Featured Rare Books: Home

The University Archives for the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences collects, preserves, and makes available rare university materials; historical military medical and public health collections; and personal papers of enduring value from administrators, faculty, and alumni for the research use of the university and the general public.  The Archives collects manuscripts, oral histories, rare books, audio-visual materials, and artifacts relating to the history of the university and the history of military medicine.

The following are links to other institutions with collections and exhibits that complement the material in the USU Archives. 

• Historical Collections

• Anatomical Collections

• Neuroanatomical Collections

• Otis Historical Archives

• Exhibits at the NMHM

National Library of Medicine

• History of Medicine Division

• Archives and Modern Manuscripts

National Archives and Records Administration

• Research

• Veterans' Service Records

The following are links to catalog records or digitized versions for the Rare Books currently featured on the Archives homepage, along with some information about each book. 

• Mundus subterraneus b​y Athanasius Kircher, 1678
  • Athanasius Kircher, 1602-1680
    • German Jesuit scholar who published around 40 major works, most notably in the fields of comparative religion, geology, and medicine
    • Interpreted mountain ranges as the Earth's skeletal structures exposed by weathering
    • First scientist to be able to support himself through the sale of his books.
  • Mundus Subterraneus is a geology book published between 1664-1678. The book seeks to cover the entirety of the Earth’s geology, from volcanoes and earthquakes to the internal fires in the Earth’s center and the location of the island of Atlantis.
  • The work features many illustrations of volcanic eruptions, caves, and the Earth’s interior.

• Trait́é des maladies des femmes grosses​ by François Mauriceau, 1738 (6^th edition)
  • François Mauriceau, 1637-1709
    • Leading obstetrician of his day who helped develop a technique for assisted breech delivery, known at the Mauriceau-Levret manipulation
    • Trained at the Hôtel-Dieu, the oldest hospital in Paris
  • This work, which first appeared in 1668, was reprinted and translated for more than seventy years
  • Collection includes a copy from 1687, which is a German translation as well as volume two from 1738 (6th edition)

• Chirurgie, in welcher alles, was zur Wund-Artzney gehöret...​ by Lorenz Heister, 1752
  • Lorenz Heister, 1683-1758
    • In 1718, he coined the word "tracheotomy"
    • first physician to perform a post-mortem section of appendicitis
  • This volume on surgery was translated into several languages. It was used extensively in Japan and was still employed as a standard text in Vienna as late as 1838.

• Traité, théorique et pratique des blessures par armes de guerre by Guillaume Dupuytren, 1834
  • Guillaume Dupuytren, 1777-1835
    • Best known for his description of Dupuytren’s contracture, which is a condition in which one or more fingers become permanently bent in a flexed position. He first performed corrective surgery on this condition in 1831 and it was published in The Lancet in 1834
    • One of the first surgeons to successfully drain a brain abscess using trepanation, in which a hole is cut in the skull. He also used trepanation to treat seizures.

• Clinical surgery. Extracts from the reports of surgical practice between the years 1860-1876. Translated from the original, and edited, with annotations, by C.T. Dent. ​by Theodor Billroth, 1881
  • Theodor Billroth, 1829-1894
    • Father of modern abdominal surgery
    • 1876: First surgeon to excise a rectal cancer and by 1876, he had performed 33 such operations
    • 1881: First successful gastrectomy for gastric cancer
    • Billroth I: an operation in which the pylorus is removed and the distal stomach is anastomosed directly into the duodenum. Named for him after he successfully performed this operation in 1881.

• Tubercle bacillus infection and tuberculosis in man and animals, processes of infection and resistance; a biological and experimental study by Albert Calmette, 1923
  • Albert Calmette, 1863-1933
    • Calmette’s serum: first antivenom for snake venom
    • Bacillus Calmette-Guerin: an attenuated form of Mycobacterium bovis used in the BCG vaccine against tuberculosis
    • Charged by Louis Pasteur to found and direct a branch of the Pasteur Institute at Saigon (French Indochina), in 1891.

The following are links to catalog records or digitized versions for books which have previously been Featured Rare Books.

• The care and treatment of mental diseases and war neuroses ("shell shock") in the British Army
• The Sanitary Reporter, February 15, 1865
• Manual for the Medical Department of the United States Navy / published by the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery under the authority of the Secretary of the Navy

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