The INHH (International Network for the History of Hospitals) has launched a new blog.

Have a look!

http://inhh1.wordpress.com/

SYMPOSIUM AT YORK...next 17th July!!

Following a number of conversations at Kalamazoo, I thought some of you might be interested in this one day conference on pilgrimage to be held at the University of York. It is free (including lunch). Places are limited but there are a few left so please get in touch soon if you would like to come. As you will see, it is designed to promote a broad interdisciplinary conversation about pilgrimage and I would love to have some more medievalists present!

best wishes

Dee Dyas


TAKING THE LONG VIEW IN PILGRIMAGE STUDIES
(material culture, gender, responses to place and landscape)
Humanities Research Centre, University of York

July 17    10.30 - 17.30

10.00  onwards            Coffee and registration

10.30 -11.30                  'Current directions in Anthropology'
                                      Simon Coleman (University of Toronto)
                                      'Developments in religious history'
                                      Alana Harris (Lincoln College, Oxford)

11.30 - 11.45                 Break

11.45 - 12.45                 'Tactile piety and the experience of place in Christian pilgrimage'
                                      Dee Dyas (University of York)
                                      'Embodied and gendered experience of pilgrimage landscape'
                                      Avril Maddrell (University of the West of England)

12.45 - 13.45                 Lunch

13.45 -14.45                  ‘Archaeology and sacred space’
                                      Kate Giles (University of York)
                                     ‘Life as a pilgrimage in the Celtic monastic tradition’
                                      Jonathan Wooding (University of Wales, Trinity, St David)
                                      'Space and Place in the making of Roman Catholicism as a world religion c.1500-1700'
                                      Simon Ditchfield (University of York)       

14.45- 15.45                  'The Hajj' 
                                      Venetia Porter, Curator of the British Museum exhibition
                                      'Migration, Diaspora and Religious Pilgrimage in   Comparative                  Perspective: Sacred Geographies and Ethical Landscapes'
                                      Pnina Werbner (Keele University)

15.45 - 16.15                 Tea

16.15 - 17.30                 Where is pilgrimage research going? General discussion
                                    
There is no charge for the conference and lunch will be provided but places are limited. Those interested should register by emailing Dr Dee Dyas (dee.dyas@york.ac.uk) as soon as possible.


--
Dr Dee Dyas
Senior Research Fellow
Director, Centre for the Study of Christianity and Culture
Berrick Saul, 119
University of York
York, YO10 5DD
Office: 01904 328094
Mobile: 07946 430360

dee.dyas@york.ac.uk

The Codex Calixtinus stolen from Santiago Cathedral's Library

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

Sorry to send this very discouraging new:

The Codex Calixtinus, one, if not, the most precious Medieval codex from the Spanish cultural heritage has been stolen from Santiago de Compostela Cathedral's Library. This is specially a very sad new for all hospital historians as its main content is kind of pilgrim's guide to Compostella produced in the 12th century.

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/cultura/Codice/Calixtino/sustraido/Catedral/Santiago/estaba/asegurado/elpepucul/20110707elpepucul_4/Tes

Teresa.

Hospital de la Santa Creu (Barcelona): Els llibres d'entrades de malalts, digitalitzats//Hospital of the Holy Cross (Barcelona): Patients' registers now on-line

Dear Friends:

The National Library of Catalonia has digitised the patients' registers of the Hospital of Santa Creu [Holy Cross] from Barcelona, between 1457 and 1789.

http://mdc.cbuc.cat/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=/hospstcreu

Very much looking forward you enjoying them.

Teresa.

---

Benvolguts amics:

Us informo que la Biblioteca de Catalunya ha digitalitzat els llibres d'entrades de malalts entre 1457 i 1768.

http://mdc.cbuc.cat/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=/hospstcreu

Espero els disfruteu.

Teresa.

Un tast de Bibliografia/ A Bibliography's taste (II)

Isenheim Altarpiece (Colmar, France)

Dear Friends,

Let's continue (thanks to collegues from Sciencia.cat, among others) with a selection of Bibliography on hospitals, the complete texts of which you can find on-line. Enjoy it!

Amics, 

Continuem (entre d'altres, gràcies als amics de Sciencia.cat) amb la selecció de Bibliografia hospitalària que podreu trobar a la xarxa. A disfrutar-ho.


Echevarría Arsuaga, Ana, “Esclavos musulmanes en los hospitales de cautivos de la Orden Militar de Santiago (siglos XII y XIII)”, Al-Qantara: Revista de Estudios Árabes, 28, 2 (2007), 465-488.


García i Díez, Ferran, “La pobresa a Igualada i les deixes testamentàries a l'Hospital Sant Bartomeu (segles XIV-XV)”, Miscellanea Aqualatensia, 8 (1997), 101-142.


Gironella i Delgà, Anna, “La cultura de la caritat: inventari dels béns de l'Hospital de la Seu (Girona, 31 de gener 1342)”, Annals de l'Institut d'Estudis Gironins, 42 (2001), 163-177.

"Save History of Medicine at UCL" /Salvem la Història de la Medicina a UCL

Dear Friends,

I have just read and signed the online petition "Save History of Medicine at UCL" (which I do copy below), distributed my Vivian Nutton, Emeritus Professor of History of Medicine, -a most admired mentor throughout my accademic life.

Dear Colleagues,

As many people will already know, on March 31, the Wellcome Trust abruptly announced that it intended to withdraw its funding from the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL, which would be closed completely on September 30, 2012. A similar statement followed from UCL.

You are invited to sign the petition against closure that is now online at 

http://www.petitiononline.com/WTCHOM/petition.html 

  

and to pass details of it on to others known to you who might also support our cause.

Further information is available on our website and the opportunity to comment on the closure can be found on http://friendsofwtchom.blogspot.com

With thanks for your support,

Vivian Nutton

Emeritus Professor of the History of Medicine

I personally agree with what this petition says, and I think you might

agree, too.  If you can spare a moment, please take a look, and consider

signing yourself.

Best wishes,

Teresa Huguet-Termes

Duodecim quodlibet: Interviewing a hospital historian

Interviewing Professor Peregrine Horden...

Dear friends and colleagues. Today we do start a new section on Speculum hospitale which aims to explore what do hospital historians (and other sort of openminded historians from other fields, as well) think about our fascinating discipline in an informal way. Twelve questions (honouring the twelve paupers privileged by a great number of Medieval and Early Modern hospital benefactors) will be put to a very interesting range of historians. Professor Peregrine Horden has been invited to inaugurate the section and has very kindly agreed to do so. Why starting by him? The answer is quite evident: he was the first historian to call 'hospital history' a 'discipline of rellevance', in 1988  (Social History of Medicine, 1 (1988): 359-374. Peregrine (if I may) is professor of Medieval History at Royal Holloway (University of London). Within his interests are: the Social history of early medieval medicine in Europe and Byzantium; the history of the family; Mediterranean studies; environmental history and the theory and philosophy of history. See a selection of his publications at the end of the interview and click on, if you would like to read a recent and most fascinating paper What's wrong with Early Medieval Medicine?. I do hope you enjoy the questions and the answers. Let me say THANK YOU so much to Professor Peregrine Horden for his collaboration and let me hearthily recommend to you all one of his great books on hospitals, his latest one entitled: Hospitals and Healing from Antiquity to the Later Middle Ages (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008).

Further acknowledgement: To Phil Banks for his help reviewing my questions' English style! 

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS


1.
Teresa: How and why did you come across medieval hospitals?
Peregrine: I knew I wanted to research on some aspect of medieval social history, and at Cambridge, where I started a PhD, my supervisor, Walter Ullmann, gave me his article on the ‘public welfare’ provision of the early medieval councils. It grew from there!


2.
Teresa: You do point out usually the extent to which your (always sceptical, I know!) gaze at hospitals has been much influenced by social anthropology. My tricky question would be: The connection between anthropology and medieval hospital history lies in the idea/tool of mentalities (please do correct me if I am not right). If so, what about the fact of mentalities having changed since medieval times: is the connection still useful? Why?
Peregrine: I use social anthropology more to help me understand cultures of healing past and present, rather than hospitals specifically. It is not a question of establishing continuities over time so much as of enlarging the range of possibilities with which I am – from my armchair! – familiar. I wish we did have a full anthropological study of modern hospital life, perhaps from the developing world, but I have yet to find it.


3.
Teresa: I hate the word ‘model’ but let me ask you, just in case… Is there a ‘medieval hospital model’?
Peregrine: Not for me: they vary too much over time: those of the twelfth century in Europe are not the same as the fifteenth, the latter with their elaborate liturgical life.


4.
Teresa: Once I heard an Early Modernist saying that the only things that are worth ‘historicising’ are: economy, political institutions, the ‘high’ culture, and the foreign relationships. The rest, according to him, and especially ‘daily life’ - for instance - was just like fashion, that is something that goes down and up and leaves. What do you think a hospitals historian - you, for instance - would have liked to answer?
Peregrine: Fashion has its serious history, just like the hospital. Changes in both require searching explanation. That early modernist is an idiot.


5.
Teresa: Hospitals and the Mediterranean: James Brodman, in his book ‘Charity and the poor in Medieval Catalonia’, points to the fact of the lack of hospitals studies in the Iberian peninsula and the extent to which the Italian or French interpretations have exerted a most influential impact, perhaps a too influential impact. As an expert on the history of the Mediterranean, what kind of old or new issues do you think Iberian hospitals, rather than the above mentioned, could better illuminate, if any?
Peregrine: Perhaps the influence (or lack of influence) of Islamic foundations, the chronology of these ‘fashions’ in hospital foundation, the role of the state, the military orders, the Counter-Reformation … the list is endless. On all these we need an Iberian perspective!


6.
Teresa: Medieval hospitals + late medieval consolidation processes = the ‘new General Hospital’: can we truly speak of a rationale? If so, which are its main targets not yet explored?
Peregrine: We need a substitute for ‘the great confinement' – indeed a substitute for Foucault tout court – but not another simplistic formulation. I am not yet sure what should be put in its place.


7.
Teresa: After the Variorum compilation of your work on hospitals: what is your next study on hospitals about or what would you like to do go next?
Peregrine: I am still writing a worldwide comparaive study of hospitals up to c. 1100 CE!


8.
Teresa: Rituals of public-health and the Western city: I loved your paper on public-health and the city in the High Middle Ages and your ‘use’ of hospitals. And what about rituals inside medieval hospitals? What can they tell us about cities’ public health strategies?
Peregrine: Thank you! I hadn’t thought of hospital rituals in that way but the liturgical or sacramental ones from the later Middle Ages could be seen as microcosms of collective public health measures. As I’ve argued, there is more to public health history than cesspits and cemeteries.


9.
Teresa: A difficult question: What is the most fascinating paper/book on hospitals have you ever read?
Peregrine: I have always admired the articles and books of Carole Rawcliffe and John Henderson and most of my ideas are stolen from them.


10.
Teresa: Hospitals and landscape: What do you think hospitals can tell us about history of landscape? Is this a question that can only able to be addressed to rural hospitals?
Peregrine: No, I think hospitals can profoundly alter the urban landscape – or be thought to do so. Look at the cover of The Impact of Hospitals. I don’t feel historians have given enough attention to this. A theme for another INHH conference?!


11.
Teresa: A question on comparative Hospital History: What would it be worth to comparing, in your own, between hospitals? Where are the limits of comparing?
Peregrine: I think there are no inherent limitations. I have for instance been fascinated to compare the similar chronology of hospital foundations in twelfth-century Europe and Cambodia.


12.
Teresa: Where is the future of Hospital History? Where should it go next?
Peregrine: Ad fontes! We need many more archival studies of a quite traditional kind as well as renewed exploration of the political, economic, religious and topographical contexts.




PUBLICATIONS ON HOSPITALS, MEDICINE AND DISEASE:

Hospitals and Healing from Antiquity to the Later Middle Ages (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008).

(ed. with John Henderson and Alessandro Pastore), The Impact of Hospitals 300-2000 (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2007)

(ed.), Music as Medicine: The History of Music Therapy since Antiquity (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000).

(co-author Nicholas Purcell), The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History (Oxford: Blackwell's, 2000).

(co-editor, with Emilie Savage-Smith) The Year 1000: Medical Practice at the End of the First Millennium, special issue of Social History of Medicine, 13.2 (August 2000).