pproximately 33,000 history-related journal citations unique to the former HISTLINE^® database are now in MEDLINE^® and can be searched in PubMed. These are citations to literature about the history of health-related professions, sciences, specialties, individuals, institutions, drugs, and diseases in all parts of the world and covering all historic periods. As NLM continues to reorganize its bibliographic databases, the migration of these specialized citations to MEDLINE provides users with continued access to history-related information. Please see the May-June 2000 NLM Technical Bulletin article Organization of National Library of Medicine Bibliographic Databases for more information on the reorganization of bibliographic databases.

Although most of the former HISTLINE database was originally derived from MEDLINE, these 33,000 citations were not in MEDLINE until now. Some of the history-related, non-Index Medicus journals from which these citations came are now being indexed by NLM's History of Medicine Division for MEDLINE.

For now, use the following features in PubMed to narrow your search retrieval to history-related items:

1. Historical Article Publication Type (PT) - Use Historical Article [pt] to retrieve all history-related items (e.g., head lice AND historical article [pt]). The Historical Article Publication Type is assigned to all citations that are indexed with an historical Medical Subject Heading (MeSH^®) term, the History subheading, or a Personal Name as Subject entry.
2. Limit your search by time periods and places by manually entering the specific MeSH terms in the query box. For example use History of Medicine, Ancient [mh] to limit your search to the period of the history of medicine before 500 A.D.

Citations from the former HISTLINE database indexed prior to 1987 do not have English Article Title, Country, or Language data.

A new subject subset, "History of Medicine," will soon be available on the Subset pull-down menu on the PubMed Limits screen. This subset can also be used in a search as history [sb]. Look for an announcement in this publication when the History of Medicine subset is available.

Note to PubMed Cubby Users: As they are new to MEDLINE and PubMed, the 33,000 history-related journal citations may be pulled by a Cubby stored search using terms in this subject area.

By James Cassedy
History of Medicine Division
and
Young Rhee
History of Medicine Division

Cassedy J, Rhee Y. History of Medicine-related Journal Citations Added to PubMed^®. NLM Tech Bull. 2001 Sep-Oct;(322):e4.