Introduction

Medicine in the Americas is a digital library project that makes freely available original works demonstrating the evolution of American medicine from colonial frontier outposts of the 17th century to research hospitals of the 20th century.

Drawing on the collections of NLM's History of Medicine Division and including works from the United States, Latin America, the Caribbean and Canada, this initial release of Medicine in the Americas encompasses monographs dating from 1610 to 1865. Additional titles, dating up to 1920 and drawing further upon NLM's comprehensive collection of early American printed books and journals, will be available on an ongoing basis in the future.

Medicine in the Americas will be of interest to scholars, educators, writers, students and others who wish to use primary historical materials to help expand knowledge of medical and public health history for the advancement of scholarship across the disciplines and for the education of the general public.

Digital files created for Medicine in the Americas, reside in NLM's "Digital Collections", a repository for access to and preservation of digitized biomedical resources. Digital Collections allows rich searching, browsing and retrieval of monographs and films from NLM's History of Medicine Division.

Medicine in the Americas is made possible in part through the participation of the National Library of Medicine in the Medical Heritage Library, a digital curation collaborative supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and administered by the Open Knowledge Commons.

Subject Areas

Materials have been scanned from a broad range of areas, including (but not limited to):

Popular & Clinical Works
Epidemiology & Public Health
Allopathic & Alternative Approaches
The Diversity of Specializations
Ethnic & Racial Diversity
Women’s Health & Women Physicians
Milestones in Medical Publishing
Allied Healthcare Professions