HSLS will be hosting the traveling exhibit, “And There’s the Humor of It”: Shakespeare and the Four Humors, produced by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and coordinated by the American Library Association. The exhibit uses materials from the historical collections of NLM to explore the prevailing belief during the Shakespearean era that human emotional states were physically determined by the four bodily humors—blood, bile, melancholy, and phlegm.
The connection between Shakespeare’s time and our own is the common understanding of neuroscientists that human emotions are based in biochemistry and that drugs can be used to alleviate mental suffering.
The exhibit is set to arrive at Falk Library on September 29, 2014. Please mark your calendars for the following free events during the exhibit:
OPENING PRESENTATION: October 2, 6-7 p.m., 1105 Scaife Hall
“William Shakespeare and the Four Humors: Elizabethan Medical Beliefs”
Gail Kern Paster, PhD, director emerita, Folger Shakespeare Library
*Visit the exhibit in Falk Library following the lecture, 200 Scaife Hall
OCTOBER PRESENTATION: October 21, 6-7 p.m., Scaife Hall, Lecture Room 5
“A Clinician Looks at Shakespeare and Medicine”
Robin Maier, MD, MA, director of medical student education/clerkship director, Family Medicine, University of Pittsburgh
~Ester Saghafi