Founded in 1929, we are the oldest academic department of the History of Medicine in the English-speaking world. We are dedicated to scholarship on the histories of medicine, disease, the health sciences, and their relationships to society.
Upcoming Events
March 27, 2025
3:00pm
Colloquium Speaker: Gabrielle Robbins
Dr. Gabrielle Robbins of Johns Hopkins University will present “A Factory of Dreams: Conversions,” as part of our Spring 2025 Colloquium presented by the Program in the History of Science, Medicine, & Technology.
Who: Gabrielle Robbins
When: March 27, 2025 at 3pm
Where: Hybrid: In person in Welch 303 and via Zoom. For more information and to receive pre-circulated papers, contact Marian Robbins at myrobbins@jhmi.edu.
Title: A Factory of Dreams: Conversions
April 3, 2025
4:00pm
29th Hideyo Noguchi Lecture featuring Dr. Alisha Rankin
We are pleased to announce that Dr. Alisha Rankin of Tufts University will present “The Skillful Surgeon: Surgical Expertise and Contested Authority in Early Modern Europe” for the 29th Hideyo Noguchi Lecture.
Presented by the Institute for the History of Medicine and co-sponsored by the Department of Medicine and the Department of Surgery, this hybrid event is open to all, but please register here.
When: 4/3 at 4pm
Where: Mountcastle Auditorium, Preclinical Teaching Building, East Baltimore Campus, JHU
Register: Click to register.
Dr. Alisha Rankin is Professor and Chair of History at Tufts University and a co-editor of the Bulletin of the History of Medicine. Her work focuses on the history of medicine and science in early modern Europe, with a particular focus on questions of experiment, expertise and authority. She is the author of two award-winning books, Panaceia's Daughters: Noblewomen as Healers in Early Modern Europe (Chicago, 2013) and The Poison Trials: Wonder Drugs, Experiment, and the Battle for Authority in Renaissance Science (Chicago, 2021), alongside two edited collections and multiple articles. Currently she is co-editing the early modern volume of the Cambridge History of Medicine and working on a project on surgery, expertise, and authority in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe and a project on the witches’ brew in early modern Europe and America.
Read MoreHighlights
We are committed to exploring the history of medicine in its broadest sense, both geographically and chronologically; we offer a range of graduate and undergraduate courses on topics such as the History of Chinese Medicine; Colonial Knowledge; Health and Healing in Early Modern England; Darwin, Freud, and Pasteur; and Disease Control in Historical Perspective.
About us
The Institute of the History of Medicine is located in the William H. Welch Medical Library, named after the first Chair of the Department of the History of Medicine. In establishing the first Department of the History of Medicine in the English-speaking world, Welch sought to provide a humanistic component to medical education and public health.
Library
The departmental library of the Institute, the Historical Collection is also the resource center for the history of medicine for the Hopkins community, and hosts visiting scholars from the United States and abroad. A research collection covering all aspects of the history of medicine, public health and allied sciences, it contains over 70,000 volumes. A large, comprehensive library of secondary sources accompanies a smaller, but choice collection of rare books, manuscripts, prints, photographs, medals, stamps and objects.
BHM
The Bulletin of the History of Medicine is the official publication of the Johns Hopkins Institute of the History of Medicine and the American Association for the History of Medicine (AAHM) and is published by The Johns Hopkins University Press. A leading journal in its field for more than three quarters of a century, the Bulletin spans the social, cultural, and scientific aspects of the history of medicine worldwide.
