Information for Librarians

• Databases

Images from the History of Medicine (IHM) The prints and photographs collection contains approximately 70,000 images dating from the 15th to the 20th century including portraits, photographs, caricatures, genre scenes, posters, and graphic art illustrating the social and historical aspects of medicine.

IndexCat contains material dated from the 1400s through 1950 and is an important resource for researchers in the history of medicine, history of science, and for clinical research.

Directory of History of Medicine Collections provides research, reference, and interlibrary loan services to scholars interested in the history of the health sciences. Some of the subjects include: dentistry, veterinary medicine, nursing, military medicine, and pharmacy. While the Directory is by no means exhaustive, it serves to draw attention to the depth and variety of history of medicine collections available to researchers.

History of Medicine Division Finding Aids is the central access point for electronic finding aids provided by the Archives and Modern Manuscripts and the Prints and Photographs collections.

History of Medicine Finding Aids Consortium is a tool created by archivists to give information about the contents of archival collections. We currently have over 3,000 finding aids from 20 institutions that collect broadly in the area of the history of medicine and its allied sciences.

• Digital Collections

Profiles in Science celebrates twentieth-century leaders in biomedical research and public health. It makes the archival collections of prominent scientists, physicians, and others who have advanced the scientific enterprise available to the public through modern digital technology.

Medicine in the Americas features digitized American medical books dating from 1610 to 1920, made possible in part through NLM's participation in the Medical Heritage Library, a digital curation collaborative among a group of the world’s leading medical libraries.

Films and Videos features digitized historical public health and training films using a prototype full-text search and delivery platform for online motion picture content.

Historical Anatomies on the Web features high-quality images from important anatomical atlases in the Library's collection. The project offers selected images from NLM's atlas collection, not the entire books, with an emphasis on images and not texts. Atlases and images are selected primarily for their historical and artistic significance, with priority placed upon the earliest and/or the best edition of a work in NLM's possession.

Cholera Online features digitized English language monographs from the History of Medicine collections dating from 1817 to 1900 dealing with the cholera pandemics of that period.