News and Events

The Thirty-fifth International Congress on the History of Medicine

Flights from Athens to Cos, where the Congress met in September 1996, are scheduled for either early morning or late at night. My wife and I were on the early morning flight, which landed at Cos shortly after sunrise. Cos is a long, narrow island bisected by a central ridge of forested mountains. The airport lies toward its western end while the town of Cos is at the northeast corner of the island. A pleasant young man from ITCO, the Greek organization responsible for the Congress arrangements, met us at the airport and drove us along narrow roads almost the length of the island, through the town of Cos and to the Kypriotis Village Hotel, headquarters of the Congress. In addition to meeting rooms—named appropriately for Hippocrates, Galen, and Aretaeus—and a large marble-floored lobby and dining room open to the Mediterranean breezes, the Kypriotis Village consisted of modest two-story groups of rooms with terraces overlooking gardens, arranged around two large swimming pools, one an Olympic-sized lap pool.

In this idyllic setting the Congress opened the evening of September 3. In celebration of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the founding of the International Society for the History of Medicine, J. P. Tricot of Belgium described the Society’s history. Many of the papers delivered during the following three days of the Congress dealt with the origins and influence of Hippocratic medicine, but sessions were also devoted to other aspects of ancient medicine, to the history of hospitals, to women in medicine, and to miscellaneous historical topics. The historians present, coming from many different countries, brought with them a remarkable breadth of historical learning, frequently enriched by extensive clinical experience.

On the final day, the Congress went in buses to the excavated Asclepion of Cos, the ancient healing center of Asclepius—stone ruins on a series of terraces overlooking the sea, pine-forested mountains rising behind them. As the shadows of evening spread over this ancient place, we heard the music of pipes and a procession of maidens began slowly to descend the stone steps from the uppermost terrace. Behind them came stalwart young men dressed in the ancient Greek chiton, playing the traditional pipe, a flute-like instrument that the God Pan is said to have played, and in their midst Hippocrates himself, curly-haired, bearded, and robed, like his statue come to life. When they reached the lower terrace of the Asclepion, where the members of the Congress awaited, the pipes fell silent and Hippocrates repeated in Greek the famous physicians’ oath, which many of the physicians present thereupon took. Afterward, as the members of the congress returned to the buses, Hippocrates was last seen climbing into a van to return to Cos town, no doubt to give a clinical lesson under the old plane tree that still spreads its branches there.

For Americans, the most pleasing event of the Congress was the election of Ynez Violé O’Neill of the UCLA School of Medicine as President of the International Society for the History of Medicine for a four-year term. Dr. O’Neill is well known for her scholarly work in the history and illustration of medieval medicine and for her recent video presentation, “The Young Vesalius: The Bologna Dissections of 1540.”

Announcements

American Association for the History of Medicine

Committee Chairs—1997–98

• Annual Meetings Committee: Jacalyn M. Duffin

• Clinician-Historian Committee: Douglas R. Bacon

• Electronic Media Committee: Russell C. Maulitz

• Garrison Lecture Committee: Harry M. Marks

• Lifetime Achievement Award Committee: Michael R. McVaugh

• Local Arrangements Committee: James T. H. Connor

• Newsletter: Dale C. Smith (editor)

• Nominating Committee: Allan M. Brandt

• Osler Medal Committee: Barron H. Lerner

• Professional Relations: Jonathon Erlen

• Program Committee: John Harley Warner and Gina D. Feldberg

• Publications Committee: Kenneth M. Ludmerer

• Shryock Medal Committee: Arleen M. Tuchman

• Welch Medal Committee: Caroline C. Hannaway

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