HIST 333: Health & Disease (Leech)

To learn what contemporary historians are saying about the history of a disease, you will overwhelmingly need to search history databases (not medicine databases). The three linked here, especially America: History and Life, will be your foremost resources for this assignment.

Some notes about JSTOR: You'll see it's included among the primary source databases, too. That's because the journals in JSTOR go back well into the 19th century.

• If you find an "older" source in JSTOR that's a direct representation of how the medical field thought about a disease at a particular historical time period, that's a primary source
• If you find a contemporary source in JSTOR that looks back and analyzes how people thought about a disease at a particular point in time, it's a secondary source
• To find secondary sources in JSTOR, I recommend starting at the Advanced Search and limiting to subjects like American Studies, History, and History of Science & Technology. Then, double-check that they are by contemporary scholars

You may also want to research contemporary medical/psychological understandings of the causes and treatment of your chosen disease. The databases here can help you do that. Note that these databases are also listed as databases for finding primary sources. The distinction here between primary/secondary isn't where (in which database/journal) you find the source, but rather when it was published.

• An "older" article from PubMed, PsycINFO, or another medical/psychological database that represents historical views of the disease is a primary source
• A 21st-century article from PubMed, PsycINFO, or another medical/psychological database that represents up-to-date understandings of the disease is a secondary source