Une histoire globale des antidouleurs

Markets of Pain: Opium, Capitalism, and the Global History of Painkillers

Benjamin Robert Siegel

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press
Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 15, 2026
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Print length ‏ : ‎ 368 pages
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0197527825


Markets of Pain offers a sweeping history of the business of licit opium--following cultivators, merchants, scientists, and policymakers--and shows how this potent crop reshaped global trade, medicine, and geopolitics.

For centuries, opium has been a source of both profit and peril, its legacy entangled with addiction, imperialism, and the complex interplay of global trade and national development. While the illicit opium trade is infamous, the history of licit opium--how it was farmed, refined, and used to build modern medicine and shape state power--has remained largely untold.

Drawing on archival sources from Asia, Europe, and the United States, Markets of Pain traces the global arc of licit opium from poppy fields and processing plants in India, Turkey, and Australia to the clinics and laboratories of modern medicine. It shows how both the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic treated the opium poppy as a national resource and a means of securing global stature. In postcolonial India, by contrast, nationalist leaders initially rejected opium's imperial legacy before embracing its strategic value amid the shifting currents of the Cold War. At the heart of this story are the cultivators, scientists, bureaucrats, and policymakers who shaped the licit opium trade and grappled with its far-reaching consequences. Their work and visions demonstrate how colonial empires and postcolonial states helped forge the global pharmaceutical industry as it struggled to govern a drug it could not abandon.

Markets of Pain reveals how a seemingly marginal crop became an unlikely engine of modernization, a tool of Cold War geopolitics, and a harbinger of today's global opioid crisis. Blending vivid scenes from opium's fields and factories with incisive analysis of scientific and diplomatic archives, Benjamin Robert Siegel recovers a buried history with urgent relevance for global supply chains, international power, and public health.

Une histoire globale de la peste noire

The Black Death: A Global History of Humanity's Most Devastating Pandemic

Thomas Asbridge


Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House
Publication date ‏ : ‎ May 26, 2026
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Print length ‏ : ‎ 544 pages
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0593129166

In the mid-fourteenth century, a lethal plague struck the medieval world, causing unimaginable suffering and destruction. The Black Death was unquestionably one of history’s defining episodes, yet a critical feature of its progress has often been ignored: the disease was not confined to Europe, but rather affected almost all of the known world, including the Near and Middle East, Byzantium, north Africa and Asia.

Tracing the pandemic’s course across the medieval globe, The Black Death contrasts the experiences of different peoples, including Christians, Muslims, and Jews, charting this catastrophe’s transformative effects on diverse aspects of medieval life. And crucially, Asbridge demonstrates that the plague was often at its most destructive in the Islamic world, where it ultimately played a role in the collapse of the mighty Mamluk Empire.

The Black Death also brings the human drama of this calamitous era to life, evoking the terror and the turmoil that beset cities such as London, Cairo, and Florence. Asbridge reconstructs the lives of the men, women and children who faced the Black Death—from ruling monarchs to peasant farmers—laying bare both the abject horror they endured and the courageous resolve they often demonstrated while striving to survive.

Uncovering a story that speaks to our own age, The Black Death highlights humankind’s capacity for compassion and resilience amidst a global crisis to explain how the medieval world confronted, and ultimately overcame, this shattering pandemic.

Les sages-femmes juives et les pratiques de guérison secrètes dans l'Europe moderne

Delivering Knowledge: Jewish Midwives and Hidden Healing in Early Modern Europe

Jordan R. Katz 

Stanford University Press (April/May 2026)
Series: Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture

This book offers a new perspective on the history of early modern Jewish communities by centering the experiences of Jewish midwives. In the wake of the Thirty Years' War, as cities and towns across northern and central Europe placed new emphasis on the regulation of healthcare and childbirth, Jewish midwives stood at the crossroads of tremendous changes in both Jewish communities and the surrounding Christian municipalities. Drawing on previously untapped archival sources, Jordan Katz reveals that Jewish midwives were integral to the expansion of medical bureaucracies, crossing boundaries between genders, between religious communities, and across classes through their work caring for pregnant women and newborn babies.

Grounded in rich historical evidence, the book shows how a focus on Jewish midwives illuminates the complex relationships between Jewish communities and local municipalities, showcasing a level of engagement between Jews and Christian civic authorities that has gone unstudied. Through the lens of midwives, this book opens up new understandings of Jewish communal history, the history of women's healing practices, Jewish-Christian relations, and cultures of record in the early modern period.

Un traité d'anatomie physiologique de la fin du XIIe siècle

L'"Anathomia" de Ricardus Anglicus. Un traité d'anatomie physiologique de la fin du XIIe siècle

 

Philippe Guillet

Honoré Champion
29/05/2026 
EAN13 9782745366290 

 

Les bases médiévales de l’anatomie moderne, définie comme une connaissance approfondie de la structure et de l’organisation du corps humain essentielle à la médecine, émergent en Italie à la fin des XIIIe et XIVe siècles. Les textes médicaux des XIIe et XIIIe siècles s’intéressent précocement à l’anatomie, non pas dans le contexte de la chirurgie, qui n’a pas encore clairement manifesté d’intérêt pour cette discipline, mais plutôt dans une perspective naturaliste plus large, visant à comprendre l’organisation et le fonctionnement des différents membres du corps humain. Un texte notable illustrant cet intérêt est l’Anathomia Ricardi, également connue sous le nom d’Anathomia Ricardi Salernitani. Les historiens allemands de la médecine, qui en ont publié les premiers manuscrits à la fin du XIXe siècle, pensaient qu’il avait été écrit à Salerne.

Il s’agit de la première synthèse intégrant les informations anatomiques et physiologiques détaillées dans le Pantegni de Constantin l’Africain, mais organisée en suivant la classification des membres principaux de Galien dans le Tegni, version médiévale de son Art médical.

Les résultats de notre enquête présentés dans ce livre, révèlent que les copies successives de ce texte, écrit à la fin du XIIe siècle, se divisent en deux traditions distinctes, chacune ayant connu un succès certain. La première tradition, écrite par un médecin du nom de Ricardus anglicus, possiblement à Montpellier, diffuse rapidement dès le début du XIIIe siècle à travers le réseau abbatial, vers le nord et l’est de l’Europe (France, Angleterre, Allemagne, Pologne). La seconde tradition résulte d’une révision significative de ce texte initial, intégrant des éléments issus des œuvres biologiques d’Aristote peu après leur traduction au XIIIe siècle. Elle semble être enseignée à Montpellier, et ses copies gagnent également rapidement les mêmes régions géographiques que la première. Ces traditions furent l’objet d’adaptations en langue vernaculaire au XVe siècle, attestant leur intérêt persistant pendant trois siècles.

Philippe Guillet, médecin et historien des sciences et des techniques est actuellement chercheur associé à l’équipe SAPRAT (Savoirs et pratiques du Moyen Âge à l’époque moderne) de l’EPHE.

Le St. Vincent’s Hospital

A Monument of Charity: St. Vincent’s Hospital and Catholic Health Care in New York City 

Thomas F. Rzeznik  



Publisher ‏ : ‎ NYU Press
Publication date ‏ : ‎ June 2, 2026
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Print length ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1479839728



Tells the history of St. Vincent's Hospital and the transformative impact of Catholic health care in New York City.

St. Vincent’s Hospital began with a simple, but radical mission: to care for all those in need regardless of race, creed, or financial means. For more than 160 years, the hospital carried out that work, serving notables and the nameless alike, from impoverished immigrants and those stricken by devastating nineteenth-century epidemics to AIDS patients and the victims of the attacks of 9/11.

A Monument of Charity provides the first comprehensive history of this remarkable institution, from its humble beginnings in 1849 to its abrupt closure in 2010. Located in the heart of Greenwich Village, St. Vincent’s earned distinction not only for the quality of its medical programs, but also for its unwavering dedication to the poor. The hospital was a testament to the vision and labor of the Sisters of Charity, who founded, staffed, and administered the hospital with remarkable skill and devotion.

Prochaine séance de la SFHM

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

Vendredi 12 JUIN 2026 à 14 heures
à l’Académie Nationale de Médecine, 16 rue Bonaparte 75006 Paris. Salle Simone Veil.



Conférence invitée (60min) :
Jacqueline VONS
Savoir et séduction dans la Fabrique (1543) d’André Vésale
 

Communications (20min) :
Philippe ALBOU
Aperçu de la médecine médiévale à partir de « Renart médecin », épisode du Roman de Renart (XIIe s.) 

Jacques ROBERT
Les premiers temps du Bulletin de l’Association française pour l’étude du cancer

 Benoît VESSELLE
Une blessure par balle reçue à la bataille de Waterloo

Les violences sexuelles en médecine et en psychiatrie

Sexual Violence in Medicine and Psychiatry: Addressing Harms Through Interdisciplinarity 

Rhian Elinor Keyse, Adeline Moussion Esteve, Emma Yapp (Editors)
 

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Palgrave Macmillan
Publication date ‏ : ‎ May 19, 2026
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Print length ‏ : ‎ 294 pages 
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-3032107992

This book explores how medical and psychiatric knowledge, practitioners, and practices respond to sexual violence. It highlights how the medical and psychiatric fields often reproduce political and social dynamics of discrimination, othering, marginalisation, neglect, or surveillance, through their own sets of discourses and practices. Covering a wide range of geographical case studies including the UK, Australia, Kenya, and Argentina, this book is the first cohesive edited collection to unite interdisciplinary scholarship on this topic.

La pratique et l'apprentissage de la chirurgue à l'époque moderne

Learning to Cut. Surgical training and practice, 1450–1800

Maria Pia Donato, Elaine Leong, Tillmann Taape (Editors)


UCL Press
June 2026
Series: Opening up the History of Science



Across early modern Europe, surgeons played a key role in the provision of everyday healthcare. They dressed wounds, lanced boils, set bones, treated tumours, as well as performing specialist operations such as couching cataracts or cutting for the stone. They carried out anatomies and autopsies, prepared corpses for embalming, and, if they were entitled to do so, occasionally performed major operations such as removing cancers, amputating limbs, and trepanning skulls. Yet, while recent studies have done much to elucidate the work of surgeons, little has been published about how they were trained.

Learning to Cut fills this significant gap. A range of case studies from the French, Italian, German, and English contexts reveal diverse modes of surgical teaching and learning in early modern towns and cities, and how they were shaped by existing social, economic, and occupational structures. Equally varied were the spaces and institutions where prospective practitioners learned and experienced surgery. Thus, the shop, the patient’s house, the hospital, the guild hall, and the anatomy theatre were all sites for learning, teaching – and cutting. The chapters present rich narratives of education and, together, shed new light on the practice of early modern surgery.