The earliest items include a draft of the appointment of Charles II's Surgeon General, military hospital records and memoirs from the European wars of the late 17th and 18th centuries, and regulations on teaching in French military hospitals dated 1775. There are some records of the army's medical care in the colonies dating back to the early 19th century, and some records and diaries from the Napoleonic Wars, but the bulk of the collection dates from the Crimean War onwards, with emphasis on the World Wars of the 20th century. The Corps's accumulated records, being public records, should be mainly found in the Public Record Office, but this collection does contain a few strays, notably the registers of the Crimean War Pathological Board. The personal paper collections of high-ranking army medical officers often contain official statistics and correspondence.
Many collections contain the unit copy of a War Diary from the First or Second World War.
There is also a large number of training manuals, historical works and memoirs, both published and unpublished. Collections are described by RAMC accession order and it is therefore recommended that readers consult the index in Vol. II before they see the list which gives further details under RAMC number.