Thursday, 8 April 2010

Greetings One and All!

This blog is for friends of the Wellcome Trust Centre of the History of Medicine at UCL. Anyone may post a message here, but please note that this site will be moderated.

Happy posting!

11 comments:

  1. Never usually a 'Follower' but couldn't resist being first. Good luck with the Blog. Hi to all the WTCHOM MA group 2009-2010 - the sun is shining but stick with those essays... Orla :-)

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  2. I'll follow with interest your blog.
    I think the study of history (and history of medicine too) it's very important.
    Tucidides said: "history is a gain for ever" (ktema es aiei).
    That's my blog about history of medicine:
    http://historiamedica. blogspot.com

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  3. All set to follow... Just a shame there seems to be so little here yet.

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  4. Hi Felix, good to have you onboard! At the moment we are encouraging people to sign-up. Once we have a "critical mass" of followers I'm sure we will start blogging in earnest. Watch this space!

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  5. I just saw this post on the MEDMED-L list serve viz.:

    "The Wellcome Trust and UCL have decided to close the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine and initiate a two year wind down, without a quinquennial peer review. This marks the end of the Centre, and its prior
    incarnation, the Academic Unit of the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine."

    Is this true? If so, what an unmitigated tragedy for the History-of-Medicine community! I can't even begin to fathom the amount of excellent scholarship that has come out of the Trust and the people who have been supported by its grants. And all of this is to come to a halt in two years? Say it isn't so!

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  6. Yes, it is true, a real tragedy!

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  7. This is dreadful news - for the scholarly community at the Unit and for medical history around the world.
    Please accept our full moral support from the University of Melbourne,
    Janet McCalman
    James Bradley

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  8. Hi, there's no way to post to this blog, other than as a comment on something posted by the owner. That's why it isn't taking off, I think.

    It's a terrible shock that the Centre is closing. Tom Snyder said it all, above. I'm sorry to say that I think it's indeed true.
    Dominik

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  9. Hi,

    This is dreadful news indeed. I have always looked up to the Centre and the scholarship it produces. In fact, I have been trying to persuade people to create a similar centre in India using the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine as a model. This is awful shock.

    Indira

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  10. Núria Pérez-Pérez26 April 2010 at 07:59

    Dear colleagues,
    I was very surprised indeed when I know the decision to close the center. For me and my colleagues is a reference center in all aspects and I think the closure is a very bad news for the history of medicine and allied sciences.
    Núria

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  11. Dear All,
    Over fifty years of institutional development gone in one short spat with Wellcome administrators who probably themselves will have moved on in a few years time. Yes there were obviously some problems, but it was their job to produce a solution. The closure of their main London Centre will affect the Wellcome's image and status in ways that they obviously have not forseen, with many unintended consequences. Some of them have already been posted on these blogs, ie. their international academic reputation, positive commendation from the WHO, their relationship with their London neighbours, the viability of their Library and Museum, etc etc. This short-term thinking is not serving the Wellcome Trust or Foundation well. There should be some internal enquiry as to how things got to such a state, and an immediate restart to negotiations with UCL.
    But what is potentially even more worrying is the thought that the Wellcome may be using this as an excuse to try to get out of the history of medicine altogether. Is this the case? What is going on here? The more fuss we make the better. Well done Carol. Now can we have a world-wide petition?
    Dr Virginia Smith,
    Centre for Public Health History, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

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