Chair holder 2024-2025
On Thurday, October 17, 2024, at 4.00 pm, the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy, the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, and the Ghent University Museum (GUM) will appoint the 40th Sarton Chair of History of Science to Prof. dr. Rina Knoeff (University of Groningen).
Location: Forum GUM, Ledeganckstraat 35, 9000 Gent.
After the lecture, there will be a reception.
Medicine and the Female Body: A Historical Consultation
A recurring theme in explaining the origins of today’s gender health gap is an alleged tradition of patriarchal and misogynist attitudes toward women. Yet, we seem to have forgotten that the discipline of medicine also contains a tradition that valued the female body as both the most natural site of perfect health and paradoxically, as the seat of the most horrible diseases. The latter inspired gender-specific therapies, which we seem to lack today. Knoeff will ask how this more positive premodern approach to the female body can inspire gendered healthcare today.
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