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Dear colleagues,

Please join us next Tuesday (22nd November) for the fourth seminar in the 2016–17 History of Pre-Modern Medicine series, with Dr Elaine Leong (Max Planck Institute, Berlin)

Title:

Paper, medicine and everyday technologies in the early modern household

Abstract:

In recent years, the early modern household has emerged as a central site for medicine and healthcare. Through analysis of personal letters, household account books, diaries and recipe books, we have uncovered the myriad of ways in which householders sought to understand their own bodies and the natural environment around them. Within these activities, paper played a central role. Householders utilised a range of paper technologies such as notebooks and paper slips to collate, categorise and manage the vast volumes of medical knowledge they stored in anticipation of possible sickness and ill health. Concurrently, they also used paper to apply plasters and ointments to the body, to tightly close vessels containing liquid medicines, to shape rolls of pills and to make containers for the mixing of different ‘materia medica’. This talk investigates the multiple ways in which early modern English men and women used paper technologies and technologies with paper to perform quotidian tasks and codify practical knowledge. This focus on the materiality of paper, I argue, offers both a fresh perspective to conceptualise the relationship between knowledge and practice and new ways to talk about medical technologies in pre-modern medicine.

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The seminar will take place in the Wellcome Library, 183 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BE.

 

Doors open at 6pm prompt, the seminar will start at 6.15pm.

 

For more details see: http://blog.wellcomelibrary.org/2016/11/paper-medicine-and-everyday-technologies-in-the-early-modern-household/.

 

With best wishes,

 

Ross

 

 

Ross MacFarlane

Research Engagement Officer

Wellcome Library

 

T +44 (0)20 7611 7340

F +44 (0)20 7611 8369

@wellcomelibrary

 

Wellcome Trust

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London NW1 2BE, UK

 

www.wellcomelibrary.org  

 

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