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IMC 2012: Sessions

Session 305: Medicine and Illness, II: Experiences of Illness

Monday 9 July 2012, 16.30-18.00

Organiser:Catherine Rider, Department of History, University of Exeter
Moderator/Chair:Wendy J. Turner, Department of History, Anthropology & Philosophy, Augusta State University, Georgia
Paper 305-aTormented by Visions of Puppies: Rabies and the Afflicted Patient, Animal or Human
(Language: English)
Kathleen Walker-Meikle, Center for Digital Humanities, Saint Louis University / Department of History, University of York
Index terms: Daily Life, Medicine, Science
Paper 305-bMaking Sense of Infertility in Medieval England
(Language: English)
Catherine Rider, Department of History, University of Exeter
Index terms: Lay Piety, Medicine, Sermons and Preaching, Sexuality
Paper 305-c'Sick with Gout' and 'Broken in Body': Looking for Illness and Injury in Royal Archives
(Language: English)
Iona McCleery, Institute for Medieval Studies / School of History, University of Leeds
Index terms: Daily Life, Language and Literature - Spanish or Portuguese, Medicine
Abstract

In 1985 the historian of medicine Roy Porter called for more work to be done on the patient's view of illness. Medievalists have gone some way towards doing this but many sources, and many illnesses, remain unexplored. This session will discuss some of the ways in which historians can approach people's experiences of illnesses in the Middle Ages. It will focus on some individual conditions (infertility and rabies) and on particular bodies of sources, such as medical texts, royal archives and religious writing. In particular it will look at how non-medical as well as medical texts can shed light on medieval people's experiences of illness.