History of medicine

This is the place to find tasks relating to history of medicine and health.

Medical articles are very often held to very high standards on Wikipedia and the medical parts are usually excellent (thanks to folks such as those at Wikiproject Medicine)... Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the history sections of many medical articles, or pages specifically relating to the history of medicine. This means there are lots of ways you can make a difference!

Improve an article on epidemic history

Fancy doing something to put our current situation in its historical context? And perhaps to counter some misinformation about the past? Fantastic! Even if you don't yet know much about these epidemics, there is lots of material online (especially via Wellcome Library) that you can use to find out a fact and then add it to one of these pages. The guide to the right illustrates step-by-step how to add your information to an existing page.

Here are some topics about past epidemics that really need some TLC:

List of epidemics and pandemics
Sweating sickness
Cocoliztli epidemics
1563 London plague
1592–1593 London plague
1616 New England epidemic (doesn't exist yet)
1772–1773 Persian Plague
1793 Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic (massive page but very few images - we probably have some that could help illustrate this article)
1812–1819 Ottoman plague epidemic
1863–1875 cholera pandemic
1875 Fiji Measles outbreak (doesn't exist yet)
1915-1926 Encephalitis Lethargica Pandemic
1910-1911 Manchurian plague epidemic (doesn't exist yet)
1957–58 influenza pandemic (this one's locked for editing only by experienced editors, get in touch if you'd like to improve it!)
Hong Kong flu
London flu (page only talks about its effect on America...)

P.S. In taking a look at the history of epidemics to prepare this list, I ended up doing a lot of work on the page for Wu Lien-teh - he's fascinating and I encourage you to have a read! We have this wonderful picture of his mask in action in our collection!

Improve an article on something you know

Have a browse around articles on a topic that you know or have recently been asked a question about and had to research. Feel free to add new footnotes to verify content, or if there is a relevant source that doesn't link to a specific fact, feel free to add sources to the "Further reading" sections.

There is some great guidance for Archivists and Cultural Professionals who want to link to collections on Wikipedia here, so read this first!

Simple history

Are you good at explaining complicated ideas? Would you like to practice and become even better? Then editing Simple English Wikipedia is an ideal task for you! This version of Wikipedia was created to make information accessible for children and adults who are learning English. At the moment, there are only 13(!) articles in the history of medicine category, so there is plenty of opportunity for you to add a new topic!

This is a great task to do with children or with someone who is learning English because you try out your explanations on them, or get them to act as your editor and check that what you have written makes sense.

Here is how to improve an article. As you follow the steps, keep this page open and right click to open new tabs so you can see the instructions without clicking the back button!:

First familiarise yourself with how to write Simple English.
Then either search for a topic on Simple English Wikipedia or take a look at the History of medicine category on Simple English Wikipedia or the Medicine category.
Log in to Simple Wikipedia using the link in the top right of the page - your Wikipedia account will work there too.
Choose an article from the subcategories and read what is already there.
Click the "Change" button to edit the article. Add or improve the information. For instance, the Black Death article uses the term virulent - is there a simpler one?
Click the big blue "Publish changes" button at the top to save your edits.

Find a random article to edit

If you'd like to edit on something to practice your editing, but want a diversion from current events and from your usual research topics, use this button to find a random article that you can improve:

Click this angry penguin

For a random history of medicine article

Add a missing or new page

If you think an article on a history or archive topic is missing from Wikipedia but are not sure where to begin with creating it, get in touch via email, or leave a message on my User talk page and we can discuss how you can create it!

Find something else to do

If you fancy giving some context to a historical image, adding some scientific or medical knowledge, improving the diversity of Wikipedia or learning more about editing, go back to the inspiration list and find something there.