Story No.  177-60                             Russian __55_
January 6, I960
                       STOREHOUSE OF MEDICAL KNOWLEDGE

                            By Richard Montague

 1.     On a knoll  in  the  grounds of the  National  Institutes  of
 2.     Health,  ten kilometers  from  downtown Washington,  men  and
 3.     machines are building a new  home  for a  century-old  treasure
£.     house.   A handsome five-story  structure faced with  white
 5.     limestone,  it  will shelter the  National Library of  Medicine,
 6.     which  serves doctors and medical  technicians all over the
. 7.     world.
 8.        Founded in 1836, the  library is a clearing house  for medical
*" 9.     information printed in  thirty-two languages.  On an average
 10.    day it fills more than  300  requests from medical libraries in
 11.    the United States and other  lands.  It  also receives and
  .2.     catalogues hundreds of  articles and books — many of them written
 13.    by foreign doctors.  This continuous accumulation of new
 14.    material has resulted in a collection of medical literature
 15.    which has been described by British Museum authorities as the
 16.    greatest in existence.
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1.      The collection now  comprises mere  than  1,000,000  books,
2.    monographs, theses, pamphlets, microfilms,  pictures,  and
3.    other informative material dealing with medicins.   At the
4.    outset it  consisted of  200 books acquired by  the first chief
5.    of the U.  S. Army's Medical  Department.   For  the library began
6.    as an army adjunct and  remained so until  1956 when  it became
7.    part of  the U.  S. Public Health Service.
8.      Most of  the  collection is  now squeezed  into a red brick
9.    building near  the Washington Monument, but  this ancient
10.   structure  can't hold  it all.  Some of the overflow  0f
11.                                about 35*000  other volumes, dealing
12.   with medicine  in the  sixteenth, seventeenth,  and eighteenth
13.   centuries, is   lodged in a branch library in  Cleveland, Ohio.
14.     Dr. Frank Rogers, director of the  library,  tries  to obtain one
15.   copy of  everything significant printed about  medicine anywhere
16.   in the world.   To this  end the national institution conducts
17.   numerous exchanges of its  own and U. S. Public Health publica-
18.   tions in return for other  medical literature.  Some of these
20.   exchanges  are  with the  600 libraries in American medical
21.   schools, hospitals, pharmaceutical houses, medical  societies,
22.   and industrial  firms.   Some  are with medical  libraries in
23.   other countries.  For example, the library now has  exchange
24.   arrangements with about thirty libraries  in the Soviet Union
25.   including  the  State Central  Medical Library in Moscow and the
26.   Saltykov-Shchedrin Public  Library in Leningrad.
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 1.      Another development which has furthered Dr. Rogers' plans was
 2.    the signing in January, 1958, of the agreement between the
 3.    United States and the Soviet Union  on exchanges in the
                                                   an
4.     cultural, technical, and educational fields,/agreement which
5.     has since been extended.  As a result, the library in
6.     Washington is supplying thirty-four commercially-published
7.     American medical publications to the State Central Medical
8.     Library in Moscow in return for Soviet periodicals of
9.     comparable value.
 10.    The national library's two main publications are its monthly
 11 *  ^ndex Medicus and its annual Catalog.   The Index annually lists
 12.  more than 100,000 articles from all over the world.  The monthly
 13.  output is cumulated at the end of each year by the American
 14.  Medical Association, a privately-supported organization of
 15.  physicians.
 16.    The Catalog lists books, pamphlets,  and other materials, both
 17.  domestic and foreign.  It contains about 35*000 entries.
 18.    Dr. Rogers and his aides also put out several other publica-
 19.  tions.  When a subject is found to be  especially popular,  a special
 20.  bibliography is prepared.  In 1958 the library published a ninety-
 21.  page Guide to Russian Medical Literature which lists works by
 22.  Soviet doctors and tells how they may  best be obtained.   More
 23.   recently it has published bibliographies on space medicine,
 24.   psychopharmacology,  cancer  chemotherapy,  and fungus infections,
 25.   and a reference guide to documentary motion pictures on medicine
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and allied sciences.
  The indexes, catalogues, and guides it puts  out  inspire many
of the inquiries the library  receives, for they  show  other
medical libraries what books  and articles are  available  on
what subjects.  The institution deals mainly with  other
libraries, although individual researchers may use its stacks  and
si^udy tables.  If a physician wants late information  on  the
Incidence of  leukemia in  adults, for example,  he seeks it
first at his  local medical library.  If the local  library can't
help him, it  forwards his request to the national  library.
  Normally the national library sends microfilm  or photoprint
copies of the material requested, though original works  are some-
times loaned.  A photoduplicating machine
    makes microfilm pictures  of two book pages simultaneously,
and another machine enlarges  the pictures and  transfers  them to
a paper strip which is cut into convenient sizes for mailing.
              /eior oduce s
                  more than 3j, 000, 000 of these            pages
every year. Half are sent out in response to requests; the other
 half are kept to replace deteriorating pases.
  The library also receives hundreds of requests each year for
reproductions of pictures and portraits concerned with medicine.
Its art collection includes some 60,000 items  including  original
woodcuts, etchings, engravings, and oil paintings.  Some
pictures show the development of medical science down the
centuries.  About 3^^000  are  portraits of medicine's great
men and women, including  all  the Nobel Prize winners  to  date in
medicine and physiology.  The picture collection is growing afc
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 the rate of 2,000 items annually and is much used by news-
 papers,  magazines,  book publishing houses,  and artists.
   That many physicians do not take themselves too seriously
 Is indicated by a large and popular collection of medical carica-
 tures, both in color and black and white,  by such artists as
 Rowlandson, Cruikshank" > Hogarth,  and Daumier.   There also
 is a big stock of lantern slides,  maps, posters,  and hospital
 plans and sketches.
   One of the never-finished jobs In the library is the repair and
 preservation of books and magazines whose  paper is crumbling with
 age.  Many old books are rebound each year,  and yellowing
 journals are routinely microfilmed and —  if especially useful —
 reproduced on rag paper and bound.  Another  quiet project is
 the microfilming of medical school theses,  of which the
 Institution has 280,000 from many parts of the world.   As an
 experiment to gauge the demand for such documents,  library workers
 are microfilming 15*600 theses -- comprising 515*000 pages —
 acquired from the University of Berlin.
   Machines do much of the library drudgery.   One  device
 photographs 230 catalogue cards a minute for inclusion in the
 Index Medicus. And the machine which transfers enlarged micro-
 film pictures of book pages to a paper strip turns out six
 meters of such pictures a minute.   But automation will not
 completely take over the routine work until  somebody invents
 machines which can  analyze and index books in thirty or more
languages.                                                   (more) 
 
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  After World War II the library carried out a mass disposal  of
duplicate material, shipping out as many as 15,000 items a
month to other institutions.  The action aided war-devastated
libraries in many countries and enabled numerous other institu-
tions abroad to start badly needed collections of medical
literature.
  As a side line, the library prepares exhibits of medicine,
past and present, for display in the nearby Smithsonian Institu-
tion, a government-sponsored organization which encourages
learning and research.  Thousands of tourists see these dis-
plays.  The library also prepares exhibits for conventions of
physicians and other scientists.  One recent display at a
gathering in Princeton, New Jersey, was entitled "Development of
Russian Neurophysiology."  It featured the work of Doctors E.M.
Sechenov, I.P. Pavlov, and other specialists in this field.
  The move to the grounds of the National Institutes of Health
will place the library in a world medical center where hundreds
of scientists from more than thirty countries have worked with
American colleagues in various branches of research.  To visiting
and American scientists alike the library will offer more
efficient service than was possible in the past.   The new
building will house the Cleveland collection as well as the
one in Washington.  It will have a big main reading room, ade-
quate space for exhibitions, and facilities for speeding up the
photographic,  mailing, and other jobs.
  "Successive librarians have been dreaming of a building like 
 
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this for forty years," said Dr. Rogers.  "And not only dreaming,
but working for its realization.  We think these new quarters
will be just about ideal for most of the library's operations
for a century to come.
  "Naturally we're excited about it.  We like to think of the
library as a storehouse of medical knowledge.  And with the help
of great libraries in other lands we hope to make it an in-
creasingly abundant source of enlightenment for men and women
everywhere who devote unselfish lives to treating the bodily
ailments of mankind."

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