Bibliography on NIH History

• Ahrens, Edward H., Jr., The Crisis in Clinical Research: Overcoming Institutional Obstacles. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
• Alkon, Daniel L., Memory's Voice: Deciphering the Mind-Brain Code. New York: Harper Collins, 1992.
• Blodi, Frederick C., “The History of the National Eye Institute,” American Journal of Ophthalmology 115 (1993): 420-25.
• Brown, Bertram S. The Federal Mental Health Program: Past, Present, and Future. Hospital and Community Psychiatry, 27(7) 1976: 512-514.
• Cantor, David, "Cancer, Research, and Educational Film at Midcentury: The Making of the Movie 'Challenge: Science Against Cancer,'" University of Rochester Press, 2022. View the film.
• Cantor, David,  “Between Prevention and Therapy: Gio Batta Gori and the National Cancer Institute’s Diet, Nutrition and Cancer Programme, 1974-1978,”  Medical History, 56, 4, October 2012, pp. 531-561.
• Cantor, David,  “Le National Cancer Institute: problème d’une intervention fédérale contre le cancer dans l’Amérique du début du XXe siècle,” in Didier Foucault (ed.), Lutter contre le cancer (1740-1960), Toulouse: Éditions Privat, 2012, pp. 329-358.
• Cantor, David,  “Radium and the Origins of the National Cancer Institute,” in Caroline Hannaway (ed.),Biomedicine in the Twentieth Century: Practices, Policies, and Politics, Amsterdam: IOS Press, 2008, pp. 95-146.

• Cantor, David, “The National Institutes of Health: Courting Congress, Creating a Research Infrastructure,” in Martin Halliwell and Sophie A. Jones (eds.), The Edinburgh Companion to the Politics of American Health, Edinburgh:  Edinburgh University Press, 2022, pp. 338-355.

• Cook-Deegan, Robert M. The Gene Wars: Science, Politics, and the Human Genome. New York: W.W. Norton, 1994
• DeVita, Vincent D., Jr., :Elizabeth DeVita-Raeburn. The death of cancer : after fifty years on the front lines of medicine, a pioneering oncologist reveals why the war on cancer is winnable--and how we can get there. New York : Sarah Crichton Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015
• Drew, Elizabeth Brenner, “The Health Syndicate: Washington 's Noble Conspirators,” Atlantic Monthly 220 (1967): 75-82.
• Dyer, R. E., “Medical Research in the United States Public Health Service,” Bulletin of the Society of Medical History of Chicago 6 (1948): 58-68.
• Erdey, Nancy Carol, Armor of Patience: The National Cancer Institute and the Development of Medical Research Policy in the United States, 1937-1971, Ph.D. dissertation, Department of History, Case Western Reserve University, 1995.
• Farreras, Ingrid G., Caroline Hannaway, and Victoria A. Harden, Eds., Mind, Brain, Body, and Behavior: Foundations of Neuroscience and Behavioral Research at the National Institutes of Health. Amsterdam: IOS Press, 2004..
• Fox, Daniel M., “The Politics of the NIH Extramural Program, 1937-1950,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 42 (1987): 447-66.
• Fredrickson, Donald S., “Biomedical Science and the Culture Warp,” in William N. Kelley, Marian Osterweis, and Elaine R. Rubin, (eds.), Emerging Policies for Biomedical Research, Health Policy Annual III (Washington, DC: Association of Academic Health Centers, 1993), pp. 1-42.
• Fredrickson, Donald S., “The National Institutes of Health Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow,” Public Health Reports 93 (1978): 642-47.
• Fredrickson, Donald S., The Recombinant DNA Controversy, A Memoir: Science, Politics, and Public Interest 1974-1981 ( Washington, DC: American Society of Microbiology, 2001).
• Forty Years of Achievement in Heart, Lung, and Blood Research: A Collection of Essays in Selected Areas of Biomedical Research Accomplishment. Bethesda, MD: National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, 1987.
• Furman, Bess, A Profile of the United States Public Health Service, 1798-1948. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, DHEW Publication No. (NIH) 73-369.
• Gallo, Robert. Virus Hunting: AIDS, Cancer, and the Human Retrovirus: A Story of Scientific Discovery. New York: Basic Books, 1991.
• Greenberg, Raymond S. Medal Winners: How the Vietnam War Launched Nobel Careers (University of Texas Press, 2020).
• Grob, Gerald N., “Creation of the National Institute of Mental Health,” Public Health Reports, 111 (1996): 378-81.
• Grob, Gerald N., From Asylum to Community: Mental Health Policy in Modern America.Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991.
• Hamer, Dean and Copeland, Peter. Living with Our Genes: Why They Matter More Than You Think. New York: Doubleday, 1998.
• Hannaway, Caroline, ed., Biomedicine in the Twentieth Century: Practices, Policies, and Politics, Amsterdam: IOS Press, 2008. With permission from IOS Press. 
• http://www.iospress.nl/book/biomedicine-in-the-twentieth-century-practices-policies-and-politics/
• Hannaway, Caroline; Harden, Victoria; and Parascandola, John (eds.), AIDS and the Public Debate: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (Amsterdam and Washington, DC: IOS Press, 1995).
• Harden, Victoria A., AIDS at 30: A History. Washington, DC: Potomac Books, Inc., 2012.
• Harden, Victoria A., Inventing the NIH: Federal Biomedical Research Policy, 1887-1937. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986.
• Harden, Victoria A., “The National Institutes of Health,” entry in The Historical Guide to the U.S. Government (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 409-414.
• Harden, Victoria A., “National Institutes of Health: Celebrating 100 Years of Medical Progress,” in Encyclopedia Britannica, 1989 Medical and Health Annual (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1988), pp. 158-75.
• Harden, Victoria A. Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever: History of a Twentieth-Century Disease. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990.
• Harden, Victoria A., Risse, Gunther (eds.). AIDS and the historian : proceedings of a conference at the National Institutes of Health, 20-21 March 1989. [Bethesda, Md.] : U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, National Institutes of Health, [1991]
• Harris, Ruth Roy, “Brief History of the National Eye Institute,” Government Publications Review12 (1985): 427-48.
• Harris, Ruth Roy. Dental Science in a New Age: A History of the National Institute of Dental Research. Rockville, Md.: Montrose Press, 1989.
• van Heyningen, W. E. and Seal, John R. Cholera: The American Scientific Experience, 1947-1980. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1983.
• Houts, Joseph K. Jr. Joseph James Kinyoun: Discoverer of Bubonic Plague in America and Father of the National Institutes of Health.  McFarland & Company, Incorporated Publishers, 2021
• Humphreys, Betsy L., , Robert A. Logan, Randolph A. Miller, Elliot R. Siegel. Transforming Biomedical Informatics and Health Information Access: Don Lindberg and the U.S. National Library of Medicine, Series-Studies in Health Technology and Informatics, Volume 288, 2022.
• Judd, Lewis L., “Historical Highlights of the National Institute of Mental Health from 1946 to the Present,” American Journal of Psychiatry, 155 Suppl (1998): 3-8.
• Kanigel, Robert. Apprentice to Genius: The Making of a Scientific Dynasty. New York: Macmillan, 1986.
• Keating, Peter and Cambrosio, Alberto. Cancer on Trial: Oncology as a New Style of Practice. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2012.
• Khot, Sandeep, Park, Buhm Soon; Longstreth, W.T., Jr. The Vietnam War and Medical Research: Untold Legacy of the U.S. Doctor Draft and the NIH 'Yellow Berets,' Academic Medicine 86 (2011): 502-8.
• Kornberg, Arthur. For the Love of Enzymes: The Odyssey of a Biochemist. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989.

• Kramer, Victor H., National Institute of Health: A Study of Public Administration. New Haven, Conn. : V.H. Kramer, 1937. Printed by Quinnipiack Press.

• Krause, Richard. The Restless Tide: The Persistent Challenge of the Microbial World. Washington, DC: The National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, 1981.
• Kraut, Alan M. Goldberger's War: The Life and Work of a Public Health Crusader. Boston: Hill & Wang, 2003.
• Lanahan, Ernestine Taylor. A Salute to the Past: A History of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Based on Personal Recollections. Bethesda, MD: National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, 1987.
• Lee, Thomas H. Eugene Braunwald and the Rise of Modern Medicine. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013.
• Lyons, Michele. Seventy Acres of Science: The NIH Moves to Bethesda. NIH Publication, 2006.
• Mandel, Richard, Beacon of Hope, 1953-1993: The Clinical Center Through Forty Years of Growth and Change in Biomedicine. Bethesda, Maryland: National Institutes of Health, 1993.
• Mandel, Richard, A Half Century of Peer Review, 1946-1996. Bethesda, Maryland: National Institutes of Health, Division of Research Grants, 1996.
• Masur, Jack and Thompson, N. P., “A National Clinical Center for Chronic Disease Research Hospitals (November 1949): 1-12.
• May, Clarence W. A Brief History of the Growth of the National Institutes of Health of the United States Public Health Service. January 15, 1947. (Internal Report)
• McNees, Pat. Building Ten at Fifty: 50 Years of Clinical Research at the NIH Clinical Center. Clinical Center Communications, October 2003.
• Mider, G. Burroughs, “The Federal Impact on Biomedical Research,” in John Z. Bowers and Elizabeth F. Purcell, eds., Advances in American Medicine: Essays at the Bicentennial, 2 vols. (New York: Josiah Macy, Jr., Foundation, 1976) 2: 806-71.
• Miles, Wyndham D. A History of the National Library of Medicine, The Nation's Treasury of Medical Knowledge. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, NIH Publication No. 82-1904, 1982.
• Mullan, Fitzhugh. Plagues and Politics: The Story of the United States Public Health Service.
• NIH Through the Years: A Century of Science and Health, Published for the National Institutes of Health Centennial, 1987. 
• “The National Cancer Institute: A Twenty-Year Retrospect,” by J. R. Heller, in Journal of the National Cancer Institute, special twentieth anniversary issue 19 (1957): 141-190.
• National Cancer Institute, Journal of the National Cancer Institute, special fortieth anniversary issue 59 (2) suppl., 1977. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, DHEW Publication No. (NIH) 77-13.
• National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, History and Fact Book, NIH publication, 1963.
• National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Intramural Contributions, 1887-1987, ed. by Harriet R. Greenwald and Victoria A. Harden. Bethesda, Maryland: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, 1987.
• National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, A History of Progress: NIEHS, The First 20 Years (1966 to 1986). Research Triangle Park, NC: National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, 1986.
• National Institutes of Health, NIH Almanac, published annually. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Selected sources from the Almanac can be found at http://www.nih.gov/about/almanac/historical/index.htm
• National Institutes of Health, NIH Data Book. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1961-1994. Copies available for reference by appointment in NIH Historical Office. Data now available at various locations on the NIH World Wide Web page,http://report.nih.gov/nihdatabook/
• National Institutes of Health, NIH Record available online (full-text) 1949-present.
• November, Joseph, Biomedical computing : digitizing life in the United States. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012.
• O'Hern, Elizabeth Moot. Profiles of Pioneer Women Scientists. Washington, D.C.: Acropolis Books, Ltd., 1985. One section devoted to NIH scientists. 
• Olszewski, Todd M. "Lost in Translation: Linking Biomedical Research and Clinical Practice at the National Institutes of Health, 1977 to 2013." Annals of Internal Medicine. 2018;168:431–435. doi: 10.7326/M17-2418.

• Olszewski, Todd M., "Between Bench and Bedside: Building Clinical Consensus at the NIH, 1977–2013," Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 73 (2018): 464-500. 

• Patel, Sejal S., "Methods and Management: NIH Administrators, Federal Oversight, and the Framingham Heart Study," Bulletin of the History of Medicine 86 (2012): 94-121.

• Patel, Sejal S., "The Benevolent Tyranny of Biostatistics: Public Administration and the Promotion of Biostatistics at the National Institutes of Health, 1946-1970," Bulletin of the History of Medicine  87 (2013): 622-47.

• Park, Buhm Soon. “The Development of the Intramural Research Program at the National Institutes of Health After World War II,” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, volume 46, number 3 (Summer 2003): 383-402.
• Rapoport, Judith L. The Boy Who Couldn't Stop Washing: The Experience and Treatment of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. New York: Dutton, 1989, reprint ed., Signet paperback, 1991.
• Rettig, R. A. Cancer Crusade: The Story of the National Cancer Act of 1971 Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977. Written by a journalist.
• Rhodes, Richard. Deadly Feasts: Tracking the Secrets of a Terrifying New Plague. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997. Journalistic history of prion diseases.
• Rosenberg, Steven A. and Barry, John M. The Transformed Cell: Unlocking the Mysteries of Cancer. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1992.
• Rowland, Lewis P. NINDS at 50: An Incomplete History Celebrating the Fiftieth Anniversary of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. NIH Publication No. 01-4161. October 2001.
• Sapir, Philip, and Brand, Jeanne. The National Institutes of Health Research Grant Program and the History and Sociocultural Aspects of Medicine. Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 33 (1), Jan-Feb. 1959.

• Scheffler, Robin Wolfe. A Contagious Cause: The American Hunt for Cancer Viruses and the Rise of Molecular Medicine. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019.

• Schneider, Stanley F. National Institute of Mental Health. In the Encyclopedia of Psychology, Volume 5, pp. 391-394. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association and Oxford University Press, 2000.
• Shannon, James A., “The Advancement of Medical Research: A Twenty-Year View of the Role of the National Institutes of Health, Journal of Medical Education 42 (1967): 97-108.
• Shannon, James A., ed. Science and the Evolution of Public Policy. New York: Rockefeller University Press, 1973.
• Shimkin, Michael B. As Memory Serves: Six Essays on a Personal Involvement with the National Cancer Institute, 1938 to 1978. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, National Institutes of Health; NIH Publication No. 83-2217, 1983.
• Shorter, Edward, The Health Century. New York: Doubleday, 1987.
• Schmeckebier, Laurence F. The Public Health Service, Its History, Activities, and Organization. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1923.
• Spingarn, Natalie Davis, Heartbeat: The Politics of Health Research. Washington, D.C.: Robert B. Luce, 1976.
• Stark, Laura, Behind Closed Doors: IRBs and the Making of Ethical Research. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.
• Stetten, DeWitt, Jr. and William T. Carrigan, eds. NIH: An Account of Research in Its Laboratories and Clinics. Orlando, Fla.: Academic Press, 1984.
• Stimson, Arthur H., “A Brief History of Bacteriological Investigations of the U.S. Public Health Service, “ Supplement No. 141 to Public Health Reports, 1938.
• Strickland, Stephen P., Politics, Science, and Dread Disease: A Short History of United States Medical Research Policy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972.
• Strickland, Stephen P., The Story of the NIH Grants Program. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1989.
• Swain, Donald C., “The Rise of a Research Empire: NIH, 1930-1950,” Science 138 (1962): 1233-37.

• Tabor, Edward. "The Origins of NIH Medical Research Grants." Hektoen International, Science (Fall 2022). https://hekint.org/2022/10/18/the-origins-of-nih-medical-research-grants/. 

• Thompson, Larry. Correcting the Code: Inventing the Genetic Cure for the Human Body. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994.
• Topping, Norman, Recollections, with Gordon Cohn. Los Angeles: University of Southern California, 1990. Memoir; chapters covering his career at the NIH and in the PHS.
• Topping, Norman, “The United States Public Health Service Clinical Center for Medical Research,” Journal of the American Medical Association 150 (1952): 542-43.
• U.S. National Library of Medicine. Notable Contributions to Medical Research by Public Health Service Scientists: A Bio-bibliography to 1940, comp. by Jeanette Barry. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Public Health Service Publication No. 752, 1960.
• Van Slyke, C. J., “New Horizons in Medical Research,” Science 104 (1946): 559-67.
• Varmus, Harold and Weinberg, Robert A., Genes and the Biology of Cancer. New York: Scientific American Library, 1993. 
• Wadman, Meredith. Vaccine Race. [Place of publication not identified]: Doubleday, 2017.
• Williams, Ralph C., The United States Public Health Service, 1798-1950. Washington, D.C.: Commissioned Officers Association, 1951.
• Zeckhauser, Richard, Report: Future Growth of NIH. August 31, 1967.
  This report was directed to address identified critical issues relating to Federal support for biomedical science.
• Zigas, Vincent. Laughing Death: The Untold Story of Kuru. Clifton, N.J.: Humana Press, 1990.

Last Updated: August 2018