La démonstration et l'expérience chez Galien

Proof and experiment in Galen


Talk by Matyas Hravda (Czech Academy of Sciences)


on October 7, the Research Seminar of UTN's Early Modern Lab features a entitled:


Galen is well known both for his extensive use of experimental procedures and for his commitment to a largely Aristotelian conception of scientific proof as deductive reasoning. This combination raises a puzzle: if scientific knowledge is established through deduction from evident principles, what role can experiment play in its acquisition? Drawing on examples from Galen’s experimental practice and his reflections on scientific proof, I will argue that this puzzle can be resolved by considering the role of experiment in the search for premises appropriate to a given scientific problem and, more generally, in the process by which scientific proofs are constructed.


The Early Modern Lab's Research Seminar is organized by Dana Jalobeanu, Rodolfo Garau, and Andrei Bunaciu. This meeting will take place at the University of Technology Nuremberg (Ulmenstraße 52i) , and online (zoom link below) on Wednesday, October 7, at 5 pm CET. More info on the Seminar can be found here: https://www.utn.de/en/departments/department-liberal-arts-and-social-sciences/early-modern-lab/the-research-seminar-of-the-early-modern-lab/


Zoom link:

https://utn-de.zoom.us/j/63489126627?pwd=yDamnnbZTu0lfNauqurO3OEalHIKO1.1
Meeting-ID: 634 8912 6627
Kenncode: 6520524599 

Prochaine séance de la Société Française d’Histoire de la Médecine

Prochaine séance de la Société Française d’Histoire de la Médecine 

Vendredi 16 OCTOBRE 2026 à 14 heures
à l’Académie Nationale de Médecine, 16 rue Bonaparte 75006 Paris. Salle Simone Veil.

PROGRAMME
Informations générales, présentation et élection des candidats.

Conférence invitée (60min) :
Raphaële ANDRAULT
Anatomie et clinique de la douleur au 17e siècle
 

Communications (20min) :
Serge ROSOLEN
Les chats ratiers d’Adrien Loir, neveu de Louis Pasteur

Viridiana PETITJEAN
Penser la fièvre aux XVIᵉ et XVIIᵉ siècles : entre héritage galénique et naissance de l’observation clinique

Patrick BERCHE
Julius Wagner-Jauregg et le traitement de la paralysie générale par la malaria
 

Les résumés de ces communications sont disponibles sur notre site internet : https://numerabilis.u-paris.fr/partenaires/sfhm/1523-2/
 

Secrétariat général : Dr Élise ANDRÉ, 15, rue du Vieux Château 37190 RIVARENNES, secretariat.sfhm@gmail.com
 

Propositions de communications et organisation des séances :
Dr Jean-François HUTIN, 2, rue de Neufchâtel, 51100 REIMS jef.hutin@gmail.com ou comite.de.lecture.sfhm@gmail.com

Postdoctorats au NIH

NIH History Post-Doc Opportunities

Call for applications

Deadline for applications: January 11, 2027

Under its newly relaunched Stetten Scholars program, the Office of NIH History and Stetten Museum (ONHM) seeks candidates for two 12-month post-doctoral positions.

These opportunities to research significant aspects of the history of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are open to US Citizens and Legal Permanent Residents who have earned a doctorate within the last five years. Although ABD applicants are welcome to apply, all requirements for the degree must be completed before the selectee can take up the position. Scholars selected in this round are expected to begin their tenure in the summer of 2027.

The position carries a stipend of approximately $70,000 per year plus health, dental, and vision insurance. Reimbursement for training-related travel and conference attendance may be provided if program funding allows.

Project scope: One of the opportunities will support a project that addresses any aspect of NIH history. The second, sponsored by NIH’s Office of Research on Women’s Health (ORWH) in celebration of its 35th anniversary, must focus on the history of research on women’s health. Both positions will be administered through the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE), a program of the Department of Energy.

You can find the ORISE opportunity posting and application portal here.

The core of the application is a brief research proposal (up to 1200 words, not counting citations) that includes an outline of NIH’s role as an essential component of the research. The proposal must demonstrate mastery of standard historical methods as well as readiness to expand and deepen your expertise. Each application will be assessed by a panel of historians and subject-matter experts drawn from relevant NIH Institutes, Centers, and Offices, using standard NIH review criteria: 

• Importance of the Research (in this case, of both the proposed historical work and its scientific subject)
• Rigor and Feasibility
• Expertise and Resources

Scholars selected for this opportunity will likewise receive mentorship from at least one biomedical researcher in a relevant NIH Institute, Center, or Office as well as from ONHM’s professional historians. Your project should be designed to take full advantage of this dual learning opportunity.

For questions: Our downloadable FAQ sheet is here.

You are welcome to email us at history@nih.gov with questions about our holdings. You can explore our archives and other historical resources via this website. However, since we are always getting new donations, we may also have relevant material that has not yet been catalogued and posted.

You are also strongly encouraged to contact ONHM’s Dr. Kristin Heitman, Deputy Director and Senior Historian, to discuss other resources that might strengthen your application.

We will be delighted to help you pursue your research about NIH and its history, even if you decide not apply for one of the Stetten Scholar positions.

Une histoire du corps en erreur

Cultural Techniques of Biosensing. A History of the Body in Error 

Christopher O’Neill
 

Stanford University Press
September 2026
178 Pages
Hardcover ISBN: 9781503647503

Against the emergence of "the Internet of Bodies," Christopher O'Neill presents an incisive long history of biosensing technologies from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. As O'Neill shows, sensor technologies work by failing—if their mode of measure never quite captures the body, this is a feature and not a bug. Nobody and no body really fits into the Internet of Bodies, but the endless correction of biosensor errors works to endlessly extend the reach of the sensor society.

O'Neill's book traces the emergence and transformation of the cultural techniques of biosensing which "work through" these errors, examining how the early pulse-writing sensors of the sphygmograph produced a newly educated touch in the medical clinic; the way work measurement technologies not only optimized but introduced a new intimacy into the post-Fordist workplace; and how the sensors in nineteenth-century burglar alarms enabled a new choreography of servants' movements in the American home. These histories, as O'Neill demonstrates, presage contemporary anxieties surrounding the Quantified Self movement, the management of affective intensities in digitally surveilled workplaces, and the integration of the gig economy within the smart home.

Just as O'Neill demonstrates that technologists' claims to objectivity, transcendence, and omniscience remain frustrated by the messy reality of the body, the book also shows that we must go beyond the typical critical gesture of pointing out errors, biases, and false assumptions about the body, and instead show what precisely these errors do.

Quantification et mesure dans les conseils de santé britanniques

Quantification and Measurement in British Health Advice, c. 1670–1830. Diet, Exercise, and Body Weight in Iatromechanics

Marsha Wubbels

Palgrave MacMillan

Open Access
© 2026

This open access book explores how medical advice on diet, exercise, and body weight evolved in Britain between 1670 and 1830. Focusing on the growing use of measurement and quantification, it shows how ideas of a ‘healthy’ body were defined and debated in medical literature. Bringing together three topics rarely examined in combination, the study offers a fresh perspective on eighteenth-century health practices. Drawing primarily on printed health guides, alongside letters and diaries, it argues that the period from 1680 to 1780 marked a formative moment in the development of modern health advice.

Le nu médical dans le long XIXe siècle

The Medical Nude in the Long Nineteenth Century

Call for papers

Association for Art History Conference, University of Exeter, 7–9 April 2027
Deadline: 25 October 2026

Dr Hannah Halliwell and Dr Rebecca Whiteley invite proposals for their AAH panel 'The Medical Nude in the Long Nineteenth Century'.

The nude is an art-historical stress test. As Lynda Nead tells us, it stands at the pinnacle of fine art and yet is always in danger of slipping into the unacceptable, the obscene. This dual identity has made it of central importance to the methodological development of aesthetics and connoisseurship in the nineteenth century, and feminist art history in the late twentieth. This panel proposes that the nude is once again needed as art historians test the capacities of a new methodological approach: the medical humanities.

The nineteenth century saw science and medicine radically reshape understandings of the body and its relation to identity. The nude, science and medicine were deeply entangled in fine art, in epistemic images, and in print cultures. But only recently have art historians and historians of science and medicine considered these interactions. How can the medical humanities reframe our understanding of the age-old art-historical concept of the nude? In what ways did science and medicine make use of the nude in constructing notions of race, class, gender, sexuality, morality and beauty?

This session will explore the extent and importance of the overdue conversation between the idealised body in fine art and the scientised body in medicine. We welcome papers on any aspect of the medical nude in the long nineteenth century. We are especially interested in constructing an interdisciplinary and global narrative, exploring all kinds of visual material of the medical nude from a range of perspectives.

For information on how to apply, see here: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://forarthistory.org.uk/93-the-medical-nude-in-the-long-nineteenth-century/__;!!CF15FET90Tp8!HyrALrW0rh3QTMK72A-pDgDYZqD-o50DgZkFl7x6pW3h1HJrkUDE7hJWiRPtrROyVvnvJbRBEqTqhL0P0DGRXxY$

If you have any questions please contact Rebecca at r.k.whiteley@bham.ac.uk

Les rendez-vous du CRIHM

Les rendez-vous du CRIHM. Cercle de recherche interdisciplinaire sur les humanités médicales

SAISON 4 — Séminaire 2026-2027

Sciences Po Lille

9 rue Auguste Angellier

Lille

Du 16 octobre au 18 juin 2026

Responsables

Claire Barillé, Samy Bounoua, Marie Derrien, Anselme Dojat-Gouttard, Gabriel Galvez-Behar, Léo Heuguebart, Clément Marquez, Mélanie Traversier (HARTIS, ULille) ; Charles-Antoine Wanecq (CPJ, HARTIS, Sciences Po–Lille)

Contacts

Aurélie Gyselinck (HARTIS, Pont-de-Bois) — aurelie.gyselinck@univ-lille.fr —

Sophie Becart (Sciences Po Lille) — sophie.becart@sciencespo-lille.eu —


16 octobre 2026 – 10h00 - 16h00 – salle 1.34
—> Organes

10h — Tiphaine LOURS (CHSP, Sciences Po Paris)
Sélectionner, collecter, conserver les greffons : histoire des enjeux et difficultés du prélèvement des tissus destinés à la greffe en France (seconde moitié du XIXe siècle–années 1920)

— Emma PACCHIANA (CRISES, UMontpellier)
Le chantier des savoirs sur les organes génitaux féminins au XVIIIe-XIXe siècle

14h — Olivier CHRISTIN (EPHE) et François ZANETTI (ECHELLES, Paris Cité)
La littérature médicale à l’estomac. Retour sur une controverse stomacale au début du XVIIIe siècle

Resp. : Claire Barillé, Anselme Dojat-Gouttard, Mélanie Traversier

13 novembre 2026 – 10h00 - 16h00 – salle 2.44
—> Exil

10h — Chloé TISSERAND (Sciences Po Lille)
Comprendre la frontière migratoire au prisme du travail de la médecine de l’urgence humanitaire, hospitalière et légale

— Giovanni MATERA (ARENES, EHESS)
La coopération entre organisations dans la réponse aux troubles psychiques des personnes migrantes

14h — Laurence MONNAIS (Institut des humanités en médecine, CHUVaudois/ULausanne)
(Im)mobilités virales : Rougeole, réfugiés et vaccinations de masse (1967–2026)

Resp. : Marie Derrien, Valentin Mériaux, Charles-Antoine Wanecq

19 février 2027 – 10h00 - 16h00 – salle 2.44
—> Inégalités

10h — Élodie EDWARDS–GROSSI (IRISSO, Paris Dauphine–PSL)
La fin du rêve californien ? Interroger la pétrotoxicité en croisant l’analyse des inégalités sociales et de la santé environnementale

— Justine BERTHOD (CREDA, Sorbonne Nouvelle)
Les inégalités de l’évitement. Sanitarisation de l’alimentation et gouvernement individualisé du risque chlordécone en Martinique

14h — Muriel DARMON (CESSP, USorbonne Paris Nord)
Comment les inégalités sociales de santé s’inscrivent-elles dans les cerveaux ?

Resp. : Marie Derrien, Léo Heuguebart, Clément Marquez


2 avril 2027 – 10h00 - 16h00 – salle 1.34
—> Âges de la vie

10h — Marie DERRIEN (HARTIS, ULille) et Mathilde ROSSIGNEUX-MÉHEUST (LARHRA, ULyon2)
« Encore une vieille ! Où va-t-on la mettre ? ». Faire l’expérience des troubles psychiques du grand âge, du XIXe siècle aux années 1980

— Lucas BOUGUEREAU (CHR, EHESS)
Pathologiser les sexualités juvéniles : expertise psychiatrique et justice des mineurs au cours du premier XXe siècle (France-Belgique)

14h — Benoît CRET (PACTE, UGrenople Alpes)
Capter le bon résident : une approche morphologique et stratégique de la concurrence entre Ehpads

Resp. : Anselme Dojat-Gouttard, Mélanie Traversier

18 juin 2027 – 10h00 - 16h00 – salle 2.44
—> March ands, march andisations

10h — Alexandre GETENET (Centre Roland Mousnier, Sorbonne Université)
« Il préféra à sa fortune l’honneur de les secourir ». Praticiens et marchés de la santé dans les colonies de la monarchie française (XVIIIe siècle)

— Amandine DANDEL (Archives Henri Poincaré, ULorraine)
Lobbying scientifique du Cédus : promouvoir le sucre en tant que source d’énergie indispensable (années 1950–années 1960)

14h — Paul TURBERG (Institut des humanités en médecine, CHUVaudois/ULausanne)
Les marchands du médicament. Industriels suisses, organisations patronales et régulation pharmaceutique mondiale (1945–1990)

Resp. : Anselme Dojat-Gouttard, Clément Marquez, Mélanie Traversier

Séances en hybride à ce lien =>
https://univ-lille-fr.zoom.us/j/99153463070?pwd=UtykRdd8etj59rpzCxfqMYcu3Yfrez.1

[ID de réunion : 991 5346 3070 — Code secret : 863305]

La mystérieuse maladie du négus Iyasu Ier

Jacques-Charles Poncet et la mystérieuse maladie du négus Iyasu Ier (1698-1701)
 

Pierre Aubry, Bernard-Alex Gaüzère
 

L'Harmattan
Date de publication : 07/09/2026
Collection : Médecine à travers les siècles

 

Il s’agit ici d’une enquête menée par deux médecins, férus d’histoire et spécialistes en médecine tropicale, qui tentent d’identifier rétrospectivement la nature exacte de la maladie dont souffraient le négus d’Éthiopie et l’un de ses fils, à la toute fin du XVIIe siècle, au point de faire appel à un médecin français établi au Caire. En se basant sur les aventures du docteur Poncet, d’après ses propres écrits, il s’agit d’évoquer des hypothèses diagnostiques, à la lumière des données acquises de la médecine, de l’épidémiologie des maladies — dont la présence a été attestée en Éthiopie de manière irréfutable — et de notre expérience professionnelle. Scorbut ? Lèpre ? Leishmaniose ? Syphilis ? Autre dermatose ?