Episode 263: Sari Altschuler, The Medical Imagination

by Liz CovartNovember 5, 2019

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Did you know that imagination once played a key role in the way Americans understood and practiced medicine?

Sari Altschuler, an Associate Professor of English at Northeastern University and author of The Medical Imagination: Literature and Health in the Early United States, joins us to investigate the ways early American doctors used imagination in their practice and learning of medicine.

About the Show

Ben Franklin’s World is a podcast about early American history.

It is a show for people who love history and for those who want to know more about the historical people and events that have impacted and shaped our present-day world.

Each episode features a conversation with a historian who helps us shed light on important people and events in early American history.

Ben Franklin’s World is a production of the Omohundro Institute.

Episode Summary

Sari Altschuler, an Associate Professor of English at Northeastern University and author of The Medical Imagination: Literature and Health in the Early United States, joins us to investigate the ways early American doctors used imagination in their practice and learning of medicine.

As we explore how early American doctors used their imaginations, Sari reveals how and why early American doctors used imagination in their practice of medicine; Early American ideas about disease, health, and the body; And why we should consider medical imagination when we think about histories of medicine and science.

What You’ll Discover

Early Americans’ medical imagination
Links between medicine and poetry
How early American physicians used literature to experiment
Methods for acquiring medical knowledge
The role literature played in early American medicine
Origins of the tradition of doctors using literature to assist with their medicine
How early Americans thought about the body and its systems
How early Americans interacted with & practiced medicine
How early American doctors shared information
Benjamin Rush
The republican model of health
Medicine and the early American state
Women in early American medicine
Why we should consider medical imagination when we think about histories of medicine and science

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Time Warp Question

In your opinion, what might have been different about the development of early Americans’ medical imagination if women had been allowed to fully participate in the professional medical community?