Historical Library Collection of Institute for History of Medicine on the First Faculty of Medicine in Prague
Abstract
Institute for History of Medicine was established in 1920, but it started its activities in 1924, when its first director Ondřej Schrutz obtained several rooms for the institute in Celetná Street in Prague. There was a library connected to the institute since the beginning of its existence.
The core of the library was acquired from the first special medical library in Prague - Prager medizinisches Lesemuseum, but a lot of books came also from Prussian school for military doctors in Berlin - Pépinière. There are more than 2500 volumes of manuscripts, incunabula, old prints and other rare prints from 19th and the beginning of the 20th century in the historical collection of the library.
The most of the books (almost 2000 volumes) are from the 18th century. The majority of the old prints in the library were written in Latin, a lot of them also in German.
The usual topics of the books are medicine and science, the authors of the most of the books are classical doctors Hippocrates and Galen. In the year 2017, the most important task of the Book History Department of the First Faculty of Medicine is to process prints from the 16th century, which belong to the Institute for History of Medicine.
There are 123 volumes which contain 197 16th century books. Almost all of those publications were written in Latin, there are only 11 in German, 6 in Greek and just one in Czech.
Most of the books were printed in Basel, the rest of them is usually from Lyon, Venice and Frankfurt or other Swiss, French, German or Italian centres of book printing. One of the parts of processing of the old prints is their provenance research.
We can identify some of the important persons and institutions who used to owe some of the researched books. It is possible to name bibliophile Heinrich von Rantzau (1526 - 1598) or book collector Joachim von Windhag (1600 - 1678), among the institutions for example Deutsche Ärzte-Bücherei from Berlin.