Premodern Health, Disease, and Disability
About the Book Series
Premodern Health, Disease, and Disability is an interdisciplinary series devoted to all topics concerning health from all parts of the globe and including all premodern time periods: Antiquity, the Middle Ages and Early Modern. The series is global, including but not limited to Europe, the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and Asia. We encourage submissions examining medical care, such as health practitioners, hospitals and infirmaries, medicines and herbal remedies, medical theories and texts, care givers and therapies. Other topics pertinent to the scope of the series include research into premodern disability studies such as injury, impairment, chronic illness, pain, and all experiences of bodily and/or mental difference. Studies of diseases and how they were perceived and treated are also of interest. Furthermore, we are looking for works on medicinal plants and gardens; ecclesiastical and legal approaches to medical issues; archaeological and scientific findings concerning premodern health; and any other studies related to health and health care prior to 1800.
Cultural Perceptions of Health, Illness and the Body in Medieval and Early Modern Europe
1st Edition
Edited
By Anni Hella, Anu Korhonen
April 22, 2026
Cultural Perceptions of Health, Illness and Medicine in Medieval and Early Modern Europe explores the rich cultural history of bodily experience through diverse case studies spanning from Italy to Sweden and from England to the Levant. How did medieval and early modern Europeans experience and...
Medieval Communities and the Mad: Narratives of Crime and Mental Illness in Late Medieval France
1st Edition
By Aleksandra Nicole Pfau
January 10, 2026
The concept of madness as a challenge to communities lies at the core of legal sources. Medieval Communities and the Mad: Narratives of Crime and Mental Illness in Late Medieval France considers how communal networks, ranging from the locale to the realm, responded to people who were considered mad...
Disabled Clerics in the Late Middle Ages: Un/suitable for Divine Service?
1st Edition
By Ninon Dubourg
January 09, 2026
The petitions received and the letters sent by the Papal Chancery during the Late Middle Ages attest to the recognition of disability at the highest levels of the medieval Church. These documents acknowledge the existence of physical and/or mental impairments, with the papacy issuing dispensations ...
Gender, Health, and Healing, 1250-1550
1st Edition
Edited
By Sara Ritchey, Sharon Strocchia
December 01, 2025
This path-breaking collection offers an integrative model for understanding health and healing in Europe and the Mediterranean from 1250 to 1550. By foregrounding gender as an organizing principle of healthcare, the contributors challenge traditional binaries that ahistorically separate care from ...
Health and Society in Early Modern Sweden
1st Edition
Edited
By Mari Eyice, Charlotta Forss
December 01, 2025
The understanding of what health is and how it can be maintained has changed through history. Questions like who can perform healing? and what sort of bodies are considered healthy? have elicited widely divergent responses in different societies. This volume explores how health was understood and ...
Hospitals in Communities of the Late Medieval Rhineland
1st Edition
By Lucy Barnhouse
December 01, 2025
From the mid-twelfth century onwards, the development of European hospitals was shaped by their claim to the legal status of religious institutions, with its attendant privileges and responsibilities. The questions of whom hospitals should serve and why they should do so have recurred — and been ...
Medical Case Studies (Consilia medica) of the Early Modern Period: Great Pox Documented
1st Edition
By Bohdana Divisová
December 01, 2025
Consilia played an important role in not only medieval but also early modern professional health literature. A literary ‘consilium’ consisted of a written statement of one particular case, including the patient's condition and disease as well as advice concerning medical treatment. In the sixteenth...
Monstrosity, Bodies, and Knowledge in Early Modern England: Curiosity to See and Behold
1st Edition
By Whitney Dirks
December 01, 2025
In 1680, the poor cottager Mary Herring gave birth to conjoined twins. At two weeks of age, they were kidnapped to be shown for money, and their deaths shortly thereafter gave rise to a four-year legal battle over ownership and income. The Herring twins’ microhistory weaves throughout this book, as...
Saint Anthony's Fire from Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century
1st Edition
By Alessandra Foscati
December 01, 2025
After the discovery of the ergotism epidemics (poisoning caused by ingesting the fungal toxin of rye) and its etiology, eighteenth-century physicians interpreted medieval chronicles in their medical texts in order to recognize the occurrences of ergotic diseases through retrospective diagnosis. ...
Saints, Infirmity, and Community in the Late Middle Ages
1st Edition
By Jenni Kuuliala
December 01, 2025
Bodily suffering and patient, Christlike attitudes towards that suffering were among the key characteristics of sainthood throughout the medieval period. Saints, Infirmity, and Community in the Late Middle Ages analyses the meanings given to putative saints' bodily infirmities in late medieval ...
Viewing Disability in Medieval Spanish Texts: Disgraced or Graced
1st Edition
By Connie Scarborough
December 01, 2025
This book is one of the first to examine medieval Spanish canonical works for their portrayals of disability in relationship to theological teachings, legal precepts, and medical knowledge. Connie L. Scarborough shows that physical impairments were seen differently through each lens. Theology at ...
Women, Food, and Diet in the Middle Ages: Balancing the Humours
1st Edition
By Theresa Vaughan
December 01, 2025
What can anthropological and folkloristic approaches to food, gender, and medicine tell us about these topics in the Middle Ages beyond the textual evidence itself? Women, Food, and Diet in the Middle Ages: Balancing the Humours uses these approaches to look at the textual traditions of dietary ...