The Venereal Poison: an interdisciplinary study of sexual disease in the Enlightenment.
Anatomical preparations offer an unusual opportunity to combine history of science and genetic analyses, as they can be studied both as historical objects and as a potential resource for pathogenic aDNA. This project uses William Hunter's books and pathological collection to study how 18th century medical practitioners understood and developed new knowledge about venereal disease. It also aims to recover genomic information from the collection, and asks how these two different datasets can be combined meaningfully.