NGS doctor files

Kerry Scott over at Clue Wagon has a happy post on the good results she had from the National Genealogical Society's AMA Deceased Physician Research with a medical relative surnamed Sykes, who got his start in Wisconsin and Illinois.

My experience with this service has also been positive. (Some of the same raw material is available on FHL microfilm.) As Scott says so well, "If you already have an Ancestry subscription, your very next purchase should be an NGS membership…that’s where you’ll learn to do it right."

If your MD research target attended medical school, take a look in local archives or successor institutions. Some of these places had publications, and some of these publications tracked alumni after graduation. Such publications live on even if the institution itself is long gone. (Chicago's Hahnemann Medical College is an example; it was a homeopathic stronghold in its day but gradually became more broad-minded before being merged out of existence.) If available, this resource can make a nice combination with the American Medical Association and related records retrieved by NGS.