Fever: Histories of (a) Disease, c. 1750–1840

We are excit­ed to announce the work­shop “Fever: His­to­ries of (a) Dis­ease, c. 1750–1840”, which will take place on 10–11 July 2025 at the Hei­del­berg Acad­e­my of Sci­ences. Host­ed by the ERC CoG Project FEVER based at Hei­del­berg Uni­ver­si­ty, this work­shop seeks to bring togeth­er his­to­ri­ans inter­est­ed in fever(s), wide­ly con­sid­ered the period’s most com­mon and fatal ail­ment, in soci­eties with­in or tied to the Atlantic world.

While ‘fever’ is, in some sense, a uni­ver­sal aspect of human sick­ness, that concept’s mean­ing, expe­ri­ence, and impli­ca­tions var­ied sig­nif­i­cant­ly across dif­fer­ent his­tor­i­cal con­texts. Our inter­est is in the eigh­teenth- and ear­ly nine­teenth century’s tax­onomies of fever, in the diag­nos­tic reper­toire of experts and layper­sons pri­or to the advent of ther­mom­e­try, but also in the sen­so­ry expe­ri­ences, emo­tion­al reg­is­ters, and envi­ron­men­tal anx­i­eties that fevers would often entail. Our inquiry into the his­to­ries of fever might also raise ques­tions about the racial­iza­tion of fever in impe­r­i­al con­texts, the dis­ease category’s trans­la­tion between dif­fer­ent med­ical cul­tures, and fever’s dual role as both an epi­dem­ic and a quo­tid­i­an ail­ment, to men­tion but a few pos­si­bil­i­ties. We seek to under­stand fever’s his­to­ry across a broad geo­graph­i­cal range, from typhus out­breaks in British work­hous­es to the tert­ian fevers that plagued vicere­gal Lima.

We invite paper pro­pos­als relat­ed to the conference’s the­mat­ic focus on fever in the eigh­teenth and ear­ly nine­teenth cen­turies. Areas of inter­est include the his­to­ry of med­i­cine, sci­ence, and tech­nol­o­gy, as well as mate­r­i­al, envi­ron­men­tal, social, or reli­gious his­to­ries of fever. Please sub­mit an abstract (200–250 words) and a brief aca­d­e­m­ic biog­ra­phy by 15 Decem­ber 2024 to fever.project@zegk.uni-heidelberg.de. We will cov­er par­tic­i­pants’ trav­el expens­es (econ­o­my air­fare or sec­ond-class train tick­ets) and pro­vide one night’s accom­mo­da­tion near the con­fer­ence venue. We look for­ward to wel­com­ing you and engag­ing in inspir­ing dis­cus­sions in Heidelberg.