History of Medicine
Books and Journals
Material in the collection covers every area of the history of medicine and the health sciences in the United States and Europe, and substantial collections of Latin American and Asian publications.
Books Published before 1914
Journals Published before 1871
Incunabula (books printed before 1501)
East Asian Collection (15th-20th century)
Pamphlets (16th-20th century)
Dissertations (16th-20th century)
Reports (19th-20th Century)
History of Medicine Reading Room Collection
How to Search Books and Journals
How to Find Uncataloged Material
How to Access and Use Books and Journals
Contact Books and Journals
Books Published before 1914
The historical book collection provides a rich resource for studying every aspect of medicine and health in the past, including related areas of social, economic, and intellectual history.
What the collection includes
The collection includes about 500 incunabula (books printed before 1501), some 57,000 16th-18th century books, and 95,000 items published between 1801 and 1913. Nearly every European language and many Asian languages are represented. The book collection includes monographs, serials, pamphlets, medical school dissertations and catalogs, hospital, health department and other government reports.
Popular and ephemeral items
Among works of popular and ephemeral interest are home health guides, pharmaceutical almanacs, patent medicine catalogs, medical equipment catalogs, personal narratives, first-hand accounts, broadsides, pharmacopoeias, illustrated herbals, and botanical name indexes (materia medica).
Treasures
Medical history landmarks in the collection include Andreas Vesalius' De humani corporis fabrica (1543), William Harvey's Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis (1628), William Withering's An Account of the Foxglove (1785), and Edward Jenner's An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae (1798), as well as comprehensive holdings of the works of major medical figures such as Hippocrates, Galen, Paracelsus, Boerhaave, and Osler.
Journals Published before 1871
The journal collection includes bound and unbound medical journals dating from the 17th century through 1870.
Incunabula (books printed before 1501)
NLM holds approximately 500 incunabula titles. The word incunabula comes from the Latin word cuna (cradle) and refers to books printed during the infancy of printing, which dates from the invention of moveable type (c. 1455) until 1500.
East Asian Collection (15th-20th century)
The East Asian collection holds approximately 3,000 books, manuscripts, prints, photographs, and pieces of ephemera from Japan, China, and Korea dating from the 15th-20th century. Nearly 1,000 items date from before 1850.
The Library has recently begun a project to catalog the East Asian collection online using vernacular characters. We are also undertaking a project to microfilm the collection in order to make the texts available to other libraries in the U.S. and Asia.
See also Classics of Traditional Chinese Medicine (online exhibition)
Pamphlets (16th-20th century)
The pamphlet collection includes some 75,000 pamphlets (short essays, treatises, articles, etc., often unbound) dating from the 16th-20th century, covering a wide range of medically-related topics.
All the pre-1801 and about 22,000 post-1800 pamphlets have records in LocatorPlus. About 50,000 19th and 20th century pamphlets do not yet have records in LocatorPlus. Many of them can be found by searching NLM’s Index Catalogue online.
Dissertations (16th-20th century)
The collection of dissertations and theses on medical subjects are primarily from American and European universities and date from the 16th-20th century. Some 20,000 dissertations in the collection were printed before 1801 and about 180,000 since 1800.
Reports (19th-20th Century)
The collection includes published reports of hospitals, medical schools, and organizations, as well as reports of state, local, and federal health-related agencies, mostly dealing with such matters as disease prevention, hygiene, and safety. Most of this material dates from the 19th and 20th century.
History of Medicine Reading Room Collection
The History of Medicine Reading Room collection includes the major bibliographic resources necessary for historical research, as well as standard works in the history of medicine.
The collection includes general histories of medicine, histories of diseases, medical directories, encyclopedias, biographies and collective biographies, and reprints of medical classics. Reference sources, such as directories, handbooks, regulations, abstract tools, statistical sources, and prepared bibliographies, are used by patrons and by staff to answer reference questions
