Research Guides: HLTH 218: Experiencing and Responding to Illness and Disability: 1793-1930 (HC) [Spring 2015]: Primary Sources

Major Image Collections for U.S. History

American Memory This link opens in a new window
Provides information on, and access to, digitized versions of primary-source collections on American history and culture, including photographs, documents, sound recordings, and motion pictures.
ARTstor
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
A digital library that provides access to thousands of digital images derived from a variety of museum, library and archival collections. Images support a variety of disciplines including architecture, painting, sculpture, photography, decorative arts, and design. Coverage varies.
Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) This link opens in a new window
The DPLA allows you to search millions of photographs, manuscripts, books, sounds, moving images, and more from libraries, archives, and museums around the United States. Each record links to the original object on the library or other content provider's website.

Flickr: The Commons
Images from many of the world's public photo archives, described by Flickr users so that some are very richly described.
Images from the History of Medicine
The U. S. National Library of medicine makes over 70,000 images available on this website.
Smithsonian Collections Search
Search over 8.59 million catalog records of museum objects, and library & archives materials. More than 963,000 of these records contain online images, video and sound files, electronic journals and other online resources.
Images from the History of the Public Health Service
These online images were part of an exhibit in 1994 done by the Public health Service.

Images as Primary Sources

Eakins, Thomas, The Agnew Clinic, 1889 (Wikimedia Commons)

Images as primary Sources

Anatomy lesson at the Woman's College of New York Medical Infirmary, 1870 (Wikimedia Commons)

Book Using Images to Understand the History of American Medicine

Picturing Medical Progress from Pasteur to Polio by Bert Hansen
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
- This link opens in a new window
ISBN: 9780813545264
Publication Date: 2009-06-29
This book offers a portrait of an era (1880s-1950s) when the public excitedly anticipated medical progress and research breakthroughs. This unique study with 130 archival illustrations drawn from newspaper sketches, caricatures, comic books, Hollywood films, and LIFE magazine photography analyzes the relationship between mass media images and popular attitudes. Also available as an ebook.

Finding Primary Source Texts

Primary source texts that have been edited, reprinted in facsimiles, or transferred to microfilm can be borrowed through E Z Borrow or interlibrary loan if they are not in Tripod.

Many of them will be listed in Tripod and WorldCat under subject terms which include such words as "sources," "letters," "diaries," or "personal narratives." For example, the search (medicine OR medical) ("personal narratives") ("united states") history produces results including:

The Wounded River: The Civil War Letters of John Vance Lauderdale, M.D. /
Author:John Vance Lauderdale Publication: Michigan State University Press, 1993

A Woman Doctor's Civil War: Esther Hill Hawk's Diary /
Author: Edsther Hill Hawk. Publication: : University of South Carolina Press,1984

Literature and Art as Primary Sources

The New York University School of Medicine has created a database of literature and the arts with references to medical conditions. This material gives you a first-person point of view of illness and medical treatment.

Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database
Start out by searching a relevant keyword along with the genre memoir.