The University of Dundee Archives hold a wide variety of collections that contain a wealth of material for all types of researcher: academic staff, postgraduate and undergraduate students, private researchers, including family historians, and school pupils.

The diversity of medical related research themes to be found within the collections is immense and includes history of insanity, tropical medicine, medical missions, surgery, pathology, infectious diseases and the experiences of women in the medical and nursing professions. These include documents and photographs from NHS Tayside (asylums, hospitals, Boards of Management, Colleges of Nursing, for example); Dundee Dental Hospital; Manuscript Collections; and the University Records Collection which contains the records of various medical professors and lecturers.

The collection houses various pathological materials, including drawings, engravings and photographs. The majority of the pathological drawings are by Neil Stewart and feature comments by Sir William Tennant Gairdner, the eminent pathologist and physician.