Journal of European Integration History
From the Inlibra website for the journal:
“The Journal of European Integration History provides a forum for research on the European integration process in all its aspects: political, military, economic, technological, social, and cultural.
“It focusses on contributions covering specific unification projects since 1945, but also publishes works on their precursors and preparations.The purpose of the Journal is to encourage the analysis and understanding of different aspects of European integration, especially since 1945, in as wide a perspective as possible. The Journal publishes the conclusions of research on diplomatic, military, economic, technological, social and cultural aspects of integration.
“The journal is published twice a year. In addition to thematic issues, there are “open” issues, and reviews of important new publications are also published each time. The articles by an international group of authors are published in English, French or German.”
Access Journal of European Integration History via iDiscover.
Hunter Gatherer Research
From the Liverpool University Press website for the journal:
“Published on behalf of the International Society of Hunter Gatherer Research, Hunter Gatherer Research is an international, multi-disciplinary quarterly online publication that covers all aspects of hunter-gatherer studies, whether focusing on the present, past or future. We welcome all theoretical and empirical work, including those with clear implications for understanding hunter-gatherer communities, and studies that extend theories from hunter-gatherer research to other societies.
“The journal encompasses social and cultural anthropology, applied research, archaeology, ecology, ethnography, ethnohistory, evolutionary anthropology, genetics, indigenous rights, and linguistics, and is an indispensable resource for anyone with a research or activist interest in hunter-gatherers.”
Access Hunter Gatherer Research via iDiscover. Access from 2002 to 2012 is available under the earlier title Before farming : the archaeology and anthropology of hunter-gatherers. Full access from 2002 to present is available from either title/link.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Part III (ECCO III) – trial access
We are pleased to announce that Cambridge University members now have trial access to Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Part III (ECCO III).
This trial is active now and ends 10 February 2026.
Please tell us what you think about this resource using our feedback form.
Research into the transformative impact of the eighteenth century enriches our understanding of modern institutions and fosters broad cultural awareness. From its inception, ECCO was intended to connect researchers to a comprehensive digital collection of published materials from the eighteenth century. Cambridge users already have access to ECCO I and ECCO II which include over thirty-two million pages of primary source content – however, the collection was not yet complete.
Twenty years after the release of ECCO I, the discovery of new titles and new developments in scanning technology have made it possible to bring researchers rare and relevant eighteenth-century materials previously unavailable in digital form. ECCO III provides 1.7 million newly digitized pages in full colour, added perspectives from the Americas, Asia, Australia, and Europe, as well as unique materials in unusual formats and sizes, including broadsides, maps, and book covers.
Watch this video to learn more about ECCO III.
Please note ECCO Part III is cross-searchable with the other two parts via the trial link. To single out just Part III, the “archive” filter can be applied either from the advanced search page or the filters on the right of a search results page.
New eresource – Covidence
We are pleased to announce that researchers and students at Cambridge University now have access to Covidence, a collaborative systematic review management tool. You can use Covidence to manage and support the review steps of title and abstract screening, full-text screening, data extraction and quality assessment.
See how it works by watching this video.
How to access Covidence
First time users need to register with their @cam.ac.uk email address and create a new account here. Existing users can sign in via Single Sign-On (SSO). Full SSO instructions for both new and existing users are available on this support page for Cambridge users.
You can also access Covidence via the Databases AZ.
Covidence training webinar
Wednesday 21 January 2026, 1000-1100
Attend this training webinar to learn how Covidence can assist in streamlining your research process – includes a live demo and Q&A, providing an overview of the systematic review workflow and showcases some of our most popular features including settings, importing, title and abstract screening, full-text review, extraction 2.0, export and PRISMA.
Register to attend. If you can’t attend live, register anyway to receive the recording.
Der musikalische Arzt: Prescribing Music
“And it came to pass, when the evil spirit from God was upon Saul, that David took a harp and played with his hand; so Saul was refreshed and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him.”
— 1 Samuel 16:23 (KJV)
The healing properties of music have been posited since ancient times. The age of enlightenment in Europe, from the 17th to 19th centuries, saw much advancement in the fields of both medicine and the musical arts. The shift from a focus on humoral theory to viewing the body as an interconnected system of functions elevated the nervous system as a central subject of study. In this context, the pressures of modern urban life contributed to the widespread diagnosis of ‘nervousness’, particularly among affluent and intellectual urban populations.
James Gillray, A Little Music. Hand-colored etching, published 1810.
(Source: Art Institute Chicago)
One of the Whipple Library’s recent acquisitions, Peter Lichtenthal’s Der musikalische Arzt (The Musical Doctor), produced in Vienna in 1807, reflects this period when European intellectual life increasingly sought to explain human health through the interaction of body and mind. Peter Lichtenthal was an Austrian physician and composer. He studied medicine and music in Vienna and Der musikalische Arzt was written during his studies. Rather than presenting music purely as entertainment, Lichtenthal framed it as an intervention capable of altering one’s physiological and emotional states. This aligns with broader medical literature of the period, which increasingly described music as being capable of producing demonstrable changes to the functioning of the body.
Title page of the Whipple Library’s copy of Der musikalische Arzt (1807) by Peter Lichtenthal.
Lichtenthal’s thinking also reflects the influence of the Brunonian system of medicine, developed by the Scottish physician John Brown in the late 18th century. Brunonian theory argued that health depended on the body’s level of “excitability”, and that disease resulted from either overstimulation or understimulation. Treatment aimed to restore balance through either stimulation or sedation. Within this framework, music was understood not merely as entertainment but as a physiological catalyst capable of altering the body’s nervous state. Beyond Der musikalische Arzt, Lichtenthal is also known for his Dizionario e bibliografia della musica (Dictionary and Bibliography of Music), a foundational musicological reference work, which he produced during his time living in Milan in 1826, where he worked within the spheres of medicine and music until his death.
Early 19th-century Vienna was one of Europe’s most important centres of culture and learning. By the early 19th century, physicians and philosophers were attempting to move beyond purely anecdotal accounts toward testable theories of how music affected the body. This intellectual climate drew on older classical traditions that framed music as a force acting directly upon the body. Ancient Greek and Roman writers had long argued that melody and rhythm could alter emotional and physical states, and these ideas remained influential well into the modern period.
Lichtenthal’s epigraph is a quotation from Impetum faciens dictum Hippocrati (1745) by Abraham Kaau Boerhaave. In English, it roughly translates to: “I doubt whether all that is said about incantations and charms should not be attributed to the effects of music, because the ancient physicians excelled in them.”
Vienna boasted a highly developed print culture by the early 19th century. As was typical for scientific works produced in the German language of this time, Der musikalische Arzt employs Fraktur type, with minimal decorative elements.
With thanks to Nicole Atherton for providing this guest post.
References:
James Kennaway, From Sensibility to Pathology: The Origins of the Idea of Nervous Music around 1800, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Volume 65, Issue 3, July 2010, Pages 396–426, https://doi.org/10.1093/jhmas/jrq004
Pratt, R.R., Jones, R.W. (1987). Music and Medicine: A Partnership in History. In: Spintge, R., Droh, R. (eds) Musik in der Medizin / Music in Medicine. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. Https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-71697-3_36
Kim, Youn, and Sander L. Gilman (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Music and the Body, Oxford Handbooks (2019; online edn, Oxford Academic, 10 July 2018), https://doi-org.manchester.idm.oclc.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190636234.001.0001
New eresource – Building Types Online
We are pleased to announce that Cambridge University users now have access to the database Building Types Online, a resource for the study and practice of architectural design.
Entrance to Pflaum House in Falkensee near Berlin (Source: Carsten Krohn)
Building Types Online is based on Birkhäuser’s high international standing in professional architecture books, on the knowledge of the authors and editors who are leading experts in their fields, as well as on the technical quality of the illustrations.
The database offers exclusive and unparalleled, highly flexible and detailed search and browse access to the contents of the Birkhäuser program on building types. All content was written and selected by internationally renowned authors in architectural design. Information on how to search and sort your results is available here.
You can also access this resource via the Databases AZ.