Over the past few weeks, staff at the Library have come across a number of interesting online resources – podcasts, articles, websites and blogs that we have added to our Delicious list of links.  All of them are free to access.  If you have any favourite resources then please leave a comment.  Here are our current top 5:

1)      Chirurgeon’s apprentice

This website describes itself as ‘dedicated to a study of early modern chirurgeons, and all the blood and gore that comes with it.’  The site was created by Lindsey Fitzharris, who is currently a Wellcome Trust Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Queen Mary, University of London.  It contains a series of casebooks covering a variety of topics, such as vivisection, blood letting and the reaction of medical students to dissection.

2)      Waterloo 200

This site has been set up to commemorate the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, in the run up to its 200^th anniversary.   Along, with Q&A and education sections, an area of the site is dedicated to articles about the battle.  An article of particular interest is ‘Surgeon George James Guthrie, Wellington’s combat surgeon’, written by MKH Crumplin (Hon. Curator at the Royal College of Surgeons of England and archivist to the Association of Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland).  Crumplin traces the early life and education of Guthrie as a military doctor, his time as a surgeon in military campaigns and his career as a civilian doctor after 1815.  If this article whets your appetite, Crumplin’s book Guthrie’s War: a surgeon of the Peninsula and Waterloo (2010) can be requested from the Bodleian’s book stacks to consult in the Bodleian Libraries Reading Rooms.  His 2005 book A surgical artist at war is also available to consult the Wellcome Unit Library (shelfmark R489.B38 CRU 2005) .

3)      Archives Hub – The Heritage of our Medical Profession

The Archives Hub acts as a gateway that gathers together information about archives held in UK institutions.  The Hub is currently adding information about the archives held by British Royal Medical Colleges.  So far, it has added descriptions for the archives of Royal College of Surgeons of England, Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and more are to follow.  Although many of these collections of archives have not been digitised, the Hub descriptions give details about the scope and content of the physical collections held by the institutions.   For instance, the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow holds the student notes taken in Dr Robert Watt’s lectures on fevers in 1812.  The Hub also has sections dedicated to Tuberculosis and Charles Darwin.

4)      National Archives Podcast – Anxiety, dread and disease: British ports 1834-1870

Sarah Hutton, a modern domestic records specialist at The National Archives, delves into the archives to investigate the spread of disease in British port towns in the 19^th century.  Using examples of cholera outbreaks in the north of England, she explores how reactions to cholera differed when the disease was deemed to have arrived on incoming ships.  This lecture demonstrates the value of the vast collections available at the National Archives.

5)       Pybus Podcasts

This second set of podcasts had been created by the Northern Centre for the History of Medicine, which is a partnership between Durham Univerity and Newscastle University, supported by the Wellcome Trust.  Six podcasts of public seminars have been recorded and are available to listen online or download.  Topics include ‘The Drug Trade in Colonial India‘ by Dr Nandini Bhattacharya (University of Leicester) and ‘Madness and Passions in Early Modern Spain‘ by Dr Elena Carrera (Queen Mary, University of London).