All Souls College Seminar in the History of Pre-Modern Science

Trinity Term 2018
Conveners: DMITRI LEVITIN and PHILIPP NOTHAFT

All sessions will be held on Wednesdays, 5.00–6.45pm. Please note that the location will alternate between the Wharton Room and the Hovenden Room – details for each individual seminar are provided below. Access to the College is via the entrance on the High Street; please ask at the porter’s lodge for further directions, or consult the information at Visiting the College. All very welcome.


25 April MICHAEL HUNTER (Birkbeck, University of London), ‘The “Decline of magic” reconsidered’ [Wharton Room]


2 May MAXIMILIAN SCHUH (Heidelberg), ‘Perceptions of nature between scholastic knowledge and individual observation: William Merle’s weather diary (1337-1344) and his De prognosticatione aeris (1340)’ [Hovenden Room]


9 May FELICITY HENDERSON (Exeter), ‘Robert Hooke, art, and craft in Restoration London’ [Wharton Room]

16 May ANDREW WILSON (All Souls College, Oxford), ‘The transmission of mechanical technologies between the Mediterranean and China in antiquity’ [Hovenden Room]

23 May MONICA AZZOLINI (Bologna), ‘News from Sicily: Italian naturalists and the Royal Society on volcanic eruptions and earthquakes’ [Wharton Room]


30 May MONICA AZZOLINI (Bologna), ‘News from Sicily: Italian naturalists and the Royal Society on volcanic eruptions and earthquakes’ [Wharton Room]

6 June MARIE-ALINE THÉBAUD-SORGER (Centre Alexandre-Koyré, Paris; Maison Française, Oxford), ‘“Airs” as boundary objects: the elaboration of a collective knowledge at the crossroad of chemistry, practical arts, and medicine in the eighteenth century’ [Wharton Room]


13 June ANUJ MISRA (Observatoire de Paris), ‘Atha brahmāṇḍanirmāṇa: an Aristotelian view of the cosmos in a sixteenth-century Sanskrit text on mathematical astronomy’ [Hovenden Room]

Fellowships in the History of Science, Technology, Medicine, & Industry (Philadelphia)

Beckman Center for the History of Chemistry 2014–2015 

Fellowships in the History of Science, Technology, Medicine, & Industry

The Beckman Center for the History of Chemistry at the Chemical Heritage Foundation (CHF), an independent research library in Philadelphia, PA, invites applications for short-term and long-term fellowships in the history of science, medicine, technology, and industry.

Short-term fellows are particularly meant to use the collections, while long-term fellows' work must help to support the mission of the institution and fit with collections more generally. The research collections at CHF range chronologically from the fifteenth century to the present and include 6,000 rare books, significant archival holdings, thousands of images, and a large artifact and fine arts collection, supported by over 100,000 reference volumes and journals. Within the collections there are many areas of special strength, including: alchemy, mining & metallurgy, dyeing and bleaching, balneology, gunpowder and pyrotechnics, gas-lighting, books of secrets, inorganic and organic chemistry, biochemistry, food chemistry, and pharmaceuticals.

We support roughly 20 fellows each year, creating a vibrant international community of scholars whose work is in some way tied to the history of materials and materiality, chemistry, and all related sciences. Applications come from scholars in a wide range of disciplines across the humanities and social sciences. To see this year's list, go to:
http://www.chemheritage.org/research/beckman-center/fellows-and-staff.aspx.

Postdoctoral Fellowships (we encourage scholars with PhDs at all career levels to consider applying, including those looking for a place of residence during a sabbatical leave)
9 Months in Residence
open to PhD scholars • $45,000

Dissertation Fellowships
9 Months in Residence; open to graduate students at the dissertation stage • $26,000

Short-Term Fellowships
1–4 Months in Residence; open to all scholars and researchers • $3,000 per month

Application Deadline: February 15, 2014

For further information visit:
www.chemheritage.org/BeckmanCenter

History of Pre-Modern Medicine Seminar

The next seminar in the 2013-14 History of Pre-Modern Medicine academic seminar series, will take place on Tuesday 19th November.

Details: Emilie Savage-Smith (Oxford)

A Literary History of Medicine: The Best Accounts of the Classes of Physicians by Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿah (d. 1270)

Abstract:

In the mid-13th century, a practising physician in Syria by the name of Ibn Abi Usaybi`ah set himself the task of recording the history of medicine throughout the known world. His book "The Best Accounts of the Classes of Physicians" covers 1700 years of medical practice, from the mythological beginnings of medicine with Asclepius through Greece, Rome, and India, down to the author's day.

Written as much to entertain as to inform, it is not only the earliest comprehensive history of medicine but the most important and ambitious of the medieval period, incorporating accounts of over 442 physicians – their training, their practice, and their medical compositions – interlaced with amusing poetry and anecdotes illustrating the life and character of the physicians.

Written by a man who was himself a medic and a poet, this highly readable history reflects considerable medical experience and lies at the interface of the serious medical practice of the day with society's interest in biography and gossip. A team has now been assembled, with the support of a Wellcome Trust Senior Investigator Award in Medical Humanities, to edit and translate the entire treatise and make it available both to scholars and the general public.

The seminar will take place in the Wellcome Trust, Gibbs Building, 215 Euston Road, NW1 2BE (http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/About-us/Contact-us/Travel-information/index.htm). Doors at 6pm prompt, seminar will start at 6.15.