 
America's Librarian
Dr. John Shaw Billings, a graduate of Miami
University and the Medical College of Ohio in Cincinnati in 1860, became one of
the world’s most famous librarians. He started the famed
National Library of
Medicine, published the first Index Medicus, and directed the New York Public
Library, where he pioneered many modern library innovations. He also convinced
industrialist Andrew Carnegie to spend $60 million to build nearly 3,000 free
public libraries nationwide.
History of the National Library
of Medicine (NLM)
NLM historical collections trace their beginnings
to 1818. In that year Dr. Joseph Lovell, the first Surgeon General of the Army,
filled a few of his office shelves with books, journals, and pamphlets to serve
as a reference collection for the Army surgeons under his command. In 1836 the
growing collection was officially named the Library of the Office of the Surgeon
General, United States Army. After the Civil War, the Surgeon General's Library
received an infusion of medical books and journals from the Army's temporary
hospitals, which closed at the end of hostilities.
 To
take charge of the burgeoning collection, the Army summoned 27-year-old career
Army medical officer and book lover Dr. John Shaw Billings (1838-1913), who set
out to create a comprehensive collection of medical materials. The relentless
Dr. Billings wrote letters to physicians, editors, health and government
officials, librarians, and society officers requesting donations, exchanges, and
outright purchases. He accosted State Department officials traveling overseas,
entreating them to bring back foreign medical books and journals.
Billings was so dedicated to his quest to build a world-class library that
Oliver Wendell Holmes noted, "Dr. Billings is a bibliophile of such eminence
that I regard him as a positive danger to the owner of a library, if he is ever
let loose in it."
Billings' voracious reading in the Library made him one of the most learned men
of Gilded Age America. He was a top authority in such fields as public health
administration, hospital design, vital statistics, scientific medicine, hygiene
and ventilation technology, census organization, epidemiology, and science
administration.
Under his stewardship, the Library's roughly 2,300 medical volumes grew into a
collection of some 124,000 bound volumes. By 1895 the Surgeon General's Library
was the largest medical library in the Americas and possibly in the world.
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