Knowledge, Ethics and Representation of Medicine and Health - Historical Perspectives. (360G-Wellcome-082800_A_07_Z)

This project aims to increase our understanding of the ways in which, from classical antiquity until the present day, medical knowledge and practice have been defined, established and validated, professionally institutionalised and ethically justified, and communicated and represented to a variety of audiences through a range of different textual and visual media. It will apply these questions to a number of different periods in the history of Western (and partly also non-Western) medicine, with particular emphasis on the mind-body interface and to the areas of gender and sexuality; and it will take due account of the social, geographical, institutional and environmental aspects of healthcare provision. Methodologically, it will do so through historical analysis of textual and visual sources in their social and cultural contexts, as well as demographic, archaeological and palaeopathological methods of research. The specific intended outcomes of the project are (a) scholarly publication s; (b) public engagement activities; (c) training of research students and nurturing of a new generation of scholars in the history of medicine; (d) increasing convergence between medicine and the humanities, both at student and at professional level.