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New book – Illness, Pain, and Health Care in Early Christianity, by helen Rhee, pub. by Eerdmans 

Illness, Pain, and Health Care in Early Christianity

Helen Rhee 

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Eerdmans (October 22, 2022)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 367 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0802876846
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0802876843

In this wide-ranging interdisciplinary study, Helen Rhee examines how early Christians viewed illness, pain, and health care and how their perspective was influenced both by Judeo-Christian tradition and by the milieu of the larger ancient world. Throughout her analysis, Rhee places the history of medicine, Greco-Roman literature, and ancient philosophy in constructive dialogue with early Christian literature to elucidate early Christians’ understanding, appropriation, and reformulation of Roman and Byzantine conceptions of health and wholeness from the second through the sixth centuries CE.

Utilizing the contemporary field of medical anthropology, Rhee engages illness, pain, and health care as sociocultural matters. Through this and other methodologies, she explores the theological meanings attributed to illness and pain; the religious status of those suffering from these and other afflictions; and the methods, systems, and rituals that Christian individuals, churches, and monasteries devised to care for those who suffered. Rhee’s findings ultimately provide an illuminating glimpse into how Christians began forming a distinct identity—both as part of and apart from their Greco-Roman world.

 

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. Health, Disease, and Illness in Greco-Roman Culture
2. Health, Disease, and Illness in the Bible and Early Christianity
3. Pain in Greco-Roman Culture and Early Christianity
4. Health Care in the Greco-Roman World
5. Health Care in Early Christianity
Conclusion
Bibliography
Indexes

 

More on the editor website: https://www.eerdmans.com/Products/7684/illness-pain-and-health-care-in-early-christianity.aspx

New books – A Cultural History of Disability (6 volumes), ed. by David Bolt, Robert McRuer – Bloomsbury publ.

About A Cultural History of Disability

How has our understanding and treatment of disability evolved in Western culture? How has it been represented and perceived in different social and cultural conditions?

In a work that spans 2,500 years, these ambitious questions are addressed by over 50 experts, each contributing their overview of a theme applied to a period in history. The volumes describe different kinds of physical and mental disabilities, their representations and receptions, and what impact they have had on society and everyday life.

Individual volume editors ensure the cohesion of the whole, and to make it as easy as possible to use, chapter titles are identical across each of the volumes. This gives the choice of reading about a specific period in one of the volumes, or following a theme across history by reading the relevant chapter in each of the six.

The six volumes cover1. – Antiquity (500 BCE – 500 CE); 2. – Middle Ages (500 – 1450); 3. – Renaissance (1400 – 1650) ; 4. – Long Eighteenth Century (1650 – 1800); 5. – Long Nineteenth Century (1800 – 1920); 6. – Modern Age (1920 – 2000+).

Themes (and chapter titles) are: atypical bodies; mobility impairment; chronic pain and illness; blindness; deafness; speech; learning difficulties; mental health.

The page extent is approximately 2,000pp with c. 200 illustrations. Each volume opens with Notes on Contributors, a series preface and an introduction, and concludes with Notes, Bibliography and an Index.

Table of contents

Volume 1: A Cultural History of Disability in Antiquity, edited by Christian Laes (University of Manchester, UK)
Volume 2: A Cultural History of Disability in the Middle Ages, edited by Jonathan Hsy (George Washington University, USA), Tory V. Pearman (Miami University, Hamilton, Ohio, USA) and Joshua R. Eyler (Rice University, USA)
Volume 3: A Cultural History of Disability in the Renaissance, edited by Susan Anderson (Sheffield Hallam University, UK) and Liam Haydon (United Kingdom Research and Innovation, UK)
Volume 4: A Cultural History of Disability in the Long Eighteenth Century, edited by D. Christopher Gabbard (University of North Florida, USA) and Susannah B. Mintz (Skidmore College, USA)
Volume 5: A Cultural History of Disability in the Long Nineteenth Century, edited by Joyce Huff (Ball State University, USA) and Martha Stoddard Holmes (California State University San Marcos, USA)
Volume 6: A Cultural History of Disability in the Modern Age, edited by David T. Mitchell (George Washington University, USA) and Sharon L. Snyder (George Washington University, USA)

More infos on the editor’s website

CFP – “Wounds Visible and Invisible in Late Medieval Christianity” – Kalamazoo 2019

Call for Papers – Kalamazoo 2019:
Wounds Visible and Invisible in Late Medieval Christianity

 

This session at the 2019 International Congress on Medieval Studies examines the many valences of wounds in late medieval Christianity, focusing on themes surrounding wounds and wounding both visible (corporeal and/or material) and invisible (rhetorical and allegorical). The image of the wounded body held a central place in late medieval Christian practice and material culture; the wounds of the crucified Christ were tangible reminders of his Passion and served as foci of veneration, while stigmatic saints and maimed martyrs were marked as holy by means of bodily trauma. Papers may also consider the Christian response to physical injury, in the form of saintly intervention through healing miracles and medical intervention through the establishment of hospitals and provision of care by religious orders.

Moving beyond the ample possibilities for discussion stemming from the theme of “visible” wounds in medieval Christianity, this session also encourages a broad examination of “invisible” wounds within the late medieval Christian context. Examples might range from the accusations of metaphorical violence levied against the mendicant orders by antifraternal critics, to the conceptualization of the Western Schism as a wound to the Church. By exploring wounds both “visible” and “invisible,” this session elicits the perspectives of scholars of history, art history, literature, and theology and seeks to expand conceptions of wounds and injury within a late medieval Christian framework.

Please send a brief proposal (300 words max) and a participant information form (currently available at https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/submissions) to Hannah Wood at Hannah.wood@mail.utoronto.ca and Johanna Pollick at j.pollick.1@research.gla.ac.uk by 15th September 2018.

As per ICMS rules, any abstracts not accepted for our session will be forwarded for consideration for General Sessions.

See the organisator’s wesbsite for more infos !

CFP – “Disability and the Medieval Cults of Saints: Interdisciplinary and Intersectional Approaches” – edited volume by Stephanie Grace-Petinos, Leah Pope Parker, and Alicia Spencer-Hall

CFP: Disability and the Medieval Cults of Saints: Interdisciplinary and Intersectional Approaches
Discussion published by Massimo Rondolino on Friday, July 27, 2018
Editors: Stephanie Grace-Petinos, Leah Pope Parker, and Alicia Spencer-Hall
We invite abstract submissions for 7,500-word essays to be included in an edited volume on the topic of Disability and the Medieval Cults of Saints. Because saints’ cults in the Middle Ages centralized the body—those of the saints themselves, those of devotees, and the idea of the body on earth and in the afterlife—scholars of medieval disability frequently find that our best sources are those that also deal with saints and sanctity. This volume therefore seeks to foster and assemble a wide range of approaches to disability in the context of medieval saints’ cults. We seek contributions spanning a variety of fields, including history, literature, art history, archaeology, material culture, histories of science and medicine, religious history, etc. We especially encourage contributions that extend beyond Roman Christianity (including non-Christian concepts of sanctity) and that extend beyond Europe/the West.
For the purposes of this volume, we define “disability” as broadly including physical impairment, diversity of bodily forms, chronic illness, neurodiversity (mental illness, cognitive impairment, etc), sensory impairment, and any other variation in bodily form or ability that affected medieval individuals’ role and treatment in their communities. We are open to topics spanning the medieval period both temporally and geographically, but also inclusive of late antiquity and the early modern era. The editors envision essays falling into three units: saints with disabilities; saints interacting with disability; and theorizing sanctity/disability.
We welcome proposals on topics including, but not limited to:
· Phenomenology of saints’ cults with respect to disability, e.g. pilgrimage, feast days, liturgy, etc;
· Materiality of sanctity involved in reliquaries, shrines, and relics;
· Doctrinal approaches to disability in relation to sanctity and holiness;
· Sanctity and bodies in the archaeological record;
· Intersections of disability and race/gender/sexuality/etc in hagiography, art, and material culture;
· Healing miracles and disabling miraculous punishments;
· Cross-cultural approaches to sanctity and disability;
· Saints who wrote about disability;
· Specific saints with connections to concepts of disability, e.g. Margaret of Antioch, Cosmas and Damian, Francis of Assisi, Dymphna, etc;
· Theorizing sanctity in relation to disability; and
· Saintly figures in non-hagiographic genres.
Timeline
Oct. 1, 2018 Proposals due
Oct. 31, 2018 Replies sent to proposals
Nov. 30, 2018 Volume proposal submitted to press (contributors will provide short abstracts and bios)
May 31, 2019 Essays due from contributors
Aug. 30, 2019 Editors deliver extensive feedback to contributors
Jan. 15, 2020 Revised essays due from contributors
April 3, 2020 Full volume manuscript delivered to press
Please submit abstracts of 300–400 words, along with a short author bio and a description of any images you anticipate wanting to include in your essay, to the editors at DisabilitySanctity@gmail.com by Monday, October 1, 2018.

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.