The Rush University Medical Center library perhaps unsurprisingly moves with a quiet hum. Students click through the Internet at computer stations and page through textbooks at wooden tables, prepping for their futures as modern doctors.

In an alcove on the library’s upper floor, a different store of knowledge can be found — though not for long.

A double-locked door opens into a small circular room housing a collection of rare books. Organized by a Rush doctor named Stanton Freidberg and first shelved in 1976, the collection features about 3,300 titles that range from anatomy texts of the 16th century to treatises on the insane published about 300 years later. The oldest, An Incunabulum of the Florentine by Marsilius Finicus, made its debut in 1500.

Glass cabinets recessed into the black-paneled walls enclose the books, the oldest of which are organized by century, with those published during the 1800s categorized by topic — Neurology/Psychiatry, Cardiovascular and other specializations. Dotting the collection are such famous titles as John Snow’s On the Mode of Communication of Cholera, published in 1855, which demonstrated that water was the vector spreading cholera — from the infamous Broad Street pump — during a deadly epidemic in London instead of air.

An oversized reproduction of an anatomy book published in 1543 sits at the center of the room. With statuary peering down from a ledge, backlit by unseen bulbs, the room feels akin to an empty corner in a medieval European university library, hush and freighted with ancient knowledge.

The problem with the collection is simply one of utility. With no history of medicine program, Rush’s faculty and students have little need for such texts.

“Our emphasis is a working clinical collection,” said Christine Frank, director of Rush’s library. “We’re here to support the working needs of the medical center.”

“It is a treasure,” Frank said. “But it’s not being used where it is right now.”

Since Frank became director of the Rush library five years ago, in fact, no one has come to use it, save the occasional tour group.

In November 2008, Frank, acting on a recommendation of an appraiser who looked over the Rush collection a few years earlier, put in a call to the University of Chicago. Would they be interested in purchasing the collection?

The answer, as it turned out, was yes. The University of Chicago library system had just gained access to a bequest from the estate of Erica Reiner, a deceased faculty member who studied Babylonian science and medicine. The school decided to purchase Rush’s rare books with the Reiner funds, and will truck them down to Hyde Park later this year. The sale price is not being disclosed.

“We weren’t terribly optimistic we wanted to pursue it,” said Alice Schreyer, director of the special collections research center at the University of Chicago. “When you have a strong collection, you already have a lot of key works.” If the overlap between existing resources and a potential collection is too high, “it’s not worth it.”

Schreyer estimated the overlap between the University of Chicago books and the Rush rare books at no more than 30 percent — a low number. Many of the books are in good shape, she said, and the titles from the 1800s are unique.

“What really pleased us immensely is even going into the late 19th century we realized we were going to be acquiring a large number of new titles,” Schreyer said. “And that’s golden. That’s what a research library looks for.”

In Hyde Park, the Rush books will be integrated into the special collections section in the Regenstein Library, the primary one on campus, as well as an institution called the John Crerar Library. Schreyer said scholars from the history of science, philosophy — “the broad range of humanistic disciplines,” she said — would use the Rush collection.

Frank was glad to ship the books whole cloth. “I didn’t want to cannibalize the collection. The last thing I wanted to do was sell it through Sotheby’s, or eBay, or piecemeal it,” she said.

The future of the rare books room has not yet been determined. Frank admits she’ll miss it.

“It’s like walking into another world,” she said. “It’s very precious and wonderful stuff.”

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