Nicholas Culpeper’s The English Physitian
digital edition of Culpeper’s 1652 treatise on herbal medicine (Electronic Texts in the History of Medicine)

The Diary of Martha Ballard
At the heart of this sophisticated site is the diary (of over 1400 pages) kept by Martha Ballard, a late-eighteenth-century midwife and healer in Massachusetts. There is also an archive of primary sources used in the project, which can be browsed in a variety of ways including under topic headings (such as domestic life; religion; law and justice; midwifery and birth). For teachers, also offers practice in reading handwriting, guided exercises in such crucial historical skills as the interpretation of conflicting evidence, and an excellent section on the use of primary sources (Film Study Center, Harvard University)

Early Modern English Medical Wills, Book Ownership, and Book Culture
article by Christine Cerdeira using wills of medical practitioners to explore book ownership and culture
From Canadian Bulletin of Medical History, 12:2 (1995)

Edward Jenner and the Discovery of Vaccination
exhibit to mark the 200th anniversary of Edward Jenner’s first experimental vaccination against the deadly scourge of smallpox (Patrick Scott, Jason Pierce)

Eighteenth-century colonial formularies
Website providing access to two 18th-century medical manuscripts which “illuminate the therapeutic practices and medical orientation of two dispensing physicians in the multilingual colonial medical market of rural Pennsylvania” (College of Physicians of Philadelphia Digital Library)

Elizabeth Blackwell and her ‘Curious Herbal’
webpage showcasing Elizabeth Blackwell’s Curious Herbal containing five hundred cuts of the most useful plants, published in 1737 (British Library)

Epidemic Disease in London
collection of seminar papers, most focused on the early modern period, including a number on the plague; from a Symposium held in 1992 (Institute of Historical Research)

Herbal Medicine in Shakespeare’s England
Article on John Hall, a sixteenth-century physican-herbalist (Michael Tierra)

Inoculation–A means of protecting people or propagating smallpox: Spain and New Spain, 1779-1800
article by Robert McCaa on the controversies surrounding smallpox inoculation in Spain and its colonies
from Boletín Mexicana de Historia y Filosofía de la Medicina, 2 (1998)

Islamic culture and the medical arts: late medieval and early modern medicine
Looks at European influences on early modern Islamic medicine and vice versa (US National Library of Medicine)

John Graunt’s Observations on the Bills of Mortality
Full text of this 1662 work - a remarkable early piece of statistical analysis (Ed Stephan)

The medicinal value of wine in early modern England
article by Louise Hill Curth
From The social history of drugs and alcohol, 18 (2003)

Pregnancy and Childbirth
Bibliography of secondary sources (EMR)

The Plague in England 1539-1640
Illustrated online essay, overview and case-study of Loughborough (Ian Jessiman)

Words and deeds of madness in eighteenth-century France
Bilingual (French and English) site, containing excerpts from legal records - petitions, interviews and inquiries into individual cases - of the appointment of a guardian to look after the insane or mentally impaired (Laurent Cartayrade)
(Currently unavailable, Jan 2006)