LibGuides: The Medical World of Early Modern Europe, 1400-1800: Primary and Secondary Sources

Primary and Secondary Sources

Primary Source Databases & Websites
Secondary Source Databases

Anatomia Collection: Anatomical Plates 1522-1867
Collection of approx. 4500 full page plates and other human anatomy illustrations. Each is fully indexed using medical subject headings (MeSH). Plates are sorted by anatomy and plate/drawing artist.

British Library Newspapers
A comprehensive range of regional and local newspapers in Britain between the mid-eighteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, providing a range of publications to reflect the social, political and cultural events of the times. The British Library Newspapers' collections feature London national newspapers, English regional papers, home country newspapers from Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, and titles in specialist areas such as Victorian radicalism and Chartism.

Casebooks Project
Digitized archive of medical writings from Simon Forman and Richard Napier, one of the largest sets of medical writing in history. Collection written in the years 1556-1634.
Contagion: Historical Views of Diseases and Epidemics
Collection from Harvard Library providing general background information on diseases and epidemics worldwide. Includes more than 500,000 pages of materials such as digitized copies of books, serials, pamphlets, incunabula, and manuscripts. These materials also include primary sources such as plates, engravings, maps, charts, broadsides.
Digital Public Library of America
Provides access to millions of images, photographs, manuscripts, books, sounds, and more from libraries, archives, and museums across the U.S.

Early English Books Online
(EEBO) contains digital facsimile page images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473-1700 - from the first book printed in English by William Caxton, through the age of Spenser and Shakespeare and the tumult of the English Civil War. Access includes Thomason Tracts and Early English Books Tract Supplement. early_english_books_online.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online
Includes books, pamphlets, essays, broadsides and more. Based on the English Short Title Catalogue. Works published in the UK during the 18th century plus thousands from elsewhere.

Encyclopedia of Diderot and D'Alembert Collaborative Translation Project
Resource provides English translations of work from the French Enlightenment period.
HathiTrust
Collection of digitized titles from libraries and research institutions around the world.
Historical Images in Medicine
Collections encompass over 3,000 photographs, illustrations, engravings, and bookplates from the history of the health and life sciences.
London Lives 1680-1820
Searchable database of numerous manuscripts, archives, and datasets, giving access to 3.35 million names.

Making Of The Modern World
Provides digital facsimile images of primary sources that track the development of the modern, western world through the lens of trade and wealth. Full-text searching across millions of pages of works from the periods 1450-1850, 1851-1914, and 1890-1945 provides researchers access to material for research in the areas of history, political science, social conditions, technology and industry, economics, area studies and more. Includes books, serials, pamphlets, essays and more.

Medical Heritage Library
Provides open access to historical resources in medicine.
National Library of Medicine Digital Collections
Digital Collections provides access to the National Library of Medicine's distinctive digital content in the areas of biomedicine, health care and the history of medicine.
National Library of Medicine Digital Projects
This source contains historical and contemporary resources for research and education. It features NLM's online exhibitions and links to NLM's digital projects, which are sorted by date or subject.
Osler Library Prints Collection
The Osler Library Prints Collection brings together a rich variety of visual documents related to the history of medicine, spanning several centuries, countries, and artistic media. Ranging from the seventeenth to the twentieth century, the collection consists predominantly of prints, though it also includes some photographs, drawings, posters, and cartoons.
Seeing is Believing
Illustrations were essential in spreading new scientific and medical ideas, and it was often the case that new developments in the sciences were accompanied by corresponding developments in illustrative techniques. These techniques are the subject of Seeing Is Believing, which complements an exhibition of the same name on view from October 23, 1999-February 19, 2000 at The New York Public Library's Humanities and Social Sciences Library.
Sloane Letters Project
The correspondence of Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753) consists of thirty-eight volumes held at the British Library, London. The letters are a rich source of information about topics such as scientific discourse, collections of antiquities, curiosities and books, patients’ illnesses, medical treatments and family history.
Verso
The blog of the Huntington Library.
World Health Organization Historical Collection
The Rare Book Collection consists largely of documentation acquired by the OIHP on epidemics included in the International Sanitary Conventions such as plague, cholera and yellow fever.
Materials covering smallpox, malaria and other diseases prevalent at the beginning of the XX century, are also included. The oldest book on plague dates from 1507 while the oldest treatise on epidemiology was published in 1518.
Wellcome Library
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. Digitized materials are released under a variety of Creative Commons non-commercial, attribution and Public Domain licenses.
Wellcome Library Recipe Books
Explore medicinal and culinary recipes through the ages with this collection of 16th-19th century domestic recipe manuscripts.

JSTOR
Archive of selected scholarly journals in anthropology, art, art history, communication studies, criminology, ecology, economics, education, English, film studies, foreign languages and literatures, geography, geology, history, mathematics, music, philosophy, political science, public and international affairs, religion, social work, sociology, statistics, theatre, and other humanities and social sciences. Find more information.
Historical Abstracts
Historical Abstracts covers the history of the world (excluding the United States and Canada) focusing on the 15th century forward, including art history, world history, military history, women's history, history of education, foreign languages and literatures, and more. Find more information.
Allows 6 users access at a time. Please try again later if you cannot access this resource.
Iter: gateway to the Middle Ages and Renaissance
Iter's bibliography includes art, art history, foreign languages and literatures, and literature pertaining to the Middle Ages and Renaissance (400-1700). Citations for books, journal material (articles, reviews, review articles, bibliographies, catalogues, abstracts and discographies) are included, as are citations for dissertation abstracts, and essays in books (including entries in conference proceedings, festschriften, encyclopedias and exhibition catalogues). Subscription includes Iter bibliography and the Iter International directory of scholars, as well as a membership to the Renaissance Society of America.