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Plague in Italy and Europe during the 17th century
The next seminar in the 2017–18 History of Pre-Modern Medicine seminar series takes place on Tuesday 30 January. Speaker: Professor Guido Alfani (Bocconi University, Milan) Plague in Italy and Europe during the 17th century: epidemiology and impact Abstract: After many years of relative… Continue reading
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History of Pre-Modern Medicine Seminar Series, Spring 2018
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… Continue reading
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Deciphering a central European plague amulet
From the ancient world to the present, people have turned to powerful words, symbols and images as magical shields against bad luck, evil spirits, debilitating illness and sudden death. In medieval and early modern Europe, textual amulets on parchment and… Continue reading
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Hands, holes and hashtags: Wellcome MS. 550
The first manuscript that I ever encountered face-to-face was Wellcome MS. 550. This volume, mainly in medieval Latin, dates from the early 15th century, and is a compendium of different medical and surgical writings. As my research involves the plague,… Continue reading
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Spotlight: a solitary survivor of the Great Plague
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
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Plants, prayers and plague: Wellcome MS. 335
Among the medieval manuscripts held by the Wellcome Library, some, such as MS. 49, have survived through time thanks to their status as beautiful objects. Others are less impressive at first sight. MS. 335, a miscellany of medical and religious… Continue reading
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Spotlight: explaining the English Sweat
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
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Spotlight: the power of angels – a charm against the plague
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
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Lecture Announcement – Sustaining Plague Mortality in Late Medieval Milan
The Wellcome Library and the National Endowment for the Humanities 2012 Summer Seminar, ‘Health and Disease in the Middle Ages’, are delighted to announce details of a lecture by Ann G. Carmichael, M.D., Ph.D. (Associate Professor emerita, Indiana University, Bloomington,… Continue reading