Home > Libraries > Exhibits > Commemoration of the Three Millionth Volume > 3 Millionth Volume

3 Millionth Volume

In tribute to James Platt White, M.D. (1811-1881), one of the founders of the School of Medicine and its first Professor of Obstetrics and Diseases of Women and Children, a significant volume in obstetrics will be added to the University Libraries as the three millionth volume. James Platt White was credited by Austin Flint as being the individual most responsible for the founding of the School of Medicine. He was intimately connected with the development of the medical library and, in 1881, bequeathed his collection of more than 1,000 volumes to the University. The three millionth volume, Jacob Rueff's De conceptu et generatione hominis was published in Zurich in 1554, and is donated to the University Libraries on this landmark occasion by George M. Ellis, M.D., class of 1945.

The three millionth volume will become part of the prestigious History of Medicine Collection in the Health Sciences Library. Rueff's work is the first work in obstetrics to contain true anatomical pictures. Fewer than five other copies of the first edition of this monumental work are known to exist in this country, according to Lilli Sentz, Curator of the History of Medicine Collection.