November 10, 2006

Dear Fellow Paracelsians,

As announced our Society met during the annual SCSC conference. Below please find the notes and information. We had about twelve colleagues attending among them Heinz Schott as co-president who provided the agenda which I am presenting below with my notes.

1. Hompage/Listserve:  Tara Numendahl was not present, but the home page is functioning; several new members have joined us via the home page. Amy Cislo, will post these notes on the home page.

2. Digitization: Lilla Vekerdy, Washington University Becker Medical Library, is currently working on our application to the NEH due in July 2007. I spoke, once again, with the Brill IDC people to explore possible ways of moving forward with digitizing the collection. This is complicated by the fact that the collection belongs to the St. Louis Medical Society who gave it as a permanent loan to WU. So, anything done to and with it would have to go through them.

3. Ongoing projects:
(a) Research project sponsored by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) until 2007 at the Institute for the History of Medicine, University of Bonn:  „Studien zu medizinisch-naturkundlichen Texten des Paracelsus unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Problemfelder Chronologie und Echtheit“  (research associate: Peter M. Kreuter). The application for a following project on „Paracelsus: magic and popular medicine“ will be submitted. 
(b) Translation project: Translation of Paracelsus’ „Astronomia magna“ into English (Dane T. Daniel, Wright State University, in co-operation with Heinz Schott, University of Bonn).
(c) Translation project:  Translation of Paracelsus’ “Buch von der Gebärung…” into English (Amy Cislo, Washington University).

4. The 2007 SCSC meeting will take place in Minneapolis. We encourage all of you to contribute papers on Paracelsus, the history of Paracelsianism (Paracelsus reception), or other history of science topics.

5. The 2008 Meeting will be held in St. Louis. Because of the Paracelsus Collection at the WU Medical School Library, we plan to organize a special conference on all aspect of Paracelsus and Paracelsian thought in the context of this conference. We did this in 1999 to great success (the collection of articles “Paracelsian Moments” that grew out of this meeting has been reviewed very positively).
This joint meeting of the SCSC and ISPS should be widely publicized at historical and literary venues, the History of Science Association, MLA, AHA, RSA etc. Newsletters, in short, with all the associations large and small that have Paracelsians/ History of Science folks  among their membership.

6. It was suggested to that we might explore the possibility of an Arbeitsgespraech about matters Paracelsian at the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbuettel.

The meeting adjourned at 1:00 pm.

Minutes submitted by Gerhild Scholz Williams, Washington University