IMC 2026: Sessions
Session 1212: Temporalities of Health and Healing, III: Monastic Medical Communities
Wednesday 8 July 2026, 14:15-15:45
| Sponsor: | Medica: Society for the Study of Healing in the Middle Ages |
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| Organisers: | Nichola Harris, Medica: Society for the Study of Healing in the Middle Ages / Department of Social Science, History & Education, State University of New York, Ulster Anna M. Peterson, Medica: Society for the Study of Healing in the Middle Ages / Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Cantabria |
| Moderator/Chair: | Ginger Smoak, Medica: Society for the Study of Healing in the Middle Ages / Honors College, University of Utah |
| Respondent: | Peter Jones, Department of History & Philosophy of Science / King's College, University of Cambridge |
| Paper 1212-a | Care in Life and Death: Intersecting Temporalities in German Female Medieval Communities (Language: English) Index terms: Language and Literature - German, Medicine |
| Paper 1212-b | The Role of Time in Uroscopy as Described in De iudiciis urinae by Thomas of Wrocław (Language: English) Index terms: Language and Literature - Latin, Medicine |
| Abstract | This session represents the third of four proposed sponsored sessions that focus on the various temporalities of health, healing, and disease in medieval medicine. This session offers three papers that each examine temporal dimensions of medieval monastic health and healing. The first paper, ‘Changing Definitions of Medicine in Late Medieval Europe and Today: Hildegard of Bingen’s Physica,’ tells the story of the text of Physica by presenting evidence from extant manuscripts and identifying which parts of the text were selected or discarded in the 14th, 15th, and 21st centuries. This paper demonstrates how the boundaries of medical knowledge changed in late medieval Europe and how medieval knowledge is repurposed into medievalism(s) today. The second paper, “Care in Life and Death. Intersecting Temporalities in German Female Medieval Communities,’ draws on the Middle High German Dominican sister book Corpus and religious regulatory texts to analyse liminal time between illness and health, life and death. The third paper, ‘The Role of Time in Uroscopy as Described in De iudiciis urinae by Thomas of Wrocław,’ analyses how time shaped the diagnostic value of urine for medieval physicians as well as exploring premodern ideas about the temporal aspects of urine formation within the body. |