About the Center
The Stanford Medical History Center collects and maintains materials related to the history of health care, medical research, and medical education at Stanford and beyond, including:
- unpublished documents and records
- historical photographs, diagrams, and other visual materials
- rare medical books from the 13th century and later
- historical medical instruments and other artifacts
- oral histories
- digital media
These materials are available for purposes of scholarship, genealogy, faculty and student recruitment and development, alumni relations, public relations, and curriculum development.
We also offer electronic databases and standard reference tools in the history of medicine and guidance in developing effective strategies for discovering primary source materials and secondary literature.
Although the rarity and fragility of our materials prevents their circulation, we provide an on-site digital imaging station for visiting researchers to reproduce materials from our collections. We also handle permissions for publication and broadcast.
Opportunities
for Giving
We need your help in capturing and protecting the legacy of Stanford Medicine for future generations.
The Stanford Medical History Center has a rich collection of over 7,000 rare medical books. We welcome support in continuing to build this collection, thus enabling us to best serve everyone interested in researching the history of medicine.
We are also always looking for support in having conservation work done on some of the rare books, historical images and other items in our collections.
Offering Your
Historic Materials
We are always grateful to those who consider donating their collection of personal papers to us. We are interested in unpublished or other rare materials related to health care, medical education, and medical research at Stanford and beyond. We are especially interested in unpublished written documents (such as correspondence, administrative records, and research materials) and images. Generally, we are not looking to collect journal reprints or other published materials unless those materials were published before 1900 or are otherwise very rare.
We do not offer to appraise the monetary value of rare books or other materials. Persons seeking appraisal services are encouraged to consult the listings of appraisers provided by the Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America.