Introduction: Reimagining Epidemics.

Over the past year, historians of medicine have found our discipline invested with a new sense of relevance. In trying to make sense of epidemics past and present, many of us have been substantially influenced by Charles Rosenberg's 1989 Daedalus essay, "What Is an Epidemic? AIDS in Historical Perspective." Writing in the middle of another unfolding global pandemic, Rosenberg suggested that all epidemics possessed similar forms of social choreography, and that applying a narrative framework could help to understand their sequence, structure, and social impact.

Introduction: women, health, and healing in early modern Europe.

Women played substantial roles in health and healing in medieval and early-modern Europe. They have been undercounted in studies that rely upon occupational labels, but when we look at caregiving and bodywork, we can see women providing a broad range of services. Although women often healed in domestic settings, neither female patients nor practitioners should be considered in isolation from larger market forces that shaped men's healing work.