Library Guides: Teaching the History of Medicine in Special Collections: Collections

Ask the Librarians

Collection Strengths at MU

The general Rare Book Collection in Special Collections has a number of strengths in medical topics and is greatly supplemented by the Rare Book Room at the J. Otto Lottes Health Sciences Library. The links below connect to listings of relevant records in the Library catalog for both collections.

Anatomy. Beginning with a 1555 second edition of Vesalius De Humani Corporis Fabrica, the collection includes many early modern anatomical works.
Early epidemiology, including accounts of disease outbreaks and responses to plague.
Herbals and botanical works. These materials include early attempts at plant taxonomy and classification, many of which have a focus on medicinal botany. Highlights include a 1542 first edition of Leonhart Fuchs' De Historia Stirpium Commentarii Insignes,
Hygiene, sanitation, and public health.
Veterinary medicine.

MU Digital Exhibitions

Anatomical Illustration: Art Informing Science, 1543-1950
The 6th annual MU Life Sciences and Society Symposium (March 2010) took as its theme, From Art to Biology and Back Again. This theme is a rich one that allowed a plethora of viewpoints of how the life sciences have influenced and been influenced by the arts. The University Libraries decided to approach the topic from a historic path calling upon its very rich collections of rare books, historical medical memorabilia, and university records.
Controlling Heredity: The American Eugenics Crusade, 1870-1940
This virtual exhibit explores the intersections between ethics and the pseudo-science of eugenics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Food Revolutions: Science and Nutrition, 1700-1950
Food Revolutions examines our changing notions of healthy eating over two centuries. The materials on view here illustrate our ongoing quest for health and our changing relationships with food.
Generations: Reproduction, Heredity, and Epigenetics
Although the scientific study of epigenetics only dates to the middle of the twentieth century, scientists have puzzled over related questions of heredity and development for hundreds of years.
In-Flew-Enza: Spanish Flu in Columbia
In fall, 1918, an outbreak of epidemic influenza spread across the entire world. Erroneously dubbed "the Spanish Flu," the pandemic was to eventually cause the death of 40-50 million people, more than the total casualties of the first World War.
Vesalius at 500
Vesalius at 500 showcases materials from the Libraries’ collections that helped to shape Vesalius’ career, including medieval manuscripts and early printed books on medicine. The centerpiece of the exhibition is Vesalius’ most famous work, De Humani Corporis Fabrica. The Libraries hold two copies of this important book, a second edition printed in 1555, and a later edition from 1568. Recognizing MU’s strength in human and animal medical research, the exhibition considers Vesalius’ effect on the history of veterinary medicine with several early illustrated works on animal anatomy. Works of Renaissance science are also included in order to situate Vesalius within the world of sixteenth-century scientific thought.

Digital Collections

College of Physicians of Philadelphia Library
The College of Physicians of Philadelphia Digital Library is a searchable image database and exhibition platform dedicated to celebrating and communicating the history of medicine.
Contagion: Historical Views of Diseases and Epidemics
Offering valuable insights to students of the history of medicine and to researchers seeking an historical context for current epidemiology, this collection contributes to our understanding of the global, social-history, and public-policy implications of disease.
Directory of History of Medicine Collections
Directory maintained by the National Library of Medicine.
Medical Artifacts Collection, Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries
This digital collection provides access to a representative group of 167 objects from the Medical Artifacts Collection housed in Special Collections and Archives at the Tompkins-McCaw Library for the Health Sciences.
Medical Heritage Library
The MHL is a digital curation collaborative among some of the world’s leading medical libraries, promotes free and open access to quality historical resources in medicine.
New York Academy of Medicine Digital Collections
The Academy is home to one of the most significant historical libraries in medicine and public health in the world. Digital collections include rare books, manuscripts, pharmaceutical trade cards, and more.
U.S. National Library of Medicine Digital Collections
Free online repository of biomedical resources including books, manuscripts, still images, videos, and maps. The content in Digital Collections is freely available worldwide and, unless otherwise indicated, in the public domain. Digital Collections provides unique access to NLM's rich historical resources, as well as select modern resources.
University of South Carolina School of Medicine Library
Selections from the 900+ volume History of Medicine collection housed in the Charles S. Bryan History of Medicine Room, which includes a wide variety of materials of importance to medical, historical, and sociological research.
Wellcome Library Digital Collections
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. Digitised materials are released under a variety of Creative Commons non-commercial, attribution and Public Domain licenses.
Yale University Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library
The Historical Library contains a large and unique collection of rare medical books, medical journals to 1920, pamphlets, prints, and photographs, as well as current works on the history of medicine.