Nous proposons de nous retrouver le mardi 24 juin prochain en D 513 à la Maison de la Recherche de Sorbonne Université (25 rue Serpente) à 17 H 45 pour une présentation par Karen Bloom Gevirtz de son ouvrage: The Apothecary’s Wife: The Hidden History of Medicine and How It Became a Commodity (University of California Press, 2024)
Au plaisir de vous y retrouver,
L. Cottegnies (pour Sandrine Parageau, Alexis Tadié, Anne-Marie Miller-Blaise, Ariane Fennetaux)
Karen Bloom Gevirtz : THE APOTHECARY’S WIFE: The Hidden History of Medicine and How it Became a Commodity
The running joke in Europe for centuries was that anyone in a hurry to die should call the doctor. As far back as ancient Greece, physicians were notorious for administering painful and often fatal treatments—and charging for the privilege. For the most effective treatment, the ill and injured went to the women in their lives. This system lasted hundreds of years. It was gone in less than a century. Contrary to the familiar story, medication did not improve during the Scientific Revolution. Yet somehow, between 1650 and 1740, the domestic female and the physician switched places in the cultural consciousness: she became the ineffective, potentially dangerous quack, he the knowledgeable, trustworthy expert. The professionals normalized the idea of paying them for what people already got at home without charge, laying the foundation for today’s global for-profit medication system. A revelatory history of medicine, The Apothecary’s Wife challenges the myths of the triumph of science and instead uncovers a fascinating truth.
Karen Bloom Gevirtz received her PhD in British and American Literature from Emory University, where her dissertation was a finalist for the Lore Metzger Dissertation Prize. She specializes in 17th– and 18th-century British literature with a focus on gender and the emergence of scientific discourse. After authoring three books and co-editing a fourth during nearly 30 years as a university professor, she withdrew from teaching and the academy and concentrates on research and writing. Her latest book, The Apothecary’s Wife: The Hidden History of Medication and How it Became a Commodity, came out in November 2024 from Head of Zeus, an imprint of Bloomsbury, and the University of California Press.
La séance sera hybride: