Diseases
Lecturer:
This lecture introduces us to the problem of how to understand diseases in the past. Focussing on the early modern period, we will see how contemporaries explained, diagnosed and treated diseases such as the plague or the French pox within an understanding of nature that was entirely different to our own today. Moreover, we will also investigate how historians of medicine have deal with this problem of writing about early modern diseases, diseases in the past.
Discussion Questions/Essay Topics:
1. What do we 'lose' by identifying past diseases with modern disease entities?
2. Venereal disease was imported from the New World to Europe in the 15th century. Discuss.
3. How did early modern contemporaries explained the 'causation' of diseases such as the French pox?
4. 'Early modern medicine was not advanced enough to successfully treat disease'. Discuss.
Required Readings:
Cunningham, Andrew, 鈥楾ransforming Plague: the Laboratory and the Identity of Infectious Diseases鈥�, in Andrew Cunningham and Perry Williams, eds, The Laboratory Revolution in Medicine (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 209-247. Course Extract
Pelling, Margaret, 鈥楥ontagion/Germ Theory/Specificity鈥�, in W. F. Bynum and Roy Porter Companion Encyclopedia of the History of Medicine (London, 1993), pp. 309-349. Course Extract
Stein, Claudia, 鈥楾he Meaning of Signs: Diagnosing the French Pox in Early Modern Augsburg鈥�, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 80,4 (2006): 617-648. E-journal
Further Readings:
Jon Arrizibalaga, John Henderson, and Roger K. French, The French Pox in Early Modern Europe (Yale, 1997). (Ordered)
Bylebyl, Jerome, 鈥楾he Manifest and the Hidden in the Renaissance Clinic鈥�, W. Bynum and Roy Porter, Medicine and the Five Senses (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 40-60.
Cunningham, Andrew, 鈥業dentifying diseases in the Past: Cutting through the Gordian Knot鈥�, Asclepio 54 (2002): 13-43 e-journal (click the 鈥楩ull Text鈥� journal link, then enter the article title in the correct search box to open the article)
Daston, Lorraine, 鈥楾he Nature of Nature in Early Modern History鈥�, Configurations 6 (1998): 149-172. e-journal
Demaitre, Luke, 鈥楾he Description and Diagnosis of Lepropsy by Fourtheenth Century Physicians鈥�, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 59 (1985): 327-344. e-journal
French, Roger et al, eds, Medicine from the Black Death to the French Disease (Aldershot, 1998).
Grafton, Anthony, Siraisi, Nancy, and Shelford, April, New World, Ancient Text: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of the New (Cambridge, 1992). (Ordered)
Siraisi, Nancy, 鈥楧isease and Symptom as Problematic Concepts in Renaissance Medicine鈥�, in Eckhard Kessler and Ian Maclean, Res et Verba in the Renaissance (Wiesbaden, 2002), 217-240.
Mclean, Ian, Logic, Signs and Nature in the Renaissance: The Case of Learned Medicine (Cambridge, 2002).
Nance, Brian, Turquet de Mayerne: The Art of Medical Portraiture (Amsterdam, 2001)
Rey, Roselyn, The History of Pain (Cambridge, 1988).
Wilson, Adrian, 鈥極n the History of Disease Concepts: The Case of Pleurisy鈥�, History of Science 38 (2000): 271-319. E-journal