Please join us for the open forum at 2:30 (Hagerty 455) and the lecture at 4 PM
Abstract: Medieval conceptions of human health and disease, that is, the principles by which the sick were treated by learned medical practitioners, derived most of their theoretical bent from surviving textual productions of ancient medical theorists like Galen and the Hippocratics. In the main, therapeutics were similarly guided by these principles, regardless of whether therapies involved dietetics and regimen, pharmacy, or surgery. Yet, currency in authoritative knowledge varied over the centuries with the production and circulation of new translations, the movement of peoples, and the opening up of European marketplaces to a rich pharmacopeia from Outremer and beyond. My presentation sketches first the general process by which knowledge, and access to new knowledge, changed over time; I then explore some of the scenarios we now understand better than ever wherein known practitioners and translators operated at the fore-front of innovative medical theory and practice. My overall goal is to envision the lived experiences of the sick and the injured, and the tools by which medical authorities endeavored to meet their often pressing physical needs.
