By Ginny A. Roth
National Library of Medicine
The Prints and Photographs collection in the History of Medicine Division at the National Library of Medicine holds many treasures that not only serve as research materials, but are also visually captivating. One does not need a trained eye in the arts in order to appreciate collection items that are as beautiful as they are informative. The image above is one page from a collection of medically-themed stamps which number in the area of 700,000 and fill 109 4-inch binders. The collection is a result of 60 years of collecting by Dr. Adolf W. Schwartz. Dr. Schwartz was born in Hamburg, Germany and received his M.D. at the University of Heidelberg. He later studied at the Mayo Clinic and practiced plastic surgery in Bakersfield California for over 30 years. Along with a life-long interest in stamp collecting, Dr. Schwartz was also a world-traveler, and many of the countries he visited are represented in the collection. Dr. Schwartz’s daughter generously donated the collection to the Library in 2010.
Subjects on the stamps include doctors, nurses, military medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine, folk and mythical medicine, plants and herbs, inventors of surgical instruments, doctors serving in Congress, places named for physicians, and more. The stamps are cancelled, non-cancelled, commemorative, in postcard form, first-day issue, proofs, tax stamps, tobacco stamps, postal cancellations, and legal tender. Stamps feature, for example, Elizabeth Blackwell, Marie Curie, Wilhelm Roentgen, and Florence Nightingale, among thousands of others. The collection includes a series on the Nobel Prizes from the Federated States of Micronesia, as well as a series of special oversized cigar bands from the Canary Islands featuring Nobel Prize winners in Medicine of Physiology for the years 1901-1970, including Joshua Lederberg, James Watson, Francis Crick, and Marshall Nirenberg. The collection also includes 16 books that Dr. Schwartz compiled containing biographical and historical information about the stamps and their subjects.
In 2014, the Library initiated an effort to preserve the collection and re-house the stamps in archival pages and binders. As part of an ongoing project, Library interns with an interest in preservation have successfully re-housed half of the collection, carefully removing each stamp from its hinge and placing it on new acid-free mounting pages using clear photo corners.
The original order of the collection has been maintained throughout this process. Additionally, the entire collection, nearly 4000 pages, has been digitized. Below is a gallery of images highlighting just a handful of the stamps that comprise this impressive collection.
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Ginny A. Roth is the Curator of Prints & Photographs in the History of Medicine Division at the National Library of Medicine.
When I was young,I collected stamps.It can be a fascinating hobby.Many different categories,a particular country,animal stamps,etc.You bring back some fond memories.
Very interesting but you note that the whole collection has been digitised without giving a link to what must be a fantastic resource. How can one look at the digitised collection?
Thanks for your message. The collection is not yet available online. We are working on that now and hope to have it available sometime in 2016.
I am the daughter of Dr. Schwartz who donated this collection. I would be very interested in knowing if or when his collection is available for online viewing and how to access it. Thank you.
Thanks for your message. Currently there is a finding aid online for the collection located here: https://oculus.nlm.nih.gov/cgi/f/findaid/findaid-idx?c=ppfindaid;cc=ppfindaid;view=reslist;subview=standard;didno=PP10-43. The entire collection of 109 binders has been digitized, but the individual pages are not yet available in our image database. In the future we would like to offer the pages in NLM’s Digital Collections, and although I cannot give you a firm time frame for when that will happen, we hope it will be within the next year or two.