commentary. By Charles Greifenstein, AMNews contributor. Aug. 27, 2001.

With the assistance of a National Leadership Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the College of Physicians of Philadelphia has begun to develop a digital resource, the

The digital library is not intended to provide complete digital copies of historical medical books. Instead, it allows patrons to browse selected books electronically; a virtual pulling the book off the shelf.

Some improvements to the digital library have been made recently.

A short explanation of each book's importance in the history of medicine has been linked to each entry on the HMDL book list, and the digital library also now holds two complete texts.

The two texts are Fat and Blood: And How to Make Them by Silas Weir Mitchell, MD, published in 1877 and An Essay on the West-India Dry-gripes by Thomas Cadwalader, MD, published in 1745.

Fat and Blood details Mitchell's rest cure for 19th century nervous exhaustion, also called neurasthenia. An important figure in the history of the College of Physicians, Dr. Mitchell achieved great success with Fat and Blood, which was based on his years of work as a neurologist and written for a popular audience.

Dr. Cadwalader's Essay is one of the college's great treasures. The first medical book based on original research written in North America, the work explores the nature and causes of the many cases of dry-gripes (lead poisoning) that were occurring in Philadelphia. [...]