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Professor Helen King

Profile summary

  • Visiting Formal Academic
  • Professor Emerita of Classical Studies
  • Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences
  • School of Arts & Humanities
  • Classical Studies
  • helen.king
  • helen.king@open.ac.uk

Professional biography

I am Professor Emerita of Classical Studies, and I worked at the OU from 2011-2017, when I decided that I didn't want to spend any more time in meetings and admin! In 2017-18, I had an intellectually and pedagogically stimulating year as Robert E. and Susan T. Rydell Visiting Professor at Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota. I continue to work as an Academic Reviewer with OU's validation services, and to write.

In September 2024, Profile Books published the UK edition of my Immaculate Forms: Uncovering the History of Women's Bodies; the US/Canada edition will be coming out with Basic Books in January 2025. I was interviewed on publication day, 5 September, by BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour and have made a number of podcasts including appearing on episode 249 of Betwixt the Sheets with Kate Lister.

My first degree, at UCL, was in Ancient History and Social Anthropology; I then held research fellowships in Cambridge and Newcastle, taught in Liverpool for 8 years, and worked at Reading (originally on a Wellcome Trust University Award) from 1996-2011. In advance of my 'retirement' at the end of January 2017, I reflected on my career on The Women's Classical Council UK blog and I continue to write a blog about retiring as well as a blog on the history of the body. In addition to my full-time jobs across the HE sector, I have been a Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies (2001), a Lansdowne Visiting Lecturer at the University of Victoria, British Columbia (2002), a Visiting Professor at the University of Texas at Austin (2005), the Käthe Leichter Visiting Professor in Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Vienna (2014) and a Provost's Distinguished Women's Lecturer at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana (2016). 

I have supervised PhDs on the female body in Christian late antiquity, the historiography of ancient Athenian and pre-Hellenic women in the 19th and early 20th centuries, sixteenth- to seventeenth-century medical illustrations, the patient in the work of Rufus of Ephesus, infertility and blame in the ancient world, classical reception at Stourhead, memory and forgetting in ancient Greek literature, and magic in Roman Britain. 

Research interests

Ancient medicine

From my PhD (on ancient Greek menstruation) onwards, I have been interested in setting ancient medical thought within its social and cultural context, as one way - among others - of making sense of life. I've therefore looked at ancient ideas about creation, the role of women, and sacrifice to illuminate Hippocratic gynaecology (Hippocrates' Woman: Reading the female body in ancient Greece, Routledge, 1998). In Immaculate Forms I chose to look at the history of women's bodies from the ancient world to the present day through four key, and disputed, body parts: breasts, clitoris, hymen and womb.

From teaching the history of medicine while working at the University of Reading, I wrote a short introduction to the main issues, Greek and Roman Medicine (Bloomsbury Press, 2001). This is aimed at undergraduate students and general readers. A 2008 volume in French, La Médecine dans l'Antiquité grecque et romaine (Editions BHMS) starts from this book but adds extra material, especially on the visual evidence; this was co-written with Véronique Dasen (Fribourg). 

A volume of essays on Health in Antiquity was published under my editorship in 2005 (Routledge) and in 2013 I published a chapter on the humours and Hippocratic medicine in the Horden and Hsu collection, The Body in Balance.

For ten years I also taught on, and examined, the History of Medicine Diploma run by the Society of Apothecaries, London. I wrote a free 6-week MOOC, Health and Wellbeing in the Ancient World, for the FutureLearn platform, which entered its first presentation in February 2017 and had its sixth in June 2019. The course is now available all year round (but without the discussion feature!) on OpenLearn.

Reception of ancient medicine

I have written on the use of classical models in nursing and midwifery, but I am particularly interested in the alleged (and imaginary) classical origins of 'hysteria', on which I've published Hysteria Beyond Freud (written with S. Gilman, R. Porter, G.S. Rousseau and E. Showalter, University of California Press, 1993), a section in History of Clinical Psychiatry (eds G. Berrios and R. Porter, Athlone Press, 1995), and 'Recovering hysteria from history: Herodotus and "the first case of shell shock"' in Peter Halligan et al. (eds), Contemporary Approaches to the Science of Hysteria: Clinical and Theoretical Perspectives (Oxford University Press, 2001). I continue to work on psychiatry; see for example my chapter on phobia (fear of heights, fear of flute girls) in William V. Harris (ed.), Mental Disorders in the Classical World (Brill, 2013).

Before moving to the Open University I held a post at Reading funded by the Wellcome Trust to work on a project on the reception of the sixteenth-century compilation, the Gynaeciorum libri; in particular, the impact of Hippocratic gynaecology in the period after its publication in Latin by Calvi in 1525, but also the subsequent history of the books themselves, their owners and their uses. Outputs from this funding include my monograph The Disease of Virgins: Green-Sickness, Chlorosis and the Problems of Puberty (Routledge, 2003), which moves from sixteenth-century ideas based on Hippocratic medicine, to the early twentieth century. I continue to work on the sixteenth century, and am interested in the history of dissection, especially around Leonardo da Vinci and Andreas Vesalius; for the anniversary of Vesalius' birth, I spoke at conferences in Leuven and Padua. Another monograph, Midwifery, Obstetrics and the Rise of Gynaecology (Ashgate, 2007), focuses on uses of classical medicine in the eighteenth century, a time when men and women were in competition for control over childbirth, and sheds new light on how the claim of female 'difference' was shaped by specific social and cultural conditions. It examines the use made of the 1597 Gynaeciorum libri by some of its early modern owners and users, and the remodelling of Hippocrates as the 'Father of Midwifery'.  

In 2009, I co-organised with Manfred Horstmanshoff and Claus Zittel a conference at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies, on the history of physiology: 'Blood, Sweat and Tears'. This was published in the series Intersections: Yearbook for Early Modern Studies (Leiden: Brill, 2012). In 2014 my co-written chapter (with Jo Brown) on the reception of Thucydides' account of the plague of Athens was published in the Handbook to the Reception of Thucydides. In November 2019 I published an open-access monograph on contemporary uses of 'Hippocrates', Hippocrates Now (London: Bloomsbury).

Gender/History of the body

Immaculate Forms (2024) challenges essentialist models of sex and gender by showing how the history of medicine offers many competing models of what 'makes' a woman. My 2013 monograph The One-Sex Body on Trial: Using the Classical and Early Modern Evidence (Ashgate) examines the reception of the story of the ‘first midwife’ Agnodice and of the Hippocratic case history of Phaethousa of Abdera, who grew a beard after her husband was exiled. By tracing the different versions of each story that existed between c.1550 and 1840, I show how the authority of the classics was invoked in professional disputes about medicine, debates about the role of women, and discussions of sexual identity. I was awarded an AHRC Fellowship to complete this monograph. An interview in which I discuss the Agnodice story and its reception with my colleague Dr Jessica Hughes appears in the ‘Classics Confidential’ series; watch this online.

I was Women's Studies Area Advisor to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (1996) and am a member of the international EuGeStA network. I have also published on ancient Greek and Roman sexology, for example 'Medicine and disease’, Sexuality in the Classical World (500 BC-350 AD), eds Peter Toohey and Mark Golden (Berg, 2010), 107-124 and ‘Galen and the widow. Towards a history of therapeutic masturbation in ancient gynaecology’, EuGeStA: Journal on Gender Studies in Antiquity 1 (December 2011), 205-235; this article was awarded the Barbara McManus Prize by the Women’s Classical Caucus. My book Immaculate Forms, due to be published in September 2024, looks at the history of women's bodies through the lens of four widely-discussed body parts: breasts, clitoris, hymen and womb. I've also been working on a project on visual representations of the womb, from ancient votives to modern knitting, findings from which were presented at the 2021 Perfecta conference.

Sue Tully womb

Death

In 1981 I co-edited, with my PhD supervisor S.C. Humphreys, Mortality and Immortality: the anthropology and archaeology of death (Academic Press). My interest in death has continued, and I've also worked on the role of the doctor at the deathbed in classical antiquity; a preliminary study, comparing classical and early modern deathbeds, has been published in Dutch.

Publications

See Open Research Online and open.academia.edu for further details of Helen King’s research publications.

Teaching interests

I have taught at an unusually wide range of HE institutions, from Oxbridge to a former teacher-training institution, in both History and Classics departments. My main teaching work at the OU was chairing the foundation module of the online MA in Classical Studies (A863), for which I wrote most of Block 1 on 'How we know what we know' and contributed sections to the subject module on the ancient body. I also wrote a unit on greensickness and melancholy for the module on early modern history, A223, which went live in October 2016. Some reflections on teaching gender appear in the 2011 CUCD Bulletin. I also co-wrote (with Patty Baker and Laurence Totelin) a chapter on teaching challenging topics in ancient medicine in the 2014 volume From Abortion to Pederasty, edited by Fiona McHardy and Nancy Rabinowitz, and with the same collaborators wrote a MOOC on Health and Well-being in the Ancient World.

When I arrived at the OU, I was interested to find that my predecessor Professor Lorna Hardwick had attended the same secondary school; we wrote about our experiences of being taught about the ancient world in From Sutton High School to the Open University.

I have worked as a Visiting Professor at the Peninsula Medical School in Truro, where I taught a fourth-year SSU module on the history of dissection. I greatly enjoyed the interchange with 'real' medical students, helping them to develop a historical perspective to their practice. My topic was particularly relevant because human dissection did not form part of the curriculum there. I also work with the De Partu history of childbirth network.

I'm also very interested in the quality agenda. In addition to having been a member of the OU's Academic Quality and Governance Committee, I have worked nationally as a reviewer for the Quality Assurance Agency (formerly with the Subject Review methodology, then with Review for Educational Oversight) and I've been asked to take part in a number of quinquennial inspections and validation reviews across the higher education sector. I currently carry out Periodic External Reviews of lay training provision for the Church of England nationally.

I was also a member of the 'Historical' thematic working group which contributed to the Church of England's 2020 teaching document on human sexuality, 'Living in Love and Faith'. I was a member of the House of Laity of the church's governing body, the General Synod, from 1985-1993 and am on again for 2021-2026. I have led small groups working with the Emmaus and Pilgrim materials and I am a Street Pastor as well as an authorised lay preacher in Oxford Diocese. I am also a Chapel Homilist at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, preaching there once a term, and have also preached in the University Church in Oxford.

Impact and engagement

I'm always interested in projects which bring together different disciplines, particularly those linking health professionals to historians. I was a member of the steering group of the AHRC-funded network on 'Risk in childbirth', linking midwives, obstetricians and historians of different periods to explore how risk has been assessed and understood over time. In 2012 I co-organised a conference bringing together people from many subject backgrounds, including midwives, to discuss narrative and birthing. I have published on the history of pain, drawing on comparative studies of modern sufferers from chronic pain, which led to invitations to speak at a local hospice. For the impact of classical studies on improving the understanding of patients’ needs, see my short film on the healing power of Greek and Roman tales and my 2014 piece in The Lancet. I wrote a piece on Agnodice, the 'first midwife', for the February 2015 issue of The Practising Midwife and have since written several other 'Last Word' features for this journal. 

I enjoy working with the wider public too, and co-led a Martin Randall Travel cruise with the theme 'Ancient Greek Philosophy and Medicine' as well as speaking at the company's weekend and day events. I have led five history of medicine tours of Bologna, Padua and Florence for the company. In  2017 I was delighted to take part in Cheney School's Festival of Ancient Science and Modern Science, and to share my research on bearded ladies at the Crick Crack Club's 'Wild Ones' event at Wellcome Collection. In 2019 I spoke at another Cheney School event, a storytelling weekend in Dorset, and a medical conference, as well as travelling to Madison WI to mark the start of an interdisciplinary teaching programme there. Since then, it's been Zoom...

I began blogging as a Monthly Contributor on Wonders and Marvels in 2012 and have also written for Nursing Clio, The Recipes Project and The Votives Project as well as for my personal blogs. I have had over 1,400,000 hits on the pieces I have written for the UK version of The Conversation, on topics including the medical use of excrement, bearded ladies, the myths of Hippocrates, ancient beliefs surrounding menstruation, the links between modern 'vaginal steaming' and ancient treatments by fumigation, and 'Five things the ancient Greeks can teach us about medicine today'. This last piece led to a 5-minute YouTube piece on the same topic, 'What can we learn from ancient Greek medicine?' My 2016 piece on the disease of virgins, based on a monograph I wrote in 2004, has had around 700,000 hits alone and led to a short Youtube piece, 'How have we viewed female virginity?'

Selected podcasts/audio

Podcast of 'In Our Time' episode on Galen, with Caroline Petit and Vivian Nutton, October 2013.

On Titian’s ‘Diana and Callisto’, National Gallery Podcast 70, July 2012: and see blog post ‘Diana, Callisto and Philip II’ on wondersandmarvels.com.

On ancient medicine, and ‘Gladiator’, April 2012:
(NB full content not available if accessed on an iPad).

On Agnodike the ‘flashing midwife’, March 2012.

Podcast of ‘In Our Time’ episode on The Hippocratic Oath with Peter Pormann and Vivian Nutton, September 2011.

Podcast of plenary lecture on women’s health in history, Anglo-American Conference of Historians 2011 (follow the link for Plenary 7).

Podcast of lecture on ancient gynaecology given at Reed College, Oregon, 2015.

Short podcast on my BA study, May 2016.

Three mini-lectures on the history of cancer, for the Gustavus Adolphus College Nobel Conference 56.

Series of mini-lectures on 'Travelling inside the body', for the Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh, 2020 (beginning here).

Interview on 'Living in Love and Faith, and same sex relationships' with Revd Alex Frost for The Godcast, November 2023.

Three episodes of Mary Beard's Being Roman, 2023-24: 2. The Vengeance of Turia; 4. What We Lost in the Fire'; 11. Three Lovers and a Funeral. 

'Hippocrates in Assassin's Creed', August 2024.

'Let's talk about myths, baby', September 2024.

'A seat at the table', Spare Ribs Club, September 2024.

Episode 249 of Betwixt the Sheets with Kate Lister, September 2024.

 

External collaborations

My history of medicine interests include my service from 1998-2003 as the co-editor of the journal Social History of Medicine (Oxford University Press), and membership of a variety of funding committees at the Wellcome Trust, including several years as Chair of the Research Resources in Medical History Committee and membership of the main History of Medicine Grants Panel and the Strategic and Enhancement Awards Committee. I have also served on the editorial board of Gesnerus. I was a judge for the Philip Leverhulme Prize in Classics in 2012, 2015, 2018 and 2021 as well as for the Marie Curie Alumni Association Awards in 2014.

Research groups

NameTypeParent Unit
Classical Reception Research ClusterClusterFaculty of Arts
Gender in the Humanities Research GroupGroupFaculty of Arts
History of Medicine Research GroupGroupFaculty of Arts
The Arts and their Audiences Research ClusterClusterFaculty of Arts

Publications

[Book Review] Lesley Dean-Jones (ed, trans), Historia Animalium Book X: Aristotle’s Endoxon, Topos and Dialectic on On Failure to Reproduce (2024)
King, Helen
Social History of Medicine ((Early access))

Being Flesh: Bodies, History and LLF (2023-01)
King, Helen
Modern Believing, 64(1) (pp. 36-43)

Seeing the bigger picture: what is gynaecology for? (2021-06-16)
King, Helen
Ágora: Estudos Clássicos em Debate, 23(1) (pp. 17-48)

On the misuses of medical history (2018-04-07)
King, Helen and Green, Monica H
Lancet, 391(10128) (pp. 1354-1355)

An infant femur bearing cut marks from Roman Hambleden, England (2014-02)
Mays, S.; Robson-Brown, K.; Vincent, S.; Eyers, J.; King, H. and Roberts, A.
International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, 24(1) (pp. 111-115)

Sex and gender: the Hippocratic case of Phaethousa and her beard (2013-12-16)
King, Helen
EuGeStA: Journal on Gender Studies in Antiquity, 3 (pp. 124-142)

Commentary: Fighting through fiction (2013-10-29)
King, Helen
Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 37(4) (pp. 668-693)

Motherhood and health in the Hippocratic corpus: does maternity protect against disease? (2013-10)
King, Helen
Mètis. Anthropologie des mondes grecs anciens, 11 (pp. 51-70)

History without historians? Medical history and the internet (2012)
King, Helen
Social History of Medicine, 25(1) (pp. 212-221)

Response to Shelton (2012)
King, Helen
Social History of Medicine, 25(1) (pp. 232-238)

Galen and the widow: towards a history of therapeutic masturbation in ancient gynaecology (2011-12-16)
King, Helen
EuGeStA: Journal on Gender Studies in Antiquity, 1 (pp. 205-235)

Creating the world: the origins of all things in ancient Greek myth and medicine (2002-12)
King, Helen
Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, 27(4) (pp. 271-277)

De dokter aan het sterfbed (2002)
King, Helen
Raster, 99 (pp. 90-106)

Immaculate Forms: Uncovering the History of Women's Bodies (2024)
King, Helen
Wellcome Collection
ISBN : 9781788163873 | Publisher : Profile Books Ltd. | Published : London, UK

Hippocrates Now: The 'Father of Medicine' in the Internet Age (2020)
King, Helen
Bloomsbury Studies in Classical Reception
ISBN : 9781350005891 | Publisher : Bloomsbury | Published : London

The One-Sex Body on Trial: The Classical and Early Modern Evidence (2013-10)
King, Helen
ISBN : 978-1-4094-6335-1 | Publisher : Ashgate | Published : Farnham

La Médecine dans l' Antiquité grecque et romaine (2008-09-20)
King, Helen and Dasen, Véronique
ISBN : 9782970053668 | Publisher : Editions BHMS | Published : Lausanne

Midwifery, Obstetrics and the Rise of Gynaecology: The Uses of a Sixteenth-Century Compendium (2007-07)
King, Helen
Women and Gender in the Early Modern World
ISBN : 9780754653967 | Publisher : Ashgate | Published : Aldershot

The Disease of Virgins: Green Sickness, Chlorosis and the Problems of Puberty (2004)
King, Helen
ISBN : 0-203-48710-9 | Publisher : Routledge | Published : London

Hippocrates' Woman: Reading the Female Body in Ancient Greece (1998)
King, Helen
ISBN : 415138957 | Publisher : Routledge | Published : London

The body and botany: “the first step toward the brothel” (2022-09)
King, Helen
In: Santos Pinheiro, Cristina; Silva, Gabriel A. F.; Fonseca, Rui Carlos; Mota, Bernardo Machado and Pinheiro, Joaquim eds. Gynecia: Studies on Gynaecology in Ancient, Medieval and Early-modern Texts (pp. 11-26)
ISBN : 978-972-36-1977-5 | Publisher : Edições Afrontamento | Published : Porto

Opening the body of fluids: Taking in and pouring out in Renaissance readings of Classical women (2021)
King, Helen
In: Bradley, Mark; Leonard, Victoria and Totelin, Laurence eds. Bodily Fluids in Antiquity (pp. 381-398)
ISBN : 9781138343726 | Publisher : Routledge | Published : London

‘Treating the Patient, Not Just the Disease’: Reading Ancient Medicine in Modern Holistic Medicine (2021)
King, Helen
In: Thumiger, Chiara ed. Holism in Ancient Medicine and its Reception (pp. 402-424)
ISBN : 978-90-04-44314-3 | Publisher : Brill | Published : Leiden

A history of our own?: Using Classics in disability histories (2021)
King, Helen
In: Adams, Ellen ed. Disability Studies and the Classical Body: The Forgotten Other. Routledge Studies in Ancient Disabilities (pp. 237-263)
ISBN : 9780367221959 | Publisher : Routledge | Published : London

The body beyond Laqueur: Hippocratic sex and its rediscovery (2020-07-10)
King, Helen
In: Höfele, Andreas and Kellner, Beate eds. Natur-Geschlecht-Politik: Denkmuster und Repräsentationsformen vom Alten Testament bis in die Neuzeit (pp. 199-216)
ISBN : 978-3-7705-6533-7 | Publisher : Wilhelm Fink Verlag

Hippocratic whispers: telling the story of the life of Hippocrates on the internet (2020-01-31)
King, Helen
In: Totelin, Laurence and Flemming, Rebecca eds. Medicine and Markets: Essays on Ancient Medicine in honour of Vivian Nutton (pp. 143-160)
ISBN : 9781910589786 | Publisher : Classical Press of Wales

Reflection: Phrontis: The Patient Meets the Text (2019-02-07)
King, Helen
In: Adamson, Peter ed. Health: A History (pp. 95-102)
ISBN : 9780199916443 | Publisher : Oxford University Press

Women and Doctors in Ancient Greece (2018-12)
King, Helen
In: Hopwood, Nick; Flemming, Rebecca and Kassell, Lauren eds. Reproduction: Antiquity to the Present Day (pp. 39-52)
ISBN : 9781107068025 | Publisher : Cambridge University Press

'First behead your viper’: acquiring knowledge in Galen’s poison stories (2018-05-09)
King, Helen
In: Grell, Ole Peter; Cunningham, Andrew and Arrizabalaga, Jon eds. "It All Depends on the Dose": Poisons and Medicines in European History (pp. 25-42)
ISBN : 978-1138697614 | Publisher : Routledge | Published : Abingdon

Rethinking nosebleeds: gendering spontaneous bleedings in medieval and early modern medicine (2018-05)
King, Helen and Zuccolin, Gabriella
In: Johnson, Bonnie Lander and DeCamp, Eleanor eds. Blood Matters. Studies in European Literature and Thought, 1400-1700 (pp. 79-91)
ISBN : 978-0-8122-5021-3 | Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press | Published : Philadelphia, PA

Between male and female in ancient medicine (2015)
King, Helen
In: Boschung, Dietrich; Shapiro, Alan and Waschek, Frank eds. Bodies in Transition: Dissolving the Boundaries of Embodied Knowledge. Morphomata (23) (pp. 249-264)
ISBN : 978-3-7705-5808-7 | Publisher : Fink Verlag | Published : Paderborn

Thucydides and the plague (2014-10-28)
King, Helen and Brown, Jo
In: Morley, Neville and Lee, Christine eds. A Handbook to the Reception of Thucydides (pp. 447-473)
ISBN : 9781405196918 | Publisher : Wiley | Published : Chichester

Medicine and the senses: humours, potions and spells (2014-10-23)
King, Helen and Toner, Jerry
In: Toner, Jerry ed. A Cultural History of the Senses in Antiquity, 500 BCE-500 CE. A Cultural History of the Senses (pp. 139-161)
ISBN : 9780857853394 | Publisher : Bloomsbury | Published : London

Teaching ancient medicine: the issues of abortion (2014-08)
Baker, Patty; King, Helen and Totelin, Laurence
In: Rabinowitz, Nancy Sorkin and McHardy, Fiona eds. From Abortion to Pederasty: Addressing Difficult Topics in the Classics Classroom (pp. 71-91)
ISBN : 978-0-8142-1261-5 | Publisher : Ohio State University Press | Published : Columbus, OH

Female fluids in the Hippocratic corpus: how solid was the humoral body? (2013-08)
King, Helen
In: Horden, Peregrine and Hsu, Elisabeth eds. The Body in Balance: Humoral Medicines in Practice. Epistemologies of Healing (13) (pp. 25-49)
ISBN : 978-0-85745-982-4 | Publisher : Berghahn Books | Published : Oxford

Fear of flute girls, fear of falling (2013-05)
King, Helen
In: Harris, William V. ed. Mental Disorders in the Classical World. Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition (38) (pp. 265-282)
ISBN : 978-90-04-24982-0 | Publisher : Brill

Inside and outside, cavities and containers: the organs of generation in seventeenth-century English medicine (2012-12)
King, Helen
In: Baker, Patricia A.; Nijdam, Han and van 't Land, Karine eds. Medicine and Space: Body, Surroundings and Borders in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Visualising the Middle Ages (4) (pp. 37-60)
ISBN : 9789004216099 | Publisher : Brill | Published : Leiden

Introduction (2012-07)
King, Helen
In: Horstmanshoff, Manfred; King, Helen and Zittel, Claus eds. Blood, Sweat and Tears – The Changing Concepts of Physiology from Antiquity into Early Modern Europe. Intersections Interdisciplinary Studies in Early Modern Culture (25) (pp. 1-17)
ISBN : 9789004229181 | Publisher : Brill | Published : Leiden

Midwifery, 1700-1800: the man-midwife as competitor (2012-05-15)
King, Helen
In: Borsay, Anne and Hunter, Billie eds. Nursing and Midwifery in Britain Since 1700 (pp. 107-127)
ISBN : 9780230247031 | Publisher : Palgrave Macmillan | Published : Basingstoke

Knowing the body: renaissance medicine and the classics (2012-05-14)
King, Helen
In: Olmos, Paula ed. Greek Science in the Long Run: Essays on the Greek Scientific Tradition (4th c. BCE – 16th c. CE) (pp. 281-300)
ISBN : 978-1-4438-3775-0 | Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing | Published : Newcastle-upon-Tyne

Sex, medicine and disease (2011-01)
King, Helen
In: Golden, Mark and Toohey, Peter eds. A Cultural History of Sexuality in the Classical World. A Cultural History of Sexuality (1) (pp. 107-124)
ISBN : 9781847888006 | Publisher : Berg | Published : Oxford and New York

Gynecology (2010-10)
King, Helen
In: Grafton, Anthony; Most, Glenn W. and Settis, Salvatore eds. The classical tradition (pp. 416-417)
ISBN : 9780674035720 | Publisher : Harvard University Press | Published : Cambridge, MA

Engendrer "la femme": Jacques Dubois et Diane de Poitiers (2010)
King, Helen
In: McClive, Cathy and Pellegrin, Nicole eds. Femmes en Fleurs, Femmes en Corps : Sang, Santé, Sexualité du Moyen Âge aux Lumières. L'école de Genre. Nouvelles Recherches (4) (pp. 125-138)
ISBN : 9782862725390 | Publisher : Publications de l'Université de Saint-Etienne | Published : Saint-Étienne

Medicine (2009-03)
King, Helen
In: Erskine, Andrew ed. A Companion to Ancient History (pp. 403-413)
ISBN : 9781405131506 | Publisher : Wiley-Blackwell | Published : London

Barbes, sang et genre: afficher la différence dans le monde antique (2008)
King, Helen
In: Wilgaux, Jérôme and Dasen, Véronique eds. Languages et Métaphores du Corps dans le Monde Antique (pp. 153-168)
ISBN : 9782753507036 | Publisher : Presses universitaires de Rennes | Published : Rennes

When is a foetus not a foetus? Diagnosing false conceptions in early modern France (2007-10-11)
King, Helen
In: Dasen, Veronique ed. L' Embryon humain à travers l' histoire: Images, savoirs et rites. Testimonia (pp. 223-238)
ISBN : 9782884740272 | Publisher : Infolio | Published : Gollion

Ancient medicine (2007)
King, Helen
In: Malti-Douglas, Fedwa ed. Encyclopedia of sex and gender (pp. 982-985)
ISBN : 9780028661155 | Publisher : Macmillan Reference USA | Published : Detroit

Structures and subjectivities in 16th-century gynaecology, or how the father of medicine reclaimed his paternity (2007)
Green, Monica and King, Helen
In: Hartman, Joan E. and Seeff, Adele eds. Structures and subjectivities: Attending to early modern women. Center for Renaissance & Baroque Studies (pp. 100-101)
ISBN : 9780874139419 | Publisher : University of Delaware Press | Published : Newark, DE

The origins of medicine in the second century AD (2006-10)
King, Helen
In: Goldhill, Simon and Osborne, Robin eds. Rethinking revolutions through Ancient Greece (pp. 246-263)
ISBN : 9780521862127 | Publisher : Cambridge University Press | Published : Cambridge

Introduction: what is health? (2005-03-03)
King, Helen
In: King, Helen ed. Health in Antiquity (pp. 1-11)
ISBN : 9780415220651 | Publisher : Routledge | Published : Abingdon

Women's health and recovery in the Hippocratic corpus (2005-03-03)
King, Helen
In: King, Helen ed. Health in Antiquity (pp. 150-161)
ISBN : 9780415220651 | Publisher : Routledge | Published : Abingdon

The mathematics of sex: one to two, or two to one? (2005-03)
King, Helen
In: Soergel, Philip M. and Barnes, Andrew eds. Sexuality and culture in medieval and renaissance Europe. Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History (3) (pp. 47-58)
ISBN : 404645526 | Publisher : AMS Press | Published : New York, NY U.S.

Illness and other personal crises in Greek and Roman religions (2004-11-30)
King, Helen
In: Johnston, Sarah Iles ed. Religions of the ancient world: A guide (pp. 464-467)
ISBN : 9780674015173 | Publisher : Harvard University Press | Published : Harvard

Cellier, Elizabeth (fl. 1668–1688) (2004)
King, Helen
In: Matthews, Henry Colin Gray and Harrison, Brian Howard eds. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (pp. 807-808)
ISBN : 9780198613602 | Publisher : Oxford University Press | Published : Oxford, UK

Hodges, Nathaniel (1629–1688) (2004)
King, Helen
In: Matthews, Henry Colin Gray and Harrison, Brian Howard eds. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (pp. 456-456)
ISBN : 198613776 | Publisher : Oxford University Press | Published : Oxford, UK

The power of paternity: the Father of Medicine meets the Prince of Physicians (2002)
King, Helen
In: Cantor, David ed. Reinventing Hippocrates. The History of Medicine in Context (pp. 21-36)
ISBN : 754605280 | Publisher : Ashgate | Published : Aldershot

The limits of normality in Hippocratic gynaecology (2002)
King, Helen
In: Thivel, Antoine and Zucker, Arnaud eds. Le normal et le pathologique dans la Collection hippocratique (pp. 563-574)
ISBN : 9782914561105 | Publisher : Publications de le Faculté des Lettres, Arts et Sciences Humaines de Nice | Published : Nice

Recovering hysteria from history: Herodotus and “the first case of shell shock” (2001)
King, Helen
In: Halligan, Peter; Bass, Christopher and Marshall, John eds. Contemporary Approaches to the Science of Hysteria: Clinical and Theoretical Perspectives (pp. 36-48)
ISBN : 019263254X | Publisher : Oxford University Press

Chronic pain and the creation of narrative (1999)
King, Helen
In: Porter, James I. ed. Constructions of the Classical Body (pp. 269-286)
ISBN : 0-472-08779-7 | Publisher : University of Michigan Press | Published : Michigan

Comparative perspectives on medicine and religion in the ancient world (1999)
King, Helen
In: Hinnells, John R. and Porter, Roy eds. Religion, Health and Suffering: a Cross-Cultural Study of Attitudes to Suffering and the Implications for Medicine in a Multi-Religious Society (pp. 276-294)
ISBN : 978-0-7103-0611-1 | Publisher : Kegan Paul International | Published : London

Medical texts as a source for women's history (1995)
King, Helen
In: Powell, Anton ed. The Greek World. Routledge Worlds (pp. 199-218)
ISBN : 978-0-415-06031-8 | Publisher : Routledge | Published : London

'As if none understood the art that cannot understand Greek': the education of midwives in seventeenth century England (1995)
King, Helen
In: Nutton, Vivian and Porter, Roy eds. The History of Medical Education in Britain. Clio Medica: Perspectives in Medical Humanities (30) (pp. 184-198)
ISBN : 978-90-5183-571-7 | Publisher : Editions Rodopi B. V. | Published : Atlanta, GA

Half-human creatures (1995)
King, Helen
In: Cherry, John ed. Mythical Beasts (pp. 138-166)
ISBN : 978-0714117379 | Publisher : British Museum Press | Published : London

Food and blood in Hippokratic gynaecology (1995)
King, Helen
In: Wilkins, John; Harvey, David and Dobson, Michael J. eds. Food in Antiquity (pp. 351-358)
ISBN : 9780859894180 | Publisher : University of Exeter Press | Published : Exeter

Conversion disorder and hysteria (1995)
King, Helen
In: Berrios, G. E. and Porter, Roy eds. History of Clinical Psychiatry: the Origin and History of Psychiatric Disorders (pp. 442-450)
ISBN : 9780485240115 | Publisher : Athlone Press | Published : London

Sowing the field: Greek and Roman sexology (1994-09)
King, Helen
In: Porter, Roy and Teich, Mikulas eds. Sexual Knowledge, Sexual Science: the History of Attitudes to Sexuality (pp. 29-46)
ISBN : 9780521444347 | Publisher : Cambridge University Press | Published : Cambridge

Producing woman: Hippocratic gynaecology (1994)
King, Helen
In: Archer, Leonie; Fischler, Susan and Wyke, Maria eds. Women in Ancient Societies: an Illusion of the Night: (pp. 102-114)
ISBN : 978-0415908818 | Publisher : Macmillan | Published : New York

The politick midwife: models of midwifery in the work of Elizabeth Cellier (1993)
King, Helen
In: Marland, Hilary ed. The Art of Midwifery: Early Modern Midwives in Europe. Wellcome Institute Series in the History of Medicine (pp. 115-130)
ISBN : 415064252 | Publisher : Routledge | Published : London

Blood, Sweat and Tears – The Changing Concepts of Physiology from Antiquity into Early Modern Europe (2012-07)
Horstmansoff, Manfred; King, Helen and Zittel, Claus eds.
Intersections: Interdisciplinary Studies in Early Modern Culture
ISBN : 978-90-04-22918-1 | Publisher : Brill | Published : Leiden

Health in Antiquity (2005-03-03)
King, Helen
King, Helen ed.
ISBN : 9780415220651 | Publisher : Routledge | Published : Abingdon

From print to wool: Vesalius and the ‘knit your own womb’ movement (2023)
King, Helen
In : Uncovering the Female Sexual Anatomy: depictions and discourses (12 May - 9 Jun 2021, [Online]) ((In Press))

Hippocratic gynaecological therapy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (1999)
King, Helen
In : Aspetti della Terapia nel Corpus Hippocraticum (Atti del IXe Colloque hippocratique) (25-29 Sep 1996, Pisa, Italy)

Chamberlen, Hugh, the elder (b. 1630x34, d. after 1720) (2004)
King, Helen
Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.

Chamberlen, Peter (1601–1683) (2004)
King, Helen
Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.