National Family Health History Day
Guides to Family Health History
- Just for the Health of It Keep Track of Your Family's Health Historyby Danette Nelson Anderson, RN, BSN
- Tracing Your Health History: It's In Your GenesBy Donna Przecha.
- Family History as a Risk Assessment ToolCommittee on Genetics Obstetrics & Gyne cology, 117: 747-50 (2011). See especially the section: Red Flags for Genetic Conditions.
Collecting Medical Information
Why Collect Medical Information?
Getting Started
Ask your family members about family stories
Look for death records (see Vital Records)
- Ancestry Library Edition This link opens in a new windowSearch all collections or select a collection and search
Location: to search for records in a state, select "Search" from the top menu
Things to Look For in Records
Diseases and Epidemics
For your family health history, add inheritable diseases and risk factors:
For looking at social history, add:
* relating to, or occurring during childbirth or the period immediately following
Epidemics: Guides
Your Guide to Cemetery Research by Provides information on cemetery research, covering such topics as locating graves and cemeteries, accessing death records, searching a cemetery, and American burial customs. Includes appendices: “Historical Time Line of Deadly Diseases, Epidemics, and Disasters in America 1516-1981” and "Historical Medical Glossary for Causess of Death."
Epidemics: Specific Diseases
Bring Out Your Dead: The Great Plague of Yellow Fever in Philadelphia in 1793 by In 1793 a disastrous plague of yellow fever paralyzed Philadelphia, killing thousands of residents and bringing the nation's capital city to a standstill.- Observations Upon the Origin of the Malignant Bilious, or Yellow Fever in Philadelphia byPublication Date: 1799Also available online through Harvard University Library.
The Cholera Years by Cholera was the classic epidemic disease of the nineteenth century. This book analyzes the moral and social interest attached to epidemic disease,
- Influenza Encyclopedia. The American Influenza Epidemic of 1918-1919: A Digital EncyclopediaThe Influenza Encyclopedia is the Internet repository for historical documents on the American influenza pandemic of 1918-1919.
Fever of War by The influenza epidemic of 1918 killed more people in one year than the Great War killed in four. ...The conditions of trench warfare on the Western Front provided ideal environments for the epidemic to thrive. Fever of War examines this dramatic story in the American historical memory.
Rats, Lice and History: Being a Study in Biography, Which, After Twelve Preliminary Chapters Indispensable For the Preparation of the Lay Reader, Deals With the Life History of Typhus Fever by Call Number: Library Annex RC 199 .Z56x 1963The biography of a bacillus.
Genealogy Resources at the University of Delaware Library
Although not aimed at genealogy and family history, the collections of the University of Delaware Library (Morris Library) include materials useful to genealogists and family historians.
This Genealogy Research Guide is provided as a service for genealogists. It presents topics and resources to assist researchers.
The UD Library does not specialize in genealogy and does not have staff responsible for genealogy. Library staff cannot conduct research.
For questions about library resources and holdings, use the Ask the Library service.
For questions about getting research assistance, see the suggestions on the home page of this guide or on the topic/resources pages.
Educational Resources
Tracing Hemophilia
- When Life Played Dice with Royal BloodArticle by Anindita Bhadra. RESONANCE September 2015, Volume 20, Issue 9, pp 769–787.