BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Talks.cam//talks.cam.ac.uk//
X-WR-CALNAME:Talks.cam
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:Biographical medicine: London consultants explain disease - Harry 
 M. Marks (Johns Hopkins University)
DTSTART:20080117T163000Z
DTEND:20080117T180000Z
UID:TALK9559@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Lauren Kassell
DESCRIPTION:It is a truism of medical historiography that\, with the rise 
 of pathological anatomy in early nineteenth-century Paris\, physicians foc
 used their attention on the signs of the physical body\, neglecting patien
 ts’ accounts of experience which had dominated in a client centred medic
 ine. At best\, an interest in the biography of disease survived on the mar
 gins of clinical practice\, far away from the centres of hospital medicine
 . This paper examines the activities of a group of prominent London consul
 tant physicians – William Gull\, Sam Wilks and James Paget – who after
  years of doing and teaching morbid anatomy\, turned to natural history to
  understand the variable manifestations of disease in their patients. They
  turned as well to organizing British general practitioners in a programme
  of research into the biography of disease. While an interest in natural h
 istory is not unknown in the second half of the nineteenth century\, I wil
 l argue that this turn to the natural history of disease was rooted in the
  distinctive career paths of London consultants who spent multiple decades
  doing morbid anatomy before developing their clinical practices. It was t
 he limitations of morbid anatomy\, as they saw it\, which led them to thei
 r interest in biographical medicine. Beyond the relevance of this story to
  medical history\, I would like to explore two issues: 1) remnants of the 
 zeitgeist – how do we best account for intellectual/epistemological deve
 lopments in a discipline which resemble contemporaneous developments in ot
 her disciplines\, without resorting to difficult claims about influence an
 d/or zeitgeist? 2) Survivals: how do we best understand the survival\, bey
 ond the immediate milieu in which they originate\, of heterodox intellectu
 al traditions like the one analysed in this paper?
LOCATION:Seminar Room 2\, History and Philosophy of Science\, Department o
 f
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR