The publisher had its origins in a Philadelphia bookstall opened by Benjamin Warner and Jacob Johnson in 1792. Joshua Ballinger Lippincott assumed control of the firm in 1836. In 1978, the company (then named J. B. Lippincott Company) was sold to Harper & Row, at which point it began to focus its publishing activities exclusively in health care; in 1990, it was sold to Wolters Kluwer. It was later merged with Raven Press in 1995 to become Lippincott-Raven Publishers, which then merged with Williams & Wilkins, ultimately forming Lippincott Williams & Wilkins in 1998.