Professor Adrian Johns

Like the others whose comments are posted here, I find the decision to close the UCL Centre both baffling and dismaying. Historical understandings of medicine have never been more necessary than they are today, when the medical and life-sciences industries are generating so many contentious issues across the world. More to the point, we stand in need of the specific kind of approach that the UCL Centre in particular has been known for since Roy Porter's days, in which medical history is treated as an integral part of social and cultural history.

It took time to build the reputation that that approach now enjoys, such that scholars across historical fields hold medical history in high repute and see it as a necessary part of their broad enterprise. It is largely as a result of this success that the history of medicine seems to be one of the few humanities fields to be holding its own here in America during the current employment crisis. But to sustain an endeavor like this requires long-term institutional commitment: funding agencies have found repeatedly that it cannot be achieved by a series of one-off, isolated projects. So it is extraordinary that the Wellcome is apparently determined - at best - to make that same mistake all over again, opting for ad hoc ventures rather than a coherent and developing program. It seems a thoroughly retrogressive and wrong-headed decision. And it is not just the history of medicine that will be the poorer for it.

Adrian Johns
Professor, Department of History
Chair, Committee on Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science
University of Chicago
1126 East 59th Street
Chicago
IL 60637