Historical research into all aspects of medicine and health sciences is supported by the primary materials housed in the rare books and special collections and by the secondary materials from the circulating history of medicine collection. They cover the history of medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, nursing, psychiatry and the allied health sciences.

The historical collections are comprised of over 20,000 volumes of monographs and journals from 1496 to the present, both primary and secondary sources, covering the fields of medicine, dentistry, nursing, pharmacy, and the allied health sciences. The Rodnan Collection on the history of rheumatology is the second largest such collection in the world. The Ravitch history of surgery collection has over 500 titles on the history of hernia repair, from the end of the 16th century until the early 1960s. There are also major collections in the areas of the history of psychiatry, neurology, and public health.