Le traité galénique De indolentia

Galen's Treatise Περὶ Ἀλυπίας (De indolentia) in Context. A Tale of Resilience

Editor: Caroline Petit

Brill
Series: Studies in Ancient Medicine, Volume: 52
Publication Date: 13 December 2018
ISBN: 978-90-04-38330-2

This collective volume arises from a Wellcome-funded conference held at the University of Warwick in 2014 about the “new” Galen discovered in 2005 in a Greek manuscript, De indolentia. In the wake of the latest English translation published by Vivian Nutton in 2013, this book offers a multi-disciplinary approach to the new text, discussing in turn issues around Galen’s literary production, his medical and philosophical contribution to the theme of avoiding distress (ἀλυπία), controversial topics in Roman history such as the Antonine plague and the reign of Commodus, and finally the reception of the text in the Islamic world. Gathering eleven contributions by recognised specialists of Galen, Greek literature and Roman history, it revisits the new text extensively.

Sens et non-sens

Sense and Nonsense

Call for Papers

Biennial conference of the European Association for the History of Medicine and Health

University of Birmingham – 27-30 August 2019

This biennial conference of the European Association for the History of Medicine and Health marks the 30th anniversary of the Association since its founding conference in Strasbourg in 1989. The title of the conference has been chosen to recognise key themes at the heart of medical history debates and discussions, and will take place in the heart of England, at the University of Birmingham.

Confirmed keynote speakers include Professor Ludmilla Jordanova (University of Durham), Professor Robert Jütte (University of Stuttgart) and Dr Vanessa Heggie (University of Birmingham). Expert sessions on public engagement and social media, among others, will also be run by Dr Vanessa Heggie and Alice Roberts, television presenter and Professor of Science Engagement (University of Birmingham) specifically for early career scholars on the first day of the conference.

Call for Papers

In the most literal of senses, the Scientific Board welcomes abstracts that will explore the history of sense perception, singularly or collectively and within medicine and health globally over the broadest of chronologies. Centring on touch, taste, smell, sight, sound or the heightened, honed, dulling, disability or loss of senses, or touching on their employment through food, pain, analgesia, polluted streets or pestiferous zones – and the emotional responses elicited – this conference encourages engagement with the emerging field of sensory history and its potential to revisit many familiar topics in fresh ways and provoke new insights. The centrality of the senses to medicine and health cuts across time periods and is apparent throughout the ancient and modern worlds, although the reliability of the senses have not always been accepted without question. At times, for example, ‘seeing is not believing’ through fakery or faith, hallucinations or delusions. And while not all periods have valued sight, neither has every practitioner cared or dared to touch their patients – all senses, like touch, having equally been gendered, if not varied with class, age and race or shaped by medical condition, comfort or neurodiversity.

While the five senses may have been recognised and embraced during the Enlightenment as the route to all knowledge, it was during this ‘age of reason’ that the so-called Western World and its colonies witnessed the rise of the asylum. Care became central for those who appeared to lose their senses or who were thought only capable of nonsense, in part because they were widely recognised as having human sensibilities and sensations and not those of animals. The senses and the action of the surroundings on them became instrumental in decisions about design and treatment, and people considered to be mentally ill or incapacitated became part of a growing body of patients who were isolated from communities. Periodically, due to war, migration and urbanisation, the senses have been overwhelmed by encounters with unfamiliar or rapidly-changing worlds in which amplified sights, smells, noises and even vibrations were held potentially to precipitate episodes of mental ill-health.

Both the history of the senses and of mental health and illness have been involved in paradigm shifts in the discipline of history, and this forms another strand to our theme ‘Sense and Nonsense’. Often new paradigms, both in historical fields and medicine, provoke aggressive responses and opposition, especially from those with the greatest investment in orthodox practices. Equally, in crowded medical marketplaces, alternative healers were very quickly identified by their rivals as ‘quacks’ and, just as the hierarchy of the senses was periodically challenged, so too were hierarchies of healers. Contested knowledge has led some figures to exaggerate claims and bred scepticism among experts and various publics, no more so than in our own destabilised ‘post-truth’ world of trickery and ‘alternative facts’. While this has bred much confusion historically, it has also led a return to rationality, objectivity and common sense. As often, it has encouraged trust in the illusory, the paranormal or the sixth sense. Ultimately, ‘Sense and Nonsense’ have always played a part in the way people and populations have tried to make sense of health and illness.

We particularly welcome proposals for panels touching on these and other topics, including, but not limited to:

• Epistemologies of the senses through time
• Animal, human, inter-species and transhuman senses
• Reading non-verbal signals and uncovering the rationale behind premodern medicines
• Extra/sensory perception and its metaphors across cultures and clinics
• Visual cultures and those of taste, sound, scent and touch
• Looking/seeing, listening/hearing, touching, smelling and tasting in medical education, examination and diagnosis
• Energy, chakras, meditation, mindfulness and the senses and their management
• Pain, torture, itching, scratching, numbing and sedating as experience, crime, punishment or therapy
• Hyper-sensitivity, diversity, ability or disability through the senses, including burns, light sensitivity, synaesthesia, acute hearing or sight loss
• Insensibility, drugs and psychoactive substances
• Enabling technologies and technologies of touch, tactile imagery and haptic healing
• Material culture and experiences of space through the senses, health, illness or as patients
• Feeling and feelings
• Mental capacity, signs of reason, neurological signs and auras
• Fever, chills, hallucination, delusion and trauma
• Nonsense, speaking in tongues, gibberish and jargon
• Paradigm shifts in medicine and medical history
• Ethics, experimentation and the return to common sense
• Experiments, therapies or designs using the senses or sensory deprivation
• Making sense of medicine and translating ideas into practice
• Geographies of the senses; virtual worlds and technology

Individual submissions will be received until 30 Jan. 2019 and should comprise a 250-word abstract, including five key words, and a one-page CV with contact information. Panel submissions should ideally include three papers (each with 250-word abstract, keywords and short CV), a chair and an initial introductory 100-word justification. If you wish to organise a roundtable, please include the names of participants and short 500-word abstract. We also invite poster presentations and ideas for novel sessions. As this is an anniversary year, the organisers will also be collecting and displaying images and items commemorating the work and activities of the EAHMH since the Association’s founding. Please contact us about anything you are happy to share. All submissions should be sent to: eahmh2019@contacts.bham.ac.uk

La psychothérapie au LSD en Amérique

The Trials of Psychedelic Therapy. LSD Psychotherapy in America

Matthew Oram

Johns Hopkins University Press
288 pages
22 b&w illus.
ISBN:9781421426204
August 2018

After LSD arrived in the United States in 1949, the drug's therapeutic promise quickly captured the interests of psychiatrists. In the decade that followed, modern psychopharmacology was born and research into the drug's perceptual and psychological effects boomed. By the early 1960s, psychiatrists focused on a particularly promising treatment known as psychedelic therapy: a single, carefully guided, high-dose LSD session coupled with brief but intensive psychotherapy. Researchers reported an astounding 50 percent success rate in treating chronic alcoholism, as well as substantial improvement in patients suffering from a range of other disorders. Yet despite this success, LSD officially remained an experimental drug only. Research into its effects, psychological and otherwise, dwindled before coming to a close in the 1970s. 

In The Trials of Psychedelic Therapy, Matthew Oram traces the early promise and eventual demise of LSD psychotherapy in the United States. While the common perception is that LSD's prohibition terminated legitimate research, Oram draws on files from the Food and Drug Administration and the personal papers of LSD researchers to reveal that the most significant issue was not the drug's illegality, but the persistent question of its efficacy. The landmark Kefauver-Harris Drug Amendments of 1962 installed strict standards for efficacy evaluation, which LSD researchers struggled to meet due to the unorthodox nature of their treatment.

Exploring the complex interactions between clinical science, regulation, and therapeutics in American medicine, The Trials of Psychedelic Therapy explains how an age of empirical research and limited government oversight gave way to sophisticated controlled clinical trials and complex federal regulations. Analyzing the debates around how to understand and evaluate treatment efficacy, this book will appeal to anyone with an interest in LSD and psychedelics, as well as mental health professionals, regulators, and scholars of the history of psychiatry, psychotherapy, drug regulation, and pharmaceutical research and development.

Matthew Oram is a historian in Christchurch, New Zealand. He earned his PhD in history from the University of Sydney.

Maladie et santé, du corps et de l'esprit

Bodies and Minds, Sickness and Soundness

Call for papers

June 13-14, 2019

University of Bristol

The 2019 SSHM PG conference committee welcomes papers on any topic within the discipline of the social history of medicine and particularly encourage proposals for papers and panels that critically examine or challenge some aspect of the history of medicine and health. We welcome a range of methodological approaches, geographical regions, and time periods.

Proposals should be based on new research from postgraduate students currently registered in a University programme. Paper submissions should include a 250-word abstract, including five key words and a short bio. Panel submissions should feature three papers, a chair, and a 100-word panel abstract.

For postgraduate students not currently funded through an existing fellowship or grant, funding is available through the SSHM to help offset the costs associated with travel and accommodation. Upon acceptance of a paper, requests for bursaries should be submitted to the Executive Secretariat prior to the conference. More information can be found on our website.

All postgraduate delegates must register (or already be registered) as members of the Society for the Social History of Medicine. For more information about SSHM student membership, please see the journal subscription site.

In addition to showcasing the latest postgraduate research, the conference will feature training workshops led by members of the SSHM Executive Committee.

To propose a paper or a panel, please visit our conference website at: https://sshmpgconference2019.blogs.bristol.ac.uk/

Call for papers closes on 31 January 2019.

Please direct queries about this event to the SSHM PG Conference admin team at: sshm-pg-conference@bristol.ac.uk

Vieillir et mourir en institution au XIXe siècle

Vies d’hospice.Vieillir et mourir en institution au XIXe siècle

Mathilde Rossigneux-Méheust 

Champ Vallon

Paru en novembre 2018

14 x 22, 392 pages

ISBN 979-10-267-0744-8

Alors que persiste aujourd’hui encore l’image de « l’hospice mouroir », le développement d’établissements pour la vieillesse au XIXe siècle témoigne au contraire d’une préoccupation nouvelle dans la société française : comment prendre soin des vieux ?

A Paris, en amont des grandes lois républicaines du XXe siècle, un vaste dispositif d’assistance se met en place pour nourrir et loger à vie des milliers de vieux indigents. Pour les classes populaires, vivre et mourir en institution devient une expérience ordinaire de la fin de vie. L’analyse de la vie privée des hospices et des maisons de retraite révèle la place ambiguë que la France post-révolutionnaire réserve à ses aînés, entre rejet et bienveillance, protection et surveillance.

Colloque étudiant sur la science, la technologie et la médecine

Third National Undergraduate Research Conference on Science, Technology, Medicine and Society

Call for Papers



To be held at DePauw University, Greencastle, IN

February 28–March 2, 2019


Keynote: “Revolutionary Turmoil and Cornea Donation: Changing Egyptian Attitudes toward Medicine’s Use of Dead Bodies.”

Speaker: Sherine Hamdy, Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Irvine. Author of graphic novel, Lissa: A Story About Medical Promise, Friendship and Revolution.


Handheld devices that are more powerful than home computers. Driver-less cars. Gene Therapy for treating cancer—These are just some of the fast-paced changes in science, technology and medicine (STM) from the last decade. How should society respond to these and other changes in STM from the recent, and not-so-recent past?

The Third Annual Undergraduate Research Conference on Science, Technology, Medicine and Society at DePauw University (February 28–March 2, 2019) welcomes student papers that address these and other issues related to STM in historical and present societies throughout the world. As an interdisciplinary gathering, we encourage students to submit papers from across the arts, humanities, social sciences and natural sciences (check out our Facebook page for past presentations: https://www.facebook.com/STMSconference/). Papers may choose to address:

1) how science, technology and medicine (STM) affect societies (past or present);

2) how societal values and concerns (past or present) inform and constitute STM; Or

3) the conceptual foundations and/or ethical implications of STM.

Registration, lodging, and meals will be provided for all student presenters. Student presenters may also apply for a travel subsidy (up to $250). Interested students should submit an overview of their paper (250 words) and a brief bio (50 words) by January 5, 2019 using the following Google form: https://goo.gl/forms/ZJSn55uOAV6apBAC2. If you have any questions, please contact Nahyan Fancy, Associate Professor of History, DePauw University (nahyanfancy@depauw.edu). All applicants will be notified by January 20, 2019.


Funding provided by: John William & Dorothy A. Asher Fund in the Humanities and the Social Sciences; and the Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics, DePauw University.

La médecine légale en Égypte contemporaine

In Quest of Justice. Islamic Law and Forensic Medicine in Modern Egypt

Khaled Fahmy 

University of California Press
Pages: 408

November 2018

ISBN: 9780520279032

In Quest of Justice provides the first full account of the establishment and workings of a new kind of state in Egypt in the modern period. Drawing on groundbreaking research in the Egyptian archives, this highly original book shows how the state affected those subject to it and their response. Illustrating how shari’a was actually implemented, how criminal justice functioned, and how scientific-medical knowledges and practices were introduced, Khaled Fahmy offers exciting new interpretations that are neither colonial nor nationalist. Moreover he shows how lower-class Egyptians did not see modern practices that fused medical and legal purposes in new ways as contrary to Islam. This is a major contribution to our understanding of Islam and modernity.

Prix étudiant Roy Porter

2018-19 Roy Porter Student Essay Prize Competition

Call for applications


The Society for the Social History of Medicine (SSHM) now invites submissions to its 2018-19 Roy Porter Student Essay Prize Competition. This prize will be awarded to the best original, unpublished essay in the social history of medicine submitted to the competition as judged by the SSHM’s assessment panel.

The competition is open to undergraduate and post-graduate students in full or part-time education. The winner will be awarded £500.00, and his or her entry may also be published in the journal, Social History of Medicine. Please click here for a list of the published articles that were past competition winners.

You can read Social History of Medicine articles by past winners of the Roy Porter essay prize FREE online: http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/sochis/porter_prize.html.

Please see here for contest regulations and submission form.

The deadline for entries is 1st February 2019.

Any questions about the competition should be directed to our Executive Secretary.