The Humanities in Medicine Program's annual Linda & Charles Wilson Lecture presents Dr. Olivia Weisser, discussing her new book, The Dreaded Pox: Sex and Disease in Early Modern London, on Thursday, April 9, 5pm, at the Great Plains Art Museum.
This talk offers a history of London life from 1650-1750 from the point of view of a shameful sexually transmitted disease. A substantial number of Londoners contracted venereal disease, yet we know relatively little about what it was like to live with it. The talk recovers everyday experiences of disease by turning away from medical institutions and learned writing and toward streets, shops, and homes where ordinary patients and healers interacted.
In particular, it looks at how patients shopped for pox cures using addresses printed on over 700 advertisements. There was a substantial market for treating the pox that included healers peddling pills and potions alongside non-medical retailers like bakers and grocers who sold treatments secretly out of their shops—the leading edge of a vast proprietary drug trade over a century earlier than historians presumed.
Olivia Weisser is Associate Professor of History at the University of
Massachusetts Boston.