The Historical Library of the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University is pleased to announce its fifteenth annual Ferenc Gyorgyey/Stanley Simbonis YSM’57 Research Travel Grant for use of the library’s collections.

The Medical Historical Library, located in New Haven, Connecticut, holds one of the country’s largest collections of rare medical books, journals, prints, photographs, and pamphlets. Special strengths are the works of Hippocrates, Galen, Vesalius, Boyle, Harvey, Culpeper, Priestley, and S. Weir Mitchell, and works on anatomy, anesthesia, and smallpox inoculation and vaccination. The Library owns over fifty medieval and renaissance manuscripts, Arabic and Persian manuscripts, and over 300 medical incunabula.  The notable Clements C. Fry Collection of Prints and Drawings has over 10,000 fine prints, drawings, and posters from the 15th century to the present on medical subjects.  Although the Historical Library does not house the official archives of the Medical School, it does own a number of manuscript and archival collections, most notably the Peter Parker Collection, parts of the papers of Harvey Cushing, John Fulton diaries and notebooks, and collections on medical activism. The Library also owns The Stanley B. Burns M.D. Historic Medical Photography Collection; an extensive Smoking and tobacco advertising collection; the Robert Bogdan collection of disability photographs and postcards; medical imagery from popular publications donated by Bert Hansen, Ph.D; and smaller collections of patent medicine ephemera from noted collector William Helfand.

The 2024-2025 travel grant is available to historians, medical practitioners, and other researchers who wish to use the collections of the Medical Historical Library https://library.medicine.yale.edu/historical. There is a single award of up to $2,000 for one week of research during the academic fiscal year July 1, 2024 – June 30, 2025.  Funds may be used for transportation, housing, food, and photographic reproductions. The award is limited to residents of the United States and Canada. Applicants should send a completed application form, curriculum vitae and a description of the project including the relevance of the collections of the Historical Library to the project, and two references attesting to the particular project. Preference will be given to applicants beyond commuting distance to the Historical Library. Applications are due by April 28th, 2024 at midnight.  An application form can be found on our website: https://library.medicine.yale.edu/historical/research/grant

Additional information about the Library and its collections may be found at: https://library.medicine.yale.edu/historical