Translating Medicine c.800-1900:Articulations and Disarticulations

Research located at the nexus of medicine and translation deals with some of the fundamentals of human experience: the most basic drive to survive and flourish, and the urge to gather and to share information that might assist in this. Using a series of case-studies ranging from ninth-century Baghdad, to fourteenth-century Aragon, to seventeenth-century Cartagena, to nineteenth-century Bengal, this volume weaves together an interconnected, long-view history of the translation of medicine. The geographically and temporally diverse contexts of our case studies explore common themes and divergent experiences, connected by our historical actors’ varied endeavours to “translate” knowledge about health and the body across languages, practices, and media. Collectively, we offer a new approach to histories of (medical) knowledge, re-localising and deconstructing traditional narratives, and de-emphasising well-worn dichotomies.