History of Pre-Modern Medicine seminar series, 2015–16

The History of Pre-Modern Medicine seminar series returns this autumn.

The 2015–16 series – organised by a group of historians of medicine based at London universities and hosted by the Wellcome Library – will commence with four seminars in the autumn term.

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

A surgeon letting blood from a woman’s arm, and a physician examining a urine flask. Oil painting by a Flemish painter, 18th (?) century. Iconographic no. 45002i. Wellcome Images V0017549.

PROGRAMME FOR AUTUMN 2015

Tuesday 13 October 2015: Dr Iona McCleery (University of Leeds), ‘A history of health? Incorporating food and drink into medieval “medicine”’

Tuesday 27 October 2015: Dr Gabriella Zuccolin (University of Cambridge), ‘Women’s medicine between script and print, c. 1450–1600’

Tuesday 10 November 2015: Professor Owen Davies (University of Hertfordshire), ‘Executing magic: the healing power of criminal corpses in European popular culture’

Tuesday 24 November 2015: Professor Michael Stolberg (University of Würzburg), ‘Humanist self-fashioning and ordinary medical practice. The Bohemian physician Georg Handsch (1529–c. 1578) and his notebooks’

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.

The programme for January–March 2016 will follow in the new year.

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

Enquiries to Ross MacFarlane (R.MacFarlane@wellcome.ac.uk).