The last formal way of searching the Internet Archive, whether for content from the Medical Heritage Library or other collections, is via the advanced search function. As you can see, advanced search allows you to construct quite a complex search. However, none of these fields are mandatory and you can enter as much or as little as you wish in any of them. You can select “contains” or “does not contain” from any of the… Continue reading
In spring 1915, a deputation of surgeons and nurses from the Harvard Medical School travelled to Paris to join the service at the American Ambulance Hospital, giving medical aid to injured soldiers from battles taking place across Europe. The unit had been invited by Dr. Joseph Blake, one of the surgeons already working in Paris. One of the surgeons who came from Harvard was Dr. Elliott Carr Cutler. In 1916, he put together a journal… Continue reading
Last week, Yale University, one of the partners in the MHL, announced it would be offering open access to images of many of the items in its museums, libraries, and special collections via a new website: Discover Yale Digital Commons. Researchers can browse the collections — which include Historical Scientific Instruments — or search for something specific. For more on the new Yale initiative, see coverage at DigitalKoans, Ten Thousand Year Blog, the Chronicle of Higher Education’s… Continue reading
In our last post about searching, we talked about how to look through items specifically in the MHL collections and through the MHL’s Internet Archive website. But you might also be looking for items with, so to speak, a broader net and want to use the Archive’s larger search functions. From the Archive’s main page, you can do a very general search in the box at the top of the page that will cover everything… Continue reading
According to Thomas Middleton Stuart’s 1819 essay on Genius and Its Diseases there are four reasons for mental genius to become disordered: inactivity, imperfection, artificial excitement, and excessive exercise. Having cited such examples for genius as Newton, Franklin, and Homer, Stuart’s suppositions as to the sources of mental disturbance seem reasonable! The essay was originally written to complete Stuart’s medical degree. The title page notes that it was “submitted to the examination of Samuel Bard…”… Continue reading
Representatives of Medical Heritage Library (MHL) collaborating institutions presented a lunchtime session at the American Association for the History of Medicine annual meeting on Saturday, April 30th. Michael North, National Library of Medicine (NLM), introduced the NLM’s improved Directory of History of Medicine Collections (http://www.cf.nlm.nih.gov/hmddirectory/index.cfm). The directory includes 200 repositories globally and is now searchable by subject and location. It is possible to refine searches, adding subjects or locations to assist users in prioritizing repositories… Continue reading
There are several different ways you can access titles in the Medical Heritage Library through our Internet Archive website. Our homepage features a variety of search functions: you can use the general Internet Archive search at the top of the page or you can browse the MHL’s collection by subject, author, or title. If you choose to browse through the collection, you can either browse the whole collection, at once or you can go through… Continue reading
Over the past twelve months, the MHL has made progress on a number of fronts. As of this writing, 9,245 monographs have been uploaded to the Internet Archive (IA); nearly 5,000 more have been digitized and are awaiting processing and deposit. Subject areas include general public health topics, psychiatry, popular medicine, medical directories, forensic medicine, and therapeutics, as well as surgery, anatomy, and physiology. The ‘browse list’ of topics on the MHL’s IA homepage demonstrates… Continue reading
In 1705, Thomas Greenhill, surgeon, published Nekpokedeia: or, the Art of Embalming in London. Greenhill’s subtitle is even more informative: Wherein is Shown the Right [sic] of Burial, and Funeral Ceremonies, Especially That of Preserving Bodies After the Egyptian Method. And it goes on from there — there are a full 44 pages of front matter, including a poem, dedication to Greenhill’s patron, the Earl of Pembroke, and a list of subscribers and contributors to… Continue reading
The Medical Heritage Library (MHL) has received a Level-One Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. This grant will support planning activities among 10 institutions and a scholarly advisory committee to continue developing the MHL (www.medicalheritage.org). The project furthers the MHL’s mission to “provide the means by which readers and scholars across a multitude of disciplines can examine the interrelated nature of medicine and society, both to inform contemporary medicine… Continue reading
