Alain Touwaide

The University of Iowa History of Medicine Society invites you to attend the R. Palmer Howard reception, dinner,  and presentation on Friday, April 24, 2015.  Alain Touwaide of the Smithsonian Institution will speak on Medicinal Plants of the Mediterranean : A Unique Tradition.  The event will be held at the Sheraton Hotel in Downtown Iowa City, beginning at 6pm.  Reservations and payment are due by April 17.  ( printable registration form, including menu) Physicians of Antiquity collected  information about the therapeutic uses of natural resources, particularly plants. This knowledge, best illustrated by Hippocrates, Dioscorides and Galen, was handed down through centuries from one generation and one culture to another in an uninterrupted chain. Touwaide will illustrate this unique phenomenon by following the legacy of Antiquity in its odyssey around the Mediterranean until the dawn of Modern Science, focusing on exceptional and ordinary books that transmitted this legacy.