an act and a subject of discourse, in the early and late modern periods. It argues that, while publications on the theme have increased considerably in the past two decades, the problematic character of the evidence for suicide has led to afocus on attitudes to suicide at the expense of empirical investigations. The latter have largely confirmed the link between social isolation and suicide, po...

Colonial medicine is a thriving field of study in the history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century medicine. Medicine can be used as a lens to view colonialism in action and as a way to critique colonialism. This article argues that key debates and ideas from that modern field can fruitfully be applied to the Middle Ages, especially for the early empires of Spain and Portugal (mid-fourteenth to...