Medicine at extremes: 2020 – 2021 Presidential address and annual general meeting

These two structured talks and the following discussion session, on the development of physiological understanding of extreme climates and the concomitant development of medical provisions and services for explorers are in the Society’s best tradition.

If you would like to attend the live stream version of this event, please book your place here. 

Both speakers are internationally renowned medical historians and will emphasise the importance of considering present knowledge and practice within a broader historical framework; and underline that the past informs the present and the future.

Learning objectives include:

• Know how medical and scientific research work, influenced by military concerns and the space race, increased understanding of survival in hot, cold and low-oxygen environments.
• Learn how physiologists accompanied and studied polar explorers, desert nomads, and mountaineers
• Document how a global network of pioneers changed knowledge about the human body, and human history.
• Understand the nature of pharmacological provision for explorers from the late C19th to the mid C20th
• Recognise the pivotal role of Henry Wellcome and Burroughs, Wellcome & Co in developing tropical medicines and research facilities

The History of Medicine Society was founded in 1912 by Sir William Osler, its first President. These talks continue to reveal the importance of learning from the lessons of the past to apply to the present and future. The Society reaches out, inter alia, to clinicians of every specialty (including students), medical scientists, health care professionals, and other interested professionals and members of the general public (e.g. journalists and teachers).

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