The Center for the History of Medicine acquires, preserves, and makes available historical materials that contextualize and offer perspective into contemporary biomedical research, clinical medicine and dentistry, and public health. We are also responsible for documenting the goals, activities, accomplishments, and faculties of the Harvard Medical School, Harvard School of Dental Medicine, and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
The Center acquires resources in a variety of types and formats, including: archival records and manuscript material; published literature; graphic, moving image, and sound materials; objects/artifacts; and data in both analog and digital formats. Resources continue to be added in areas that strengthen and extend existing collections. Areas of particular interest for development include:
- Critical 20th century therapeutic innovations, such as antibiotics and novel pharmaceutical classes, organ transplantation, chemotherapy, and medical devices
- Critical 20th century fields of study, such as genetics (fundamental and clinical), bioinformatics, immunology, molecular biology, developmental and systems biology, epidemiology and clinical epidemiology, and environmental health and population biology
- Contemporary plagues, including, AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and influenza
- Changes in health care delivery, including health maintenance organizations, the larger involvement of insurance companies in health care, attempts to achieve universal health care in America, and international efforts to provide health care to the under-served, global health and medicine, and activism by health professionals
- The experiences and contributions of early women leaders in the Harvard medical, dental, and public health communities, and their advancement and impact on health care and biomedical sciences
- Environmental health, the impact of environment on the health of populations and individuals
- Innovations in scientific and medical techniques and tools, such as biomedical informatics and the dramatic growth of biomedical imaging
- Patients’ experiences of medicine
- Alternative and non-Western medicine in the context of their adoption in American medicine
For more information about our areas of acquisition, contact the Center.
Please see our "Donating Collections or Books" page for information about how to gift something.
University Records
The Center’s documents the goals, methods, activities, and outcomes of medical, dental, and public health education at Harvard University by collecting records of long-term value originating with Longwood Campus administrative offices; clinical, research, and teaching departments; committees and working groups; and laboratories, regardless of format, as well as HMS, HSDM, and HSPH-related objects, memorabilia, oral histories, and other documentation. Records are evaluated and acquired in compliance with the Harvard University General Records Schedule. Record copies of HMS, HSDM, and HSPH student theses are also part of our archival holdings.
For more information about university records, contact the Institutional Archivist/Records Manager.
Objects, Artifacts, and Specimens
The Center acquires to enrich the understanding of the physical historical legacy of medicine and the associated life sciences. Primarily, it focuses on the medical material culture of the HMS, HSDM, HSPH, the HMS-affiliated hospitals, Boston, and greater New England, and significant focus points in the greater medical narrative. The Center also collects to support and contextualize the collections represented in the Center for the History of Medicine at large. Primary stakeholder groups for which it collects include the medical research and physician community, Harvard faculty and students, and scholars in the history of medicine. The Center's collections are one of the few access points to the physical history of medicine available to the public.
For more information, contact the Manager, Curation and Stewardship, Anatomy and Artifact Collections.