Hilary Term 2015 Seminar Series

At: The Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine
Seminar Room, 47 Banbury Road, Oxford

‘Visual and Material Culture in the History of Medicine’
Conveners: Dr Erica Charters and Dr Sloan Mahone

Week 5 – 16 February
Clare Hickman, King’s College London
Dr John Coakley Lettsom and the mangel-wurzel: Botany, agriculture and medical practitioners in the Eighteenth Century

This paper will explore how gardens were designed and used by medical practitioners as places for scientific experimentation, botanical education and agricultural improvements during the late eighteenth-century. Beginning with the rural retreat of John Coakley Lettsom at Grove Hill where he combined agricultural interests, particularly the cultivation of the mangel-wurzel root vegetable, with an ornamental landscape, it will also consider the private gardens of John Hunter and Edward Jenner, alongside the more public botanic gardens of Edinburgh University and the London botanic garden. By investigating these spaces I hope to explore aspects of botanical networks, the role of the garden as a scientific space, its use as a tool to cement professional identities, and the function of gardens in relation to knowledge production and dissemination.

Coffee is available from 14:00 – Seminars begin at 14:15 prompt.

Please note there is no parking at the Unit