The Classics of Medicine Library & Selections from the Personal Collection of Sherwin B. Nuland
Dr. Nuland's family graciously donated his working library, including a set of the Classics of Medicine to the Netter Library. The beautifully leather-bound Classics can be found to the right of the circulation desk in the bookcases against the wall. The rest of his working library is integrated into the collection for checkout, with some stored off-site (but available to check out by request).
The Netter Library thanks the family of Shep Nuland for their generous donation of books from Dr. Nuland’s personal collection.
About Dr. Sherwin B. Nuland
Dr. Sherwin B. Nuland (1930-2014) was Clinical Professor of Surgery at the Yale School of Medicine and Fellow of the university's Institution for Social and Policy Studies. He served on the executive committees of Yale's Whitney Humanities Center and its Interdisciplinary Bioethics Project. Professor Nuland was a graduate of the Bronx High School of Science, New York University, and the Yale School of Medicine, from which he earned his M.D. After training in surgery at the Yale-New Haven Hospital, he practiced and taught there for three decades. He considered the bedside and operative care of over 10,000 patients to be the most rewarding work of his career. He taught bioethics and medical history to undergraduates and medical students. Dr. Nuland was on the founding board of Connecticut Hospice, the first hospice in the United States. He wrote about the need for palliative care. His experience at the end of his life was one where he came to know the limitations that currently exist and how essential it was to expand coverage for all patients living with serious illness.
Dr. Nuland’s interest in and his writings in the history of medicine came out of his fascination with the pathology of disease. He made contributions to the literature of clinical research, surgery and medical history during the years of his surgical practice. His writing Doctors: The Biography of Medicine, was for the general reader. Through a series of biographies, he told the story of the history of western medicine from Hippocrates to the 20th century. In 1993, Dr. Nuland published, How We Die. The book was a New York Times best-seller, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the Book Critics Circle Award and won the National Book Award for nonfiction in 1994. It has been translated into 27 languages and sold over half a million copies worldwide.
Growing out of his interests in history, human biology, ethics and the nature of humanity, Dr. Nuland would continue to write for the general reader. He undertook a wide-ranging study in all these disciplines, resulting in the publication in 1997 of The Wisdom of the Body. Dr. Nuland’s next book, The Mysteries Within: A Surgeon Explores Myth, Medicine and the Human Body (finalist, Los Angeles Times Book Prize) describes the many ways in which superstition and religion have influenced the development of medical thought and our own notions of our bodies.
Classics of Medicine Collection
