Spleens, germs, wombs and menstruation.
In this short talk Professor Helen King takes us into the body – exploring some of the ways in which understanding of our bodies has changed since ancient Greece and Rome. She considers how doctors today work with their patients' beliefs, and starts to explore how people in the past had their own ideas about bodies and body parts.
Opening up the body through mummification, animal dissection and leaps of imagination. In this short talk Professor Helen King uncovers the history of animal dissection and the assumptions made by those trying to uncover the secrets within the human body during periods when dissection of humans was considered taboo.
Investigating the little things, or little people, inside our bodies. In this short talk Professor Helen King examines historical understandings of the body, using metaphors of war, of factories, and of houses. These ideas of workmen, of soldiers and of domestic architecture helped to explain the body and its workings. Professor King worked at the OU from 2011 to 2017 and is now a Visiting Professor within Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick.