#  “A Useless Sack of Bones”: Old Women as Medical and Political Agents in Early Modern Europe 

 



####  calendar\_today Date and Time 

 **February 29, 2024** 

 05:30PM - 05:30PM EST 

####  pin\_drop Location 

 **Warren House, Kates Room (201)**  



 

 



 


##  [WOMEN, GENDER, AND CULTURE IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD](/women-gender-and-culture-early-modern-world)

##  SPEAKER: Alisha Rankin, Tufts University

 Alisha Rankin joined the Tufts history department in January 2008, after spending three years as a Junior Research Fellow at Trinity College, University of Cambridge. She received her Ph.D. in the History of Science from Harvard University in 2005 and a B.A. from Wellesley College in History and German Studies in 1996.

 She is the author of *Panaceia's Daughters: Noblewomen as Healers in Early Modern Germany* (University of Chicago Press, 2013), which examines German princesses who became widely known and admired for their medical knowledge in the sixteenth century – and particularly for making medicinal cures. It won the 2014 Gerald Strauss Prize for Reformation History. She has also co-edited a collection of essays titled *Secrets and Knowledge in Medicine and Science, 1500-1800*, which was published by Ashgate Press in 2011.

 Her latest book, *The Poison Trials: Wonder Drugs, Experiment, and the Battle for Authority in Renaissance Science* (University of Chicago Press, 2021), looks at the important role poison antidotes played in attempts to evaluate early modern cures – and in the development of early modern experiment more broadly. It was excerpted in *Lapham's Quarterly* in January 2021. While working on the book, she co-led the working group "Testing Drugs and Trying Cures in Early Modern Europe" at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, and co-organized (with Elaine Leong) a conference on the topic in June 2014. She and the other organizers published a special journal issue of the *Bulletin of the History of Medicine* (Summer, 2017) on the topic.

 Future projects include a study of time and medicine in early modern Europe and a longue durée study of the use of prisoners for medical experiments. She is also co-editing the volume on *Early Modern Medicine* for the *Cambridge History of Medicine*.



 

 



 

 See also:- [ Seminar ](/event-type/seminar)
- [ Women, Gender, and Culture in the Early Modern World ](/seminars/women-gender-and-culture-early-modern-world)
 
 

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