National Library of Medicine Digital CollectionsThe NLM History of Medicine Division (HMD) collects, preserves, makes available, and interprets for diverse audiences one of the world’s richest collections of historical material related to health and disease. Spanning ten centuries, encompassing a variety of digital and physical formats, and originating from nearly every part of the globe, our collections include:
Terabytes of born-digital content, including websites, blogs, and social media
Manuscripts dating from the 11th to the 21st centuries, including the earliest anatomical drawings and the papers of Nobel Prize-winning researchers, U.S. Surgeons General, and leaders in the fields of medicine and public health
Over 600,000 printed works, including 580 incunabula (Western books printed before 1501), some 57,000 16th-18th century books, and over 400,000 titles published between 1801 and 1913
Organizational archives from such groups as the Medical Library Association and the American College of Nurse-Midwives
Over 10,000 audiovisuals
Over 150,000 prints and photographs