1) History of Health Information

An Extremely Brief History of Health Information

By: Patrick Corcoran, MLIS candidate, University of Southern Mississippi

Artist's Interpretation of the Temple of Ascepius, Island of Kos, and early Greek Repository of Health Information                                                                                                                                    (Caton, 1906, pg. 571)

   Health information is a topic that can be traced into antiquity.  In regards to written health information documentation, ancient priestly classes of healers inscribed remedies on clay tablets, papyrus scrolls and rock walls.  This form of writing technology created the first repositories of health information.  The healing temples, which sprouted out of the ancient civilizations, became the next libraries of health information.  Throughout the Middle Ages, the Islamic world flourished, making great strides in many scholastic fields.  Through conquest in the Iberian Peninsula, translations of the ancient medical works were infused into Christian Europe.
   The great secular libraries that arose in the West maintained specialties in health information, as the cloistered Catholic strongholds of cathedral and abbey libraries had contained much of the medical information throughout the Middle Ages.  "Italy led in the establishment of societies" (Birchette, 1973, pg. 305), which consequently led to the aggregation of health related books and materials for the use of members.  "The oldest medical library [in the British American Colonies/United States]...is the Pennsylvania Hospital library (1763). Its first catalog was published in 1790 (Birchette, 1973, pg. 306).  Today, health information specialty libraries are replete in society; history of health information/sciences is a type of specialty library that, although few in number, remain bulwarks of protection, making available millennia of healing knowledge for today and tomorrow's education.
   Health information is as ancient as writing.  It encompasses what we would consider "mainstream allopathic medicine" and all the other parallel medicines that have been practiced over the course of our human existence.  This is a broad topic that has implications of life and death for the individual, therefore, for humanity in general.  I pray that we, as a world of diverse cultures, show much reverence to the libraries and archives which hold this precious lineage of health information, for our future's sake.  For a more detailed history of medical libraries, please click here.
 

Bibliography

Birchette, K. (1973). The history of medical libraries from 2000 b.c. to 1900 a.d. Bulletin of the Medical Library

     Association, 61(3), 302-308. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC198686/ 

Caton, R. (1906). Hippocrates and the newly-discovered health temple of cos. The British Medical Journal, 1 (2358), 
     571-574. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2380832/