Our History

With the goal of encouraging interdisciplinary medieval medical research, a loosely aligned group of scholars joined together to form Medica: The Society for the Study of Healing in the Middle Ages. From its inception in 1998 at the International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMS) at Western Michigan University, Medica sought to foster collaborative research, not only into the particulars of practice and treatment, but also into the vast range of cultural perceptions towards health, illness, and disease. The brainchild of English Professor Gerard NeCastro (West Liberty University) the mission of the society was simple: to encourage research and to mentor young researchers in the field of medieval medicine by uniting the efforts of scholars from diverse disciplines—medical history, literary criticism, gender studies, art history, cultural studies, and theology, to name a few.

At first unstructured, Medica found its footing and established guidelines as a society under the leadership of its first president, Bryon Grigsby (1999-2005). Initially, the primary focus was on sponsoring paper sessions at Western Michigan University’s annual ICMS at Kalamazoo; however, soon Medica expanded its impact by presenting papers at the 2003 International Medieval Congress at the University of Leeds, England. The society also broadened its influence in the domestic arena, sponsoring sessions at the 2005 Annual Conference of the Medieval Academy of America. Unique in format from most conference sessions at the time, the society often combined papers from multiple disciplines in a single session, for example, a session on astronomy and medicine included papers on artistic representation, medical textual analysis, and social and political history. Medica’s emphasis on collaboration resulted in its reaching out to other academic societies to co-sponsor conference sessions. One such effort at the 2011 Medieval Congress at Kalamazoo resulted in four sessions co-sponsored by AVISTA under the overarching theme, “The Sacred and the Secular in Medieval Healing.” These sessions led to the society’s first publication, The Sacred and the Secular in Medieval Healing: Sites, Objects, and Texts (2016), co-edited by then Medica President, Linda Migl Keyser and part of AVISTA’s series Studies in the History of Medieval Technology, Science and Art.

Medica has grown through the years and expanded its outreach as part of its ongoing commitment to disseminate the research of medieval medical scholars. To meet the changing needs of diverse groups of researchers, Medica’s in-house print newsletter evolved into an active online presence in 2009 with the launching of the Medica Blog, and later in 2019 with Medica establishing a presence on Twitter (now known as X). Integral to this effort, the society has historically made it a priority to encourage and include graduate students' research in its paper sessions. This precedence ultimately led to the founding of Medica’s Graduate Student Travel Award in 2008-9.

In addition to sponsoring paper sessions and panel discussions, Medica also implemented periodic receptions to foster the exchange of information and promote mentorship in an informal atmosphere between established, developing, and independent scholars. The society hosted its first academic reception in 2015 at the Medieval Congress at Kalamazoo, an outgrowth of three sessions honoring the scholastic achievement of Linda Ehrsam Voigts, one of the society’s founding members and a leader in the field of medieval medical research. This historic event brought together an international group of experts from various fields and helped to stimulate new avenues of research on health and healing in the Middle Ages.

Continuing in this vein, Medica has broadened its base even further to deepen the understanding of the many ways that medieval society engaged with individual and communal health and illness, from the personal crises of body and mind to global epidemics. Thanks to the commitment of members and the dedication and hard work of its officers—from the early days of Gerard NeCastro and Bryon Grigsby to Linda Migl Keyser and William H. “Harry” York to Nichola Harris and Anna Peterson—Medica continues to energize research designed to investigate all the permutations of health, disease, and the body in the Middle Ages. Uniting historical and cultural inquiry with emerging fields such as genetics, each year witnesses the growth of greater collaboration and representation in the society’s projects. In 2024, Medica entered into an agreement to produce its own series of publications on current research in medieval health and illness, further expediting its mission to integrate both traditional and non-traditional sources of scholarship into one conversation.

Thank you to Prof. Linda Migl Keyser (Emerita President).