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Digital Library Collections

About the Medical Digital Library

The Cushing/Whitney Medical Digital Library is a growing collection of digital resources made available on the Web for scholarship. The Medical Digital Library Committee coordinates the library's digitization activities. Its goals include expanding access to the library's unique collections for scholarly research, and life-cycle management of digital objects. The collections are powered by Greenstone digital library software.

The Yale Medicine Thesis Digital Library Project
Starting with the School of Medicine graduating class of 2002, the Medical Library and Office of Student Research have begun a collaboration to electronically publish the full text of student theses on the Internet as a valuable byproduct of student research efforts and original source material to researchers throughout the world.

 

Postcard Collection
This collection of postcards from the Historical Library features medical institutions in Connecticut: general hospitals, private hospitals, psychiatric hospitals, sanatoria, and the Yale School of Medicine. Most are from the period 1900-1940.

 
George E. Palade. George E. Palade EM Slide Collection
The images in this collection are derived from high resolution scans of glass 3.25 X 4 inch "lantern slides" that were part of a large collection of slides covering his years at the Rockefeller University and Yale University School of Medicine. These selected images were scanned by James D. Jamieson, M.D., Ph.D., a student of Palade. 		 
Peter Parker. Peter Parker Collection
One of the gems of the Historical Library is the collection of 83 mid-19th century oil paintings rendered by Western-trained artist Lam Qua of Chinese patients with tumors under the care of Yale-trained medical missionary Peter Parker.		  
Andreas Vesalius. Portrait Engravings Collection
In the era before photography, portrait engravings were the only means of distributing images of famous individuals, including noted physicians and scientists. Many of these portraits were engraved from oil paintings, though some were based on sketches from life. Historians have recently begun to examine them for insights into the medical professionís self-image. The Historical Libraryís engraved portraits number nearly three thousand, and date from the fifteenth to the early-twentieth century.
 
Harvey Cushing. Harvey Cushing: A Biography, by John F. Fulton
John F. Fulton’s biography of his mentor and friend, Harvey Cushing, was the first book-length biography of the great neurosurgeon and teacher and has remained the standard source on his life. When Cushing died in 1939, he left funds in his will for his wife and Fulton, his literary executor, to compile a biography if they “feel that the publication of my biography may be of interest or help to medical students.” Copiously illustrated with photographs and Cushing’s own drawings, Harvey Cushing: A Biography was published for the Historical Library in 1946 and dedicated to Cushing’s wife, Kate Crowell Cushing.