Liaison librarian
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mary.yearl [at] mcgill.ca (Email)• 514-399-9316
- McGill users only
- Open access resource
- Free resource
- In-library-use only
- Catalogue record
Background and Reference Sources
Electronic
- Cambridge Historical Dictionary of Disease Entries include the history and description of 161 diseases.
- Dorland's Illustrated Medical Dictionary Good source for medical terminology.
- Oxford Reference Online Searches multiple reference books; good for definitions of terms and brief information on people; can search by specific subject areas.
- Xreferplus Multisource database; search by specific subsets, such as medicine or history.
- The Cambridge World History of Human Disease
- Companion Encyclopedia of the History of Medicine. Osler Ref WZ 13 C737 1993
- A Dictionary of the History of Medicine. Osler Ref folio WZ 13 S443d 1999
More dictionaries, encyclopedia, and resources for background information can be found here.
Article Indexes and Databases
Medicine/History of Medicine
- History of Science, Technology and Medicine (HSTM) Journal articles, conference proceedings, books, book reviews, and dissertations in the history of science, technology, and medicine and allied historical fields.
- JSTOR Full text database of over 500 scholarly journals in multiple disciplines. Here is a list of journals by subject category. Note that most recent issues of journals may not be included.
- LocatorPlus This is the catalogue of the National Library of Medicine in the United States, containing records of books, book chapters (individual essays) and audiovisual material.
- MEDLINE Major bibliographic index of journal articles in medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, and the pre-clinical sciences dating back to before 1950. One can also limit results to only "History of Medicine" by clicking on "More Limits".
- Sociological Abstracts. Indexes, in part, medicine from a sociological perspective, such as the journal "Social Science and Medicine."
- Web of Science General academic database.
General History
- America: History and Life This contains references to journal articles, book reviews and some dissertations about Canadian and United States history from the earliest times. Its subject coverage is broad and includes medical topics. To search this you need to select "United States and Canadian History" in the drop down search options.
- Historical Abstracts This contains references to journal articles, book reviews and some dissertations about the history of all parts of the world from 1450, EXCLUDING Canada and the United States. Its subject coverage is broad and includes medical topics. To search this you need to select "World History excluding US and Canada" in the drop down search options.
- NOTE: You can search both "America: History and Life" and "Historical Abstracts" simultaneously by selecting "World History including US & Canada" from the drop down menu.
Primary Material
- Early Canadiana Online - History of Medicine Collection Digitized historical materials from Canada. History of medicine collection includes many early medical journals.
- IndexCat (Index-Catalogue of the Library of the Surgeon-General's Office) Index of works in medicine and allied fields written before 1950.
- Index Medicus, the print version of MEDLINE, produced from 1879-2004. Good for locating historical published mateiral.
- JSTOR has many older issues of journals, can be useful for finding historical journal articles.
- PubMed Central has digitised some nineteenth and twentieth century medical journals.
- Osler Library Archives - searchable database Nearly 200 collections of papers by or about doctors, medical students and organisations.
- Web of Science Science citations go back to 1900, making this a source for finding historical, primary material.
Books
- McGill University's WorldCat Catalogue lists almost all of the printed holdings in the various branches of the McGill Library, as well as electronic, microform and audio-visual material, such as e-books and e-journals.
Note: An easy way to narrow down printed books to only history of medicine (i.e. eliminate general medicine from your search results) is by searching the Osler Library subcatalogue of the Classic Catalogue. Click the "Sub-catalogues" tab, then click "Osler Library of the History of Medicine" under the Libraries and Collections category.
- Use McGill's WorldCat Catalogue when searching for e-journals, e-books and databases.
Historical Medical Images
- Osler Library Prints Collection Historical prints on the history of medicine online.
- Images from the History of Medicine There are nearly 60 000 scans of images in this database from the collection of the History of Medicine Division of the National Library of Medicine.
- Wellcome Images The Wellcome Trust has scans of over 160 000 historical and contemporary images. Search for historical images in advanced mode.
More image collections online can be found here.