Harvey's Troubles with the Egg by Esther Fischer-Homberger Subject: History of Medicine Publisher: EAHMH Publications (UK) Edition Our Price inc. p&p Status chapbook, 32pp, ISBN 0953652238, 2001 UK only: £7.95 in stock

Other volumes in the EAHMH Evening Lecture Series: Reaching Out to Mothers: Public Health and Child Welfare The Human Body, From Slavery to the Biomarket: An Ethical Analysis Improving Health: A Challenge to European Medieval Galenism Ethics in Medicine: Historical Aspects of the Present Debate

The main feature of EAHMH's bi-annual meetings is to create a stimulating atmosphere which enables an intensive yet informal exchange of ideas between young researchers and well established scholars. In that context it has become a tradition to invite a distinguished academic to present part of his or her own work, at their discretion, so that the essence of a long-standing professional pre-occupation with medical history might emerge in individual and exemplary ways.

This volume presents Esther Fischer-Homberger's lecture on the occasion of 'The Healthy Life: People, Perceptions, Politics' conference held in Almunecar, Spain, from 2 to 5 September 1999. One of the first female scholars to emerge at the front line of the history of medicine and health, she pioneered the introduction of feminist theories into her research and the analysis of gendered medical knowledge.

Her lecture therefore fitted perfectly the 'perceptions and politics' aspect of central concern to the conference, and showed the increased value of feminist notions in the new world for the history of medicine and health that EAHMH aims to foster. The fact that her lecture selected a seventeenth-century theoretical problem, in front of an audience principally oriented towards contemporary contexts, gave a supplementary interest to her views, successfully bridging the chronological divides that tradition and academy keep apart.

Esther Fischer-Homberger is interested in the history of how humans experience their world. After completing her thesis on the history of manic-depressive illness she worked at the Psychiatric Clinic in Burgholzli and at the Institute of the History of Medicine, University of Zurich. At that time, her chief interests were the history of psychiatry, of neuroses and of psychosomatic interrelations. As Professor for the History of Medicine at the University of Bern she published on the history of legal medicine and on the medical history of women. In 1984 she exchanged her academic chair for that of a psychotherapist. Her latest book contained papers on the history of eating disorders in psychoanalysis, of pain and of the heart. Her most recent papers are on the medical histories of trauma and of the embryology of descent.