Diseases long ago and far away 2011 03 21

Diseases long ago and far away: Does doctor's knowledge answer historians' questions? Audio Quality: please note the audio quality of this particular podcast is not optimal Professor Hamlin, who teaches the history of science and of the environment at Notre Dame, is the author of exemplary studies of public health, including A Science of Impurity and Public Health and Social Justice in the Age of Chadwick. His latest book was Cholera: the Biography. Chris Hamlin takes a rather contentious position in this session of the Global History seminar which produced a good and interesting debate amongst those present. Hamlin asks the question ‘why should we care?’ in regards to historians attempts to diagnose old diseases and illnesses through knowledge of modern medicine. The problem with such diagnoses is that historians are rarely in a position to be able to say for certain and at any rate are imposing modern understandings of medicine onto medieval and early modern knowledge. Does it matter what disease actually caused the Black Death and how useful, really, is statistics that suggest high percentages of deaths connected specifically to that one disease? Hamlin argues that the understanding of the time is more important and that other illnesses and infections caused by (amongst other factors) malnutrition are often ignored in such simplistic categorisations. Hamlin’s paper is about the practice of historians and asks the question whether changes should be made to the way we approach such subjects. Debate throughout the presentation suggests that not everyone agrees with Hamlin’s position, but nevertheless does force them to find reasons why they think that way. Chris Hamlin