So you want to know about the affections of the sebaceous glands, or you're interested in the mysterious case and dissection of the blue female child. Well, your wait is over, for you can now get access to the entire run of the New England Journal of Medicine, all the way back to Volume 1, Number 1 of January 1812.

The easiest way to find online journals is to go the main Libraries website:

http://umanitoba.ca/libraries/

Under Find, click on E-Journals, and enter the title you are searching for into the search box.

NEJM archival access has only recently been opened up to account holders with the University of Manitoba Libraries. Two other important medical journals have made their archives available online:

American Journal of Physiology

Annals of Internal Medicine

For those who are interested in the history of medicine an article appeared recently in NEJM that is well worth reading:

Brandt AM. A reader's guide to 200 years of the New England Journal of Medicine. N Engl J Med. 2012 Jan 5;366(1):1-7. PubMed PMID: 22216839

Here is a sample contribution from Issue No. 4 of NEJM's "Intelligence" section, October 1, 1812:

Wound by a Cannon Ball
In the action between the Constitution and the Guerrière, an English sailor was struck on the fore part of the thigh by a 24 pound shot, which carried off the skin and the outer muscles leaving a wound about a foot in diameter. The bone was not injured, nor even the inner layer of muscles, and the wound did well. If the passage, alone, of a ball near the body, or what has been called the "wind of a ball," is sufficient to reduce the muscles to jelly and bones to splinters, it seems difficult to explain why the same thing should not happen in such cases as this, where an actual contact of the ball took place.