Tag: National Library of Medicine

Digital Highlights: Safeguards

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Warnings from the front matter of "The Lady's Own Book."

In 1877, in England, Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh, who would become notorious for refusing to take a religious oath to take his seat in Parliament in 1880, were prosecuted for publishing and distributing a book on birth control.

In 1847, in Michigan, Dr. Z.J. Brown published The Lady’s Own Book, or, Female Safeguard; the title goes on to specify that Dr. Brown intends talking about “Generation, Sterility, Impotency, Female Complaints, the Diseases of Infants and Children…” as well as a host of other topics all covered “…in a plain, yet chaste, style…” Continue reading

Digital Connection: Historical Images from the NLM

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The NLM, as well as being a valued partner in the MHL, has also created a great database of medical images, Images from the History of Medicine.

The database features a variety of images, including postcards, broadsides, posters, public health advertisements, and caricatures among others. Images features almost 70,000 images from the historical collections at NLM. The bulk of the images are from prior to World War II, but later public health images are also included, such as images from public health campaigns against drug abuse and AIDS. The collection is also international, featuring image material from a number of countries in various languages. Continue reading

Digitizing Dorothea Lynde Dix at the National Library of Medicine

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Portrait of Dorothea Lynde Dix, from NLM’s Images from the History of Medicine database.

Dorothea Lynde Dix (1802-1887) was one of the most influential lay social reformers to focus on the care and treatment of the mentally ill in 19th-century America. After starting a career as a school teacher in Massachusetts, Dix became aware of the abject conditions under which mentally ill persons in the state were held and treated: many of them kept restrained in dank prisons with little or no clothing, heat, or treatment. Campaigning first in Massachusetts and Rhode Island and then around the country, she approached numerous private donors, state legislatures and the US Congress to make funding available to build humane facilities for the mentally ill. Continue reading

Lamar Soutter Library Contributes Rare Books to Online Medical Heritage Library

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We are pleased to announce the addition of 286 classic medical rare books from the Lamar Soutter Library, University of Massachusetts Medical School, to the Medical Heritage Library (MHL)’s holdings in the Internet Archive. The Lamar Soutter Library is the first contributor of existing digital materials to the MHL; by adding the tag “medicalheritage” to the cataloging information for each book in the Internet Archive, the Lamar Soutter Library has radically expanded the volumes’ potential audience. These digital texts join materials from Columbia, Harvard, and Yale, the National Library of Medicine, and the New York Public Library that will comprise the MHL. Continue reading

Early American Veterinary Texts in the National Library of Medicine’s Medical Heritage Library Collection

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A handwritten recipe for the botts, a parasite that affects horses, in Gervase Markham’s "The Citizen and Countryman’s Experienced Farrier" (Wilmington, Delaware: James Adams, 1764). Ingredients include vinegar, molasses, and gin.

Over the past twelve months the National Library of Medicine, a principal partner in the Medical Heritage Library, has been digitizing books from its early American medical book collection, and included have been a number of important and interesting items relating to veterinary medicine. Continue reading

National Library of Medicine Releases “Medicine in the Americas,” Featuring Digitized Versions of American Medical Books Dating Back to 1745

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From Anatomical Tables of the Human Body, William Cheselden, 1796.

From Practical horse farrier, or, The traveller's pocket companion: shewing the best method to preserve the horse in health...,William Carver, 1820.

The National Library of Medicine, the world’s largest medical library and a component of NIH, announces the release of Medicine in the Americas. A digital resource encompassing over 350 early American printed books, Medicine in the Americas makes freely available original works demonstrating the evolution of American medicine from colonial frontier outposts of the 17th century to research hospitals of the 20th century. Continue reading