A Boom for Books on Bloodletting And Delivering Babies in 1669

Collectors with a love of medical history are bidding up the price of arcane texts

- JARED S. HOPKINS

Tim Opler was searching an online jewelry auction for a birthday gift for his wife when he stumbled upon something more interesting.

The New York investment bankers spent the next few hours scanning rare medical books and scooped up about 20 that piqued his interest. Since that day three years ago, he has acquired hundreds more, which he displays on shelves in his Manhattan office and estimates are worth $400,000.

His collection includes one of six copies of a 1669 guide to delivering babies. "Some guy 400 or 500 years ago did this, and I find that just amazing," Opler said.

Brush off those old guides to bloodletting and treating a gunshot wound with boiling oil.

You may be sitting on a gold mine.

Bankers, doctors and others who share a love for medical history and the crinkly feel of a centuries-old binding or manuscript-are bidding up the price of texts that illuminate the evolving understanding of human anatomy and treating patients.

More than $26 million in rare medical books are forecast to sell at auction in the 2020s, based on sales through 2024, marking a dramatic increase in demand for texts that had been fetching around $15 million a decade since the 1990s, according to Stifel Financial.

Collectors scour book fairs, travel together to famous libraries and compare notes in text-message groups and weekly Zoom gatherings. They spend thousands of dollars or more at auction to outbid each other and universities. With a heavy dose of admiration and a bit of envy, they recite the years and editions of each other's texts.

"This is my life, not a hobby," said Gene Flamm, 88, who fellow collectors consider the dean of the group.