Read more about the Project

Medicine in the Americas is a digital library project providing scanned historical American medical books in pdf and as searchable text files. The project is aimed at the general public, with special emphasis on historians, students, clinicians, and librarians.

The project draws on the collections of the History of Medicine Division of The National Library of Medicine and includes works not only from the United States, but from all over the New World.

In order to produce the highest quality images, the pages of the books are scanned directly. Pdf files are offered for downloading, the texts are searchable, and direct links are provided from NLM’s online catalog, LocatorPlus.

The books are mounted on the NCBI Bookshelf, which makes their texts searchable.

Geographical Scope

The project’s goal is to provide original source materials on the development of medicine in the New World, including Latin America, Canada, and the Caribbean. The History of Medicine Division hopes that including non-U.S. imprints will foster research on a wider variety of topics in the study of American medicine. So, while the emphasis will be on medicine in the United States, materials from all over the Western Hemisphere will be included.

Chronological Scope

Medical printing in the U.S. began in the late seventeenth century and even earlier in parts of Latin America. Because HMD’s monographic collections generally reach up to 1913, this is a logical stopping point for the project. Materials after 1913 will be considered for inclusion, but because of copyright issues, it is easiest to keep these works to a minimum at this point.

Monographs vs. Journals

Because a number of technical issues surrounding monographic items and journals (either by article or as a whole run) are different, the project managers would like to begin with monographs. Journals and individual journal articles will hopefully be added at a later date.

Broad Criteria

Selection for this early phase of the project is intended to include a representative sample from a broad range of areas, many of which overlap:

• Popular & Clinical Works
• Epidemiology & Public Health
• Allopathic & Alternative Approaches
• The Diversity of Specializations
• Geographical Diversity
• Ethnic & Racial Diversity
• Women’s Health & Women Physicians
• Publishing Milestones

Editing the Electronic Texts

The goal of Medicine in the Americas is to produce searchable historical texts for researchers. A high value will be placed upon the original texts as they appear on the printed page, including archaic spellings, vocabulary, capitalizations, and punctuation. However, editors will remove certain typographical conventions used by printers and compositors such as catchwords and hyphens breaking up words at the end of lines.