A Change of Editors

Fifteen years have elapsed since Gert H. Brieger and Jerome J. Bylebyl became the editors of the Bulletin. Dr. Brieger retired from the editorship in 2004, and now Dr. Bylebyl is stepping down as well. Gert writes:

When we began our collaboration, we used the successful model of the Bulletin's sister journal, Medical History, whose editors divided the primary responsibility for the modern and earlier periods of the history of medicine. In the early days of the Bulletin, Henry Sigerist, and then Owsei Temkin, had little need of editorial help because their own researches spanned the entire history of medicine. As the field grew and became ever more specialized, though, collaborative editorial efforts seemed the best way to ensure the continuing high quality of the journal. Thus I was enormously gratified that Jerry agreed to share the editorial duties with me. His wide knowledge of the history of medicine and the history of art are well known to all his colleagues, and his exacting standards helped to maintain the Bulletin's high quality of papers and reviews.

Taking over from Jerry will be Mary E. Fissell, Ph.D., who is well known to AAHM members and scholars in the history of medicine. Dr. Fissell is Professor of the History of Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University. A leading figure in the history of medicine in early modern Europe, she is particularly known for her work on health care and popular medical knowledge, and gender and the body during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. She is the author of two major historical monographs, Patients, Power, and the Poor in Eighteenth-Century Bristol (Cambridge University Press, 1991), and Vernacular Bodies: The Politics of Reproduction in Early Modern England (Oxford University Press, 2004), along with more than two dozen research articles and book chapters.

Dr. Fissell knows the Bulletin well, as a former member of the journal's editorial board and a frequent reviewer of manuscripts and books. She is also active in the AAHM, as a committee chair and committee member.

Readers will see this important change reflected in the masthead for the Spring 2006 issue, the first issue of the new volume. The editors wish Jerry well in his retirement and thank him for his many years of service to the journal and its readers. We welcome Mary to the journal in her new capacity as Editor and look forward to her participation in shaping the Bulletin's future.