Medical History Comes to Life

Medical History Comes to Life through First Person Accounts in National Library of Medicine Digital Oral History Collections.

The site contains 107 interviews in two sub-collections consisting of over 13,000 pages and 80 hours of audio content.

Some of the topics covered include: the development of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine by "Big Four" members including influential surgeon William Halsted and renowned gynecologist Howard Kelly; Guy Tugwell and George Larrick discussing their roles in the 1938 and 1951 revisions to the Pure Food and Drug Act; the practice of surgery in the United States; and medical economics in the 1930s. There is also a series of 13 interviews with homeopathy physicians, conducted in 1968. There is a separate sub-collection of interviews with primary care physicians (internists) conducted by Fitzhugh Mullan in the 1990s as part of research conducted for his book, Big Doctoring in America: Profiles in Primary Care.

Users can also hear Vivien Thomas, the celebrated African American surgical technician, speak about working with surgeon Alfred Blalock to develop procedures to treat blue baby syndrome, US Senator Lister Hill (a key figure in the creation and passage of the National Library of Medicine Act of 1956) discussing his family, life as a politician, and health care legislation, and a short recording of celebrated English nurse Florence Nightingale.

To access and listen: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/manuscripts/oh.html