Conference hears how study of medical history faces global crisis

The study of medical history faces a bleak future as university cutbacks protect science at the expense of humanities, academics warned this week.

Financial constraints expected to hit UK higher education under the government’s funding squeeze would produce a crisis by 2013-14, which will force history departments to close, Bill Luckin, research professor in urban history at Bolton University, told a conference on the future of the history of medicine in London.

The conference, organised by the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London, had been planned before the …