New Book – Poison, Medicine, and Disease in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, by Frederick W Gibbs

Poison, Medicine, and Disease in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe

Frederick W Gibbs

 

Features (from the editor website)

Challenges the standard histories of toxicology

Multi-faceted and innovative approach

Brings new perspectives to the study of the history of medicine

Summary (from the editor website)

This book presents a uniquely broad and pioneering history of premodern toxicology by exploring how late medieval and early modern (c. 1200–1600) physicians discussed the relationship between poison, medicine, and disease. Drawing from a wide range of medical and natural philosophical texts—with an emphasis on treatises that focused on poison, pharmacotherapeutics, plague, and the nature of disease—this study brings to light premodern physicians’ debates about the potential existence, nature, and properties of a category of substance theoretically harmful to the human body in even the smallest amount. Focusing on the category of poison (venenum) rather than on specific drugs reframes and remixes the standard histories of toxicology, pharmacology, and etiology, as well as shows how these aspects of medicine (although not yet formalized as independent disciplines) interacted with and shaped one another. Physicians argued, for instance, about what properties might distinguish poison from other substances, how poison injured the human body, the nature of poisonous bodies, and the role of poison in spreading, and to some extent defining, disease. The way physicians debated these questions shows that poison was far from an obvious and uncontested category of substance, and their effort to understand it sheds new light on the relationship between natural philosophy and medicine in the late medieval and early modern periods.

Must see sessions on Disability History – International Medieval Congress – Leeds – 2018 2-5 July 2018

Must see ! sessions on Disability History –

International Medieval Congress –

Leeds – 2018 2-5 July 2018

Session 150
Title Scientific, Empirical, Biblical, and Hagiographical Knowledge in the Middle Ages, I: Astronomy, Computus, and Medicine
Date/Time Monday 2 July 2018: 11.15-12.45
Sponsor School of Arts, English & Languages, Queen’s University Belfast
Organiser Sarah Baccianti, School of Arts, English & Languages, Queen’s University Belfast
Moderator/Chair Ciaran Arthur, School of Arts, English & Languages, Queen’s University Belfast
Paper 150-a Anglo-Saxons’ Visions of Modern Science
(Language: English)
Marilina Cesario, School of Arts, English & Languages, Queen’s University Belfast
Pedro Lacerda, School of Mathematics & Physics, Queen’s University Belfast
Index Terms: Historiography – Medieval; Language and Literature – Old English; Science
Paper 150-b Why Write Computus in English?: Vernacularity and Computistical Inquiry
(Language: English)
Rebecca Stephenson, School of English, Drama & Film, University College Dublin
Index Terms: Language and Literature – Old English; Literacy and Orality; Science
Paper 150-c Pus, Boils, and Amputations: Surgery in Medieval Scandinavia
(Language: English)
Sarah Baccianti, School of Arts, English & Languages, Queen’s University Belfast
Index Terms: Language and Literature – Scandinavian; Medicine
Abstract This session will focus on attitudes to knowledge, which constitutes one of the most complex concepts in the Middle Ages, as suggested by the vast semantic range of the Latin terms commonly translated as ‘knowledge’, including scientia, cognitio, notitia, eruditio and sapientia.
It will consider how scientia was transmitted and manipulated in the Middle Ages by looking at diverse sources ranging from astronomical, computistical, and mechanical texts (medicine, agriculture, and navigation), maps and the environment, and liturgical and hagiographical compositions from England, Scandinavia, and the Continent. Furthermore it will discuss the ways in which scientific knowledge and biblical and hagiographical learning were used to exercise power and the role that beliefs played in shaping and promoting scientific thinking.
Session 339
Title Memory in the Angevin World
Date/Time Monday 2 July 2018: 16.30-18.00
Sponsor Angevin World Network
Organiser Michael Staunton, School of History, University College Dublin
Moderator/Chair Stephen Church, Department of History, King’s College London
Paper 339-a Remembering the Conquest of Ireland in the Angevin World
(Language: English)
Colin Veach, School of Histories, Languages & Cultures, University of Hull
Index Terms: Historiography – Medieval; Mentalities; Military History
Paper 339-b Remembering Illness in the Angevin World: Variations of Familial Memory in the Miracle Accounts of Gilbert of Sempringham
(Language: English)
Krystal Carmichael, School of History, University College Dublin
Index Terms: Hagiography; Historiography – Medieval; Medicine; Mentalities
Paper 339-c Remembering the Loss of Normandy
(Language: English)
Michael Staunton, School of History, University College Dublin
Index Terms: Historiography – Medieval; Mentalities; Military History
Abstract This session addresses the ways in which events were remembered in the lands ruled by the Angevin kings of England (c. 1154 – c. 1216), a time of much innovation and variety in the recording and remembering of the past. Paper (a) looks at how the invasion of Ireland was remembered outside Ireland, in Latin and vernacular texts. Paper (b) discusses disputed memories of miracles in hagiographical texts, particularly those associated with Gilbert of Sempringham. Paper (c) examines the divergent ways in which King John’s loss of Normandy was remembered across the ‘Angevin empire’.

 

Session 399
Title #disIMC: Current Challenges to Accessibility and Ways Forward – A Round Table Discussion
Date/Time Monday 2 July 2018: 16.30-18.00
Sponsor Medievalists with Disabilities Network
Organiser Alexandra R. A. Lee, Department of Italian, University College London
Moderator/Chair Alexandra R. A. Lee, Department of Italian, University College London
Abstract At the IMC 2017, Medievalists with Disabilities hosted its first event. #disIMC was a ‘bring your own lunch’ affair, slotted into the timetable at the last minute. It was a great success and marked the beginning of the Medievalists with Disabilities (#dismed) network.

This round table discussion will discuss accessibility in higher education and ways that we can address issues. We take the term disabilities in the broadest possible sense, incorporating invisible and visible conditions, chronic illness, and mental health, to name but a few. Panellists will address issues individuals have overcome in Higher Education, discuss what it is like to be in HE with a disability/chronic condition, and pinpoint issues that need further attention.

Participants include Joanne Edge (University of Cambridge), Edward Mills (University of Exeter), Emma Osborne (University of Glasgow), Alicia Spencer-Hall (University College London), and Therron Welstead (University of Wales Trinity Saint David).

 

Session 604
Title New Voices in Anglo-Saxon Studies, I
Date/Time Tuesday 3 July 2018: 11.15-12.45
Sponsor International Society of Anglo-Saxonists
Organiser Megan Cavell, Department of English Literature, University of Birmingham
Moderator/Chair Damian Fleming, Department of English & Linguistics, Indiana University-Purdue University, Fort Wayne
Paper 604-a ‘Se bið mihtigre se ðe gæð þonne se þe crypð’: Metaphoric Disability in the Old English Boethius
(Language: English)
Leah Pope Parker, English Department, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Index Terms: Language and Literature – Old English; Philosophy; Social History
Paper 604-b Women, Adornment, and Social Change: Necklaces in 7th-Century Anglo-Saxon England
(Language: English)
Katie Haworth, Department of Archaeology, Durham University
Index Terms: Archaeology – Artefacts; Women’s Studies
Paper 604-c Quid est vox?: Mystery and Mysticism
(Language: English)
Matthew Coker, St Hilda’s College, University of Oxford
Index Terms: Language and Literature – Celtic; Language and Literature – Latin; Language and Literature – Old English; Learning (The Classical Inheritance)
Abstract The New Voices sessions are intended for all scholars new to the field of Anglo-Saxon studies, including research students, newly-appointed lecturers, and anyone who has only recently begun to work in this area. They provide an interdisciplinary perspective and showcase new work in the field. All submissions are reviewed by the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists (ISAS), who determine the ultimate selection of papers through a process of blind peer review. This particular session focuses on bodies.

 

Session 1047
Title Reputation, Emotion, and Remembering Death and Illness
Date/Time Wednesday 4 July 2018: 09.00-10.30
Sponsor Prato Consortium for Medieval & Renaissance Studies, Monash University, Victoria
Organiser Peter Francis Howard, Centre for Medieval & Renaissance Studies, Monash University, Victoria
Moderator/Chair John Henderson, Department of History, Classics & Archaeology, Birkbeck, University of London / School of Philosophical , Historical & International Studies , Monash University
Paper 1047-a Recording a Place of Emotions and Violence: Mapping the Coronial Deaths of Medieval Oxfordshire
(Language: English)
Annie Blachly, Centre for Medieval & Renaissance Studies, Monash University, Victoria
Index Terms: Archives and Sources; Computing in Medieval Studies; Social History
Paper 1047-b The Insania and Piety of Herimann of Nevers: Remembering a Mentally Ill Carolingian Bishop
(Language: English)
Rachel Stone, Department of History, King’s College London / Learning Resources & Service Excellence, University of Bedfordshire
Index Terms: Ecclesiastical History; Medicine; Mentalities
Paper 1047-c Medical Memory of Sense and Emotion by Baverio de’Bonetti (d. 1480): A Physician of Bologna
(Language: English)
Gordon Whyte, School of Philosophical, Historical & International Studies, Monash University, Victoria
Index Terms: Medicine; Social History
Abstract Serious illness and sudden or violent death were familiar aspects of medieval life, but how did people choose to remember such experiences? Linked to the Body in the City Project, this session draws on a variety of different sources from across the Middle Ages recording illness and death, including medical treatises, coroners’ rolls, and forms of religious commemoration. The papers explore how the messy experiences of illness and death, and the complex emotions of those involved, could be interpreted and turned into more formal accounts of events, suitable for permanent record.

 

Session 1108
Title Sanctifying the Crip, Cripping the Sacred: Disability, Holiness, and Embodied Knowledge
Date/Time Wednesday 4 July 2018: 11.15-12.45
Sponsor Hagiography Society
Organiser Alicia Spencer-Hall, School of Languages, Linguistics & Film, Queen Mary, University of London
Moderator/Chair Alicia Spencer-Hall, School of Languages, Linguistics & Film, Queen Mary, University of London
Paper 1108-a Hildegard of Bingen’s Hagiography: The Community of Heaven and Earth and the Social Model of Disability
(Language: English)
Stephen Marc D’Evelyn, School for Policy Studies, University of Bristol
Index Terms: Gender Studies; Hagiography; Religious Life; Theology
Paper 1108-b Translations of (Dis)Ability, Disease, and Digestion in The Book of Margery Kempe
(Language: English)
Katherine Gubbels, English Department, Metropolitan Community College, Nebraska
Index Terms: Gender Studies; Hagiography; Medicine; Theology
Paper 1108-c Disability and Power in the Early Lives of St Francis of Assisi
(Language: English)
Donna Trembinski, Department of History, St Francis Xavier University, Nova Scotia
Index Terms: Gender Studies; Hagiography; Religious Life; Theology
Paper 1108-d Bodily Arithmetic: Physical and Sacred Identity in Tristan de Nanteuil
(Language: English)
Blake Gutt, Department of French, University of Cambridge
Index Terms: Gender Studies; Hagiography; Religious Life; Theology
Abstract A vast amount of our knowledge of the experience of impairment in the Middle Ages comes from religious works. An important manifestation of a presumptive saint’s holiness was their capacity to perform mystically curative healings to return their devotees to an able-bodied state. But medieval saints did not just tend to those with impairment. Some saints were themselves explicitly physically impaired, either permanently or temporarily. Saints’ ascetic self-mortification could also lead to impairment. In all instances, the saint’s body is divergent to the able-bodied norm of those around them, the non-saintly. It operates as a vector of the divine in miraculous healing of others; a receptacle of the divine in their ability to withstand extreme ascetic degradation. What is at stake if we consider the medieval saint’s body as impaired, disabled, emphatically non-able-bodied?

Ultimately, this panel seeks to interrogate the ways in which the body – be that the saintly body, the disabled body, and/or the saintly and disabled body – acts as a site of embodied knowledge. More specifically, it aims to consider the body as a site of somatic memorialization: the corporeal matter of memory formation, memory retention, and temporal disturbance. How do impairments – writ on holy and profane bodies alike – bear witness to events, subject positions, even evanescent truths? And what does this form of productive bodily witnessing bring to bear on the concept of disability itself? This panel is comprised of four 15-minute papers.

More infos on the IMC Leeds website !

CFP – Technologies of Health, 1400-1700 – Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting, Toronto, 17-19 March, 2019

Technologies of Health, 1400-1700
Call for Papers
RSA Annual Meeting, Toronto, 17-19 March, 2019
Deadline: July 1, 2018

The goal of this session is to explore technological developments in health and medicine between 1400- 1700. We seek contributions that focus on the promotion of new tools and therapies for health benefits among individuals and populations, or on the salubriousness of buildings and cities through innovative materials or structural and urban infrastructures. Approaches that center on technologies for healthy living and disease prevention, and not simply reactionary treatments or responses to crises, are also welcome. Additionally, proposals may consider the provisional character of technological developments as processes in order to examine failures in the history of health and medicine. We encourage interdisciplinary papers that engage contemporary treatises, intersections of religious and therapeutic practices, and the visual and material culture of health, as well as submissions that incorporate the global circulation of knowledge during the period.

Please submit paper proposals to Danielle Abdon (danielle.abdon@temple.edu) and Elizabeth Duntemann (elizabeth.duntemann@temple.edu) by July 1, 2018. Each proposal must include a paper title (max. 15 words), 150-word abstract, short CV (max. 300 words), and keywords.

More info on the organisators website.

CFP – Society for the Social History of Medicine Conference 2018 – Conformity, Resistance, Dialogue and Deviance in Health and Medicine Liverpool, 11-13 July 2018.

Society for the Social History of Medicine Conference 2018

Conformity, Resistance, Dialogue and Deviance in Health and Medicine

Liverpool, 11-13 July 2018

Hosted by The Centre for the Humanities and Social Sciences of Health, Medicine and Technology

The Society for the Social History of Medicine hosts a major, biennial, international, and interdisciplinary conference, and from 11-13 July 2018 it will meet in Liverpool to explore the theme of ‘Conformity, Resistance, Dialogue and Deviance in Health and Medicine’.

This broad theme plays on several levels. It reflects local Liverpool health heritage as a site of public health innovation; independent and at times radical approaches to health politics, health inequalities, health determinants, treatment and therapies (including technological innovation, community and collective practices, and the use of arts in health).

Call for Papers

Upcoming SSHM Events

The Society for the Social History of Medicine hosts a major biennial, international, and interdisciplinary conference. From 11-13 July 2018 it will meet in Liverpool to explore the theme of ‘Conformity, Resistance, Dialogue and Deviance in Health and Medicine’.

This broad theme plays on several levels. It reflects local Liverpool health heritage as a site of public health innovation; independent and at times radical approaches to health politics, health inequalities, health determinants, treatment and therapies (including technological innovation, community and collective practices, and the use of arts in health).

We envisage that this conference theme will also stimulate participants to think about how medical orthodoxy has been shaped and re-molded, and how patients and practitioners choose to conform to conventional practices, seek alternatives, resist or compromise. The theme further facilitates a transnational conference strand, examining the construction of, and attitudes towards, Western and other medical traditions and health systems. In light of this theme, the 2018 conference committee encourages papers, sessions, round-tables and other interventions that examine, challenge, and refine histories of conformity, resistance, dialogue and deviance in medicine and health. These might be set in relation to inclusions, exclusions and injustices; insiders, outsiders and mediators; peoples, places and cultures; and diverse and expanding new social histories of health and medicine.

But the biennial conference is not exclusive in terms of its theme, and reflects the diversity of the discipline of the social history of medicine. Proposals that consider all topics relevant to histories of health and medicine broadly conceived are invited. Nor are submissions restricted to any area of study: we welcome a range of disciplinary approaches, time periods and geographical contexts. Submissions from scholars across the range of career stages are most welcome, and especially from postgraduate and early career researchers.

Possible topics include:

  • Health and medicine in colonial, postcolonial and transnational contexts
  • The political economy of health and medicine
  • Theories and practices of conformity and deviancy in health and medicine
  • New ways of framing working within the social history of medicine
  • Radical politics and resistance to dominant medical knowledge and practice
  • Critical theory and social movements such as feminist, postcolonial, disability and queer theory and activism in relation to health and medicine
  • Relations between different cultures of health and medicine
  • Inequalities of health and medical care
  • Public health
  • The environment and health
  • Animals, disease and health
  • Work and health
  • Arts and health
  • Popular representations of health and medicine

Individual submissions should include a 250 word abstract, including five key words and a one paragraph CV/resume with contact information.
Panel submissions should include three papers (each with a 250 word abstract, including five key words and a short CV), a chair, and a 100-word panel abstract.
Round table submissions should include the names of four participants (each with a short CV), a chair, a 500-word abstract and five key words.
We also invite poster presentations, short films and ideas for new sessions.

Deadline for Proposals
Friday 2 February 2018
sshm2018@liverpool.ac.uk

Bursaries

The Society offers bursaries to assist students in meeting the financial costs of attending the conference. Find out more and how to apply here.

CFP – ‘The Others’ – Deviants, Outcasts and Outsiders in Archaeology – publication in Archaeological Review from Cambridge Department of Archaeology.

Archaeological Review from Cambridge Department of Archaeology.

‘The Others’ — Deviants, Outcasts and Outsiders in Archaeology

Volume 33.2 November 2018

Theme editors: Leah Damman and Samantha Leggett

Throughout human history, groups have met and interacted; this has a tendency to give rise to othering behaviours, ethnic discourses and a myriad of identity related issues. But what is the archaeological signature of ‘the Others’? Archaeological literature is full of examples of ‘deviant’ practices, and modern constructs? This volume seeks submissions that discuss these ideas and explore concept of identity, otherness, deviancy, ethnicity and exclusion in archaeology.

How we define nations and nth-oral groups, and what is designated as outside of or ‘Other’ is important to consider now more than ever; especially considering recent global political events. The increasing study of identity and archaeology in recent decades is predominantly concerned with labels and traditional discourses. How we define. protect and preserve the cultural heritage of non-Western and marginalized cultural groups should also be considered. The aim of this volume is to give a voice to the ‘Others’ of the past but also to be critical of our own theory and practice when it comes to socio.cultural definitions and studying identity in the past.

Volume 33.2 of the Archaeological Review from Cambridge provides a forum to facilitate discussion surrounding the unusual treatment of selected persons in the past, understanding that this could provide and concepts of eschatological fate. This volume seeks submissions that discuss these ideas and explore concepts of identity, otherness, deviancy, ethnicity and exclusion in archaeology. Papers integrating archaeology with other subjects such as history anthropology, ethnography or sociology are thus also encouraged. Contributions might explore, although are not limited to, the following topics:

▪  Theories and identification of Otherness, deviancy and alterity

▪ Deviant burial customs and mortuary practices Performing ethnicity and forming identities

▪ Minority group archaeology

▪ Outsiders and the other in cultural heritage

▪ Colonial and post-colonial perspectives

Papers of no more than 4000 words should be submitted to Leah Damman (ld431@cam.ac.uk), and Samantha Leggett (sal78@cam.ac.uk), any time before 1 March 2018, for publication in November 2018. Potential contributors are encouraged to register interest early by either submitting an abstract of up to 250 words or contacting the editors to further discuss their ideas.

More information about the Archaeological Review from Cambridge, including back issues and submission guidelines on the review website.

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