Oxford LibGuides: Official Papers for the History of Medicine: Archive/departmental publications

Useful Resources

Library at Wellcome Collection
One of the world's major resources for the study of medical history.
Birth of the NHS
BBC: The early history of the NHS, through programmes, documents and images
British Society for the History of Medicine
Health Archives and Records Group
Historical Hospital Admissions Records Project (HHARP)
Provides access to 140,213 admission records to four children’s hospitals: three in London, the Great Ormond Street Hospital, the Evelina and the Alexandra Hip Hospital for Children, and one from the Royal Hospital for Sick Children, Glasgow. Between them the databases cover a period from 1852 to 1921.
History of NHS Reform
Nuffield Trust
Hospital Records Database
Provides information on the existence and location of the records of UK hospitals.
The National Archives research guides
The National Archives offers many research guides on their collections.
National Health Service History
Provides a detailed chronology by Geoffrey Rivett.
UK Government Web Archive
Hosted by the National Archives. Archived government websites, circa 1994-
UK Medical Heritage Library
The UK Medical Heritage Library brings together books and pamphlets from 10 research libraries in the UK, focused on the 19th and early 20th century history of medicine and related disciplines. This ongoing digitisation project is funded by Jisc and the Wellcome Library
Discovery: National Archives
Discovery holds more than 32 million descriptions of records held by The National Archives and more than 2,500 archives across the country
Archives Hub
Search across descriptions of archives, including links to digital content, held at over 300 institutions across the UK.

Searching for departmental publications

As a legal deposit library the Bodleian has an excellent collection of departmental publications. Early material may not be catalogued or may be difficult to find. Please contact official.papers@bodleian.ox.ac.uk for assistance. Material not formally published such as the working papers of a committee will be the remit of the National Archives

In the first instance search SOLO

Other useful catalogues:

Library Hub Discover - Union catalogue of over 202 UK institutions
British Library catalogue
WorldCat Search for material worldwide (Single Sign On is necessary for searching outside the University network)

Department of Health

Administrative history:

Privy Council
Board of Health, 1805-1806
Central Board of Health, 1831-1832
Medical Department, 1858-1871
General Board of Health, 1848-1858
National Health Insurance Commissions, 1911-1919
Ministry of Health, 1919-1968
Department of Health and Social Security 1968-1988
Department of Health 1988-

'National Digital Archive of Datasets' (an archived site) provides a detailed administrative description