• Regions: Europe; Italy
• Times: 17th to 19th centuries
• Themes: Environmental Humanities; History of the Book; History of Science; History of Medicine; Intellectual History

Ori Ben-Shalom is a PhD candidate in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard. His dissertation, “Medicine and Historical Practice in Enlightenment Italy,” examines the role of history in the learned medical world of 18th-century Italy. It asks why doctors in this period were so preoccupied with history and how—through citing, cataloging, archiving, excavating, and commemorating—they constructed their relationship with time. Ori’s research proposes that physicians’ extensive use of historical practices endowed them with a unique way of knowing, through which they promoted changes in medical theory, consolidated their professional status, and advanced environmental reforms across the Italian states.