Category Medical Humanities
Researching in Dublin: The Big Move
It’s been a while since I updated The Scribe Unbound. Last time I wrote, I was wrangling with image permissions having had a couple of articles accepted for publication. Those articles, which were all interdisciplinary, collaborative, endeavors, have now been published: ‘Historical analyses of disordered handwriting,’ Written Communication 34 (2016): http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0741088316681988 ‘A history of dystonia: ancient to […]
Cheesesteaks and Brownstones: Manuscript Viewings in Philadelphia and NYC
Having just returned from a research trip to the States, I thought that I would give my blog a kick, as it has gone into hibernation of late. Jet-lag and a cold prevent me from tackling my impending deadlines, so I thought that I’d take time to be more creative. I hope that peripatetic manuscript […]
Quivering Hands and Shaky Morals: The Forger’s Tremor
This week, I’ve been doing research into the characteristics of tremors that indicate a range of neurological and physiological conditions. I’ve looked up everything from a Parkinson’s Disease shake to the kind of quiver that I get when I’ve misjudged my daily caffeine quota. It’s been fascinating to learn about the features that help doctors […]
YorNight 2014: When Researchers Meet the Public – and Other Researchers
I had a fantastic evening at the YorNight 2014 evening on 26th September, spending most of the evening listening to talks at the wonderful York Medical Society, slap bang in the middle of the city. The evening was organised to show the public that research is fun and exciting. It also had the supplementary effect […]
Surgeons, Stones and Sedentary Lives: Bladder Stones in Pre-Modern England
King Charles II, some time after 1662, was paying a visit to the races at Newmarket in Suffolk. Upon arriving at his destination, he was told of a bladder stone, or calculus, of great size that had lately been removed from the wife of a local locksmith. It weighed a whopping 964 grams! Rather than […]
A Palaeographer’s Adventures in Programming (1)
I’ve been lax in updating my blog this summer, mainly due to the physical, intellectual and emotional demands of the conference season. However, I’m back at my desk now, and have begun to think about what I should share here. So, I thought I’d track my progress so far in becoming an interdisciplinary scholar: a […]
Leeds IMC Pre-thinkings: Hand, Eye and Brain in the Peripheries of the Medieval Book
I’m gearing up for a research trip to San Francisco and Los Angeles, whilst also looking forward to two conference appearances: at the Writing Britain conference at the University of Cambridge, right on the cusp of June and July, and the Leeds International Medieval Congress in July. As I prepare to talk about neurology, my […]
Scholarly Synergies: Interdisciplinarity and the Postdoctoral Researcher
As I approach the end of my second month as a discipline-hopping postdoc., I thought I’d write something about the experience of forming synergies between two or more fields of research. The paragraphs below summarise my initial thoughts about the opportunities that interdisciplinarity – especially between the humanities and the sciences – offers to the […]
Physician, Heal Thyself: Neurologists Who Have Disorders.
In the initial stage of my project on medieval scribes and neurology, I am reading about as many neurodegenerative conditions as possible. The aim is to be clear about which disorders present which symptoms, why, and in whom. Consequently, I hope to investigate neurological disorder in medieval people in an informed manner, in a way […]
Being Middle Aged in the Middle Ages
As part of my project on neurodegenerative conditions in the medieval period, I have been doing some reading on getting older in the Middle Ages. I’ve been gripped by fifteenth century accounts of what happens to the body as a person shuffles towards, and off, the end of their mortal coil. What occurs before one […]