Cultures of Healing: Medieval and After (Variorum Collected Studies)

Book info: Cultures of Healing: Medieval and After (Variorum Collected Studies) (Hardcover, 378 pages) – Routledge, 2019. Language: English.

This volume brings together for the first time an updated collection of articles exploring poverty, poor relief, illness, and health care as they intersected in Western Europe, the Mediterranean and the Middle East, during a ‘long’ Middle Ages. It offers a thorough and wide-ranging investigation into the institution of the hospital and the development of medicine and charity, with focuses on the history of music therapy and the history of ideas and perceptions fundamental to psychoanalysis.

The collection is both sequel and complement to Horden’s earlier volume of collected studies, Hospitals and Healing from Antiquity to the Later Middle Ages (2008). It will be welcomed by all those interested in the premodern history of healing and welfare for its breadth of scope and scholarly depth.

‘Horden’s scholarship is subtle, effortlessly erudite and witty’ – Social History of Medicine

‘Scholars and researchers interested in health and medicine during the medieval era, the history of hospitals in western Eurasia, and/or the history of charity and welfare will find a welcome companion in this volume’ - Julie Adamo, H-Disability (H-Net Reviews; February 2020)

Peregrine Horden is Professor of Medieval History at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is co-author, with Nicholas Purcell, of The Corrupting Sea (2000) and of both its forthcoming successor and a collection of supplementary studies entitled The Boundless Sea. He is also writing a global history of hospitals.