Sponsored by: Archaeological Institute of America
This lecture analyzes how a range of media worked in conjunction with texts to produce a story of ancient medicine (later described as Hippocratic medicine) that both proposed new practices and also built on the established visual cues associated with healing gods from across the wider ancient Mediterranean and ancient Near East, especially the gods Asclepius and Hygeia. The figure of Hippocrates is visually assimilated into a geneaology with Asclepius in a move that excises Hygeia and women healers. Representational art associated with early medicine narrates a familiar story of the doctor as god, while portable arts, body-part dedications, curses and spells make visible practices and people traditionally excluded from histories of early medicine. This lecture will explore what I am calling a feminist history of early medicine
Kershaw Lecture
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