Library of the Surgeon General's Office

The Library of the Surgeon General's Office, later called the Army Medical Library, was the institutional medical literature repository of the U.S. Army Surgeon General from 1836 to 1956 when it was transformed into the National Library of Medicine.

The Library of the Surgeon General’s Office was established in 1836 when Joseph Lovell, then Surgeon General, purchased reference books and journals for his office. In 1840 the library published its first list of publications in a manuscript notebook. In 1864, the library printed its first catalog containing 2100 volumes.

In 1867, the Library, along with the new Surgeon General's office, was moved to Ford's Theatre, site of the tragic assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in April 1865. (The theater had been closed and remodelled in the intervening two years.) The new Office/Library site was taken over by the U.S. Army to house a cluster of important post-Civil War medical activities of the Surgeon General's Office. The most significant were the archive of Civil War medical records (essential for verification of veterans' pension claims), the Army Medical Museum (now the National Museum of Health and Medicine), the editorial offices for preparation of the multi-volume Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, and the Library of the Surgeon General's Office.

The library published its first list of bibliographies in 1869 and in 1871, the decided to develop its collection nationally. The library's goal was to "contain every medical book published in this country and every work relating to public health and state medicine." This collection would be "as complete as possible in all publications relating to military organizations, medicine, and allied sciences." The library strove to provide "an universal library of references". In 1879 the library began publishing Index Medicus, a periodical listing the titles of current medical articles, books, reports, and other medical literature. This achievement, as well as the creation of the Index Catalogue of the Surgeon General's Office (1880), was largely the legacy of Dr. John Shaw Billings, Director of the Library from 1865 to 1895.

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