Bruce Fye Collection

Biography

W. Bruce Fye, III, was born in Meadville, Pennsylvania and raised in suburban Philadelphia. He earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Johns Hopkins University, receiving an A.B. in 1968, a M.D. in 1972, and M.A. in History of Medicine in 1978. Fye completed his post-graduate training on the medical service at New York Hospital -Cornell Medical Center then returned to the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine as a cardiology fellow in 1975 and in 1976 was awarded a post-doctoral fellowship in the department of history of medicine. In 1978, Fye accepted an appointment as director of the Cardiographics Laboratory at the Marshfield Clinic, Wisconsin, and rose to become the chairman of its department of cardiology in 1980. He was appointed a clinical professor of medicine at the University of Wisconsin in 1985. From 1989 to 1999, he served as vice-chief of staff at the St. Joseph’s Hospital in Marshfield, Wisconsin.

Fye pursued his interest in the history of medicine as a book collector and dealer and through academic research and publishing. He began collecting books in 1960, and launched his mail order book business W. Bruce Fye Antiquarian Medical Books in in New York City in 1972. The business relocated as he advanced his medical career and closed its online sales in 2013 i n Rochester Minnesota. He published his first book in 1987, “The Development of American Physiology: Scientific Medicine in the Nineteenth Century”. He was appointed adjunct professor of the History of Medicine, University of Wisconsin in 1990.

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Scope and Content

The W. Bruce Fye Collection spans his entire career and documents his extensive contributions in cardiology, physiology, medical history, and medical book collecting, including his time building the history program at the Mayo Clinic, also known as the W. Bruce Fye Center for the History of Medicine, for which he served as director. The collection includes documents from Fye’s time as a student of Johns Hopkins (undergraduate and medical degrees), his internal medicine residency at New York Hospital- Cornell Medical Center, and his time at the Marshfield Clinic. There are also documents from his time as president for the American Association for the History of Medicine (AAHM), the American College of Cardiology (ACC), and the American Osler Society, as well as his time as co-editor for the Profiles in Cardiology series. Other documents relate to Fye’s book collection and antique bookstore, W. Bruce Fye’s Antiquarian Medical Books, which he ran from 1972- 2013. Other material in this collection includes documents for the Ken Burns film, The Mayo Clinic: Faith, Hope, Science, which was released September 25, 2018, in which Fye served as a Senior Historical Consultant. There are also correspondence and research notes on William Osler, Fye’s presidential addresses, reprints, as well as audio and visual material from his lectures.

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