Participant Info

First Name
Alisha
Last Name
Rankin
Country
United States
State
MA Massachusetts
Affiliation
Tufts University
Website URL
https://ase.tufts.edu/history/faculty/rankin.asp
Keywords
history of science, history of medicine, recipes, poison, pharmacy, alchemy, experiment, gender, early modern, Renaissance
Availability
Media Contact
Additional Contact Information
PhD
PhD

Personal Info

Photo
About Me

I am a historian of science and medicine and an Associate Professor of History at Tufts University. I focus on early modern Europe. My first book examined the role of sixteenth-century aristocratic women in dispensing both medical advice and their own homemade medicines (Panaceia’s Daughters: Noblewomen as Healers in Early Modern Germany,  University of Chicago Press, 2013). It won the 2014 Gerald Strauss Prize for Reformation History from the Sixteenth-Century Studies Society and Conference. I am currently finishing a book on testing poison antidotes in sixteenth-century Europe, which argues that poison (and its cures) provided an important focus for early drug testing, including questions about the use of humans and animals in experiments.  I have held fellowships from the ACLS, Mellon, Fulbright, and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science.

Recent Publications
  • “Telling Time Through Medicine: A Gendered Perspective,” in Gendered Temporalities in Early Modern Europe (Amsterdam University Press, 2018), 95-114.
  • “On Anecdotes and Antidotes: Poison Trials in Early Modern Europe,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 91 (July 2017): 274-302.
  •  “Testing Drugs and Trying Cures: Experiment and Medicine in Medieval and Early Modern Europe,” co-written with Elaine Leong, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 91 (July 2017): 157-182.
  • “Medicine, Monopoly, and the Pre-Modern State: Early Clinical Trials,” co-authored with Justin Rivest, New England Journal of Medicine, 345 (July 2016): DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp1605900
Media Coverage
Country Focus
Expertise by Geography
Germany, Western Europe
Expertise by Chronology
Pre-17th century, Early Modern
Expertise by Topic
Book History, Food History, Gender, Medicine, Science, Women