Google Books Old Medical Texts
Google Books has an awesome number of old medical texts online–stuff from the 1850s and on up, and it’s just fascinating to see what these clinicians believed to be true about certain diseases. A Manual of Clinical Medicine and Physical Diagnosis
is one of my favorites, as well as A cyclopedia of domestic medicine and surgery. If I’m reading it right, they once believed that bile was somehow secreted through the hepatic veins and into the bile duct.
I wonder what they’ll be thinking when they read our medical journals 150 years from now.
(Update: Also cool is the fact that many of these books came from my own medical library! And when I say “my own,” I mean Stanford’s, but still.)
The same thing your thinking…Where did they get their medical degrees out of a Cracker Jack Box? Oh…they probably won’t know what a Cracker Jack Box is and that is the REAL shame.
I’m sure you have access to Early English Books Online (EEBO) through your university library. That indexes early printed texts printed in English or in England, and increasingly has digital copies, many full text, some illustrations. You should be able to find LOTS of fun medical texts! Way cool wayback stuffs!