CLAS 3239 | Ancient Medicine: The Classical Roots of the Medical Humanities: Websites of Interest

Website for the U.S. National Library of Medicine (NLM), which is the world’s largest biomedical library. Founded in 1836, the NLM makes available a vast print collection and produces electronic information resources on a wide range of topics. In addition, its National Network of Libraries of Medicine promotes and provides access to health information for communities across the United States.

Historical Anatomies on the Web is a digital project designed to give Internet users access to high quality images from important anatomical atlases in the Library's collection. The project offers selected images from NLM's atlas collection, with an emphasis on images and not texts. The History of Medicine Division of the National Library of Medicine has a rich collection of illustrated anatomical atlases dating from the 15th to the 20th century. The Historical Anatomies on the Web Project has been designed to broaden access to this collection by providing high-resolution downloadable scans of selected important images from the atlases. Atlases and images have been chosen for their historical and artistic significance by the project's content coordinator, Michael North. Important images may be omitted if the atlas is damaged or fragile, or if the work is bound in such a way as to impede high quality scanning. A priority has been placed upon scanning the earliest and/or the best edition of a work in Library's possession.

A portal to selected films from various eras (from the Silent Era to the present) pertaining to various medical and health-related topic. Launched in 2013 and curated by the National Library of Medicine, this collection includes professional training films (including films made for scientific or medical research) and many rare films (in some cases, the NLM possesses the only surviving copy). The films are set in historical context by commentators from the NLM.

Online exhibit at the University of Missouri Libraries. The makers of this exhibit "decided to approach the topic from a historic path calling upon its very rich collections of rare books, historical medical memorabilia, and university records. The virtual exhibit you are about to enter is [their] effort to explore one of the most interesting interactions in the human experience, how man sees and understands man as an organism."

From National Institute of Health: US National Library of Medicine. Dream Anatomy presents a rich collection of images and artifacts reflecting "anatomical imagination in some of its most astonishing incarnations, from 1500 to the present." Using the fascinating stories and images of the exhibition, the Learning Station provides lesson plans and activities designed especially for educators and students at 6-12 grade levels.

Located at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Collection of extremely high-quality digitizations of MacKinney's ektachrome slides of Medieval manuscripts, with provenance and viewing tools.

This website contains editions of many highly influential ancient Greek medical texts in the original language, along with some German language commentaries. It includes works by Hippocrates, Aretaeus, Rufus of Ephesus, Soranus, Galen, Oribasius, and others.

A National Library of Medicine digital exhibit on Greek medicine, with an overview of major physicians and rare editions of their works.

This site provides a catalogue raisonné (including images) from the more than three hundred Persian and Arabic manuscripts in the National Library of Medicine.

Online exhibit from University of Virginia, Historical Collections at the Claude Moore Health Sciences Library. © 2007

Entry on medicine from the Ancient History Encyclopedia. It includes useful background information about not only Greek and Roman medicine, but also Egyptian medicine, Mesopotamian medicine, and Indian medicine.

Images of surgical instruments from Roman antiquity in an exhibit produced by the Historical Collections & Services of the Health Sciences Library at the University of Virginia. The online exhibit also elucidates the possible uses of the surgical instruments with comments excerpted and translated from Roman medical texts.

This is a beautifully executed, informative database focusing on the medical humanities. It is published and housed at New York University. Each of the works featured contains an annotation describing its content and context as it fits into the field of medical humanities. It is focused a bit more on more recent eras.

Asclepion is a website created by Nancy Demand in 2000. Though rather outdated in terms of web design, it is a short, practical resource with concise texts and low resolution images of surgical instruments; good for a quick overview of the topic. Housed at the University of Indiana.

Striking anatomical illustrations and representations of the human body in stunningly exquisite detail. Ferguson uses drawing and other artistic and medical media to examine the beauty and complexity of the body's interior, as well as "its connections to the processes and patterns of nature."

A blog created and written by a historian of early modern science and globalization. It discusses fascinating aspects of pre-modern and early modern medicine, science, and other historical curiosities, along with remarkable illustrations and other high quality content.

An online archive and repository of medical manuscripts, articles, and an assortment of multimedia content from the Wellcome Library. The Wellcome Library is a London-based library collection of materials pertaining to the history of medicine (with a particular focus on medieval medicine) and related areas of interest including alchemy, witchcraft, anthropology, and ethnography. It holds over 2.5 million items and is open to anyone with a research or study interest in the history and/or progress of medicine.

Website for the Morbid Anatomy Museum, a non-profit institution in Brooklyn which curates exhibits and holds public lectures that are frequently relevant to the study of medicine through the ages. Its permanent collection houses an extensive research library, artifacts, medical moulages, wax embryological models, natural history specimens, and much more.