Medical records

In 1980, the University of Tartu Museum received one of its largest archive collections: University Clinic of Internal Diseases case histories from 1847 to 1962. The medical case histories give an insight into the world of medicine in an era when science started to take precedence in diagnostics and medical treatment.

The records are divided into 700 folders and contain over 100,000 case files. After receiving a digitalisation fund in 2017, the university museum has been able, with the help of volunteers, to scan in over 3000 of them, and they have been made virtually accessible to researchers via the Estonian Museums Public Portal. Since Estonia was under Imperial Russia, but the university language was German, the medical case files were German until the 1890s, when the era of Russification took over. After that, the files are a mixture of Russian and German until a decade into the Estonian independence after World War I.

At the start of the digitalisation project in 2017, the medical case files were located in the old reading room of the University of Tartu Museum, covering six floor-to-ceiling bookcases.

In 2017, the files were moved to the attic while the old reading room was renovated, making room for the new permanent exhibition 'The University of Our Lives'.

Project managers: Kaija-Liisa Koovit, Tiina Vint, Anu Rae