Apologies for the cross posting. 



CALL FOR SESSION PAPERS

Places of Medical Teaching

For the:

XIIth Colloquium Hippocraticum

Universiteit Leiden, 24, 25 and 26 August, 2005

Much scholarship has been devoted to how medical teaching was carried out in the classical era, but passing mention is only given to the actual places where the teaching occurred. We know that medical education could be gained at 'university city' libraries in Athens or Alexandria, for example, at sanctuaries such as the one dedicated to Aesculapius on Kos and in hospitals during the Islamic period. Yet, we know little about how the structures were expected to be arranged to facilitate a specific learning environment. Although distinctive institutionalised architecture (e.g. schools and university buildings) is rare prior to the 17th and 18th centuries, there have, nonetheless, always been specific structures, places within structures or locations within urban or rural areas, that were considered best for teaching particular subjects. The chosen area for these spaces was most likely organised in accordance to local traditions, but perhaps the larger libraries, such as that at Alexandria, might have been arranged with external influences, given that they were visited by scholars from both far and near. Though why is it important to know how these areas were arranged? When one thinks of medical teaching in the modern western tradition one knows that rooms need to be organised so students have an optimal vantage-point for observing dissections, or space to perform a dissection. This is because western medical philosophies are concerned with the physiological arrangement of organs within the body. Students and doctors are expected to know their functions in order to heal a patient, both through surgery and pharmacology. In comparison, students of traditional Tibetan medicine, for example, are taught an entirely different philosophy on bodily functions. There is no healing through surgery, only pharmacology, and students are taught through mnemonic devices like rhymes and by learning to recognise a large variety of plants within their natural environment. Thus, there are context-specific relationships between built spaces and scientific practices, and those spaces are central in the reproduction of particular skills and bodies of knowledge. Each medical philosophy will be a determining factor in, and be determined by, the spatial arrangement of the teaching space.

In archaeology there has been much study devoted to the phenomenology of landscape. Simply put, this theoretical approach is concerned with how people move through, arrange and perceive their environment. By understanding how different societies in the past visualised their landscape we can learn something about how they thought and how social and symbolic relations were maintained. The same theory can be applied to structures and smaller spaces. Fortunately, information about spatial arrangements can be found in the literary, pictorial and archaeological record and anyone interested in this area can take an interdisciplinary approach to the subject.

This session aims to consider the actual spaces in which students were taught medicine in the past (any period) and why these areas were chosen or arranged in specific manners. Since there were different philosophical ideas about medicine it is interesting to consider how these might have influenced the arrangement of spaces used for teaching, and if these arrangements might have determined the location and/or design of subsequent medical schools, such as in the Islamic, western European medieval or renaissance traditions. Papers addressing ritual and space, cultural use of space and movement through space, are just some ideas that can be considered to learn more about perceptions of medicine in the past. As this is an area in its infancy, preliminary discussions about the structural remains and layout can be used to instigate an area of medical history that has seen little analysis. Thus, examinations into the physical spaces devoted to learning can help us to understand how medical philosophies might have influenced spaces for learning, or how these spaces might have ultimately influenced the way medicine was taught.


Please send abstracts by the 1st of December 2004 to Dr. Patricia Baker, School of European Culture and Languages, University of Kent, Canterbury, CT2 7NF, UK [log in to unmask] Telephone +44 (0)1227 82 7349

For further Information about the conference please contact Dr H.F.J. (Manfred) Horstmanshoff, Universiteit Leiden, Oude Geschiedenis, Postbus 9515, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands, tel. +31-71-5272664 (direct), +31-71-5272651 (switchboard)fax +31-71-5272652, e-mail: [log in to unmask], web site: http://www.gltc.leidenuniv.nl/