History of Pre-Modern Medicine seminars

The History of Pre-Modern Medicine seminar series returns this month. The 2017–18 series – organised by a group of historians of medicine based at London universities and hosted by the Wellcome Library – will conclude with four seminars.

The series will be focused on pre-modern medicine, which we take to cover European and non-European history before the 20th century (antiquity, medieval and early modern history, some elements of 19th-century medicine). The seminars are open to all.

PROGRAMME FOR SPRING 2018

Tuesday 16 January: Dr Catherine Rider (University of Exeter), ‘Medieval Ideas about Infertility and Old Age’

Tuesday 30 January: Prof Guido Alfani (Bocconi University, Milan), ‘Plague in Italy and Europe during the seventeenth century: epidemiology and impact’

Tuesday 13 February: Dr William Tullet (King’s College London), ‘Smell and Medical Efficacy Eighteenth-Century England’

Tuesday 27 February: Dr Dror Weil (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin), ‘Bodies Translated: The Circulation of Arabo-Persian Physiological Theories in Late Imperial China’

All seminars will take place in the Wellcome Library, 183 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE. Doors at 6pm prompt, seminars will start at 6.15pm.

Organising Committee: Elma Brenner (Wellcome Library), Michael Brown (Roehampton), Elena Carrera (QMUL), Sandra Cavallo (RHUL), John Henderson (Birkbeck, London), William MacLehose (UCL), Anna Maerker (KCL), Patrick Wallis (LSE), Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim (Goldsmiths).

For more details see:

http://blog.wellcomelibrary.org/2018/01/history-of-pre-modern-medicine-seminar-series-spring-2018/


Ross MacFarlane
Research Development Lead
Collections and Research
Wellcome Collection
183 Euston Road
London NW1 2BE
United Kingdom

T +44 (0)20 7611 7340
E r.macfarlane@wellcome.ac.uk

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Wellcome Collection: “Finding Lost Science in Early Modern Poetry”

Wellcome Collection, 22 November.

We are hosting an afternoon workshop here at Wellcome Collection on ‘Finding Lost Science in Early Modern Poetry’. The workshop is free to attend and open to all. We would be delighted to see you there! To register, please contact Prof. Gesine Manuwald: g.manuwald@ucl.ac.uk

The workshop will be followed by a public event with viewings of early printed books, forming part of the Being Human festival: https://beinghumanfestival.org/event/finding-lost-science-in-early-modern-poetry/

Didactic poetry of the early modern period can reveal fascinating insights about what people of the time thought about science and how they expressed these ideas in poetic form. Texts of this literary genre, however, tend to be neglected because they are regarded neither as ‘proper scientific texts’ nor as ‘proper poetry’. This workshop, organised by the Society for Neo-Latin Studies, Wellcome Collection and the Department of Greek & Latin at University College London, aims to bring this type of literature into focus again. Specialists from a range of disciplinary backgrounds will present case studies, looking at a variety of English and Latin texts, and there will be plenty of opportunity for discussion. The day will conclude with a public event as part of the Being Human festival.

Programme

12.45–1.00 pm: Registration

1.00–1.15 pm: Welcome and introduction

1.15–2.00 pm: Claire Preston (Queen Mary University of London), ‘The gallery, the eye, and the rhetoric of observation in some 17th-century descriptions’

2.00–2.45 pm: David McOmish (University of Glasgow), ‘Teaching the Scientific Revolution in verse: when poetry ruled the cosmos’

2.45–3.15 pm: Coffee/tea

3.15–4.00 pm: Victoria Moul (King’s College London), ‘Latin poetry and medicine’

4.00–4.15 pm: Closing discussion

4.30–6.00 pm: Public event as part of the Being Human festival

Location: Wellcome Library, Wellcome Collection, 183 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE.

The workshop and public event are free to attend. To register to attend the workshop, contact Gesine Manuwald. No registration is needed to attend the public event.

Wellcome Collection
183 Euston Road
London NW1 2BE, UK

Medicine, Environment and Health in the Eastern Mediterranean World 1400-1750

Christ’s College, University of Cambridge Monday 3 and Tuesday 4 April 2017

Organized by Valentina Pugliano (Cambridge) and Nükhet Varlik (Rutgers-Newark)

Generously sponsored by the Wellcome Trust and Christ's College, Cambridge

This conference will offer, for the first time, a comprehensive picture of medicine and healing in the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East, ca. 1400-1750. While a considerable body of scholarship exists on Islamic and Byzantine science and medicine and their influence on the medieval Latin West, the state of medical theory and practice in the following centuries has been comparatively neglected and often spoken of in terms of intellectual stagnation and decline. The conference aims to challenge this narrative and reveal the continued vitality of knowledge making and transfer across the eastern Mediterranean world. Taking as our focus the politically heterogeneous southern Europe and eastern Mediterranean, the Mamluk Kingdom, and the Ottoman Empire, we will reconstruct the healthscape of this region in the early modern period, exploring its medical unity and disunity and the human and environmental factors that played a part in it.

With an introductory lecture by Professor Peregrine Horden, Royal Holloway University of London.

Full programme here: Medicine Environment and Health in the Eastern Mediterranean World

Please register here:  Eventbrite Regstration

Registration: Full £50 (per day £25); Students £25. Buffet lunch and refreshments included. We can provide support to book overnight accommodation in college for attendees who wish to do so. For any query, please contact Valentina Pugliano

The Sharing of Medical Ideas and Information Among Early-Modern Practitioners

A Project Meeting to be held at the Edward Worth Library (1733), in association with UCD Centre for the History of Medicine in Ireland

Tuesday 2 August 2016, 2 p.m.-5.30 p. m.

Free Admission – Booking Essential
Venue: The Boardroom, Dr Steevens’ Hospital, Dublin 8

Keynote Speaker: Professor Ole Peter Grell, MA, Ph.D., FRHS

Programme:

Tuesday 2 August 2016

1.00pm: Registration

1.45pm: Official Opening

2.00pm: Dr Jason Harris (Centre for Neo-Latin Studies, University College Cork)
“The Latinity of Renaissance Physicians”

2.30pm: Dr Benjamin Hazard (School of History, University College Dublin)
“Medical Recipes for Military Chaplains in Spanish Flanders.”

3.30pm: Dr Elizabethanne Boran (Librarian, The Edward Worth Library)
“Buying and Selling Medical Books in Early Modern Ireland”

4.00pm: Keynote Chaired by: Dr Catherine Cox (Director, UCD Centre for the History of Medicine in Ireland):

Professor Ole Peter Grell MA PhD FRHistS (Professor in Early Modern History, The Open University)
“The Importance of the Republic of Letters for the Exchange of Medical Knowledge and Ideas in the Early Seventeenth Century: The Physician Ole Worm (1588-1654) and his Correspondents”

3.00pm: Coffee Break

5.00pm: Closing Remarks

For bookings, contact: Ben Hazard

Fellowship at the Edward Worth Library, Dublin

The Edward Worth Library, Dublin, is offering a one month research fellowship, to be held in 2016, to encourage research relevant to its collections. The Worth Library is a collection of 4,400 books, left to Dr Steevens' Hospital by Edward Worth (1676-1733), an early eighteenth-century Dublin physician. The collection is particularly strong in three areas: early modern medicine, early modern history of science and, given that Worth was a connoisseur book collector interested in fine bindings and rare printing, the History of the Book. Research does not, however, have to be restricted to these three key areas. Further information about the collection and our catalogues may be found on our website: http://www.edwardworthlibrary.ie/Home-Page

The closing date is Monday 4 April 2016.

For further details and application procedures please contact:
Dr Elizabethanne Boran,
Librarian,
The Edward Worth Library,
Dr Steevens' Hospital,
Dublin 8,
Ireland

E-mail: elizabethanne.boran@hse.ie

Dr Elizabethanne Boran,
Librarian,
The Edward Worth Library (1733),
Dr Steevens' Hospital,
Dublin 8,
Ireland.
Tel: 00 353 1 635 2215.
www.edwardworthlibrary.ie

The Edward Worth Library is on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/edwardworthlibrary

Aldines at the Edward Worth Library: A Descriptive Catalogue (Dublin, 2015): more details available here: http://edwardworthlibrary.ie/publications/

Reassembling the Republic of Letters: 1500-1800: Work Group 4: Documents and Collections.
Cost Action IS1310: http://www.cost.eu/domains_actions/isch/Actions/IS1310

Eleventh Cambridge Wellcome Lecture in the History of Medicine

Thursday, 14 January 2016, 4.30pm

Seminar Room 2, Department of History and Philosophy of Science,

Free School Lane, Cambridge

Michael Stolberg (University of Würzburg) will speak about 'Curing diseases and exchanging knowledge: sixteenth-century physicians and their female patients'

In the sixteenth century, 'diseases of women' – thought to originate from their womb – and matters of generation, pregnancy and childbirth attracted growing attention in learned medical writing. So far we know very little, however, about how commonly women consulted physicians – rather than midwives and wise women – in such matters and what they could expect. Drawing on the notebooks and practice journals of sixteenth-century physicians, this lecture will examine the place of gynecological and obstetrical problems in ordinary medical practice. It will trace the ways in which physicians acquired the knowledge and the skills they needed to diagnose and treat these patients – including foetal anatomy, manual examination and the use of the speculum. And it will show that learned physicians were even prepared to take the empirical knowledge of non-academic healers and ordinary womenfolk seriously in this domain to which they traditionally had only limited access.

There will be tea before the lecture, at 4pm in Seminar Room 1, and a drinks reception afterwards, at 6pm in Seminar Room 1.

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Plus, earlier in the day (11:30, Seminar Room 1), Michael Stolberg will lead a discussion about uroscopic pregnancy diagnosis in early modern Europe 11.30am in Seminar Room 1 – all welcome

Historians like Barbara Duden have lamented a devaluation of women's authentic experience of 'being with child' by modern methods of 'objective' pregnancy diagnosis. This argument is somewhat at odds with the finding that another 'objective' method – examining women's urine for signs of pregnancy – was widely requested and practised in early modern Europe. Records of inquests against unlicensed uroscopists, physicians' personal notes and case histories and visual representations of uroscopic pregancy diagnosis in early modern genre painting suggest a complex interplay of female expectations, physicians' reservations and a desire to unveil the secrets of women even against their wishes.

Suggested reading: Michael Stolberg, Uroscopy in Early Modern Europe (2015), pp. 1-2, 5-8, 105-10, 117-21, 160-6. Copies of the book and a document consolidating the selected pages are on reserve in the Whipple Library. Please email if you need help accessing the readings.

These events are a collaboration between Generation to Reproduction (http://www.reproduction.group.cam.ac.uk/) and the Casebooks Project. They are supported by the Wellcome Trust.

Visit http://www.magicandmedicine.hps.cam.ac.uk/ for the latest updates to the Casebooks Project: A Digital Edition of Simon Forman's and Richard Napier's Medical Records

Dr Lauren Kassell
Department of History & Philosophy of Science University of Cambridge Free School Lane Cambridge CB2 3RH www.hps.cam.ac.uk
+44 1223 767173

Pembroke College
Cambridge CB2 1RF
www.pem.cam.ac.uk
+44 1223 330897

History of Pre-Modern Medicine: ‘Gardens of Improvement: Scientific, agricultural and botanical landscapes created by British medical practitioners in the late Georgian period’

History of Pre-Modern Medicine with Dr Clare Hickman (KCL), Tuesday 19th January

Abstract: This paper will explore how gardens were designed and used by medical practitioners as places for scientific experimentation, botanical education and agricultural improvements during the late eighteenth-century. Beginning with the rural retreat of John Coakley Lettsom at Grove Hill where he combined agricultural interests, particularly the cultivation of the mangle-wurzel root vegetable, with an ornamental landscape, it will also consider the private gardens of John Hunter and Edward Jenner. These examples will be employed to consider how their owners’ personal interests were manifested in their physical use of designed landscapes. Such private gardens were part of a wider network of botanical and agricultural landscapes, which included the seats of the landed gentry as well as more public botanic gardens. Plants and ideas moved between these spaces so other relevant gardens will also be considered. There was a renewed interest in botanic gardens at this time and those under consideration include William Curtis’ London Botanic Garden which was funded through subscription, the Edinburgh Botanic Garden established by John Hope and used to train medical students, and the botanic garden at Glasnevin in Dublin which initially operated under the wider purpose of botanical education for the labouring classes. By investigating these spaces I hope to explore aspects of botanical networks, the role of the garden as scientific space, and the function of gardens for knowledge production and dissemination.


This research forms part of my wider Wellcome Medical History & Humanities Fellowship exploring the ‘Garden as a Laboratory’.

Our location will be the Wellcome Library, 183 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BE.
Doors open at 6pm and we'll start the seminar at 6.15pm. 

More info on the History of Pre-Modern Medicine series: http://blog.wellcomelibrary.org/2015/01/pre-modern-medicine-seminars-spring-2015-programme/

Ross MacFarlane
Research Engagement Officer
Wellcome Library
Wellcome Trust
Gibbs Building
215 Euston Road
London NW1 2BE, UK

T +44 (0)20 7611 7340
F +44 (0)20 7611 8369
E r.macfarlane@wellcome.ac.uk
http://wellcomelibrary.org

We are a global charitable foundation dedicated to achieving extraordinary improvements in human and animal health. We support the brightest minds in biomedical research and the medical humanities. Our breadth of support includes public engagement, education and the application of research to improve health. We are independent of both political and commercial interests.

The Wellcome Trust is a charity registered in England and Wales, no. 210183. Its sole trustee is The Wellcome Trust Limited, a company registered in England and Wales, no. 2711000 (whose registered office is at 215 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE, UK).

“Art, Anatomy, and the Body: Vesalius 500″, NYAM's second annual Festival for Medical History and the Arts

The New York Academy of Medicine
1216 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016
Saturday, October 18, 2014
11:00 a.m. to 6:30 p.m.

On October 18, NYAM’s Center for the History of Medicine and Public Health presents its second-annual Festival for Medical History and the Arts. “Art, Anatomy, and the Body: Vesalius 500″ will celebrate the 500th birthday of anatomist Andreas Vesalius.

Vesalius’ groundbreaking De humani corporis fabrica (The Fabric of the Human Body) of 1543 is a key Renaissance text, one that profoundly changed medical training, anatomical knowledge, and artistic representations of the body, an influence that has persisted over the centuries. Our Festival is one of a global series of celebrations of his legacy.

Our day-long event will explore the intersection of anatomy and the arts with a vibrant roster of performers and presenters, including

• Heidi Latsky’s “GIMP” Dance Project;
• the comics artists of Graphic Medicine;
• Sander Gilman on posture controlling the unruly body;
• Alice Dreger on inventing the medical photograph;
• Bill Hayes on researching hidden histories of medicine;
• Steven Assael, Ann Fox and Chun-shan (Sandie) Yi on anatomy in contemporary art;
• Chase Joynt’s Resisterectomy, a meditation on surgery and gender;
• Brandy Schillace on ambivalent depictions of female anatomy in the 18th century;
• Lisa Rosner on famous body snatchers Burke and Hare;
• the art of anatomical atlases with Michael Sappol;
• medical 3D printing demos by ProofX;
• anatomical painting directly on skin with Kriota Willberg;
• Daniel Garrison on translating Vesalius for modern audiences;
• Jeff Levine and Michael Nevins on revisiting the Fabrica frontispiece;

and many more.

In connection with the Festival, NYAM’s Center will host 4 hands-on workshops

1. From the Cradle to the Grave: Session One: The Cradle

Working with NYAM’s conservation team, produce your own articulated anatomical figures in the Gladys Brooks Book & Paper Conservation Laboratory. Participants will have time to make at least one paper baby and pelvis, which can be produced as paper dolls or magnets.

2. From the Cradle to the Grave: Session Two: The Grave

Working with NYAM’s conservation team, produce your own “exquisite corpse” in the Gladys Brooks Book & Paper Conservation Laboratory. To produce a Vesalian-themed exquisite (or rotating) corpse, this workshop will employ a special, rotating binding structure and mix-matched facsimile images from NYAM’s rare book collections to allow students to create their own unique, moveable pieces of art.

3. Renaissance Illustration Techniques Workshop with Marie Dauenheimer, Medical Illustrator

Artists and anatomists passionate about the mysteries of the human body drove anatomical investigation during the Renaissance. In this workshop, students will learn and apply the techniques used by Renaissance artists to illustrate anatomical specimens.

4. Understanding the Hand, physical anthropology workshop with Sam Dunlap, Ph.D.

Basic anatomical dissection, illustration, and knowledge continue to be fundamental in many fields from evolutionary biology to surgery, medical training, and forensic science. This workshop will offer participants the opportunity to explore the human hand and its anatomy, which will be demonstrated with at least three dissections.

Workshop registration fees cover both the workshop and all-day admission to the Festival.

For more information and to register, see http://nyamcenterforhistory.org/vesalius-500/

Paul Theerman, PhD
Associate Director
Center for the History of Medicine and Public Health
New York Academy of Medicine
1216 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY, 10029
212.822.7350
http://nyamcenterforhistory.org/

The Oxford-Globe Forum for Medicine and Drama in Practice

The Oxford-Globe Forum meets twice a year, alternating between Shakespeare’s Globe and the University of Oxford. It brings together researchers and practitioners in medicine, theatre and academia to explore a designated theme.

The theme for October 2014 is Anatomy and Dissection. Papers are informal and are limited to 12-15 minutes; the aim is to enable discussion among different constituencies of interest.

Registration is required: the £15 fee includes a sandwich lunch and coffee.

To register, go to the calendar at www.gtc.ox.ac.uk/whats-on-calendar. Then click on 4 October.

To offer a paper, please send your proposed title and a brief abstract by September 15th to english.office@ell.ox.ac.uk (Inquiries may be made to this email address too.)

4 October 2014 at the University of Oxford, 10.00am-4.30pm
Sponsored by Globe Education and Green Templeton College, University of Oxford

Venue Address:
University of Oxford,
Green Templeton College,
43 Woodstock Road
Oxford, OX2 6SG

CALL FOR PAPERS: Science in the City

On October 3rd 2014, the committee of the Irish Network for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine will host their annual conference at the Edward Worth Library in Dublin. The conference provides an opportunity to strengthen the Irish network of researchers in the history of science, technology and medicine and create further links with practitioners abroad.

The 2014 theme is ‘Science in the City’ and at this time proposals are being sought for papers interpreting this theme.

Abstracts should be emailed to the secretary of the Irish Network for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, Dr. Juliana Adelman, at juliana.adelman@dcu.ie by 25 August. Presenters will be contacted no later than 1 September.

For further information on the conference or the History of Science Network Ireland please e-mail juliana.adelman@dcu.ie

Dr Elizabethanne Boran,
Librarian,

The Edward Worth Library (1733),
Dr Steevens' Hospital,
Dublin 8,
Ireland.

Tel: 00 353 1 635 2215.


www.edwardworthlibrary.ie





The Edward Worth Library is on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/edwardworthlibrary

Modified Bodies and Prosthesis in Medieval and Early Modern England

A one-day Symposium organised by the Centre for Early Modern and Medieval Studies at the University of Sussex

Tuesday 27 May 2014, Arts B, Social Space (B274)

Registration details: there is no charge for attending the symposium; lunch and coffee will be provided.

To register please email Chloe Porter (C.Porter@sussex.ac.uk) or Katie Walter (K.L.Walter@sussex.ac.uk), by Monday 12 May 2014.

The notions of prosthesis and bodily modification increasingly preoccupy contemporary critical discourse, from disability studies to David Wills’ characterisation of the body as ‘a prosthesis’. Such contemporary explorations can preclude or overlook the ‘pre’ or the ‘early’ modern; ‘prosthesis’ itself, as a term for medical or bodily (rather than grammatical) supplementation doesn’t appear until the eighteenth century. Yet a growing body of scholarship recognises both the particular ways in which medieval and early modern technologies modify the body, and the significance of notions of ‘prosthesis’ for literary interpretation and cultural analysis in these periods. This one-day symposium draws together new scholarship on bodily modification and prosthesis, from facial disfigurement and the disabled soldier’s body, to bodily practices –such as kneeling, dress, and the use of charms in healing –which may modify, or become extensions of the body. How can medieval and early modern modified bodies be contextualised in relation to philosophical and theological understandings of the natural human body and the body post-mortem? And how can these historical contexts participate in contemporary critical discourse? Through an interdisciplinary discussion, we will ask what medieval and early modern examples reveal about the historical, philosophical and (literary) theoretical possibilities of prosthesis.


Programme
10.45-11.00

Registration

11.00-12.30 Session 1
Patricia Skinner (Swansea) ‘“My broken nose made me ridiculous”: Unwanted Facial Modifications in the Middle Ages’
Helen Davies (Lancaster) ‘“Nature cannot be surpassed by art”: The Power of Prosthetics in the Body of the Soldier’
Margaret Healy (Sussex) ‘Healing Prosthetics: Word Charms, Amulets and Talismen’

12.30-1.30 Lunch

1.30-2.45 Session 2
Chloe Porter (Sussex) ‘Post-mortem Prosthesis: Modified Bodies and the Early Modern Afterlife’
Naomi Baker (Manchester) ‘“The body of this death”: Paul and Disability on the Early Modern Stage’

2.45-3.15 Coffee

3.15-4.45 Session 3
Isabel Davis (Birkbeck) ‘Kneeling’
Jenny Tiramani (School of Historical Dress) ‘The Rise and Fall of Geometry: The Development of Underpinnings in Early Modern Europe’
Katie Walter (Sussex) ‘Plasticity and Prosthesis’

4.45-5.00 Break

5.00-6.00 Session 4: Response and Round Table with Peter Boxall (Sussex)

The Casebooks Project: A Digital Edition of Simon Forman's and Richard Napier's Medical Records 1596-1634

http://www.magicandmedicine.hps.cam.ac.uk/

SITE UPDATE, WITH ANIMATED FILM
The Casebooks Project website has been updated, including a short
animated film about the project. New features include an at-a-glance
guide to searching and a day with the astrologers.

RELEASE 7
Release 7 includes images to accompany our transcriptions of the first
six volumes of Napier's casebooks - MSS Ashmole 175 (1597), 182
(1597-8), 228 (1598-1600), 202 (1600), 404 (1601-2) and 221 (1602-3). An
archive of a further six volumes of images - MSS Ashmole 174 (various
dates), 181 (various dates), 204 (various dates), 239 (1610-11), 237
(1614-15), and 238 (1630) - has also been released, together with
calendar entries listing salient details of all the cases recorded in
them.

PUBLIC LECTURE
Lauren Kassell will give the Gideon de Laune Lecture at the Worshipful
Society of Apothecaries of London on Tuesday, 28 January at 6 pm, under
the title 'And the doctor noted her words': Medical Casebooks in
Shakespeare's England. For further information and registration details
see:
http://www.apothecaries.org/faculty-of-the-history-philosophy-of-medicin
e-parm/eponymous-lectures/.

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Visit http://www.magicandmedicine.hps.cam.ac.uk/ for the latest updates
to the Casebooks Project: A Digital Edition of Simon Forman's and
Richard Napier's Medical Records
---
Dr Lauren Kassell
Department of History & Philosophy of Science University of Cambridge
Free School Lane Cambridge CB2 3RH www.hps.cam.ac.uk
+44 1223 767173
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Pembroke College
Cambridge CB2 1RF
www.pem.cam.ac.uk
+44 1223 330897