Yale University Library Research Guides: HSHM 448/HIST 151/WGSS 448 American Medicine and the Cold War: Primary Sources beyond Yale

Free, big databases for downloadable primary sources

Image from the National Library of Medicine Historical Collections

Turn to these free online primary sources:
Medical Heritage Library
A consortium of medical libraries, including Yale, have put parts of their collections available online. Over 300,000 freely downloadable primary source books, many from 1780-1923. On the Medical Heritage Library website, under the Content tab, you can find primary resource sets on vaccination and disability, as well as access American and State medical society journals.

National Library of Medicine (NLM) Historical Collections
Great primary history of medicine material, including digitized books, archives, and moving images (aka movies). Also see their huge image archive, which includes posters and more!

Internet Archive
Home to a huge variety of resources, including Moving Pictures, for free use. Not limited to history of medicine, but lots of possible primary sources here. Make sure, if you pick a source from here, that it's uploaded by a library or other institution! See, for example, the movie Medical Aspects of Nuclear Radiation (1950).

Hathi Trust
A huge online repository of freely downloadable books and journals, from a collaboration of libraries including Yale. Not limited to history of medicine, but lots of possible primary sources here.

Digital Public Library of America
This site pulls in sources and archives (like letters and diaries) from many libraries, museums, and other institutions, as well as big databases like Hathi Trust and Internet Archive. Look at the primary sources sets and exhibitions, including this one on the Atomic Bomb and the Nuclear Age.

Industry Documents Library-Tobacco, Chemical, Food, and Drug
The UCSF Industry Documents Library (IDL) is a portal to aid investigation about cross-industry corporate practices that are detrimental to public health. IDL currently brings together materials created by the tobacco, drug, food, and chemical industries. These collections are an important tool for researchers, lawyers, journalists, advocates and the general public as they expose industry tactics around marketing campaigns, regulatory strategies, and public health policy formulation.

Cold War era topic collections

Image from a pamphlet in the Prism collection, c1950

Ad*Access
An image database of over 7,000 U.S. and Canadian advertisements covering five product categories - Beauty and Hygiene, Radio, Television, Transportation, and World War II propaganda - dated between 1911 and 1955.
AdViews
Thousands of television commercials created or collected by the D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles (DMB&B) advertising agency, dated 1950s - 1980s.
Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC)
This list of books is just a small portion of the material available from the ABCC. There are various bibliographies documenting scholarship.
Cold War International History Project (CWIHP)
The Cold War International History Project (CWIHP) at the Wilson Center has amassed a tremendous collection of archival documents on the Cold War era from the once secret archives of former communist countries.
Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum
This links directly to online documents on topics such as McCarthyism, civil rights, and more. You might want to browse the Eisenhower library site to find additional materials, including bibliographies. There's a special link to Jonas Salk and the polio vaccine: https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/research/online-documents/jonas-salk-and-polio-vaccine
Harry S. Truman Library and Museum
Links to online document collections, including transcripts and other documents related to the War Crime Trials at Nuremberg.
Joint Committee on Atomic Energy
The Joint Committee existed from 1946-1977. Stanford University provides access to over 144,000 pages of source materials from the hearings of the committee. You can find more hearings in our Congressional database.
National Security Archive Nuclear Vault
Since the founding of the National Security Archive, nuclear crises, nuclear proliferation, and the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. policy have been central to its FOIA requesting. The overwhelming importance of the problem of nuclear weapons has posed an existential threat since the early years of the Cold War and has made this an essential focus.
Nuclear Proliferation International History Project
Nuclear Proliferation International History Project (NPIHP) explores the international history of nuclear weapons and their proliferation using archival documents and oral history interviews from countries such as Argentina, Brazil, China, Israel, India, South Africa, Sweden and more.
PRISM - Political & Rights Issues & Social Movement
PRISM: Political & Rights Issues & Social Movements, a collaborative digitization project of the libraries and special collections departments of Florida Atlantic University (FAU), and the University of Central Florida (UCF), is composed of materials focusing on a wide range of political and rights issues and social movements including topics such as socialism and communism, class struggle, Marxist economics, religion, world pacifism, anti-racism, anti-Semitism, civil rights, women's rights, workers’ rights, world labor movements, world economics, capitalism, the demise of colonialism, Cuban politics, the "ban-the-bomb" movement, war efforts, the Vietnam War, and the United Nations.
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Spanning from the mid 19th century to the late 20th century, the pamphlets and monographs provide insight into the prevailing leftist and liberal views of the times from countries all around the world; from the United States to Korea and India to Canada."
The Reluctant Internationalists
A central question of The Reluctant Internationalists concerned the roles played by debates about public health and (real or imagined) crises in the formation of international structures, mechanisms and organisations in twentieth century Europe. The link features Cold War medical and health themes and secondary sources.

HSHM 448/HIST 151/WGSS 448 American Medicine and the Cold War: Primary Sources beyond Yale

Free, big databases for downloadable primary sources

Cold War era topic collections

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