Research Tools: Historical Projects on MedlinePlus Topics

Genes and Gene Therapy
Genes are the building blocks of inheritance. Passed from parent to child, they contain instructions for making proteins. Gene therapy is an experimental technique that uses genes to treat or prevent disease. The most common form of gene therapy involves inserting a normal gene to replace an abnormal gene.

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  From DNA to Beer: Harnessing Nature in Medicine and Industry

  This exhibition explores some of the processes, problems, and potential inherent in technologies that use microorganisms for health and commercial purposes.

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  Hooke’s Books: Books that Influenced or were Influenced by Robert Hooke’s Micrographia

  This project focuses on Hooke's influences and legacy in print, the pioneering books that stimulated Hooke's research, and the works he left for others—most famously the great Dutch microscopist, Antoni van Leeuwenhœk (1632-1723).

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  Rewriting the Book of Nature: Charles Darwin and the Rise of Evolutionary Theory

  Charles Darwin’s vision—“from so simple a beginning, endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved”—now forms the foundation of the biological sciences.

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  Visible Proofs: Forensics Views of the Body

  Over the centuries, physicians, surgeons, and other professionals have struggled to develop scientific methods that translate views of bodies and body parts into "visible proofs" that can persuade judges, juries, and the public.

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Health Occupations
Every day, around the clock, people who work in the health care industry provide care for millions of people, from newborns to the very ill.

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  Changing the Face of Medicine

  Discover the many ways that women have influenced and enhanced the practice of medicine.

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  Opening Doors: Contemporary African American Academic Surgeons

  African Americans have always practiced medicine, whether as physicians, healers, midwives, or “root doctors.” The journey of the African American physician from pre-Civil War to modern day America has been a challenging one.

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  Physician Assistants: Collaboration and Care

  These resources serve as starting points for further exploration into the contributions of physician assistants and the profession, and their role in providing high-quality health care in the United States and around the world.

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  Physicians in the Shenandoah Valley: Henkel Family Letters, 1786-1907

  The Henkel Family Correspondence collection consists of 828 letters and is largely the product of Caspar C. Henkel’s life. This digital edition is divided into 5-year blocks for ease of navigation and contextual narrative.

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  Pictures of Nursing: The Zwerdling Postcard Collection

  This exhibition explores the relationship of nursing to significant forces in 20th-century life, like war and disease, and how nursing was seen during those times.

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  Rise, Serve, Lead! America’s Women Physicians

  Women have always been healers. To join the ranks of professional physicians, women had to overcome obstacles and fight to practice medicine. They rose to the challenge and have served as doctors for nearly two hundred years.

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HIV/AIDS
HIV stands for human immunodeficiency virus. It harms your immune system by destroying the white blood cells that fight infection. This puts you at risk for serious infections and certain cancers. AIDS stands for acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. It is the final stage of infection with HIV. Not everyone with HIV develops AIDS.

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  Against the Odds: Making a Difference in Global Health

  A revolution in global health is taking place in villages and towns around the world. Communities, in collaboration with scientists, advocates, governments, and international organizations, are taking up the challenge to prevent disease and improve quality of life.

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  AIDS Ephemera

  Starting in the early 1980s—AIDS was first identified in 1981—the initial response to the disease generated ephemeral public health materials, such as buttons, posters, cards, comic books, and even lunch boxes.

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  Surviving and Thriving: AIDS, Politics, and Culture

  This exhibition illustrates an iconic history of AIDS alongside lesser-known examples of historical figures who changed the course of the pandemic.

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Infectious Diseases
Germs, or microbes, are found everywhere—in the air, soil, and water. There are also germs on your skin and in your body. Many of them are harmless, and some can even be helpful. But some of them can make you sick. Infectious diseases are diseases that are caused by germs.

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  An Iconography of Contagion

  In an era of devastating epidemic and endemic infectious disease, health professionals began to organize coordinated campaigns that sought to mobilize public action through eye-catching wall posters, illustrated pamphlets, motion pictures, and glass slide projections.

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  Cholera Online: A Modern Pandemic in Texts and Images

  Epidemic cholera is an acute, painful, and often fatal disease which ravaged nearly the entire world during several severe outbreaks over the course of the 19th century. It is a diarrheal disease which can cause death by dehydration to an untreated patient in a matter of hours and is extremely contagious in communities without adequate, modern sanitation, as most of the world was in 1817 when it first left India.

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  Politics of Yellow Fever in Alexander Hamilton’s America

  As yellow fever consumed Philadelphia, politicians debated the disease’s origins, its treatment, and preventative measures. Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, a prominent Federalist, believed that newly arrived, white, French refugees fleeing the revolution in Santo Domingo (now Haiti) were the source of the disease.

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  Smallpox: A Great and Terrible Scourge

  Throughout the last three thousand years, smallpox has shadowed civilization. A viral infection, the disease spread along trade routes, emerging first in Africa, Asia and Europe and reaching the Americas in the sixteenth century.

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International Health
The spread of a disease doesn't stop at a country’s borders. With more people traveling to other countries and living in crowded cities, it’s easier for germs to spread. Some of the major diseases currently affecting countries around the globe include HIV/AIDS, malaria, Zika, and tuberculosis.

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  Against the Odds: Making a Difference in Global Health

  A revolution in global health is taking place in villages and towns around the world. Communities, in collaboration with scientists, advocates, governments, and international organizations, are taking up the challenge to prevent disease and improve quality of life.

  Go To Exhibition Project

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  Chinese Anti-Malaria Posters

  Malaria was historically a major threat to the health of the Chinese people. In 1950, over 30 million Chinese people suffered from malaria.

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  Chinese Public Health Posters

  The National Library of Medicine has recently acquired a large collection of Chinese Public Health materials, about seven thousand items produced from early 20th century to the year of SARS.

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  Classics of Traditional Chinese Medicine

  The National Library of Medicine (NLM) holds approximately 2,000 volumes of Chinese medical classics. Here we display a few of the earliest and most interesting texts from the NLM collection.

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  Consumptive Disease: Chinese Anti-Tuberculosis Posters, 1950-1980

  Tuberculosis was one of the major epidemic diseases in 20th-century China, along with smallpox, malaria, cholera, schistosomiasis, and other epidemics. Organized efforts to fight the disease began in 1933.

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  Family Planning and Socioeconomic Development: Posters from China

  As one of the most populous countries in the world, China saw the need to have a strong family planning policy. The country launched 3 family planning campaigns.

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  Health for the People: Continuity and Change in Asian Medicine

  In the 20th century, under both Nationalist and Communist governments, China supported public health measures as a way to strengthen the country.

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Mental Health
Mental health includes our emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It affects how we think, feel, and act as we cope with life. It also helps determine how we handle stress, relate to others, and make choices.

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  And there’s the humor of it: Shakespeare and the four humors

  This exhibition explores the language of the four humors that bred the core passions of anger, grief, hope, and fear—the emotions conveyed so powerfully in Shakespeare’s comedies and tragedies.

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  Diseases of the Mind: Highlights of American Psychiatry through 1900

  The rapidly growing population of the United States during the 19th century, along with an ever increasing number of immigrants, gave rise to the need for provision for the poor, the sick, and the mentally ill. Publicly supported almshouses and hospitals were established and the special needs of the mentally ill led to the era of asylums.

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  Emotions and Disease

  For centuries, physicians and non-physicians alike have acknowledged that the way people felt in their minds could influence the way they responded in their bodies. Today, a new field of research is exploring the connections between the neuroendocrine and immune systems.

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  Graphic Medicine: Ill-Conceived and Well Drawn!

  Graphic medicine shows the creator’s experiences of illness and health through a medium that is approachable and relatable. Artists and authors have drawn and written about cancer, HIV/AIDS, Alzheimer’s Disease, sexual assault, and more.

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Pregnancy and Reproduction
Getting good care before, during, and after your pregnancy is very important. It can help your baby grow and develop and keep you both healthy. Reproductive hazards are substances that affect the reproductive health of men or women. These substances may be chemical, physical, or biological.

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  Cesarean Section – A Brief History

  Cesarean section has been part of human culture since ancient times and there are tales in both Western and non-Western cultures of this procedure resulting in live mothers and offspring.

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  From ‘Monsters’ To Modern Medical Miracles: Selected moments in the history of conjoined twins from medieval to modern times

  From medieval times through the Enlightenment conjoined twins were viewed as monsters. Their existence simultaneously horrified and amazed the common person.

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  Rashes to Research: Scientists and Parents Confront the 1964 Rubella Epidemic

  Research in the 1940s and 1950s linked rubella infection early in a woman’s pregnancy to miscarriage, stillbirth, and a constellation of health problems known as congenital rubella syndrome (CRS).

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Veterans and Military Health
Military service members and veterans have made sacrifices to our country, and they face different health issues than civilians. During their service, they are at risk for various injuries. There may also be a risk of health problems from exposure to environmental hazards, such as contaminated water, chemicals, infections, and burn pits. Being in combat and being separated from your family can be stressful. The stress can put service members and veterans at risk for mental health problems.

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  Every Necessary and Care: George Washington & Medicine

  Alongside the traditional demands of family life, and political and military leadership, George Washington focused considerable attention on the health and safety of his family, staff, slaves, and troops.

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  Life and Limb: The Toll of the American Civil War

  This exhibition focuses on disabled veterans and their role as symbols of the fractured nation.

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  The Public Health Film Goes to War

  Public health advocates and professionals - who had ambitious agendas of their own - were especially charmed, deeply impressed by cinema's sway over mass audiences. The first public health film, on the “life drama of the fly,” was made in Great Britain in 1910 as part of a national anti-fly campaign.

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  Binding Wounds, Pushing Boundaries: African Americans in Civil War Medicine

  This exhibition looks at the men and women who served as surgeons and nurses and how their work as medical providers challenged the prescribed notions of race and gender.

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Women’s Health
Women have unique health issues. And some of the health issues that affect both men and women can affect women differently.

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  Confronting Violence: Improving Women’s Lives

  Featured in Confronting Violence are items from the National Library of Medicine's collection, including correspondence between Daniel Sheridan and other nurse activists, early guidelines for care, and medical training videos.

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  The Literature of Prescription

  This exhibition explores how, in the late 19th century, medical and scientific experts drew on notions of female weakness to justify inequality between the sexes.

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