In January of 1847, The New York Academy of Medicine Library began with the gift of a three-volume set of Medical and Physiological Commentaries by Martyn Paine, one of the founders of the Medical College of the University of New York City. The Library was originally intended for the use of NYAM's own Fellows, but it opened its doors to the general public in October of 1878. By then the collection had grown to over 6,000 volumes and was on its way to becoming one of the foremost private medical collections in the United States. The Library enjoyed its most dramatic growth spurt during the last part of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, increasing its collection largely through personal and institutional gifts, including the collections of the Medical Journal Association, Society for the New York Hospital and the medical books of the New York Public Library.
Historical collections rapidly became a major focus of the Library's collecting interests. In 1893, when the Society of the New York Hospital voted to disband its library and presented NYAM with over 23,000 books; a large number of these became part of the rare book holdings. The rare book collections were then greatly enhanced in 1928 by the purchase of the Edward Clarke Streeter Collection, considered one of the finest private rare medical libraries in the world, from the Philadelphia bookseller A. S. W. Rosenbach. The historical collections have continued to grow as a result of donations and purchases, and now contain about 32,000 volumes dating mostly from the 15th through the 18th centuries, as well as manuscripts, archives, pamphlets, ephemera, visual materials and secondary references about the history of medicine and the history of books and printing.
To preserve these resources for future generations, the Library operates the Gladys Brooks Book and Paper Conservation Laboratory.
