'The importance of medical history: Transnational and cross-cultural perspectives on a multi-faceted discipline' conference to be held in Mumbai, India from 15th to 17th November 2007. (360G-Wellcome-082642_Z_07_A)

The importance of medical history: Trans-national and cross-cultural perspectives on a multi-faceted discipline The proposed meeting will be the first of its type in the South Asian sub-continent - dealing with the important questions of historical method and historiography, from trans-national and cross-disciplinary perspectives; it will allow the audience access to a plethora of perspectives on how to study HOM. The projected audience will be university and college teaching, research and administrative staff of all grades, we well as undergraduate and post-graduate students, doctors, print and TV journalists, and independent researchers. A number of well-known scholars have agreed to attend the meeting, as they acknowledge the usefulness of an event like this in popularising HOM in an important education centre in Asia. These academics, who are attached to a number of Wellcome Trust-funded units, will draw upon an important item of their research - dealing with Europe, North America, Asia and further afield - to develop trans-national perspectives of how to study HOM. This meeting will engender a lot of discussion, which is critically important for an endeavour that seeks to provide new insights to post-and under-graduate teachers about important international developments in the discipline, and the most effective ways of teaching and carrying out research. Themes to be covered: History of pharmacology; Anatomy; Global trade and medicine; Medical genetics and gender; Medicine in the early modern period; Public health in 19th and 20th centuries; Global health programmes and disease eradication; War and medicine; International perspectives on rabies; Scottish doctors and British empire; Obstetrics and surgery; Cross-disciplinary perspectives on leprosy and empire; Hospitals; Medicine and 'witchcraft' in the early modern period; Healthcare in colonial Mumbai/India; Health of industrial labour; Oral histories of contemporary medicine and biological science; History of medical practice and multiple meanings of health.