Speakers: Paola Bertucci, DPhil and Stanley Finger, PhD
Lecture Title: "Frankenstein, the Vital Force, and Electricity"
Location: Bernard Becker Medical Library, King Center, 7th floor
Time: Thursday, October 6, 4:30-6:00pm
A free lecture supported by the Becker Library and the Center for History of Medicine.
Paola Bertucci, DPhil, Associate Professor of History and the History of Medicine at Yale University and Stanley Finger, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Psychological and Brain Sciences of Washington University will jointly give the 53rd Historia Medica lecture on Thursday, October 6, 2016.
First published in 1818, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus has remained a popular novel and one that has often been adapted to plays, film, and television. The two speakers will examine how the burgeoning science and promise of “medical electricity” in the late 1700s and early 1800s formed the background to Shelley’s famous work.
**All images are taken from Luigi Galvani’s de viribus electricitatis in motu musculari commentarius published in 1791.