Edited by Gianna Pomata (NHC Fellow, 2003–04) and Nancy G. Siraisi The early modern genre of historia connected the study of nature and the study of culture from the early Renaissance to the eighteenth century. The ubiquity of historia as a descriptive method across a variety of disciplines—including natural history, medicine, antiquarianism, and philology—indicates how … Continued
By Miguel SabucoEdited and translated by Gianna Pomata (NHC Fellow, 2003–04) With unprecedented clarity and care, Gianna Pomata brings an important text in the history of scientific authorship to the attention of modern-day readers. Published in Spain in 1587 under the name of Oliva Sabuco, True Philosophy of Human Nature, of which The True Medicine is part, was soon … Continued
By Mab Segrest (NHC Fellow, 2017–18) Today, 90 percent of psychiatric beds are located in jails and prisons across the United States, institutions that confine disproportionate numbers of African Americans. After more than a decade of research, the celebrated scholar and activist Mab Segrest locates the deep historical roots of this startling fact, turning her … Continued
By Jan Goldstein (NHC Fellow, 2006–07) Hysteria Complicated by Ecstasy offers a rare window into the inner life of a person ordinarily inaccessible to historians: a semiliterate peasant girl who lived almost two centuries ago, in the aftermath of the French Revolution. Eighteen-year-old Nanette Leroux fell ill in 1822 with a variety of incapacitating nervous symptoms. … Continued
By Leon R. Kass (NHC Fellow, 1984–85) The relation between the pursuit of knowledge and the conduct of life—between science and ethics, each broadly conceived—has in recent years been greatly complicated by developments in the science of life. This book examines the ethical questions involved in prenatal screening, in vitro fertilization, artificial life forms, and … Continued
Edited by Florence Eliza Glaze (NHC Fellow, 2010–11) and Brian K. Nance
By Margaret Humphreys (NHC Fellow, 2004–05) Black soldiers in the American Civil War were far more likely to die of disease than were white soldiers. In Intensely Human, historian Margaret Humphreys explores why this uneven mortality occurred and how it was interpreted at the time. In doing so, she uncovers the perspectives of mid-nineteenth-century physicians and … Continued
Edited by Michael MacDonald (NHC Fellow, 1990–91) Witchcraft was at its height in Elizabethan London. Edward Jorden showed that hysteria and not demons lay behind the witch-craze. Edward Jorden's Briefe Discourse of a Disease Called the Suffocation of the Mother (1603) is said to have reclaimed the demoniacally possessed for medicine and to have introduced the concept … Continued
By Bernard Gert (NHC Fellow, 2001–02) and K. Danner Clouser This book is the result of over 30 years of collaboration among its authors. It uses the systematic account of our common morality developed by one of its authors to provide a useful foundation for dealing with the moral problems and disputes that occur in … Continued
By Paula A. Michaels (NHC Fellow, 2008–09) The Lamaze method is virtually synonymous with natural childbirth in America. In the 1970s, taking Lamaze classes was a common rite of passage to parenthood. The conscious relaxation and patterned breathing techniques touted as a natural and empowering path to the alleviation of pain in childbirth resonated with the feminist … Continued