Disease and Healing in Global History

Drawing from rare materials held by the Rare Books Collection and Archives, both part of Rare and Distinctive Collections CU Boulder Libraries, this exhibit highlights how peoples of the past lived with and treated disease from the High Middle Ages through the early decades of the twentieth century. 

Among the sources examined in our exploration of disease and healing in global history are Hartmann Schedel's Nuremberg Chronicle, Fray Bernardino de Sahagún's Florentine Codex, the botanical illusrations of Maria Sibylla Merian and Elizabeth Blackwell, Denis Diderot's Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire Raisonné des Sciences, des Arts et des Métiers, and Benjamin Rush's Observations upon the Origin of Malignant Bilious, or Yellow Fever in Philadelphia, and on the Means of Preventing it.  

Page through our exhibit to read more about the influence of Hippocrates, Galen, and Dioscorides on centuries of medical thought and about the changes brought by the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, and the development of 'germ theory.' 

This exhibit was written and co-curated by the students of CU Boulder's Disease and Public Health in Global History, an online History course offered by CU Boulder's Division of Continuing Education and Professional Studies taught by Susan Guinn-Chipman. 

Special thanks are due to Sean Babbs and the Rare Books Collection, CU Boulder Libraries for the use of their collections and for their time and support.

Credits

This exhibit was curated by the students of Disease and Public Health in Global History. The banner art above was adapted from James Gillray, The Cow-Pock_ or the Wonderful Effects of the New Inoculation! Wellcome Library 11755i. See also James Gillray, Rare and Distinctive Collections, CU Boulder Libraries.