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Using and Accessing Primary Sources

Guide to finding and using historical sources in your research

Historical Searching

Starting your search with PubMed

Did someone already write a history of this topic? PubMed is a free online database of biomedical and life sciences articles. You can use it to find important studies and summaries that show how a medical or scientific topic has changed over time. 

If you're researching the history of a topic, PubMed can help you: 

  • Find early or influential articles. 
  • Discover summaries of how a topic developed. 
  • Identify key sources to explore further. 

PubMed articles are different from historical books or archives, but they can still be useful as primary sources: the original publications where findings were first shared. 

Method 1: Use Filters for Historical and Classical Articles 

  1. Go to the PubMed Advanced Search. 
  2. Type a keyword related to your topic (example: pharmacogenetics). 
  3. Click “Show Index” to find the most relevant subject heading (called a MeSH term). 
  4. Run the search. 
  5. On the results page, look at the filters on the left side. 
  6. Check the boxes for:  
  7. Historical Article – summaries of how a topic has changed over time. 
  8. Classical Article – important or landmark studies, often reprinted with commentary. 

Example search: 

("pharmacogenetics"[MeSH Terms]) AND ((historical article[Filter]) OR (classical article[Filter])) 

Method 2: Add “History” as a Subject Heading 

In the Advanced Search, type your topic AND the word “History” as a subject heading.  

Example search: 

"pharmacogenetics" AND "History"

Method 3: Use the “/History” Subheading 

In the Advanced Search, type your topic with /History added to the subject heading.

Example search:

"pharmacogenetics/History"

This tells PubMed to look for articles that focus on the historical development of your topic. 

Method 4: Find the Earliest Article 

If no one has written a history of your topic: 

  1. Search for your topic using its MeSH term. 
  2. Don’t apply any filters. 
  3. Sort the results by Publication Date to find the oldest article. 

If the earliest article is from before the 1940s, try searching IndexCat – the Index Catalogue of the National Library of Medicine (covers 1880–1961). 

Note: IndexCat’s advanced search may not work well with AND/OR operators. 

Chase those footnotes

Once you've identified a range of promising articles from your search, it's time to review their citations to find additional, likely older, references to seek out:

  • In a historical (overview) article, what are the original sources cited as turning points or landmarks?
  • In a classical article or original work, what references are they citing?

Some of these articles may be available in a major database, particularly if they are from the mid-twentieth century or more recent. If you start from PubMed (logged in with your OHSU credentials), you will find full-text articles via the Find @ OHSU button.

For older items, it never hurts to start with Google for a citation. But, with a notoriously unreliable algorithm, if you're not finding results, you may wish to search directly within one of the bigger digital libraries.

Excellent sites for locating digitized versions of full-text historical journals, books and other sources (particularly 1928 and earlier for copyright reasons):

  • Medical Heritage Library
    View digitized, open access resources in this collaborative library in the history of healthcare and the health sciences
  • National Library of Medicine Digital Collections
    Access online images from the historical collections of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Images include fine art, photographs, engravings, and posters that illustrate the social and historical aspects of medicine dating from the 15th to 21st century.
  • New York Academy of Medicine Digital Collections
    Access NYAM's historical collection on the history of medicine and public health, including rare books, manuscripts, pharmaceutical trade cards, and more.
  • Wellcome Collections
    Find thousands of freely licensed digital books, artworks, photos and images of historical library materials and museum objects from the Wellcome Collection.
  • Hathitrust Digital Library
    Explore millions of digitized items from a collaborative of academic and research libraries around the world. HathiTrust offers reading access to the fullest extent allowable by U.S. copyright law.

Changing terminologies, specialties and titles

  • Be mindful of changing terminologies, and potentially of a change in fields or specialties: a topic might currently be associated with a specialty that didn't exist 100 or 200 years ago.
  • If you can't find resources related to a term or keyword before a certain date range, there may have been a change in terminology around that time. What are other, more basic terms you can search for?
  • This ALSO goes for journals: many scholarly journals, particularly those over 100 years old, have undergone multiple name changes over the years. Example, Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery was titled Transactions of the American Orthopedic Association in the nineteenth century. If you are searching for an old citation (especially 1800s) with no results, the journal may have previously published under a different name, and the citation has omitted this detail. Search Hathitrust, Medical Heritage Library or similar for the article title or author name to see if it comes up under a different publication name.

Language barriers

You will, at some point, likely run across citations written in languages other than English without published translations available. If it happens to be a language in which you do not have reading proficiency, there are some possible workarounds.

Find English-language commentaries on the original article:

  • Google Scholar: search for the original article, then click "cited by" for a list of articles that cite the original. Sort by date to find one close to the original date of publication.
    • Alternative: search "author name" and "[general topic]", set the date range to ~ 5 years of publication to see if it turns up any commentaries.
  • For older articles (pre-1920s), search Hathitrust, Medical Heritage Library or similar for the title or author within ~ 5 years of the original article's publication.
  • Articles located with the above methods may not lead you to THE article you are seeking as a primary source, but it IS a primary source on how people were discussing its ideas at the time, how it was summarized, and how the author was situated with other researchers.

Find private translations of original works:

  • You may want to try a broad internet search for the title, and look for results in theses or dissertations, on department websites, you'd be surprised! Look for .edu addresses in the results.
  • In combination with other approaches, try running a PDF of the original article through Google Translate! You may be able to get the gist of the article. Your mileage may vary.

Additional resources

When in doubt, ask for help

Historical Collections & Archives staff are very experienced in tracing historical sources and helping to locate materials. It's our job! Reach out for help anytime you get stuck.

Submit a ticket to reach the first available staff member.

Resources at OHSU

Physical primary sources

To identify historical collections and books to use in your research, you can search our collections online:

  • Library catalog (items with locations that start with “OHSU Library HCA” are part of our historical collections)
    • Items located in “Closed Stacks” can be requested through the library and checked out (items at the OR Primate Center Library can also be requested)
    • Items located in “HCA Rare Books,” “HCA History of Medicine,” “History of Dentistry,” and “Rosenbaum” are only available for use in the HC&A reading room (these items generally state “Not Loanable” – but really that means contact us for access) 

Digital primary sources

Historical Collections & Archives isn’t just rare books and old paper materials. We also have digital materials at digitalcollections.ohsu.edu. Highlights include:

  • Oral History Collection: Started in 1997, the OHSU Oral History Program records firsthand accounts from people who have contributed to university history, including OHSU employees and alumni, as well as legislators and policymakers who have affected the university's development.
  • Public Health in Oregon: Discovering Historical Data: The project provides digitized Oregon public health records from the 19th and 20th centuries. The records include public health surveys, early medical journals, records of the People’s Institute and Portland Free Dispensary, papers from the early career of Dr. Esther Pohl Lovejoy, records of state institutions, and more.
  • Historical Image Collection: This collection includes digitized photographs of OHSU faculty, staff, and students; the campus and individual buildings; objects from the artifact collection; and more.
  • OHSU's Web Archive: Records online change frequently; this collection contains snapshots of select websites for OHSU, its partners, and student organizations.

For more on HC&A's digital collections at OHSU, watch the video below.

Online resources

Digital primary sources

Find digitized, full-text historical materials

  • Medical Heritage Library
    View digitized, open access resources in this collaborative library in the history of healthcare and the health sciences

  • National Library of Medicine Digital Collections
    Access online images from the historical collections of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Images include fine art, photographs, engravings, and posters that illustrate the social and historical aspects of medicine dating from the 15th to 21st century.

  • New York Academy of Medicine Digital Collections
    Access NYAM's historical collection on the history of medicine and public health, including rare books, manuscripts, pharmaceutical trade cards, and more.

  • Wellcome Collections
    Find thousands of freely licensed digital books, artworks, photos and images of historical library materials and museum objects from the Wellcome Collection.

  • Duke History of Medicine Artifacts Digital Repository
    View images of medical artifacts such as replicas of Roman surgical tools, manikins used to teach anatomy, and obstetrical tools. Images are in the public domain.
     

Digital secondary sources

Learn background and context for selected historical topics in health sciences

Collection guides

Search across thousands of collection guides (also known as finding aids) from many institutions at once

  • Online Archive of California
    Search across more than 20,000 online collection guides from archives around California. Browse, locate sources, and view selected items digitally (the OAC contains more than 250,000 digital images and documents).
  • ArchivesGrid
    Search over 5 million records describing archival materials from over 1,000 different archival institutions. Locate primary source materials held in archives, libraries, museums and historical societies (some guides link to digital materials when available).
  • ArchivesWest
    Search across collection guides from institutions in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana and Utah (some guides link to digital materials when available).
     

Podcasts

Get an engaging, broad overview of selected topics in the history of health sciences

  • Bedside Rounds
    A storytelling podcast about medical history and medicine’s intersections with society and culture.
  • This Podcast Will Kill You
    Hosted by two disease ecologists and epidemiologists, each episode tackles a different disease and its history.
  • The History of Medicine
    Explore the rich history of medicine, from the diseases that once plagued us, how the medicine we take for granted today came to be, and the curious characters and stories surrounding these technologies.
  • Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine
    Discussions of the "weird, gross, and sometimes downright dangerous ways we tried to solve our medical woes through the ages."