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IMC 2023: Sessions

Session 1637: Searching for Health and the Holy, II: Health and Healing

Thursday 6 July 2023, 11.15-12.45

Sponsor:Graduate Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Reading
Organiser:Ruth Salter, Graduate Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Reading
Moderator/Chair:Ruth Salter, Graduate Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Reading
Paper 1637-aRemedies for Elfish Impairment: Magic and Disability in the Old English Leechbook
(Language: English)
Sarah Carruthers, Independent Scholar, Halifax, Nova Scotia
Index terms: Language and Literature - Old English, Medicine
Paper 1637-bHoliness as Impediment?: Hermannus Contractus' Ideas about Disability
(Language: English)
Gregory Carrier, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto
Index terms: Hagiography, Language and Literature - Latin, Monasticism, Rhetoric
Paper 1637-cMaking Humans into Medicine in Late Medieval England
(Language: English)
Melanie Socrates, Department of English, Theatre & Creative Writing, Birkbeck, University of London
Index terms: Language and Literature - Middle English, Medicine
Paper 1637-dInterwoven Weather Prognostics
(Language: English)
Janet Walls, Graduate Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Reading
Index terms: Manuscripts and Palaeography, Medicine
Abstract

The two 'Searching for Health and the Holy' panels seek to consider the ways in which connections could be built, and blurred, and what this meant in terms of understanding and experiencing the saintly and the prophetic. This second panel focuses on healthcare in its broadest sense. The papers draw together a wide chronological range to consider the practices and concepts of healing from the Old English Leechbooks, to central medieval ideas on disability, through to materia medica and weather prognostics in the later Middle Ages.