Call for papers
Biography and medical history 16th-20th centuries
Biografie und medizinische Geschichte zwischen 16. und 20. Jahrhundert
La biographie et l’histoire de la médecine entre le 16e et le 20e siècle

SGGMN – Réunion annuelle 2017
Friday 15th September 2017, Geneva (Switzerland)

For medical historians, biographies of great men are related to teleological con-ceptions of history and naïve assumptions as to what medicine was in the past. The rare serious historical biographies are generally considered more for their literary qualities than their historical inputs. And yet, historians regularly encoun-ter rich archival material and sometimes even reflective texts written by interest-ing individuals. Such documents yield numerous possibilities for research and open fresh perspectives on the history of medicine’s past. How did individual physicians practice and how did they perceive their own roles? What were their understandings of disease? The potential for research appears to be boundless. From a historiographical viewpoint, working on personal and reflective docu-ments enables both to question established assumptions about past medical fig-ures and practices, and to confront professional (medical) conceptions and aca-demic readings of medical history.

The goal of this scientific meeting is to question the pertinence and measure the potential impact of work on biographical sources on our understanding of medi-cine’s past. What can biographical data tell us about practices and realities in the past? Can a serious historical work transcend the limits of the biographical genre ? Potential speakers are invited in particular to propose papers that breech methodological questions.

Workshop’s languages.: English, French, German
Organisation: Philip Rieder, Institut Ethique Histoire Humanités (UNIGE)
Scientific committee: Francesca Arena, Philip Rieder, Alexandre Wenger.

Please send your abstract before the 30th of April 2017 to phi-lip.rieder@unige.ch