Sources Guides list

Sources Guide: Victorian medicine and health

The Wellcome Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine, has rich archival and manuscript collections relating to the Victorian era. There are numerous personal diaries, lecture and other student notes, correspondence etc, for a range of Victorian doctors and other medical professionals, as well as of non-medical individuals on health issues, and records of organisations and businesses. There is also a substantial amount of material of general interest to the social historian, and the collections provide a rich resource for the Imperial dimension as well as Britain itself. The following selection illustrates some of the richness and diversity of the kinds of material held at the Wellcome, but there is a great deal more to interest the Victorian scholar.

Further information about the materials mentioned below can be found on the Archives and Manuscripts Online Catalogue

In some cases the full detailed catalogues of archive collections are not yet in this online database: hard copy versions are available in the Rare Materials Room of the Library and on request to archs+mss@wellcome.ac.uk

Personal papers: Sir Thomas Barlow (1845-1945); Thomas Hodgkin (1798-1866) and family; Lord Lister (1827-1912); Florence Nightingale (1820-1910); Sir James Paget (1830-1899)

Organisations: Association for the Advancement of Medicine by Research, f. 1882; British Institute of Preventive Medicine (later the Jenner, and subsequently the Lister, Institute), f. 1891; Hunterian Society of London, f. 1819 (also manuscripts accumulated by the Society); Physiological Society, f. 1876; Queen's Nursing Institute, f. 1889 as Queen Victoria's Jubilee Institute for Nurses, includes records of Elizabeth Fry's Protestant Nursing Sisters, f. 1840; Society of Medical Officers of Health, f. 1856 (the Wellcome Library also holds a large collection of local Medical Officer of Health Reports); Sydenham Medical Club, f. 1796

Private lunatic asylums: Camberwell House, Surrey; Holloway Sanatorium Hospital for the Insane; Manor House; Ticehurst House Hospital

Military and naval medicine: Sir George Ballingall (1780-1855), Professor of Military Surgery, Edinburgh; Sir John MacAndrew [later Macgregor] (1791-1866), Inspector General of Military Hospitals; Thomas O'Farrell (1843-1917), RAMC Surgeon General. The Royal Army Medical Corps Muniment Collection includes papers of Sir John Hall (1794-1866) and Sir Thomas Longmore (1816-1895) and substantial amounts of material on the Crimean War, military medicine in the imperial context, and generally during the nineteenth century

Business records: T. Burden and Co, dispensing chemists, London; Corbyn and Co, chemists and druggists, London; Fennings Pharmaceuticals; General Apothecaries Co Ltd, wholesale and manufacturing chemists and druggists, London; Thomas Morson and Son, pharmaceutical entrepreneurs; Burroughs Wellcome (later Wellcome Foundation) pharmaceutical company, including records of Cooper McDougall & Robertson Ltd, specialists in animal health, veterinary and agricultural medicine and products

Surveys: The Wellcome/National Archives Hospital Records Database has information on the whereabouts of the records, and details of the history, of over 3000 hospitals in the UK. There is also a Medical Archives and Manuscripts Survey, 1600-1945, of material in repositories in the Greater London area.