From ancient times until the present day, the written, the printed and, more recently, the electronic word has played an important part in the communication of information in medicine. Thus by 1850 there was a large legacy of medical literature, both manuscript and printed, in addition to several well established medical libraries many of which continue today.

Possibly the oldest extant medical ‘text’ is a Sumerian cuneiform clay tablet dating from around 2100 BC, but the most significant survivor from the ancient world is the Egyptian Papyrus Ebers, written about 1550 BC and discovered in a tomb at Thebes in AD 1860. It is generally accounted the oldest medical book.

The most important medical practitioners of the classical world were Greek: Hippocrates (c.460–c.370 BC, the ‘Father of Medicine’) and Galen (AD 130–200), born at Pergamon but active in Rome. Their writings influenced medicine in Europe for over 1,500 years and copies of their works were to be found in practitioners' libraries for many centuries. Galen, for example, advocated blood-letting for the treatment of fevers and this practice continued until well into the nineteenth century.