This episode of ReligionWise features Dr. Lorenzo Servitje, Associate Professor Literature and the Director of the Health, Medicine and Society program at Lehigh University. Trained in both Victorian Literature and Public Health, he considers the way that culture influences and is influenced by questions of health, healthcare, and disease.

In this conversation we consider the broader field of Medical Humanities, where it came from and why it is important. We then dig into his particular area of interest, monsters of the Victorian era, from Dracula to Mr. Hyde, asking what can they tell us about both historic and contemporary understandings of health, sickness, and treatment.

Show Notes

• Medicine Is War: The Martial Metaphor in Victorian Literature and Culture
  (https://sunypress.edu/Books/M/Medicine-Is-War)
• The Not-So-Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in Antibiotic Research: An Interdisciplinary Opportunity 
  (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33379290/)
• The Walking Med: Zombies and the Medical Image
  (https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-07711-6.html)