• Fall Semester and New Experiences.

    It’s going to be a busy semester ahead for me. I’m teaching a course at Ryerson University, Medicine from Antiquity to the 1500s, TAing at University of Toronto for a course on the history of evolutionary biology, logging hours at the Writing Center at my department, and somehow finding time to continue writing my dissertation. I came… Continue Reading

  • Votive Ear

    From Science Museum London & Wellcome Images Collection: Votive offerings were presented to a god, either in the hope of a cure or as thanks for one. They were made in the shape of the afflicted body part – in this case a person’s ears. They may have been experiencing deafness or infection. Made from… Continue Reading

  • Duncan Campbell

    The play also raised a timely social issue, that of the need of England’s charity movement to establish educational schools for the deaf; but the transference of public perceptions of the deaf and dumb from France to Britain through this play was no means done so in isolation—the public were already aware of the necessities… Continue Reading

  • Objects of Sympathy

    While in France, Enlightenment philosophy emphasized the notion that man could be released from ignorance and superstition through rational knowledge and experience, the situation was drastically different in England. Instead of beings seen as evidence of the philosophies of the Enlightenment philosophers or reflective of the political ideologies of the time, the deaf in England… Continue Reading

  • The Giant’s Shoulders: The Fiftieth Anniversary Edition

    Welcome history of science aficionados, to the fiftieth anniversary edition of The Giant’s Shoulders! Don’t let Newton’s grouchiness sway you–you’re in for quite a treat! First, a very happy birthday to Sascha the canine philosopher dog! We’ll have a toast in your honor and you can hump or chase squirrels or whatever you fancy. I want to… Continue Reading

  • What do you do when you’re sick?

    I like to ask my students this question at the beginning of the term to help them get a mindset of what disease and illness was like in the early modern period and medieval ages. When confronted with the inevitable reality of disease, how did people of the Middle Ages react? Of the different forms… Continue Reading

  • Leigh’s New Picture of London

    On the London Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb (est. 1792): By this excellent institution, extensive and successful arrangements are made to teach even the deaf and dumb! So long ago as 1653, the celebrated Dr. Wallis first laid down the principles by which the deaf and dumb might be instructed, (Vide the Philosophical Transactions… Continue Reading

  • Historiography of the Market for Health

    Parallel to my research on socio-educational institutions for the deaf, I’m hoping to tie together themes of technological progress, entrepreneurialism and consumerism with the broad and diverse medical community and marketplace—what we can aptly call medical pluralism. There’s been a lot of historical scholarship on the complex dynamics that wove together a diverse group of… Continue Reading

  • Deaf World/Hearing World

    As some of you may have gathered from my Tweets, my paper has been selected for the Deaf World/Hearing World: Spaces, Techniques, and Things in Culture and History Conference to take place on December 10-11 in Berlin. The conference is sponsored by the Max Planck Institute and Project Biocultures at the University of Chicago. The… Continue Reading

  • From comme les monstres to hommes de la nature

    The afternoon of 1799, drew attention to the Théâtre de la République, where just five weeks after Napoleon’s seizure of power, the dramatist Jean-Nicolas Bouilly (1763-1842) was showcasing his new play, L’Abbé de l’Épée. A comedy in five acts, the play dramatized a fictionalized version of the case of the Comte de Solar, a young… Continue Reading