Note:
Below you will find a few suggestions for searching this topic. These suggestions aren't the only way to find materials, but they may help to get you started.
Huntington's Disease
I. Find Background
- Cambridge World History of Human Disease
Be sure to search in the box that says "Search in this book." Search for "Huntington's disease". The article includes some clues (including reference to sources) about the early understanding of the disease. NOTE: this article is relatively short and the medical understanding of the disease may have changed since the publication of this encyclopedia. - Encyclopedia of Human Development: Do *not* search the box in the top. Instead, scroll down the page a bit and search the smaller box that says "Search within" to search within the Encyclopedia of Human Development. Search for the traditional name of the disease: "Huntington's chorea"
- Access Science
II. Search the Library Catalog
- Open the library catalog
- Enter the phrase "huntington's disease" and use the pull-down menu to select "Subject Browse."
- Or, search "huntington's disease" in all fields. Then, from the Limit Your Search menu, select Subject. You can also limit by date.
- Note: Beware of searching for "Huntington", even when paired with "disease," Huntington (singular) finds many records that are medical texts from the 17th century that are from the Huntington Library (not related to Huntington's disease).
- Other search terms to try: "nervous system degeneration" or "neurodegeneration".
- To find more historical records, try searching for other names of the disease as it has been called at various points in history: "chorea," "Huntington's chorea," "hereditary chorea" or "chronic progressive chorea."
III. Find current Scholarly Journal Articles (secondary sources)
IV. Find current “popular” (i.e. written for the general public, rather than for specialists) articles about Huntington's disease.
- Proquest Research Library
Enter your search terms; Try searching for "Huntington's disease" in any field.
You could also enter just "Huntington's" and use the pull-down menu to select "document title."
Place quotation marks around phrases;
From the list of results, filter to Magazines; and select a time period;
Under Publication Titles, select "more" to select specific magazines. -
Access World News
Select a geographic region, e.g. the United States;
Add some search terms;
There will be thousands of results just searching for "Huntington's" in any field. Try using the pull-down menu to limit your search terms to the Headline. Try also limiting to a narrow date range. Compare articles from the last three months to articles from 30 years ago.
V. Sources for historical articles
- Proquest Historical Newspapers
Select the Advanced Search;
Add your search terms: You may need to use one of the older names, e.g. "chorea"
Scroll down to choose Document types;
If you wish use the date limits to restrict your results to a particular date range. - American Periodicals
This database contains periodicals published between 1740 and 1940, including special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines and many other historically-significant periodicals.
Select the Advanced Search;
Add your search terms;
Scroll down to choose Document type(s);
Adjust date ranges, if desired.
V. Find more articles about the history of Huntington's Disease
Including some historical articles that may be considered primary sources (how the condition was understood at various points in history).