The College Library collaborates
with the University of Edinburgh to host an annual series of
lectures on different aspects of medical history.
Medical records in early modern England
Dr Lauren Kassell University of Cambridge
Between 1596 and 1634 Simon Forman, the notorious astrologer, and his protégé, Richard Napier, recorded 85,000 astrological consultations, most of which were medical. This is a unique archive. This paper situates these documents within a broader history of record keeping and asks fundamental questions about the medical encounter. What, for instance, did it mean for a practitioner to work with a pen in hand or to converse with his patients? It also introduces the Casebooks Project, a digital edition which makes Forman’s and Napier’s records accessible as never before: http://www.magicandmedicine.hps.cam.ac.uk/.
Books and Beaks: Doctors’ Fight Against the Plague in Early Modern Europe
Dr Jane Stevens Crawshaw Oxford Brookes University
The plague was one of early modern Europe’s most deadly and feared diseases. At the forefront of developing public health campaigns in the face of epidemics, from the 14th century onwards,
were the doctors who advised on the prevention and treatment of the disease. This paper will consider continuity and change in the attitudes and advice given by doctors between 1500 and 1700. In particular, it will set theories, as reflected in written texts, alongside the information we have about the realities of treatment. In the context of the latter, attention will be paid to the material culture of public health for the plague, including occupational clothing and the iconic plague doctor costume.
Thomas Mann’s fictional characters and their quest for the patient narrative
Dr Thomas Rütten Newcastle University
In the majority of his novels, short stories, and essays, in his diaries and personal letters, that
is throughout his life and work, Thomas Mann (1875-1955) reflects on matters of health and
disease, patients and doctors, healing and dying. The radically autobiographical roots of his
writing blur the boundaries between fact and fiction, historiography and the art of narration,
experience and imagination. In my presentation, I will explore the interface between medicine
and literature in his work and assess the latter’s relevance for a medical historiography that takes
the individuality of the patient seriously.
Victorian Skin
Professor Pamela Gilbert University of Florida
The body brings together a number of vexing questions:
it is ‘animal’ yet ‘human’; ‘natural’ yet
the ultimate object of cultural inscription? The part of
the body that most represents us to others
is its surface: for Victorians, skin, especially of the
face and hands, was an important medium through which to
read character and selfhood, a membrane that both divided
the inner and outer worlds and served as a medium for the
projection and interpretation of interiority. In this talk,
I will discuss Charles Bell, Charles Darwin and Cesare
Lombroso’s
discussions of blushing and the emotions. I will survey
examples from both literary and visual culture to show
how Victorian perspectives on the skin aid our understanding
of representations of the relation between selfhood, the
material body and the emotions.
Pain and the Politics of Sympathy, 1789 to the Present
Professor Joanna Bourke Birkbeck College University of
London
Bodily suffering is central to the experience of being
human, yet we still know remarkably little
about how people actually experienced pain in the past. How
can historians know what pain
‘really felt like’ in previous centuries? What
models did people use to understand pain, and
how have these changed? Pain is inter-subjective, thus opening
a space to explore questions of
clinical empathy, or what 18th-century surgeon William Hunter
called the physician’s ‘necessary
Inhumanity’.
Portrait of the Psychiatrist as a Young Man: The Early
Years of R.D. Laing, 1927–60
Dr Allan Beveridge Queen Margaret Hospital, Dunfermline
This paper reconsiders the formative years of one of Scotland’s
most famous psychiatrists. Drawing on the extensive archive
of Laing’s private papers, it looks at Laing’s
intellectual background and his wide reading in philosophy,
the arts and psychiatry. It also looks at his detailed clinical
notes and examines what they tell us about his approach to
patients and the medical culture of his time.
The Philadelphia phlebotomist: Benjamin Rush, the Yellow
Fever, and the Rise of Physician Autobiography
Dr Catherine Jones, University of Aberdeen
This paper examines the links between Benjamin Rush’s
autobiography ‘Travels through Life’
and his protracted feud with the English journalist, politician
and agriculturalist William Cobbett. The rhetorical strategies
used by Rush to defend his character and medical practice,
and the influence of his autobiography on later physician-writers
are also explored.
Medical Innovation in the British Empire: The Edinburgh
Connection, c.1770–c.1830
Professor Mark Harrison, University of
Oxford
The Heroic Anatomist: Dissection and the Stoic Ideal
Simon Chaplin, Royal College of Surgeons of England
Epidemiology and the Science of Detection, 1890-1960
Professor Anne Hardy, University College London
Beating Depression: New Advice from an Ancient Book
Professor Vivian Nutton, University College
London
Crime Scene Edinburgh: Forensic Science in the Era of Burke
and Hare
Professor Lisa Rosner, Richard Stockton College
New Jersey
Medicine and Politics in the Wars of Religion: Hugh Trevor-Roper
and Sir Theodore Mayerne
Professor Blair Worden, Royal Holloway College,
London
The Library archives include
interviews conducted with Fellows of the College.
Dr Tom Chalmers
Interviewed by Martin Eastwood
Dr Ian Campbell
Interviewed by Martin Eastwood
Sir John Crofton
Interviewed by Martin Eastwood
William Alister Alexander
Interviewed by Angus Stuart
Sir Stanley Davidson
Interviewed by Angus Stuart
