January 15, 2008

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - UAB (University of Alabama at Birmingham) is at the forefront of modern medicine. Its clinics and operating rooms are home to the latest, most advanced therapies, procedures and imaging techniques. Its laboratories are developing tomorrow’s medical breakthroughs. But in one little corner of UAB, on the third floor of the Lister Hill Library, the focus is not on where medicine is today or where it is going tomorrow. For at the Reynolds Historical Library, the focus is on the past.

The Reynolds Historical Library is 50 years old this year. It is a treasure trove of more than 13,000 rare medical texts, letters and other documents. The library was created in 1958 when Alabama-born physician Dr. Lawrence Reynolds donated his collection of more than 5,000 rare books and letters to UAB.

The oldest book is a copy of Rhazes’ Ninth Book of the Al’ Mansuri, a medical textbook dating from 1388, one of only three remaining in the world. Another volume, Arnold of Villanova’s Brevarium Practicae Medicinae, is believed to date from 1485. One of the most impressive works is a leather-bound first edition of Andreas Vesalius’s On the Workings of the Human Body, a groundbreaking volume of human anatomy from 1543, dedicated to Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.

The library holds a 1628 work by William Harvey that first described the human circulatory system. It possesses one of only five copies of The English Physician by Nicolas Culpeper, the first medical book published in North America in 1708.

Other holdings include letters written by Louis Pasteur, Florence Nightingale, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. and George Washington.

UAB will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the library with a special lecture and reception Feb. 8, in the Ireland Room of the Lister Hill Library of the Health Sciences. Stephen Greenberg, Ph.D., of the National Library of Medicine, History of Medicine Division, will present “Real Books: What They Are and Why We Still Need Them”, at 4 p.m. A reception in the Alabama Museum of the Health Sciences will follow.

Lawrence Reynolds, M.D., (1889-1961) was born in the small Alabama town of Ozark, the son of a doctor.

“His love of books began in his youth when he read to his father, whose eyesight was failing, as they traveled by horse and buggy from patient to patient” said Michael Flannery, associate director of Historical Collections at UAB. “In his later years, Reynolds spent much time and money amassing exceptional works of medical literature.”

Educated at the University of Alabama and Johns Hopkins Medical School, Reynolds served in a military hospital in France during World War I and practiced medicine at Harvard and at Harper Hospital in Detroit. Three years before his death, he chose UAB over other suitors including Yale, Wayne State University and the University of Michigan, to house his entire collection.

“Although he never practiced medicine here, Reynolds’ Alabama roots motivated him to return something of great value to his native state,” Flannery said. “The library has nearly tripled in size since, and is now the core of UAB’s Historical Collections, which includes the Alabama Museum of the Health Sciences and the UAB Archives.”