We are delighted to announce that the 2018 Medical History William Bynum Essay Prize has been awarded to Dr Sara Crouch (University of Sydney, Australia) for her entry ‘Noli me tangere: The Dangers of Skin-to-skin Contact in Eighteenth-century London’. The runner up this year was Guy Sechrist (University of Cambridge, UK) with his entry ‘Collaborative Healers: Pregnant-Patients and their Midwives in Richard Napier’s Casebooks’.
All at Medical History would like to offer our warmest congratulations to Sara, as well as our thanks to all those who entered the competition. A special mention of appreciation must also go to the Prize Committee, chaired by William Bynum himself and this year comprising Akihito Suzuki (Keio University) and Jonathan Reinarz (University of Birmingham), who had the difficult task of selecting a winner from a collection of high-quality entries.
We are also pleased to announce that the competition will return again this year! All submissions should be sent to the journal editor, Professor Sanjoy Bhattacharya, Director of the Centre for Global Health Histories, by 1 January 2020. Full details are available via https://www.york.ac.uk/history/global-health-histories/publications-outreach/bynum-prize/
The Prize is generously supported by Cambridge University Press, publishers of Medical History, and is coordinated by Medical History’s editorial office, which resides within the Centre for Global Health Histories, Department of History, University of York.
As journal editor, I would like to thank Dr Alexander Medcalf, Assistant Editor, for all his hard work on the journal and the Bynum Prize. Dr Medcalf wished me to pass on the following message in this editorial: ‘I would like to take this opportunity to thank Sanjoy, the editorial board past and present and the team at Cambridge University Press for their help and support since 2011. Working with such an array of authors and referees has been an immensely interesting and gratifying experience.’ After several years of remarkable commitment and energy, Dr Medcalf moves on to a teaching position and other exciting responsibilities. He will be greatly missed by all at Cambridge University Press and the Centre for Global Health Histories. Mr Arnab Chakraborty has been appointed as his replacement, initially for a period of one year.
