The History Department is delighted to introduce their Visiting Scholar for the Fall 2012 semester,  Michael Stolberg.  Michaelis chair of the history of medicine at the University of Würzburg, Germany.  His research focuses on the history of medicine and the body in 16th- and 17th-century Germany, Italy and France.  Recent publications include Experiencing illness and the sick body in early modern Europe (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2011; orig. German edn 2003), Die Harnschau. Eine Kultur- und Alltagsgeschichte (Böhlau, 2009, forthcoming Engl. edn; A cultural history of uroscopy, Ashgate, 2013) and “`Abhorreas pinguedinem`. Fat and obesity in early modern medicine (c. 1500-1750)”, in Stud. Hist. Phil. Biol. Biomed. Sc. 43 (2012), 370-378.  He is currently working on the voluminous personal notebooks of Georg Handsch, a fairly obscure Padua-trained, young physician in mid-16th-century Prague, studying in particular the oral transmission of medical knowledge to the patients and their families, the acquisition of practical skills and the role of empirical observation in ordinary medical practice.

Michael welcomes your contacting him for coffee and discussion while he is here at Columbia, and he can be reached at  <[email protected]>.