About this Event
While the flow of bodily fluids is essential to the functioning of our bodies, we are quick to consider pus, sweat, and urine as dirty and unhygienic, associating them with shame and taboo.
In this session, Ruben Verwaal is joined by historians and scholars of medical humanities, all of whom apply visual and material methods to analyse fluids in society, culture, and medicine. Bodily fluids are not just a quirky footnote in the annals of medicine: they are a window into how people have experienced their bodies, illness, and health. Their study reveals how cultural ideas about purity, contamination and moral character permeate everything form everyday hygiene practices to scientific knowledge production.
Audiences are invited to take a deep dive into the story of the bodily fluids, their changing perceptions, and practical and medical uses throughout history.
The online event runs 4-5pm BST.
In-person event runs 4-5.30pm BST (including a drink reception from 5-5.30pm)
About the speakers
Ruben Verwaal is an honorary fellow at the Institute for Medical Humanities at Durham University and curator of medical collections at the Erasmus University Medical Centre, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. In Blood, Sweat and Tears: A History of Bodily Fluids, he looks at the history of bodily fluids such as breastmilk, earwax, sweat, pus, and urine. Verwaal claims that while we might find them repugnant today, this was not always the case. He demonstrates that each one of our bodily fluids is dripping with symbolism and its own cultural history.
Amanda Herbert is associate professor of the early modern Americas at Durham University and an expert in history of the body, gender, wellness, and food cultures in the British Atlantic world. Her current book project Spa Medicine and Body Politics in the British Atlantic seeks to refigure and reclaim spas as an important site for the study of public health. She shows why great quantities of sweat trickling down one’s body can simultaneously be perceived of as off-putting and as an important and natural process for healing.
Claire Turner is a historian of medicine and the senses and a Bridging Fellow in the Affective Experiences Lab at the Discovery Research Platform for Medical Humanities. Her doctoral research centred on sensory experiences and perceptions of plague in early modern London; she is currently developing this into a monograph for Manchester University Press. Claire is a keen proponent of public engagement with historic research and in 2024 (as Digital Engagement Fellow on the Hematopolitics project at the University of Leeds) she collaborated with the Thackray Museum of Medicine to design and deliver a digital exhibition on the history of blood donation and transfusion.
Harriet Barratt is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Visual & Material Lab at the Discovery Research Platform for Medical Humanities. Her research addresses the material cultures, patient narratives and psychosocial contexts of medicine, taking an object relations theory approach. Harriet was a core collaborator in the Senses of Health/Care Environments research collective, funded over 2019-2022 by the Wellcome Trust. Harriet’s current project Donor Conception Materialities: Object Relations in the Clinic, the Home and the Museum seeks to transform understandings of complex patient experiences within the UK’s assisted reproductive technology (ART) sector, focusing on the practice of donor conception
This hybrid event is free to attend. The Zoom link will be circulated closer to the event. If you have any access requirements, please get in touch with [email protected].
This event is co-organised by Durham University's Institute for Medical Humanities and the Visual & Material Lab of the Discovery Research Platform for Medical Humanities.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Institute for Medical Humanities • Durham University, Confluence Building, Durham, United Kingdom
GBP 0.00
