Institute of the History and Ethics of Medicine Medical History Collections

The collections of the Institute of the History and Ethics of Medicine at Heidelberg University bring together heterogeneous holdings on the history of medicine, the health professions, and medical image practices

Their origins reach back to the early 20th century and reflect changes in medical research, teaching, and self-conception. A central holding is the slide library, established in the 1960s, which comprises around 10,000 slides on the history of medicine from antiquity to the present. For decades, it served as a visual teaching and research instrument and is itself a record of historical knowledge transfer. It is complemented by the Walther Schönfeld Collection, whose beginnings date to the 1930s. It brings together photographs, dermatograms, and documents on tattoos and body modifications, and ranks among the most extensive collections of its kind in Germany.

More recent collections broaden the view of medicine and nursing as social practice. The teaching collection on the history of medicine and the health professions, established in 2018, as well as the nursing history collection from the children's hospital, the paediatric nursing school, and the midwifery school, document training, daily work, and role models in 19th- and 20th-century medicine and nursing. Taken together, the collections serve research, teaching, and critical reflection on medical history and ethics.