Medicine and literature: a Wellcome Library workshop

Using the Library catalogue to search for medicine and literature
Resources for the medical humanities
Medicine and literature online resources

Using the Library catalogue to search for medicine and literature

The Wellcome Library collects medically themed novels, poetry and plays, works of literary history, biography and memoir, and more recently graphic novels, as part of our commitment to documenting the story of medicine and its role in society, past and present.

The best place to begin searching for these items is the Library catalogue. Should you have a particular work or author in mind, simply enter a title or author name into the catalogue to see whether the Wellcome Library holds the items you are after. However, if you wish to browse more generally for works relating to medicine and literature, there are a number of search strategies that can be employed.

Word searches

This is often the simplest way to begin. Using the Library catalogue, you could enter ‘literature’ or ‘fiction’ or ‘Shakespeare’, or any other relevant terms into the search text box, and then click ‘Search’.

You could combine words to return more specific results. For example, ‘fiction’ and ‘plague’, or ‘memoirs’ and ‘Alzheimer disease’, or ‘biographies’ and ‘literature’.

Searching by genre

You can use the catalogue to search by genre. A ‘genre/medium’ search could be used to find particular forms or styles of literature. These might include ‘novels’ or ‘fiction’, ‘short stories’, ‘poems’, ‘plays’, ‘biographies’, ‘autobiographies’ and ‘memoirs’, ‘travel literature’ and ‘graphic novels’.

To search by genre, go to the drop down search menu and select ‘genre/medium’. Enter any of the above terms into the text box, then click ‘Search’.

Searching by subject

You can search the catalogue for items that specifically relate to medicine and literature by doing a subject search. There are two main types of subject headings used in the catalogue. These are MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) and LCSH (Library of Congress Subject Headings).

Using MeSH, you might want to explore ‘Medicine in Literature’. And using LCSH, you might be interested in browsing ‘Literature and medicine’ or ‘Psychoanalysis and literature’.

If you are specifically interested in the published work of medical practitioners who have also written literature, then you could do a new LCSH search, using the term ‘Physicians as authors’.

To search by subject, go to the drop down search menu and selecting either ‘MESH Subject’ or ‘LCSH Subject’, enter your search term and click ‘Search’.

Practice Session 1

1. Using the Library catalogue, try doing some word searches and see what items you find. For example, search for works by or relating to particular authors (e.g. Shakespeare or Dickens), or that are concerned with particular genres (fiction or poetry, drama or memoirs).

2. Now try combining words. For example, ‘Shakespeare‘ and ‘madness’, or ‘fiction‘ and ‘cholera’, or ‘biographies’ and ‘literature’.

3. Now do a search for items by ‘genre/medium’. Terms that the catalogue uses include ‘novels’ and ‘fiction’, ‘short stories’, ‘poems’, ‘plays’, ‘biographies’, ‘autobiographies’ and ‘memoirs’, ‘travel literature’ and ‘graphic novels’.

Things to note: ‘fiction’ is used as a genre/medium tag for novels, but not all novels are tagged with ‘fiction’, so you will need to browse both ‘novels’ and ‘fiction’ to find all novels.

4. Do a MeSH subject search for ‘literature’. You will generate a list of more specific headings to explore, including ‘Medicine in Literature’. Explore the tiles generated, and those of other related headings.

5. Now start again, and this time do a LCSH subject search for ‘literature’. A different list of subject headings will have been generated, including ‘Literature and medicine’. Again, explore the titles generated, and those of other related headings.

Things to note: Items will not necessarily have been marked with both a MeSH and LCSH subject heading, and it is worth browsing through both of these – including the more refined subject headings – to avoid missing anything.

Resources for the medical humanities

Recent years have seen the growth of the medical humanities. An academic field of enquiry in its own right, it engages diverse subjects, including literary study, art history, philosophy, cultural studies, and anthropology, to investigate health and medicine. This work has fed back into medical education and professional development, and today medical students and practicing doctors might find themselves reading a novel or a play, alongside learning how to treat a new injury or disease.

Many resources have been developed to support the medical humanities, including academic journals and online databases. In this section, we will look at a few of these resources.

Medical humanities journals in the Wellcome Library

The Wellcome Library holds a number of academic journals that are specifically concerned with the medical humanities, and these contain articles on various subjects relating to medicine and literature.

To find these journals on the library catalogue, first limit your search to 'Journal Titles' in the right hand side drop down menu (rather than the default 'Entire Catalogue') and do a MeSH subject heading search for 'Medicine in Literature'.

PubMed Database

To search a large number of journals in one go we can use a journal database. These index articles from many different publications and provide abstracts of articles and sometimes even links to full-text articles. PubMed is a database that indexes articles from most established biomedical journals, a number of which will be relevant to the medical humanities.

PubMed can be accessed through the Library catalogue. To do so, open the Library catalogue and go to ‘Electronic Resources’ and then ‘Databases and electronic journals’. Type ‘pubmed’ into the ‘Database title search’ field and, after clicking ‘submit search’, select the first hit ‘PubMed’. From here, select ‘Connect to: PubMed’. One simple search we could use would be to type ‘medical humanities AND literature’ into the search field found at the top of the page, and click ‘Go’.

Practice Session 2

1. Go to the Library catalogue and, using the MeSH subject ‘Medicine in Literature’, generate a list of journal titles that are concerned with medicine and literature.

2. Open the link to 'Medical Humanities'. Now click on the ‘electronic access’ link ‘Connect to BMJ Journals’. Explore the website to find articles that interest you. One way to begin might be to browse the latest issue, or to enter ‘novel’ or ‘poetry’, for example, in the ‘Search this site’ text box found at the top of the page.

3. Find PubMed using the Library catalogue. When you have reached the database, carry out the above search for ‘medical humanities AND literature’. Browse through the articles you have found.

Medicine and literature online resources

Many medicine and literature resources can be found freely online, including the following websites:

BMJ Medical Humanities Blog
Supports the BMJ’s 'Medical Humanities' journal, with weekly postings.

British Society for Literature and Science
News and events relating to the BSLS: ‘a scholarly society which promotes interdisciplinary research into the relationships of science and literature in all periods’. Also, reviews of academic books concerned with science and literature.

Graphic Medicine
A wonderful website that promotes comics and graphic novels as a resource for health professionals and patients.

Lablit
LabLit.com is dedicated to real laboratory culture and to the portrayal and perceptions of that culture – science, scientists and labs – in fiction, the media and across popular culture.

Literature, Arts, and Medicine Database
This freely available online database was developed by the New York University School of Medicine to support teaching and research in the medical humanities. It presents annotated guides to literary works, films, and art works, selected and written by scholars of the medical humanities.

The section on literature is impressively large, covering not only European and North American writers, but also writers from other parts of the world. It provides a list of literary works that address or touch upon medical themes, each accompanied by short discursive essays. These can be searched alphabetically by author, or thematically by medical subjects that range widely from Aging to War and Medicine.

A fantastic feature of the database is that, where possible, links have been provided to freely available online versions of the featured literary works.

New York University School of Medicine also host the fantastic Bryant Collection Roster of Physician Writers, an extensive list of physician-writers with author biographies and bibliographies of their work.

Narrative Genetics
This blog explores ‘how genetic understanding and belief are expressed through story, and of the impact of those narratives’.

Poetry and Healthcare Resources
A list of online and print resources, including reading lists, put together by the Poetry Society.

Poetry Therapy
Website of the National Association for Poetry Therapy (USA).

Society for Veterinary Medicine and Literature
Founded 'to support and advance the discussion of literature and other arts in veterinary medicine, education, and practice'.

Wonders & Marvels
This site is dedicated to ‘curious minds who love history, its odd stories, and good reads’.

Practice session 3

1. Go to the Literature, Medicine and Arts Database.

2. Follow a link to a literary work that caches your eye. Have a look at the keywords tagged to this literary work. Click on one of these to find a list of further works to explore.

3. Take a few moments to explore some of the other websites listed above.