Rare books and manuscripts
Search our collection of 73,000 print materials from 1430 to 1945, with strengths in anatomy, women’s health, surgery, natural history, and pharmacy.
The Wangensteen Historical Library of Biology and Medicine collections contain materials and objects that broadly represent health, medicine, and biological sciences from 1430 to 1945.
Search our collection of 73,000 print materials from 1430 to 1945, with strengths in anatomy, women’s health, surgery, natural history, and pharmacy.
The digitized collections of the Wangensteen Historical Library are freely available online. They cover a broad range of topics from East Asian History to Clara Barton’s diaries.
Our artifact collection contains 8,000 objects, including pharmaceutical, medical and surgical equipment, instruments, and products.
A student-made StoryMap tracks reused woodcut images across multiple sixteenth-century herbals.
This extensive online exhibit explores the anatomical works of Leonardo Da Vinci and his contemporaries in honor of the 500th anniversary of his birth.
This exhibit showcases some of the most important examples of the Wangensteen’s vast collection of historical anatomical illustrations and features three of the collection’s flap anatomies, reproduced and made larger so that viewers can interact with them.
Materials from the Wangensteen Historical Library are available by appointment.
Meet with curators to locate materials for your research topic.
Collaborate with curators to support student learning and student interactions with texts, historical images, manuscripts, and objects.
Partner with the library to create or enhance conversations about the history of health, medicine, and biological sciences through exhibits, lectures, and material loans.
Learn more about travel grants that support in-depth research drawing on the library’s holdings and staff expertise.
In the 1960s, Dr. Owen H. Wangensteen, distinguished surgeon, became the force behind the creation of the library that bears his name.
This exhibit showcases some of the most important examples of the Wangensteen’s vast collection of historical anatomical illustrations and features three of the collection’s flap anatomies, reproduced and made larger so that viewers can interact with them.
No events are scheduled.
This exhibit celebrates the stories of our books — from the stories woven in their bindings to the comments written on their pages by readers.
Our library holdings come together to illuminate the medical themes threaded throughout Masterpiece Theater’s wildly popular Downton Abbey.
This exhibit is centered on a 17th-century apothecary manuscript from Toulouse, France, and a student’s research project involving translating the manuscript and mapping where in the world the ingredients may have been sourced.