“Health and Disease in The Middle Ages” is a five-week college and university faculty seminar for sixteen participants to explore how scientific technologies can inform humanistic methods in interpreting disease. To be held in London at the Wellcome Library, the seminar, co-directed by historian Monica Green and bio-archaeologist Rachel Scott (both of Arizona State University), explores the intersections of religion, economics, and medicine in the treatment of disease and disabling conditions in the medieval period. By engaging historians of medieval medicine with modern bioscience, it attempts to cross scientific and humanistic boundaries; and by comparing how cultural contexts lead to different reactions to the same physical threats, the seminar also brings together the intersecting influences of medieval Christian and Islamic cultures with a modern biomedical perspective. Week one begins with medieval medical historiography; week two delves into medieval theoretical pathology; week three unpacks both medical and historical/cultural aspects of leprosy as a case study of a chronic condition; week four, in contrast, is devoted to the transmission of acute epidemics like the Black Death; week five explores alternative therapies from the religious to the magical. Common readings are supplemented by presentations by the directors and guest scholars including Florence Glaze (Coastal Carolina University), Luke Demaitre (University of Virginia), and Ann Carmichael (Indiana University). In addition, research trips take place to the city of Bath, the Chelsea Physic Garden, and the Museum of London. Participants present preliminary findings of their own research to the seminar group.
