History of Medicine

Interface in English or other, major European languages. Content in multiple languages.
Europe-wide unified search of digitized collections. Images, audio, texts, and more. Funded by the EU. Covers more than 1,000 years of history. Strongest for 1500 to 2000.
Open Access.

Interface in English. Content in English or other languages.
Digitized collections from the Library of Congress, includes manuscripts, books, photos, maps, audio recordings, and more. Strongest between the 17th and 21st centuries. Content dating back to B.C.E.
Open Access.

"A digital curation collaborative among some of the world’s leading medical libraries, promotes free and open access to quality historical resources in medicine. Our goal is to provide the means by which readers and scholars across a multitude of disciplines can examine the interrelated nature of medicine and society, both to inform contemporary medicine and strengthen understanding of the world in which we live. The MHL’s growing collection of digitized medic..."
Open Access.

The Library's digital collections cover a wide variety of topics, including asylums, food, sex and sexual health, genetics, public health and war.
Published books, pamphlets, archives, posters, photographs, and film and sound recordings are completely free to view.

"Makes available Nightingale’s major published books, articles and pamphlets (many long out of print) and a vast amount of heretofore unpublished correspondence and notes. Extensive databases, notably a chronology and names index, and the original, unedited, transcriptions, will also be published in electronic form. This will permit convenient access to scholars interested not only in Nightingale but other major figures of her time."
Open Access.

"Despite being a vital part of the war, the contribution of nurses is often overlooked. The accounts that emerge from the scrapbooks highlight the extraordinary commitment of the nursing profession, a commitment that continues in nursing today. The experience of trained nurses during the war, as opposed to the work of VADs, is little documented. By the end of the war, more than 17,000 trained nurses had served in military hospitals. Unlike VADs, some worked close to the front line, performing duties in Casualty Clearing Stations and with far greater responsibility for casualty care, wound irrigation and dressing and assisting in surgery and blood transfusions. Our project fills this gap in the historical record."
Open Access.

The papers of nurse, educator, philanthropist, and lecturer Clara Barton (1821-1912) consist of 62,000 items (81,608 images). Includes Letterbooks, 1876-1911 covering the Spanish-American war.

Interface and content in English.
Over 19,000 photographs, including hundreds of nurses, from the 20th century.
Open Access.

"This curated selection of meetings and minutes" as well as personal papers "portray the actions and activities of nurses and nursing institutions during the Influenza Pandemic of 1918. These minutes report on the number of patients being seen, patient cases, children’s cases, and relief efforts to support families and orphans." Focused on the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Open Access.

"The History of Nursing collection, comprised of images representing resources in the University Museum, promotes an understanding of the historical development of the nursing profession and the University of Portland’s School of Nursing."
Open Access.

Database of over 70,000 digitized images of the approximate 100,000 items from the U.S. National Library of Medicine’s Prints and Photographs collection; includes portraits, photographs, caricatures, genre scenes, posters, and graphic art illustrating the social and historical aspects of medicine dated from the 15th to 21st century.
Open Access.

"The North Carolina History of Health Digital Collection consists of books, journals, reports, bulletins, minutes, proceedings, and histories covering topics in medicine, public health, dentistry, pharmacy, and nursing, dating from 1849 to the present. These materials thoroughly document the development of health care and the health professions within North Carolina and is thus a significant part of the state’s cultural heritage and history."
Open Access

The Osler Library Prints Collection brings together a rich variety of visual documents related to the history of medicine, spanning several centuries, countries, and artistic media. Ranging from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, the collection consists predominantly of prints, though it also includes some photographs, drawings, posters, and cartoons. Medical professionals throughout history are represented largely through portraiture, as well as through caricatures and scenes.