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Author: Elma Brenner

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Elma Brenner

Elma Brenner

Dr Elma Brenner is the Wellcome Library’s subject specialist in medieval and early modern medicine. Her research examines the medical and religious culture of medieval France and England, especially the region of Normandy. She is also interested in the materiality of early books and manuscripts, and the digital humanities. For her publications, see http://www.unicaen.fr/crahm/spip.php?article557&lang=fr. She can be found on Twitter @elmabrenner.

  • People viewing medieval manuscripts.

    Close encounters: a manuscripts workshop

    23/04/2018

    A free manuscripts workshop for PhD students at Wellcome Collection, 01 June 2018 Engaging with an artefact from the past is often a powerful experience, eliciting emotional and sensory, as well as analytical, responses. Researchers in the library at Wellcome… Continue reading

  • Finding lost science in early modern poetry

    17/10/2017

    Workshop: Finding lost science in early modern poetry Wednesday 22 November 2017, Wellcome Library, Wellcome Collection Didactic poetry of the early modern period can reveal fascinating insights about what people of the time thought about science and how they expressed… Continue reading

  • Woodcut of swimming.

    Health and well-being: Early Medicine’s new theme

    07/06/2016

    The preservation of health and prevention of illness were major preoccupations in the ancient, medieval and early modern worlds. Since medical intervention to combat sickness could be both expensive and dangerous, it was preferable to take steps to avoid becoming… Continue reading

  • Astrological image from incunabulum.

    Incunabula and medicine: a workshop

    12/05/2016

    On Friday 20 May 2016 the Wellcome Library will host a one-day workshop on incunabula and medicine. This event will reflect broadly on the relationship between the earliest printed books and medicine. Topics will include: medical illustration in incunabula; the… Continue reading

  • Plastic surgery 1597 image.

    Beauty and the hospital: call for papers

    23/03/2016

    Paper proposals are invited for the eleventh conference of the International Network for the History of Hospitals, which will take place in Malta, 6–8 April 2017, hosted by the Mediterranean Institute at the University of Malta, and the University of… Continue reading

  • Spotlight: a solitary survivor of the Great Plague

    01/10/2015

    The Great Plague that afflicted London 350 years ago (1665–66) had a dramatic impact on the city, killing up to 100,000 people of a population that then numbered about 460,000. There was a plethora of printed responses to this plague… Continue reading

  • Early Medicine: exploring medicine and health before 1700

    02/06/2015

    Welcome to Early Medicine, the Wellcome Library’s blog channel on medicine and health in Europe in the ancient, medieval and early modern periods. Our new blog was born from a wish to exploit our growing body of early digitised content… Continue reading

  • Digitising our incunabula: final phase of the early European printed books project

    10/04/2015

    We’re nearing the end of our early European printed books digitisation project with ProQuest. After four years of digitisation, nearly 3.8 million images have been captured from 8,850 volumes published outside the UK before 1701. In the final phase of… Continue reading

  • Spotlight: explaining the English Sweat

    17/03/2015

    The Sweating Sickness was a new phenomenon in later 15th and 16th century Europe, recognised by contemporaries as being distinctively different from the plague and other epidemic diseases. The illness was almost exclusively confined to England, and was soon known… Continue reading

  • Spotlight: the power of angels – a charm against the plague

    05/01/2015

    Plague was one of the most feared and dreaded aspects of daily life in 15th century England. Although scholarly medicine attributed the plague to corrupt air, it was also explained in terms of divine punishment. Charms, healing remedies whose power… Continue reading