John Henderson (historian)

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John Sebastian Henderson (born June 12, 1949 ) is a British historian .

John Henderson received his bachelor's degree from Newcastle upon Tyne . The Master followed at the University of Cambridge . In London he received his doctorate ( Ph.D. ) with the thesis Piety and charity in late medieval Florence . He was a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge . In 2003 he became Wellcome Trust Reader at Birkbeck College of the University of London . Since 2007 he has been teaching there as a professor for the history of the Italian Renaissance. Henderson is a member of the Royal Historical Society and a fellow at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge.

Henderson's research focus is poor relief in central Italy in the late Middle Ages and the early modern period . He also works on epidemics in Italy during the Renaissance . He is considered to be the leading health care expert in Florence and Tuscany in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. Henderson dealt with the nursing staff in the Florentine hospitals , analyzed the Renaissance hospitals in relation to the patient, dealt with the medical plague tracts and the official measures against the risk of infection in Florence in the 14th century. His portrayal of The Renaissance Hospital. Healing the Body and Healing the Soul from 2006 is a summary of his many years of Italian research on the Renaissance hospitals in the greater Florence area from 1250 to 1550. The work is considered a standard work in hospital history. The spectrum of sources used by Henderson ranges from the architecture of the buildings with their sculptures to inventories of interior fittings, reports on sick people, nursing staff and medical professionals to registers about questions of occupancy, diseases or therapies. On top of that, Henderson analyzed a recipe book from 1515 that had been handed down from the Florentine hospital. Over 1000 recipes were evaluated, taking into account the indications at the time. The work traces the development of the Florentine hospital landscape from the 11th to the 16th century, examines the functions of the hospital and deals with the working conditions of doctors. Henderson was able to identify 68 hospitals founded in the medieval Italian commercial metropolis of Florence between 1000 and 1550. The study overcomes the verdict of earlier historians that the hospitals before the 19th century were "hell holes" in which the patients were doomed to die. Henderson sees the large hospitals in Florence rather as institutions of holistic therapy. According to Henderson, the hospitals in Florence became the model for similar facilities both in Italy and in other parts of Europe. He found an extremely low death rate in his calculations. Henderson's work was translated into German in 2014 by the Marburg anatomist and medical historian Gerhard Aumüller .

Fonts

  • The Renaissance hospital. Healing the body and healing the soul. Yale University Press, New Haven 2006, ISBN 0-300-10995-4 .
    • German translation: The hospital in Renaissance Florence. Healing for the body and for the soul. Translated by Gerhard Aumüller. Steiner, Stuttgart 2014, ISBN 978-3-515-09943-1 .
  • Piety and charity in late medieval Florence. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1994, ISBN 0-19-820271-7 .

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ John Henderson: Caring for the Poor. Commessi and Commesse in the Hospitals of Renaissance Florence. In: Gisela Drossbach (ed.): Hospitals in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times. France, Germany and Italy. A comparative story. Munich 2007, pp. 163–173.
  2. ↑ John Henderson: The material Culture of Health. Hospitals and the Care of the Sick in Renaissance Italy. In: Florian Steger (Ed.) Health - Illness. Cultural transfer of medical knowledge from late antiquity to early modern times. Cologne et al. 2004, pp. 155–166.
  3. ↑ John Henderson: The Black Death in Florence. Medical and communal responses. In: Steven Bassett (ed.): Death in towns. Leicester et al. 1992, pp. 136-150.
  4. ↑ See Robert Jütte in: Historische Zeitschrift , Vol. 301 (2015), pp. 791f.
  5. ↑ See Christina Vanja in: Journal for Historical Research , Vol. 43 (2016), p. 126f.
personal data
SURNAME Henderson, John
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Henderson, John Sebastian
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British historian
DATE OF BIRTH June 12, 1949