The Edward Worth Library, is named after its collector, the early eighteenth-century Dublin physician, Dr Edward Worth (1676–1733), who bequeathed his library of c. 4,300 volumes to Dr Steevens’ Hospital, Dublin, an institution of which he was a Trustee.
Edward Worth Library
Dr Steevens' Hospital - Dublin
Today, it is regarded as the most important medical collection of early modern Ireland. Its extensive medical holdings reflect Worth’s interest in all areas of medical practice, while the rest of his library points to his abiding interest in the history of science and the history of the book as material object.
Worth’s medical collection displays not only his fascination with Newtonian medicine but, above all the impact of his medical education at the University of Leiden. As his accompanying collection of auction and sales catalogues from the last ten years of his life makes clear, Worth was a connoisseur collector who did not limit himself to what was available in early eighteenth-century Dublin, but who also acquired material from the great centres of the continental book trade: London, Amsterdam and The Hague.
Thus, Worth’s medical collection mirrors the dominant themes of early modern European medicine.
