Submitter:
Email:
Type: Call for Papers
State:
Nation:
Date: --
CFP: The Health of the Realm: The historical context of medicine in the
early middle ages
IMC Leeds 7-10 July 2014

While interest in medicine and medical texts has been growing in recent
years, its historical context has largely been neglected. Illness and
treatment do not exist in a vacuum: just as chronic stomach pain finds a
place alongside Byzantine diplomacy and the Lombard threat in the
letters
of Gregory the Great, so the Anglo-Saxon Bald's Leechbook transcribes a
remedy sent to a sick King Alfred, and Bede records the plague that
brought
the monastery of Wearmouth-Jarrow to its knees. Medical texts were the
product of the circumstances, anxieties, and philosophies of their
times,
just as the times were shaped by the health of those who lived them.
This
session hopes to explore the historical framework of illness, care, and
the
transmission of medical knowledge. We are looking for papers on any
aspect
of early medieval medicine that draws on broader themes, on topics
including but not limited to:

- Cultural relations and the transmission of texts
- Trade and the market for materia medica
- The economy of medical care
- Transmission
- Vernacular and Latin sources
- Linguistic development and medical texts
- Leadership and Illness
- Death and illness, 'the Great Levellers'
- Soul, body, and the Church

Please send an abstract of no more than 300 words to jb781@cam.ac.uk by
September 10, 2013

--
~~~~~
Christine Voth
Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic
University of Cambridge