NEH Syllabus - Health and Disease in the Middle Ages (Summer 2012) (original) (raw)
Related papers
NEH Summer Seminar 2012 - "Health and Disease in the Middle Ages," London, UK
http://www.public.asu.edu/\~mhgreen/healthanddisease2012/index.html “Health and Disease in the Middle Ages” was a five-week Seminar for College and University Teachers held June 24-July 28, 2012, in London, England. Based at the Wellcome Library—the world's premier research center for medical history—this Seminar gathered scholars from across the disciplines interested in questions of health, disease, and disability in medieval Europe. Support for this Seminar came from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (ACMRS). We explored how the new scientific technologies of identifying pathogens (particularly leprosy and plague) could inform traditional, humanistic methods (historical, literary, art historical, and linguistic) of understanding cultural responses to disease and disability. Reciprocally, we also explored how traditional, humanistic studies of medieval medicine could inform modern scientific studies of disease, which were developing at a rapid pace thanks to new methods of DNA retrieval and analysis. Special emphasis wasmplaced on assisting participants with independent research projects relating to the History of Medicine, especially—but not restricted to—those based on unpublished primary sources.
Medieval Medicine: Health and Disease in the Middle Ages
Despite our popular understanding of the European middle ages as a dirty, disease-ridden, hopelessly backward period, the sources show us quite a different picture. Although a lack of understanding of the means of genetic change and the cause of viral and bacterial disease caused medieval people to understand the human body very differently than we do, their medical systems were not without logic and efficacy. This course explores the human body and its diseases in the middle ages through a series of connected readings that introduce the body as a conceptual system and medieval science's attempts to understand it. We use the growing field of genomic research as a way of understanding and comparing our modern systems of understanding the body to those in the past. By exploring the field of pathogenomics, we also explore how newer scientific technologies are helping historians learn about the past in new ways.
Green and Muehlberger Twitter Q-and-A on the State of Medieval Medicine
Twitter, 2020
On 10 February 2020, Ellen Muehlberger and I engaged in a question-and-answer session on Twitter, revisiting a 2009 essay of mine that had appeared in the journal *History Compass*. The essay had offered a survey of the state of the field of medieval medical history. It was pitched specifically at "general" medieval historians: those who did not identify as doing medical history, but may have had some cause to engage with medical historical questions in the course of their research. In this Q-and-A, Muehlberger asks me to reflect on my particular motivations in writing the essay; why the topics of health and disease are particularly challenging to research since there are no special archives for such materials; and what points I'd want to stress if I were to attempt a new overview of the field a decade later. Since long Twitter threads can sometimes be a challenge to read, I have reformatted our exchange here, correcting typos and providing some links. I'd be happy to respond to further queries, either on Twitter (@monicaMedHist) or via e-mail (monica.h.green@gmail.com).
2009
Hitherto peripheral (if not outright ignored) in general medieval historiography, medieval medical history is now a vibrant subdiscipline, one that is rightly attracting more and more attention from ‘mainstream’ historians and other students of cultural history. It does, however, have its particular characteristics, and understanding its source materials, methods, and analytical limitations may help those not trained in the field better navigate, explore and potentially contribute to its possibilities for illuminating the intersections of medicine and health with other aspects of medieval culture. Although this article focuses primarily on western Europe, many of its observations are also relevant to the Islamic world and Byzantium precisely because all three cultures shared many of the same intellectual traditions and social structures. The attached bibliography serves as a general introduction to the current state of the field.
A Cultural History of Medicine in the Middle Ages - front matter
A Cultural History of Medicine in the Middle Ages, 2021
The Middle Ages are well-known for the growth of universities and urban regulations, plague pandemics, increasingly sophisticated ways of causing injury in warfare, and abiding frameworks for health and illness provided by religion. Increasingly, however, archaeologists, historians and literary specialists have come together to flesh out the daily lives of medieval people at all levels of society, both in Christian Europe and the Islamic Mediterranean. A Cultural History of Medicine in the Middle Ages follows suit, but also brings new approaches and comparisons into the conversation. Through the investigation of poems, pottery, personal letters, recipes and petitions, and through a breadth of topics running from street-cleaning, cooking and amulets to religious treatises and death rituals, this volume accords new meaning and value to the period and those who lived it. Its chapters confirm that the study of latrines, patterns of manuscript circulation, miracle narratives, sermons, skeletons, metaphors and so on, have as much to tell us about attitudes towards health and illness as do medical texts. Delving within and beyond texts, and focusing on the sensory, the experiential, the personal, the body and the spirit, this volume celebrates and critiques the diverse and complex cultural history of medieval health and medicine.
The greatest health problem of the Middle Ages? Estimating the burden of disease in medieval England
International Journal of Paleopathology, 2021
To identify the major health problems of the Middle Ages. Bubonic plague is often considered the greatest health disaster in medieval history, but this has never been systematically investigated. Materials: We triangulate upon the problem using (i) modern WHO data on disease in the modern developing world, (ii) historical evidence for England such as post-medieval Bills of Mortality, and (iii) prevalences derived from original and published palaeopathological studies. Methods: Systematic analysis of the consequences of these health conditions using Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) according to the Global Burden of Disease methodology. Results: Infant and child death due to varied causes had the greatest impact upon population and health, followed by a range of chronic/infectious diseases, with tuberculosis probably being the next most significant one. Conclusions: Among medieval health problems, we estimate that plague was probably 7th-10th in overall importance. Although lethal and disruptive, it struck only periodically and had less cumulative long-term human consequences than chronically endemic conditions (e.g. bacterial and viral infections causing infant and child death, tuberculosis, and other pathogens). Significance: In contrast to modern health regimes, medieval health was above all an ecological struggle against a diverse host of infectious pathogens; social inequality was probably also an important contributing factor. Limitations: Methodological assumptions and use of proxy data mean that only approximate modelling of prevalences is possible. Suggestions for further research: Progress in understanding medieval health really depends upon understanding ancient infectious disease through further development of biomolecular methods.