Medical Publishing

Essay

The U.S. medical publishing industry got its start in Philadelphia in the early nineteenth century, and the Philadelphia region has maintained its preeminence in the industry ever since. The industry grew with the general book-selling industry, flourished as medicine acquired a solid scientific foundation starting around the end of the nineteenth century, went through a frantic period of explosive growth and consolidation starting in the 1960s, and continued in the twenty-first century.

This industry started as an offshoot of Philadelphia’s robust publishing and printing industries—founding father Benjamin Franklin himself was a printer—along with its academically solid medical schools (especially Jefferson Medical College and the medical school of the University of Pennsylvania) and a flourishing medical community. This combination of business and medical expertise was not quite unique; a similar mix existed in Boston, but Boston publishers gravitated toward law and letters rather than medicine.

Throughout its history, Philadelphia’s medical publishers focused on books for medical students and clinicians. Medical journals, however, did not get the same attention. Like Philadelphia’s medical community overall, the publishers’ response to the increasing pace of medical research was modest. As a result, Philadelphia was and is a secondary, albeit significant, player in publishing medical journals.

A black and white drawing of Samuel D Gross, who is an older gentleman. This image shows him from the shoulders up. He is wearing a suit with a bow-tie, and his white hair is receding from the top of his head.
As a prominent medical writer and lecturer during the nineteenth century, Samuel D. Gross served the medical students at Jefferson Medical College for a majority of his career. (Autobiography of Samuel Gross)

The earliest medical publisher in Philadelphia was the nation’s first book publisher of any kind—Carey & Lea, founded in 1785 by Matthew Carey (1760-1839). Through most of the nineteenth century this company was the leading medical publisher in the United States. Among its most important books was System of Surgery (1859), by Samuel D. Gross of Jefferson Medical College. As a family partnership, this firm changed its name frequently to reflect the partners who came and went. Finally, in 1908, the name of the firm changed to Lea & Febiger, the name it retained until it was sold to Waverly Press of Baltimore in January 1991.

J.B. Lippincott Co., a force in medical publishing for well over a century, got its start when Joshua Ballinger Lippincott (1813-1886) bought out Grigg, Elliot & Co., a book wholesaler and publisher, in 1849. Among the notable titles Lippincott acquired from the Grigg company was the United States Dispensatory, which was first published in 1833 and persisted through twenty-seven editions until it faded from view in the 1970s. In 1861 Lippincott moved into a palatial new building at 715-717 Market Street. After a catastrophic fire gutted the building, Lippincott built a new building on East Washington Square, where it remained through the 1990s before relocating to rented space. In the early twenty-first century, Lippincott’s best-known work is Cancer: Principles and Practice of Oncology (1982), initially edited by three luminaries from the National Cancer Institute, now in its ninth edition. Lippincott remained under family ownership until 1978, when it was sold to Harper & Row, the start of a merry-go-round of corporate ownership.

The firm of Blakiston & Lindsay, founded in 1843 as a general publisher, was the next company to venture into medicine. By 1851, the firm was selling several works in medicine, primarily imported titles from England. The company moved to 1012 Walnut Street in 1880 and apparently stayed there into the 1960s. Blakiston’s medical dictionary was one of the standards for generations. Eventually, Blakiston was sold to McGraw-Hill. The Blakiston imprint persisted into the 1970s, but it has since been absorbed by its parent company.

A color photograph of the brick Saunders building in the background. The foreground shows a bit of the green grass and sidewalks of Washington Square. There are a few trees, a bench, and a few people walking around the area in front of the building.
W. B. Saunders Co. moved into this building on West Washington Square in 1911 and occupied the offices until Saunders was purchased by book publisher Elsevier in 2000. (Photograph by Donald D. Groff for the Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia)

The largest of all medical publishers, W.B. Saunders Co., started in 1888, publishing “Quiz Compend” books for medical students from a building at 33 South Tenth Street. The firm grew quickly in size and ambition. In 1892, it published American Textbook of Surgery, edited by W.W. Keen (1837-1932) of Jefferson Medical College and J. William White of the University of Pennsylvania, and in 1894 it published the two-volume Practice of Medicine, by the Philadelphia physician/scientist William Pepper (1843-1898). Other massive, authoritative works emerged at frequent intervals.

Over the years, Saunders published landmark works in most areas of clinical medicine, as well as another important medical dictionary (Dorland’s), nursing books, and textbooks in a number of college disciplines. Its headquarters on West Washington Square was built in 1912, and Saunders remained there into the 1980s.

One of the most notorious Saunders publishing adventures was the Kinsey Report. Alfred Kinsey (1894-1956), the head of the Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University, sought a serious publisher that would not sensationalize the book, and Saunders, with its focus on professionals rather than the general public, was an ideal choice. Saunders management estimated the company would sell 5,000 copies of the first volume, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, which was published in 1948, but the book went on to sell hundreds of thousands of copies in the face of both withering criticism and high praise. The successor volume, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, was published in 1953, and also became a best seller.

Saunders remained under family ownership until 1968, when it was sold to the broadcaster CBS, then keen to diversify. After CBS, Saunders had other owners and became part of the Health Sciences Division of Elsevier, a Dutch publishing conglomerate.

The other prominent Philadelphia medical publisher is F.A. Davis Company, founded in 1879 and still owned by the founder’s descendants. Elizabeth Irene Davis, the widow of the founder, took over the company in 1923 and remained active in the firm until 1960. Control of the firm passed to her brother’s side of the family. The most famous title from this publisher is Taber’s Cyclopedic Dictionary of Medicine and Nursing, first published by the company in 1940.

A black and white photograph of the a stone building in front of a large grassy field. The image shows the rectangualr, three story building from the front and the right side of the building. There are some sidewalks and higher buildings visible on the right side of the building.
Constructed in 1925 and occupying the south side of Washington Square, Lea & Febiger was the last of the four major publishers to construct office space on Washington Square. (PhillyHistory.org)

For much of the twentieth century, Washington Square was the nexus of Philadelphia’s publishing industry, possibly unrivaled anywhere in the world. The Curtis Publishing Company, publisher of the Saturday Evening Post and many other magazines, served a general audience from the north side of the square. On the other three sides of the square were medical publishers—Lea & Febiger on the south, J.B. Lippincott on the east, and W.B. Saunders on the west.

Early in the twenty-first century, Philadelphia held its reputation as the the largest center for the medical publishing industry in the country and the world, ranging from international conglomerates to family-owned firms and Philadelphia-based societies publishing influential journals. Most of these operations remained in Center City, not far from where they were founded and not far from the medical schools that still supply many of their authors.

Richard H. Lampert, a veteran of the medical publishing industry, is a consultant specializing in print and digital publishing strategy at The Lampert Consultancy, LLC. His clients have included large corporate organizations, small entrepreneurial publishers, and over two dozen professional societies in health care specialties. (Author information current at time of publication.)

Copyright 2014, Rutgers University.

Gallery

Saunders Publishing Catalogue for 1893

Medical publishers in Philadelphia offered books to fill every need of doctors and medical students. In this list of books published by W. B. Saunders Co. in 1893, the subjects cover specific types of diseases (Henry W. Stelwagon's Diseases of the Skin), general education compilations (American Text-Book of Surgery), and books to help medical professionals run a practice efficiently (John M. Keating's How to Examine for Life Insurance). Saunders updated a number of its primary textbooks and general reference guides regularly to keep medical professionals current with the newest medical discoveries. Only four years after Saunders opened, books such as Charles B. Nancrede's Essentials of Anatomy and Manual of Practical Dissection had already reached four printings with updated material.

Samuel D. Gross

Graduating from Jefferson Medical College at the age of twenty-one in 1826, Samuel D. Gross spent his life educating medical professionals through his lectures and published works. Gross's career as a medical educator led him to positions in the Medical College of Ohio, the Louisville Medical Institute in Kentucky, and the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. Generations of medical students learned from Gross's lectures and medical demonstrations, and hundreds of thousands more learning from his published works. Gross began to write books of medical diagnosis and his procedures beginning in 1830. In addition to writing medical books, he edited compilations of material from his colleagues and worked on the review board for organizations such as the Journal of the American Medical Association. A celebrated 1875 painting by Thomas Eakins titled "The Gross Clinic" depicted Gross speaking to medical students as he and his team operated on a patient—an image many considered shocking to sensibilities of the era. Gross continued to write medical materials and teach until his death in 1884.

(Autobiography of Samuel Gross)

J. B. Lippincott Co. Building

Founded in 1849 after Joshua Ballinger Lippincott purchased publisher Grigg, Elliot & Co, the newly titled J. B. Lippincott Company published a variety of material in the medical, literature, religious, and school textbook fields. Lippincott Company and architect William B. Pritchett put up this building in 1900, when the only other publisher on Washington Square was the Curtis Publishing Company. Lippincott used this building as its headquarters for over a hundred years. During the twentieth century, Lippincott increased its specialization in medical textbooks and materials for professionals. When Harper & Row purchased Lippincott in 1978, it turned Lippincott into an imprint solely focused on the health profession. Lippincott's editorial offices remained in this building on West Washington Square through multiple sales to other publishers, until finally being absorbed into publisher Wolters Kluwer in 2002. In 2005, the Lippincott building was sold to private developers who replaced the offices with condominiums. (Photograph by Donald D. Groff for the Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia.)

Lea & Febiger Building

PhillyHistory.org

The earliest medical publisher in Philadelphia, Carey & Lea, continued operating in Philadelphia until 1991. After generations of family control under various names throughout the nineteenth century, the company name changed to Lea & Febiger in 1908. As part of Lea & Febiger's growing medical publishing initiatives in the early twentieth century, the company constructed an editorial building on Washington Square in 1925. Designed by architect Earle Nelson Edwards, the Lea & Febinger building was the last of four publisher buildings constructed on Washington Square. The Lea & Febiger building pictured here in 1972, remained as the publisher's headquarters until Waverly Press purchased the company in 1991.

Art dealer Marian Locks purchased the building from Lea & Febiger in 1991, developing the space into Locks Art Gallery for contemporary artists.

W. B. Saunders Co. Building at Washington Square

Founded in 1888, the W. B. Saunders Co. began publishing medical materials from this building on the west side of Washington Square in 1912. Philadelphia architect John Torrey Windrim designed and supervised the construction of the building in 1911. Although the owners of Saunders would change over the latter half of the twentieth century, starting with CBS in 1968, the offices on Washington Square remained open until the company was sold to Harcourt Brace Jovanovich in 1986. In 2000, the building was renovated into condominium units. (Photo by Donald D. Groff for the Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia)

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Related Reading

Bussy, R. Kenneth. Lea & Febiger: 1795-1985 Two Hundred Years of Publishing. Philadelphia: Lea & Febiger, 1985.

Bussy, R. Kenneth. Epilogue: The Death of an Imprint: A Supplement to Two Hundred Years of Publishing. 1994 (n.p.)

Bussy, R. Kenneth (ed.) Philadelphia’s Publishers and Printers: An Informal History. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Book Clinic, 1976.

Craven, Robert H. F.A. Davis Company 1879-1979: A Very Personal Account. Philadelphia: F.A. Davis Co., 1979.

Dusseau, John L. An Informal History of W.B. Saunders Company. Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders Company, 1988.

Freeman Jr., J. Stuart. Toward a Third Century of Excellence. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1992.

Kaser, David. Messrs. Carey & Lea of Philadelphia: A Study in the History of the Booktrade. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1957.

(Anonymous). One Hundred Years, 1843-1943. Philadelphia: The Blakiston Company, 1943.

Tebbel, John. Between Covers: The Rise and Transformation of American Book Publishing. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.

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