Welcome to a virtual tour of the historical materials in the National Library of Medicine (NLM) collection. Today, for women’s history month, we are featuring materials at the intersection of women’s history and women’s health in the collection.
These materials document how women have experienced health and illness, practiced medicine, and advocated for their health and the health of their families. They document the research of women scientists, and describe public health debates and decisions that affected women. They also reveal stories about personal responsibility and the intersection of individual and public health.
NLM staff have selected these highlights from the collection for you to explore. We welcome questions! Use the comment feature below to share your thoughts.
Selections from NLM Digital Collections
NLM Digital Collections is the National Library of Medicine’s free online repository of biomedical resources including books, manuscripts, and still and moving images.
Images
Images from the History of Medicine (IHM), within NLM Digital Collections, is a digitized set of historical images selected from the collection. Here are a few images related to women’s history:
Explore women’s history-related images in NLM Digital Collections under these search terms:
Women’s Health| Female Scientists| Women’s History
You can also explore public domain images from the NLM prints and photographs collection on Flickr.
Rare Books and Journals
The National Library of Medicine has digitized many books containing a wide variety of information about the history of women’s health, including books about education, research, and public health.
- A Treatise on the Treatment of Female Complaints by Alexander Hamilton. New York, 1795.
- Advice to Mothers, on the Subject of their Own Health by William Buchan. Philadelphia, 1804.
- A Treatise on the Diseases of Women by William P Dewees. Philadelphia, 1826.
- Water-Cure for Ladies by Mrs. M.L. Shew. New York, 1844.
- Medicine as a Profession for Women by Elizabeth Blackwell. New York, 1860.
- Hygiene and Physical Culture for Women by Anna Galbraith. New York, 1895.
Historical Films
The film Ladies Wear the Blue (1974) traces the history of women’s service in the U.S. Navy from the first world war (when they were known as “yeomanettes”) through the early 1970s. In July 1942, thousands of women began volunteering for an all-female corps known as the Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service (WAVES). Early on, females often served in clerical roles, but in some cases they handled technical or mechanical work (see this clip of WAVES at work in Seattle). Duties and opportunities expanded each decade. By the time Ladies Wear the Blue was made in the early 1970s, women were routinely serving on Navy vessels alongside men. May 1973 saw the first solo flight by a female Navy aviator. Access the complete film here.
Citizen Frances (1999) is a biographical interview with Frances Humphrey Howard, a woman deeply influential in developing the National Library of Medicine into the world’s leading biomedical library. She retired from NLM in 1999 after nearly 30 years working on the development of national policies and programs to promote biomedical research. In this lively video interview, Mrs. Howard also discusses her collaborations with other women who made history in the 20th century, including First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt; the celebrated singer Marian Anderson, and Felisa Rincon de Gautier, who served as mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico for more than 20 years.
Find more films about the history of women’s health in NLM Digital Collections.
NLM Publications and Productions
This group of materials consists of digitized documents that were produced by NLM over it’s long history, such as technical notes, bibliographies, reports, catalogs, posters, and lectures. Explore those related to the history of women’s health in NLM Digital Collections.
NLM Exhibitions and Events
The National Library of Medicine curates stories about the social and cultural history of science and medicine that enhance awareness of and appreciation for the collections and health information resources of the National Library of Medicine. This work encourages enthusiasm for history and nurtures young professionals in the fields of history, the health professions, and biomedical sciences.
Explore scholarship at NLM around the intersection of women’s history and the history of medicine.
Exhibitions
Changing the Face of Medicine: Celebrating America’s Women Physicians — Women have always been healers, nursing the sick in their homes and providing traditional healthcare for their communities. Yet, when medicine became a formal profession in Europe and America, women were shut out. Nevertheless, they fought to make a place for themselves and future generations. Changing the Face of Medicine: Celebrating America’s Women Physicians introduces trailblazing women doctors who created opportunities in medicine and furthered women’s health through clinical practice and advocacy.
Confronting Violence, Improving Women’s Lives — Activists and reformers in the United States have long recognized the harm of domestic violence and sought to improve the lives of women who were battered. Beginning in the late 1970s, nurses were in the vanguard as they pushed the larger medical community to identify victims, adequately respond to their needs, and work towards the prevention of domestic violence. Confronting Violence: Improving Women’s Lives explores these developments during latter half of the 20th century, when nurses took up the call.
The Literature of Prescription: Charlotte Perkins Gilman and “The Yellow Wallpaper” — In the late nineteenth century, medical and scientific experts drew on notions of female weakness to justify gender inequality. Writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman rejected these ideas in a terrifying short story that served as an indictment of the medical profession and the social conventions restricting women’s professional and creative opportunities. The Literature of Prescription: Charlotte Perkins Gilman and “The Yellow Wall-Paper” explores the story behind Gilman’s influential tale.
Profiles in Science
Virginia Apgar — Virginia Apgar (1909-1974) was an American physician who is best known for the Apgar Score, a simple, rapid method for assessing newborn viability. Developed in the early 1950s and quickly adopted by obstetric teams, the method reduced infant mortality and laid the foundations of neonatology for over fifty years. While she is best known for this achievement, Apgar was also a leader in the emerging field of anesthesiology during the 1940s and the new field of teratology (the study of birth defects) after 1960.
Florence Sabin — Florence Rena Sabin (1871-1953) was an American anatomist and medical researcher. Her excellent and innovative work on the origins of the lymphatic system, blood cells, and immune system cells, and on the pathology of tuberculosis was well-recognized during her lifetime. She was also a trailblazer for women in science: the first woman to hold a full professorship at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, the first woman elected to the National Academy of Sciences, and the first woman to head a department at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. In her retirement years, she pursued a second career as a public health activist in Colorado, and in 1951 received a Lasker Award for this work.
Web Archives
Of the news and information that is created and shared digitally over the web, what will remain to be examined one, ten, or even fifty years from now? This content is in a constant state of change and at high risk for loss.
NLM’s Women’s Health web archive is a selective collection of nearly 300 web resources archived by the National Library of Medicine beginning in 2023 related to issues in women’s health, including reproductive health and maternal health, mental health, aging, cancer, and woman-specific disease issues. Included in the archive are websites of government and non-government organizations, as well as selective blogs, articles, and other websites of interest, with the aim to collect a diversity of perspectives.
Other NLM Resources on Women’s History
Rare Books
- Enneas Muliebris by Luigi Bonacciuoli. Ferrara, 1502-1503.
- Experimentarius Medicinae. Strasbourg, 1544.
- Gynaeciorum sive de mulierum affectibus commentarii Graecorum, Latinorum, barbarorum, jam olim & nunc recens editorum. Basil, 1586-1588.
- Traité des Maladies des Femmes by Jean Astruc. Paris, 1761-1765.
- De la Ménopause, ou de l’Age Critique des Femmes by Charles-Pierre-Louis de Gardanne. Paris, 1821.
- Clinique Médicale sur les Maladies des Femmes by Gustave Bernutz. Paris, 1860-1862.
- Diseases of the Ovaries by Spencer Wells. London, 1865.
- Our Bodies, Ourselves by the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective. New York, 1973.
Finding Aids to Archive and Manuscript Collections
Finding aids are the main access point and research support tool provided for the Archives and Modern Manuscripts, Prints and Photographs, and Films and Videos collections. These aids offer detailed descriptions of large aggregations of materials. Many of the collections document the work of women in medicine related to medical practice, research, health services, education, health literacy, public policy, and advocacy including:
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- Alice C. Evans Papers — Contains Evans’s memoirs and associated papers, including reprints, clippings, biographical data, and miscellaneous correspondence relating to her work as a bacteriologist for the Department of Agriculture’s Dairy Division beginning in 1910. Evans is best known for discovering the transmission of Bacillus abortus through raw milk and was a forceful advocate for pasteurization.
- Bernadine Healey Papers — Contains correspondence, subject files, briefing materials, speeches and presentations, published and draft writings, committee meeting minutes, reports, publicity, and audiovisual and photographic materials which chronicle the professional career of cardiologist, health administrator, and first female director of the NIH Dr. Bernadine Healy.
- June E. Osborne Papers — Contains correspondence, reports, speeches, testimonies, hearings, audiovisual material, and biographical material documenting Osborn’s professional career as an expert advisor in urgent health issues — including virology, infectious diseases, vaccines, and public health policy — for government agencies such as the National Institutes of Health, the World Health Organization, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
- Oral History Project on Women in Medicine — Contains transcripts of oral history interviews with 37 women and 2 men physicians that were carried out by the Medical College of Pennsylvania from 1976-1978 to explore the subject of recent developments of women in medicine from the perspective of women physicians of a wide variety of ages, specialists, practice patterns, life choices, and geographic areas.
- Images of Women in Medicine Ephemera — Contains ephemera that portray women in medicine as collected by William Helfand, including engravings of nurses Edith Cavell and Florence Nightingale, postcards of women physicians, pharmacists and nurses, including some that derogate professional women, and chromolithographs of women practicing first aid.
Current Health Information and Research
PubMed
PubMed is a free resource supporting the search and retrieval of biomedical and life sciences literature with the aim of improving health—both globally and personally. The PubMed database contains more than 35 million citations and abstracts of biomedical literature. PubMed was developed and is maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), at the National Library of Medicine (NLM), located at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Here are some search topics related to women’s history:
MedlinePlus
MedlinePlus is a health information portal from NLM, that provides access to current, accurate health information and references from trusted sources about a wide array of health topics, including:
The NLM Collection Tours series provides highlights from the diverse historical collections of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) on a variety of contemporary topics in health and medicine. Explore our library services, such as our scan on demand service. Staff are available through our NLM Support Center to answer questions.
Discover more from Circulating Now from the NLM Historical Collections
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Thank you for your informative website! I appreciate having access to all these resources!
Thanks for your comment! So glad you found us.