Although the collection includes materials relating to the history of health and medicine throughout world, the emphasis is on the Canadian experience during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Works published about the North American, British and French experience form the bulk of the collection. All items are included in the library catalogue searchable from
http://catalogue.mcmaster.ca/catalogue/ . Reference service is available and interlibrary loans of the secondary resource materials only. Digital copies of some primary resources is available.

The primary resources consist of approximately 2000 items. They include classical texts, family medicine manuals, homeopathic works, annual reports of 19th century psychiatric hospitals, annual reports and publications of government departments,19th century Canadian medical periodicals, posters, public health and patent medicine ephemera. It is a small but interesting collection.