Skip to Main Content
Westminster College Logo

BIO 114/Eng156 The Science & Humanity of Human Disease: ENG 156: Literature and Medicine

This guide provides resources to support the cluster ENG 156 Literature and Medicine and BIO 114 (Cell Biology of Human Disease)

Finding Primary (Literary) Sources

Search WISE to find primary sources related to your topic.  

A few tips:

  • Use the advanced search option to search by SUBJECT.  
  • Use the limitation options to filter your results by topic, audience, and content (example: fiction v. non-fiction)
  • Add additional terms to your disease name using AND

You should also try NYU’s Literature, Arts, & Medicine Database which is an annotated multimedia listing of prose, poetry, film, video and art for teaching and research in MEDICAL HUMANITIES.

Finding Secondary (Critical) Sources

The following online sources will help you to find secondary, or critical, sources.  Some are specifically focused on English/Literature resources, and some are multidisciplinary, but all should be useful for your topic.

To help you get started, you can also check out a few of the secondary sources indicated on the right-hand side of this page for sources that might help with your specific topic.

A few tips: 

  • Try out the "advanced" search options that are available in all of these databases.  
  • Search using all possible synonyms for your topic.  
  • Use the word "and" in between all search terms, and leave out all extraneous words (Example: "the," "a," and "in").

You may also want to consider using some of the resources listed on the BIO114 tab for more technical information about individual diseases.