Professor Emeritus Louise Curth

Biography

Professor Louise Hill Curth FRHS, Bsc, MA, PhD (Royal Holloway, University of London) is Emeritus Professor of Medical History. She joined the University of Winchester in 2009 after working at the Universities of Warwick, Exeter, Bath Spa and the Peninsula Medical School, Exeter. Louise has an interdisciplinary background in medical humanities and currently specialises in issues of health, illness and wellbeing in the past. She is particularly well known for and has published extensively in both human and veterinary history in early modern England. Her publications also illustrate her interest in the wider field of 'health studies', medical astrology, medical advertising and 'healthy lifestyle' books. 

Louise has appeared in a wide variety of radio and television programmes relating to the health, illness and wellbeing of both humans and other animals in the past.

She was appointed Professor in 2015 and delivered her Inaugural Lecture For man and beast: animal health care in Early Modern England on 27 Oct. 2016 (watch the video) and was made a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 2017.

Areas of expertise

Medical Humanities
Early Modern veterinary medicine
Early Modern human medicine
History of medical astrology
Early Modern print culture
Early Modern medical advertising

Publications

Books, authored

A plaine and easie waie to remedy a horse: equine medicine in early modern England (Brill, Sept. 2013)
The care of brute beasts: a social and cultural history of veterinary medicine in early modern England (Brill, 2009)
English Almanacs, Astrology & Popular Medicine, 1550 – 1700 (MUP, 2007)
Books, edited
From Physick to Pharmacology: Five Hundred Years of British Drug Retailing (Ashgate, 2006)
New Perspectives in Veterinary History Winchester University Press Series Editor (from 2010)
Contributions to books
'The relationship between anger, health and illness in early modern England' in K.A.E. Enkel (ed) Discourses of Anger in the Early Modern Period (Brill, 2012), 217 – 40
‘The most noble of creatures’: health care for horses in early modern England’, in P. Edwards and E. Graham (eds) The Renaissance Horse (Brill, forthcoming)
'Pre-veterinary' veterinary medicine in England’, in J. Schaeffer (ed.) Tierheilkundige in Geschichte und Greensward (Verlag Schwabe, 2010)
'Almanacs and their role in the dissemination of medical information in early modern England’, in A. Messerli (ed.) Zahl-Text-Bild im Volkskalende Tagesbund Kalender (Schwabe Verlag , 2010)
‘History of Health and Illness’, in J. Naidoo and J. Wills (eds) Health Studies: an introduction, second edition (Palgrave, 2008), 47 – 72
‘A Remedy for his Beast: animal health care in early modern Europe’, Intersections: representations of animals, Yearbook for Early Modern Studies, 6 (2007), 360 – 81
‘Introduction: Perspectives on the evolution of the retailing of pharmaceuticals’, in L. Hill Curth (ed.) From Physick to Pharmacology: five hundred years of drug retailing (Ashgate, 2006), 1 – 11
'Medical Advertising in the popular press: almanacs and the growth of proprietary medicines’, in L. Hill Curth (ed.) From Physick to Pharmacology, 29 – 48
‘Erotic Writing in Seventeenth Century England’, Encyclopaedia of Erotic Literature (Routledge, 2006)
‘Making new spaces of public food consumption: Victorian catering and the Aerated Bread Company’, with Shaw, G and Alexander, A., in J. Benson and L. Ugolini (eds) The Cultures of Selling: Perspectives on Consumption and Society since 1700 (Ashgate, 2005)
'Health, Strength and Happiness: Medicinal constructions of wine and beer in early modern England', with Cassidy, T., in A. Smith (ed.) Drink and Conviviality in Seventeenth Century England (Boydell and Brewer, 2004), 143 – 59
'Almanacs as Medical Mediators', in C. Usborne and W. de Blecourt (eds) Mediating Medicine: Cultural approaches to illness and treatment in early modern and modern England (Palgrave, 2004), 56 – 70

Articles

‘Medical advertising in the popular press’, Pharmacy in History, Vol. 50, No 1 (2008), 3 – 16
‘Astrological medicine and the popular press in early modern England’, Culture and Cosmos Vol. 9, No 1 (Summer, 2005), 73 – 94
‘The Medical Content of English Almanacs’, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Vol. 60, No 1 (July 2005), 1 – 28
'Promoting retail innovation' with Alexander, A. and Shaw, G., Environment and Planning A (2005, Vol. 37), 805 – 21
'The Medicinal Uses of Wine in Early Modern England', The Social History of Drugs and Alcohol (Autumn, Vol. 18, 2004), 35 – 50
'Selling the Supermarket: the Americanisation of Food Retailing in Britain: 1945 – 1960’, with Shaw, G. and Alexander, A., Business History (October 2004), 568 – 82
‘Animals, Almanacs and Astrology: Seventeenth Century Animal Health Care in England’, Veterinary History 12 (November 2003), 33 – 54
‘Lessons from the past: Preventative Medicine in early modern England’, Journal of Medical Humanities 29 (2003), 1 – 6
'The Care of the Brute Beast: Animals and the Seventeenth-Century Medical Marketplace', Social History of Medicine, 15 (2002), 375 – 92
'A New Archive for the History of Retailing: The Somerfield Archive', with Shaw, G. and Alexander, A., Business Archives 84 (November, 2002), 29 – 37
'The Commercialisation of Medicine in the Popular Press: English Almanacs 1640 - 1700', The Seventeenth Century 17 (Spring, 2002), 48 – 69
‘Robert Gell’, in The New Dictionary of National Biography (2002)
'The Birth of the British Supermarket: 1945 – 1960', with Shaw, G., History Today (November, 2002)
‘Martin Frobisher’, in The Naval History Encyclopaedia (2001)
‘English Almanacs and Animal Health Care in the Seventeenth Century’, Society and Animals 8 (2000), 71 – 86