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Faculty Profile

A social historian of medicine, Professor Shorter has published widely in this field, including histories of obstetrics and gynaecology, the doctor-patient relationship (Doctors and Their Patients), psychosomatic illness, and psychiatry. His recent publications include A Historical Dictionary of Psychiatry (2005); Written in the Flesh: A History of Desire (2005); and Shock Therapy: A History of Electroconvulsive Treatment in Mental Illness (co-author David Healy, 2007).  In 1995 Professor Shorter won the Jason A. Hannah Medal of the Royal Society of Canada for From Paralysis to Fatigue: A History of Psychosomatic Illness in the Modern Era (1992), and in 2000 he was again honoured with the Hannah Medal for A History of Psychiatry from the Era of the Asylum to the Age of Prozac (1997).  He has been the Hannah Professor in the History of Medicine since 1991, and in 1996 was cross-appointed as Professor of Psychiatry.