Vol. 42, No. 2, April 2013
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Medical Traditions: An Emerging Discipline
Alain Touwaide and Emanuela Appetiti in the stacks of the Institute's library
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Notes from the Inside
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Article:
Medical Traditions: An Emerging Discipline
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Article: The Past, Present, and Future of a Treasure Trove
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Article:
"Grandma got STEM"
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Article: Lessons from Uneasy Careers…
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Member News
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News from the Profession
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Upcoming Conference
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Why Did HSS Conduct A Climate Survey?
Over the past decade medical traditions, be they of the Mediterranean, China or India for example, have been increasingly researched all over the world with different objectives. Whereas in the case of Chinese medicine, such research is oriented toward validating the traditional practice, in other cases it is more about locating primary sources in libraries worldwide, digitizing them to make them more widely available, and deciphering, studying and publishing their texts.
Building on the decade-long research activity by Alain Touwaide, the Institute for the Preservation of Medical Traditions was created in September 2007 by Touwaide in collaboration with anthropologist Emanuela Appetiti to host, foster and promote the study of medical traditions. Although it originally focused on the Mediterranean traditions because of Touwaide's own research, it rapidly expanded the scope of its activity and is gradually including the Ethiopian, Chinese, and Ayurvedic traditions.
As a research organization, the Institute curates the library and the other collections assembled by Touwaide over time and includes approximately 20,000 monographs and offprints, around 500 microfilms of Greek, Latin and Arabic manuscripts, more than 70,000 color images of 15th and 16th century printed herbals, and archive files on all aspects of medicine, botany and natural sciences in the Mediterranean world from Antiquity to the Renaissance and even beyond, with the continuity of traditional medicine among the Greek speaking populations in the Ottoman Empire.
Since its creation, the Institute also organizes educational program, both intra- and extramural, in the U.S. and abroad. Students (from undergraduate to post-doctoral level) come from a great variety of horizons ranging from Classical Studies to Genetics, and including History, Geography, Anthropology, Religious Studies, Archaeology, Medicine, Botany and Complementary and Alternative Medicines.
Significantly enough, the Institute receives an increasing number of requests for educational programs, supervision of research, internship programs, direction of Ph.D. theses and short-term residential stays. It also receives requests for consultation of the library resources and the other material in the Touwaides' collections. Recently, the Institute hosted 6 Fellows for a 10-week intensive internship and has now 2 researchers from overseas engaged in pre- and post-doctoral research.
During 2012 the Institute reached a turning point in its rapid, yet constant growth. To better respond to the many requests it receives and the expectations it has generated, the Institute is exploring a move from the Smithsonian Institution, where it is currently located as an independent research organization with 501(c)(3) non-profit status, to a degree-granting institution. Such relocation will make it possible for the students attracted by medical traditions to attend a proper curriculum and, more generally, for the scientific and scholarly communities to have more direct access to the scholarly resources under the Institute's curatorship.
The Institute is currently seeking to identify the best partner in order to create a mutually convenient synergy, and is interested in receiving suggestions, recommendations, and expressions of interest in order to further develop medical traditions studies and to establish them as an academic discipline in the field of History of Science.
Institute for the Preservation of Medical Traditions,
PO Box 7606, Washington, DC, 20044, USA;
e-mail: research@medicaltraditions.org