Horning Lecture Series: Exposed to the Lazy and Ignorant: Medical Authority and Print Culture in Early Modern Medicine

The seventeenth century witnessed exponential growth in the number of printed medical books, from academic anatomies to popular herbals. This talk examines the ways that medical authors from an array of backgrounds approached print to bend it--as a technology, but also as a social medium--to their needs and to construct, or at least preserve, their medical authority. Rare medical books from the SCARC collection will be on display.

Nicole Howard is Associate Professor of History at Eastern Oregon University. her research focuses on early modern science and print culture. Her first book is The Book: The Life Store of a Technology (Greenwood Press 2005, reprinted in paperback by Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009). Her current project, under contract with Johns Hopkins, is Loath to Print: The Reluctance of the Scientific Author: 1500-1750.