ReOrienting Histories of Medicine: Encounters Along the Silk Roads, by Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim. Bloomsbury Academic, 2021. xvi+236 pp.; Hb $115.00 USD; Pb $39.95. ISBN-13: 9781472512574.

A case-study, small-group-discussion (“focal problem”) exercise in the history of medicine was designed, piloted, and evaluated in an overseas course and an on-campus elective course for medical students. Results suggest that this is a feasible approach to teaching history of medicine which can overcome some of the problems often encountered in teaching this subject in the medical curriculum.

History of medicine is taught in West Germany as part of the standard course offerings for medical students and is well represented at many universities. But history of science and technology unfortunately still lacks any adequate supporting system and accordingly barely continues to survive at a few institutions of the Federal Republic. Although history of medicine serves a different function than history of science and technology, closer cooperation between these groups is possible and greatly (...) desired for the future. (shrink)

This paper is part of the Forum COVID-19: Perspectives in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The history of medicine is mostly written as a history of human medicine. COVID-19 and other zoonotic infectious diseases, however, demand a reconsideration of medical history in terms of ecology and the inclusion of non-human actors and diverse environments. This contribution discusses possible approaches for an ecological history of medicine which satisfies the needs of several current and overlapping (...) crises. (shrink)

The social and cultural history of medicine and health is a growing field of research in Sweden, stimulated by the present political, economic and social concern about health and health care. Since there have never been any chairs in the history of medicine within the medical faculty, the topic has mostly been approached by historians of science and ideas, social historians and anthropologists and sociologists interested in long-term developments. Psychiatry and psychiatric care is one of the (...) most popular subjects. Other fields are professional history and social policy, cultural and local studies on different aspects, epidemics and public health and socio-demographic studies of mortality and morbidity. This report presents some major Swedish contributions and gives a short summary of some of the results. There has, during the recent years, been a trend towards interdisciplinary exchange, for instance through Swedish and Scandinavian networks, and towards an international orientation that has led to comparative studies and exchange of results, a trend that can also be observed in many other countries. (shrink)

A popular saying attributed to Aristotle states that ‘medicine begins where philosophy ends’—but this principle does not seem entirely valid for the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, when medicine and philosophy were considered to be integral parts of the same branch of knowledge. For this reason, although today medicine and philosophy are clearly distinct disciplines, historians of ideas cannot study them entirely separately. Indeed, since the early modern era was a period of profound revision of knowledge, (...) probably only a truly interdisciplinary investigation can identify the conceptual shifts and transfers capable of reinstating medicine in its fundamental role in the development of civilisation and modern thought, in particular as a model of a rational knowledge aimed at improving the social good through a fitting interpretation of experience. This article intends to offer arguments in support of such a historiographical approach, and to illustrate certain interesting methodological ideas that emerge from a study in which the history of philosophy and history of medicine cross-pollinate. (shrink)

A Literary History of Medicine: The ʿUyūn al-anbāʾ fī ṭabaqāt al-aṭibbāʾ of Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿah. Edited and translated by Emilie Savage-Smith, Simon Swain, and Geert Jan van Gelder. Handbuch für Orientalistik, 1: The Near and Middle East, vol. 134. 5 vols. Leiden: Brill, 2020. $865. Open access: https://scholarlyeditions.brill.com/lhom/.

ABSTRACT:In 1740, Joanna Stephens (fl. 1720–1741) produced a recipe for a tonic that she claimed cured bladder stones. Although she had the support of some notable and powerful men in the medical community and empirical evidence that her tonic worked, it took two years of petitioning, discussing, and even (unsuccessfully) crowd-sourcing before Parliament relented and awarded her the sum she requested to take her tonic public. Stephens’s interaction with the scientific community serves as a case study for how epistemic credibility (...) shapes how communities hear, interpret, and react to testimonies of knowledge claims from marginalized community members. Stephens’s position as an outsider, both qua woman and qua experimentalist, meant that she was effectively and almost immediately written out of her own story by learned and powerful men with who had both vested interests in the cure for the stone and epistemic prejudices that made it impossible for them to hear Stephens’s claim that she had made a discovery. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDieser Beitrag ist Teil des Forums COVID-19: Perspektiven in den Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften. Die Figur des Pestarztes mit der schnabelförmigen Maske ist heute die am häufigsten zitierte Bildmetapher für die Pest. Es verwundert daher nicht, dass die Pestarztmaske in der Sammlung des Deutschen Medizinhistorischen Museums in Ingolstadt zu den am meisten nachgefragten Objekten und Bildmotiven des Hauses gehört. Der Forumsbeitrag spürt der Figur des Pestarztes auf mehreren Ebenen nach: Zunächst wird anhand zeitgenössischer Text- und Bildquellen diskutiert, welche Art von Schutzkleidung (...) zu Seuchenzeiten empfohlen wurde und welche Rolle das schnabelförmige Maskenattribut dabei spielte. Anschließend wird das Ingolstädter Exemplar unter die Lupe genommen, hinsichtlich seines Materials und seiner Machart auf Authentizität und Praktikabilität hin untersucht und mit dem Exemplar des Deutschen Historischen Museums in Berlin verglichen.Das Ergebnis: Die frühesten Belege für die Verwendung dieser speziellen Art von Schutzkleidung stammen aus Italien und Südfrankreich und datieren aus der Mitte des 17. Jahrhunderts. Für Mitteleuropa gibt es keinerlei Nachweise dafür, dass zu Pestzeiten jemals eine solche Schnabelmaske in Gebrauch gewesen wäre. Und die Pestarztmasken in Ingolstadt und Berlin? Bei kritischer Betrachtung finden sich bei beiden Masken Details, die gegen eine Verwendung als Schutzkleidung sprechen. Ob es sich dabei um ältere, historisierende Nachbauten oder bewusste Fälschungen handelt, muss offen bleiben.This paper is part of Forum COVID-19: Perspectives in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The figure of the plague doctor with the beak mask has become the symbol of the plague par excellence. It’s little wonder that the plague mask in the collection of the German Museum of the History of Medicine in Ingolstadt is one of the museum’s most popular objects and motifs. This forum paper investigates the figure of the plague doctor on several levels: first, it analyses contemporary textual and image sources in regard to protective clothing used in times of plague and the respective role of the beak-like part of the mask. Then it takes a close look at the Ingolstadt specimen. By examining the mask’s materiality and fabrication, questions of its authenticity and practicability are raised. Finally, the Ingolstadt mask is compared with the specimen at the German Historical Museum in Berlin.The conclusion: the beak mask is not mentioned before the mid-seventeenth century, and then only in Italy and Southern France. There is no proof at all of its use during plague outbreaks in Middle Europe. And the specimens in Ingolstadt and Berlin? Both masks present details which suggest that they were not used as protective clothing at all. We do not know, however, if they were produced as replicas for historic reasons or as fakes for the modern art market. (shrink)

The principal argument of the present paper is that the human body is as much a reflective formation of multiple discourses as it is an effect of natural and environmental processes. This paper examines the implications of this argument, and suggests that recognizing the body in this light can be illuminating, not only for our conception of the body, but also for our understanding of medicine. Since medicine is itself a discursive formation, a science with both a (...) class='Hi'>history, and a future, it is argued that much can be learned by reflecting on the progression of models, or “paradigm-shifts,”, in terms of which modern medicine has articulated the human body that figures at the heart of its discourse. Four historical periods of medicine will be considered, each one governed by its own distinctive paradigm. It is argued, finally, that, with the emergence of behavioural medicine, and, more particularly, psychoneuroimmunology, a new discursive formation in medicine, one can see a new conceptualization of the human body beginning to take shape; and that this new figure of the body makes it possible for the very first time to conceive the construction of testable hypotheses regarding correlations between the objective body of science and the phenomenological body of experienced meaning. (shrink)

This book presents essays by eminent scholars from across the history of medicine, early science and European history, including those expert on the history of the book. The volume honors Professor Nancy Siraisi and reflects the impact that Siraisi's scholarship has had on a range of fields. Contributions address several topics ranging from the medical provenance of biblical commentary to the early modern emergence of pathological medicine. Along the way, readers may learn of the purchasing (...) habits of physician-book collectors, the writing of history and the development of natural history. Modeling the interdisciplinary approaches championed by Siraisi, this volume attests to the enduring value of her scholarship while also highlighting critical areas of future research. Those with an interest in the history of science, the history of medicine and all related fields will find this work a stimulating and rewarding read. (shrink)