Digital facsimile from BnF Gallica at this link.

Considered the most significant work on the pulse between Galen and Harvey. The work includes what is probably the earliest graphic representation of the pulse. Struthius provided a useful mnemonic of the five simple pulses in the form of a hand (on p. 116). Digital facsimile of the Venice,1573 edition from Google Books at this link.

The first monograph on heart disease written and published in the United States. Digital text from Project Gutenberg at this link.

The first medical book, as distinct from a pamphlet, that was written and published in California.  See Shapiro, "California's 'first' medical book. David Wooster's Diseases of the heart (1867)," Calif. Med., 108 (1968) 255-262.

The first detailed history of efforts at blood transfusion. Mercklin was one of the earliest writers to discuss the history, value, dangers, and methods of blood transfusion. He recognized and understood what we now call a transfusion reaction. Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

The first textbook on radiation therapy. Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

"Eder was the director of an institute for graphic processes and the author of an early history of photography. With the photochemist Valenta, he produced a portfolio in January 1896, less than a month after Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen published his discovery of X-rays. Eder and Valenta’s volume... demonstrated the X-ray’s magical ability to reveal the hidden structure of living things. Human hands and feet, fish, frogs, a snake, a chameleon, a lizard, a rat, and a newborn rabbit are all presented in exquisitely printed photo-gravures, as are carved cameos and an assortment of natural materials. In an era when photography’s ability to accurately depict the visible world had become commonplace, this newfound capacity to record the invisible opened up a host of possibilities, both scientific and aesthetic" (https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/296322, accessed 05-2018).

This collection of x-ray photographs published within a few months of Röntgen's discovery includes applications in archaeology and anthropology (x-rays of mummies) and forensic medicine (for the investigation of gunshot wounds),

Gesell, who originated the Child Study Center at Yale University, was the founder of the study of child development in the United States. He is best known for his groundbreaking studies of normal child development: beginning in the 1920s, he used advanced cinematic and photographic techniques, including one-way mirrors, to record developmental milestones from infancy to adolescence. His most famous work is the Atlas of Infant Behavior, which contains 3200 photographs documenting the human infant's "visible manifestations of his maturing patterns of action and reaction. . . . Through systematic, pictorial charting, we trust that this Atlas will reveal the patterned organization of the moments and of the developmental sequences of infant behavior" (p. 11).

"The Maturational Theory of child development was introduced in 1925^[1] by Dr. Arnold Gesell, an American educator, pediatrician and clinical psychologist whose studies focused on "the course, the pattern and the rate of maturational growth in normal and exceptional children"(Gesell 1928).^[2] Gesell carried out many observational studies during more than 50 years working at the Yale Clinic of Child Development, where he is credited as a founder. Gesell and his colleagues documented a set of behavioral norms that illustrate sequential & predictable patterns of growth and development. Gesell asserted that all children go through the same stages of development in the same sequence, although each child may move through these stages at their own rate ^[3] Gesell's Maturational Theory has influenced child-rearing and primary education methods since it was introduced.^[4][5] (Wikipedia article on Gesell's Maturational Theory, accessed 05-2018). Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link. Various films made by Gesell and/or showing him at work are available on YouTube.

This appears to be the earliest monograph on computerized disease mapping. At the time the research was conducted both computer graphics processing and data output in mainframe computers were inadequate for drawing all but very primitive maps so that many of the images in the book compare the very limited computer graphic output with traditional simple hand-drawn black & white maps. Much of the book describes the planning of appropriate data collection and data input methodologies for computer processing of epidemiological and environmental data. With Roger J. Cuffey, Jerome Monrenoff, Wayne L. Richmond, and Joseph D. H. Sidley.

"Through an analysis of twenty-four examples of female-owned herbals supplemented by case studies of the herbal references in the writings of Margaret Hoby, Grace Mildmay, Elizabeth Isham, and Isabella Whitney, Rebecca Laroche seeks to uncover the myriad ways that women engaged herbal texts along with the multiple contexts of their usage. She investigates the texts for their practical value, rather than as reference texts to help modern scholars understand allusions in early modern literary works.

"Her work is firmly within the revisionist critique of the concept of the medical marketplace and the tripartite division of medical authority into physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries, a model that excludes and subjugates women. Beginning with an examination of herbals written by men, she shows how these intentionally authoritative and comprehensive texts aimed to bring a more complete herbal knowledge to a projected audience of learned men, and to masculinize the herbal tradition. John Parkinson, for example, produced two books on herbals: one for women that demonstrated the delights to be found in plants and one for men that incorporated more intellectual debates and medicinal remedies. The published herbals, through their construction of the female reader, attempted to limit the medical activities of women, but the extensive information they supplied enabled gentlewomen in particular to acquire considerable medical knowledge" (https://muse.jhu.edu/article/522314, accessed 05-2018).

Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

Key documents from the Scopes Trial. Digital facsimile from the Hathi Trust at this link.

This play about the Scopes Trial that concerned creationism versus evolution was the subject of numerous film adaptations including the most famous one first screened in 1960 starring Spencer Tracy and Fredric March.

In Rafinesque's polemic style the title page includes the following statement:

"The art of seeing well, or of noticing and distinguishing with accuracy the objects which we perceive, is a high faculty of the mind, unfolded in few individuals, and despised by those who can neither acquire it, nor appreciate its results."

New edition by Richard Ellsworth Call as Ichthyologia Ohiensis or natural history of the fishes inhabiting the river Ohio and its tributary steams. A verbatim et literatim reprint of the original, with a sketch of the life, the ichthyologic work, and the ichthyologic bibliography of Rafinesque (Cleveland: The Burrows Brothers Co, 1899).

Digital facsimile of the 1820 edition from Biodiversity Heritage Library at this link.

Analysis, illustrated with Woodburytype photographs, of data collected by the "Collective Investigation Committee" of the British Medical Association. Note that in the 1880s attaining the age of 80 was considered worth documenting. Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

Digital facsimile from BnF Gallica at this link.

Published at the end of the 19th century, and employing the wide variety of illustration technologies then available, including color lithography, lithography, and photography, this work testifies to the breadth and depth of Bramwell’s medical knowledge; it illustrates, with extensive accompanying text for each image, a wide range of disorders including Addison’s disease, smallpox, cancer, hemiplegia, muscular dystrophy and the various stages of syphilis. Also included is a remarkable series of portraits of the insane, depicting patients suffering from “melancholia,” “melancholia with fear,” “melancholia with strong suicidal tendency,” “hilarious mania” and “mania.” As a contribution to the artistic depiction of disease this work is unsurpassed.

A study of the sharp increase in cesarean births (up to 25%) in the U.S. during the 2nd half of the 20th century, as a result of technologization of medicine and, consequently, obstreticians' weakened skills, the malpractice climate, and a health care system in which cesarean section became lucrative.

Foege, as director of the Centers for Disease Control, is credited with "devising the global strategy that led to the eradication of smallpox in the late 1970s".^[4] 

Director of the Centers for Disease Control from 1977-1983, and President and Co-Founder of The Task Force for Global Heath, 1984-1999, Foege was instrumental in the eradication of smallpox, the generalization of immunization in developing countries and, among many other achievements, the transformation of the CDC from a program on malaria to the observatory of world epidemiology.

Of the 19,798 lots in the auction catalogue of Falconet's library, which at its peak contained around 60,000 volumes, there were 3,672 lots of medical books, including a major cross-section of significant medical works published up through his time. Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

"This book offers a critical review of the pelvic sciences—past, present and future—from an anatomical and physiological perspective....The book starts with a “construction plan” of the pelvis and shows its structural consequences. The historical background of pelvic studies proceeds from medieval and early Italian models to the definitive understanding of the pelvic anatomy in the Seventeenth century. During these eras of pelvic research, concepts and approaches developed that are illustrated with examples from comparative anatomy and from mutations, also with regard to the biomechanics of pelvic structures. Perceptions of the pelvis as an important element in sexual arousal and mating conduct are discussed, as well as attitudes to circumcision, castration and other mutilations, in its anthropological, social context.

"The anatomy and physiology of the pelvic wall and its organs as well as the development of these pelvic organs are covered as a prerequisite to understanding, for example, the spread of pelvic carcinoma and male and female bladder muscle function. Connective pelvic tissue is examined in its reinforcing capacity for pelvic structures, but also as a “hiding place” for infections. Innervations and reflexes relayed through the pelvic nerves are discussed in order to explain incontinence, sphincter function and the control of smooth and striated muscles in the pelvis.

"Catheters and drugs acting on pelvic function are described, and a critical review of alternative clinical methods for treating pelvic dysfunctions is provided" (publisher).

"Owing to a paucity of relevant sources, we know rather little about Hittite medical practice, but it is clear that native therapies relied as much on magic as upon what moderns would recognize as medicine. Practitioners from Babylonia and Egypt, whose expertise was acknowledged to be superior to that of local physicians, were welcome at the Hittite court" (G. Beckman, https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444338386.wbeah30208, accessed 06-2018).

"This collection of articles is the first collection of studies on the specific subject of disease in Babylonia, based upon actual medical texts, with contributions by senior scholars who have spent years working on published and unpublished cuneiform medical texts. The volume contains editions of unpublished materials as well as syntheses of information about specific diseases in Babylonia, such as fever, published here for the first time" (publisher).

Edition and commented translation (German) of 17 Hittite texts, with an introduction.

First published in Dohrn's Geschichte der Geburtshülfe der Neuzeit, zugleich als dritter Band des Versuchs einer Geschichte der Geburtshülfe, von Eduard von Siebold, Erste Abtheilung (Tübingen, 1903) 193-264. Digital facsimile of the offprint of the American version from the Internet Archive at this link.

Digital facsimile from cervantesvirtual.com at this link.

A gynecological treatise from the Hippocratic Collection. This one is supposed to come from the School of Cnidus or to use Cnidian material and is generally dated to mid 4th century BCE.

One of the most emblematic treatises of the Hippocratic Collection. The author, a physician presumably associated with Hippocrates but otherwise unidentified, illustrates the value of scientific medicine sometime between 420 and 380 BCE.

This treatise on prognostication in acute diseases was possibly written by Hippocrates himself; or if not, by a physician close to him, sometime during the second half of the 5th century, before 410 BCE.

The first historical monograph on rumination syndrome or merycism.

The founding work of paleoneurology based on Edinger's discovery that mammalian brains left imprints on fossil skulls, allowing paleoneurologists to discern their anatomy.

Edition of the Greek text with facing French translation and commentary of On winds and On the art of medicine from the Hippocratic Corpus. Both treatises date to the final decades of the 5th cent. BCE. On winds claims that diseases are caused by air. On the art aims to demonstrate the efficacy of medicine.

Edition of the Greek text with facing French translation and commentary of On regimen of the Hippocratic Collection. The treatise dates to the late 5th or early 4th century BCE. 

Perhaps the most beautiful book on botanic poisons and their antidotes, including narcotics. Plates 1-15 cover mushrooms, and plate 175 depicts Cannabis sativa. With 180 plates printed in color à la poupée and finished by hand. Digital facsimile from BnF Gallica at this link.

The first book on the animal, vegetable and mineral medicines indigenous to Sri Lanka. Grim was a physician in the service of the VOC (the East India Company). Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

Includes some references to early expert testimony and related in France.

Gaudereau worked as a missionary in Turkey, Armenia, Persia, and India, facing plague outbreaks several times. In Turkey he almost succumbed to the plague, himself, but was cured using local remedies. These remedies and other local precautions to avoid the disease he reported in this book.

Essays influential on the planning and eventual operation of Johns Hopkins Hospital, which was innovative in its design and influential on the design of hospitals that followed. See Brieger, Gert, "The original plans for the Johns Hopkins Hospital and their historical significance," Bull. Hist. Med., 39 (1965) 518-528. Digital facsimile of the 1875 work from the Internet Archive at this link.

The first description of the use of a cardiac catheter as a diagnostic tool, in this case a congenital heart defect. The authors worked in the laboratory of Eugene Stead, Jr. at Grady Memorial Hospital, Atlanta, Georgia.

Pioneering work in mitral valve surgery.

Bailey was the first to graft the internal mammary artery, now typically called the internal thoracic artery.

This research by Bigelow and collegues first made possible the use of hypothermia in cardiac surgery.

In this pioneering experimental study of coronary function, describing the first experimental tying of a coronary vessel, Chirac demonstrated that cardiac arrest occurs in response to coronary ligation. “A special position must be allocated to the French physician Pierre Chirac for having performed the first experimental ligation of a coronary artery in a dog. His book De motu cordis (1698) is an early attempt at experimental pathology with regard to the coronary vessels. Likewise there is much information on the fibers of the heart; some ideas are also expressed as to measuring the heart’s power . . . the blood volume, too, was estimated” (Leibowitz, The History of Coronary Heart Disease, p. 305). Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

In this work Harvey first described the circulation of blood through the coronary arteries. Harvey also described experiments that he made to provide further support to his theory of the circulation since the publication of De motu cordis in 1628. He was motivated to publish this work to refute the misconceptions of Jean Riolan the younger. published in Riolan's Encheiridium anatomicum (1648). Published simultaneously by Daniel in Cambridge and Arnold Leers in Rotterdam. 

First successful heart-lung transplant, performed on March 9, 1981, after nearly four years of testing on primates.

Abstract

The earliest separate treatise on cardiac physiology and pathology. Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

"Opening a window on a dynamic realm far beyond imperial courts, anatomical theaters, and learned societies, Pablo F. Gómez examines the strategies that Caribbean people used to create authoritative, experientially based knowledge about the human body and the natural world during the long seventeenth century. Gómez treats the early modern intellectual culture of these mostly black and free Caribbean communities on its own merits and not only as it relates to well-known frameworks for the study of science and medicine.

"Drawing on an array of governmental and ecclesiastical sources—notably Inquisition records—Gómez highlights more than one hundred black ritual practitioners regarded as masters of healing practices and as social and spiritual leaders. He shows how they developed evidence-based healing principles based on sensorial experience rather than on dogma. He elucidates how they nourished ideas about the universality of human bodies, which contributed to the rise of empirical testing of disease origins and cures. Both colonial authorities and Caribbean people of all conditions viewed this experiential knowledge as powerful and competitive. In some ways, it served to respond to the ills of slavery..." (publisher).

"New Zealand is the only country in the world where elected health boards have long been a core feature of the health care system. These boards are conceptually important and aspirational for policy-makers and communities across the world grappling with issues of how to increase public participation in health care. This book traces the development of New Zealand’s elected health boards, from the 1930s to the present District Health Board structure, analyzing the history of democratic governance of health care, how boards have functioned, the politics surrounding their reform, and the idea of local democracy in health care decision-making. Based on extensive primary research, it assesses the capacity of elected boards to effectively govern the allocation of public expenditure on behalf of taxpayers and patients. Are there alternatives to the existing District Health Board model? How might the electoral model be improved upon? The concluding chapter provides some suggestions" (publisher).

Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

Greek text with facing French translation and study of four short treatises of the Hippocratic Collection on anatomy and traumatology of different periods and origins: On sores (probably 5th cent. BCE), On the nature of bones (probably late 5th cent. BCE), On the heart (possibly between 300 and 250 BCE), and On anatomy (late 5th century or 4th century BCE).

Greek text with facing French translation and commentary of On diseases II from the Hippocratic Collection, possibly from the second half of the fifth century BCE.

"The 1939 foreword to the book, written by physical anthropologist Earnest A. Hooton, lauded Price's work for confirming previous research that dental caries were less prevalent in "savages" and attempting to establish the etiology for this difference. In 1940, a review in the Canadian Medical Association Journal called the book "a masterpiece of research", comparing Price's impact on nutrition to that of Ivan Pavlov in digestion. In 1950, a review in the journal The Laryngoscope said that "Dr. Price might well be called "The Charles Darwin of Nutrition" while describing Price's documentation of his global travel and research in a book.^[24] Other reviews were less sympathetic, with the Scientific Monthly noting some of his conclusions went "much farther than the observations warrant," criticizing Price's controversial conclusions about morality as "not justified by the evidence presented", and downplaying the significance of his dietary findings.^[23] Likewise, a review in the Journal of the American Medical Association disagreed with the significance of this nutritional research, noting Price was "observant but not wholly unbiased", and that his approach was "evangelistic rather than scientific."^[25]

"A 1981 editorial by William T. Jarvis published in Nutrition Today was more critical, identifying Price's work as a classic example of the "myth of the healthy savage," which holds that individuals who live in more technologically primitive conditions lead healthier lives than those who live in more modern societies. The review noted that Price's work was limited by a lack of quantitative analysis of the nutrition of the diets studied, and said he overlooked alternative explanations for his observations, such as malnutrition in primitive societies and overindulgence in the Western diet, rather than the diet itself, as a cause for poorer health. The review makes the assertion that Price had a preconceived positive notion about the health of primitive people, which led to data of questionable value and conclusions that ignored important problems known to afflict their societies, such as periodontal disease.^[26] "(Wikipedia article on Weston Price, accessed 08-2018).

The text of the 1939 edition may be available from journeytoforever.org at this link.

Greek text with facing French translation and commentary of a group of treatises from the Hippocratic Collection about generation or considered to be about it: On generation, and On the nature of the child, both dated to 430-420 BCE, On diseases IV (loosely connected to the former two and generation), of mid 4th century BCE, and On the eight-month infant, of the early 4th century BCE.

Includes annotated descriptions of numerous classics on veterinary medicine for horses.

Edition of the Greek text with facing French translation and commentary of a group of treatises from the Hippocratic Collection concerning anatomy, physiology, and pathology with the following possible periods of origin:

• Des lieux dans l'homme (On places in man) possibly ca. 450 BCE
• Du système des glandes (On glands) early 4th century
• Des fistules (On fistulas)  and Des hémorroïdes (On Hemorrhoids) both dating to 450-400 BCE
• De la vision (On sight)  late 5th century
• Des chairs (On flesh) possibly dating to 450-400 BCE
• De la dentition (On dentition) possibly early 4th century

See, Jorge A. Larriva-Sahd, "Some predictions of Rafael Lorente de Nó 80 years later," Frontiers in neuoranatomy, 8 (2014) 147.

Lorente de Nó "demonstrated structural evidence that the cortical areas of mammals are organized in a columnar manner rather than in horizontal layers, thus articulating for the first time the basic features of the columnar organization of the cerebral cortex" (Rodriguez and Verkhratsky, Rafael Lorente de Nó (1902-1990): The pioneer of physiologycal [sic] neuroanatomy" ).

Thirty-two chapters devoted to all aspects and some key moments in the history of IVF, together with histories of the development of the science around the world.

Both a history of vaccines and immunology and of the anti-vaccination movement.