Helene Castenbrandt: Lars Öberg Lecture: Guarding the Coast: Cholera and Maritime Quarantine in the 19th Century

Helene Castenbrandt is a researcher at the Department of Economic History, Lund University, Sweden. Trained as a historian, she earned her PhD from the University of Gothenburg in 2012 for her dissertation on dysentery epidemics in Sweden between 1750 and 1900, exploring the disease's demographic and medical history. She then held a postdoctoral fellowship at the SAXO Institute, University of Copenhagen, where she focused her work on sickness funds and health in early 20th-century Sweden. Her research concerns medical and population history, particularly the development of healthcare institutions, access to healthcare, and the historical management of epidemic diseases.”

 

Susann Holmberg: Waters of Well-Being: "Sundhedsvand" and Medicine in Early Modern Norway

Susann Holmberg is an Associate Professor of History at the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences. She earned her PhD from the University of Oslo in 2020 with a dissertation on knowledge of venereal disease in eighteenth-century Norway. Her research focuses on the history of medicine, knowledge, and culture, with particular interests in topics such as apparent death, rescue medicine, and forensic medicine.

Juris Salaks: Justus Christian von Loder (1753–1832): His Artificial Mineral Waters Establishment in Moscow

Juris Salaks is Professor of History of Medicine and Director of the Institute of the History of Medicine at Riga Stradinš University, Latvia. Trained as a physician in Riga and received his Dr. med. from the Free University of Berlin. For many years he has combined academic work with museum practice at the Pauls Stradinš Museum of the History of Medicine in Riga Stradinš University, Latvia. Trained as a physician in Riga and received his Dr. med. from the Free University of Berlin. For many years he has combined academic work with museum practice at the Pauls Stradinš Museum of the History of Medicine in Riga.

His research interests range from German–Russian medical relations in the 18th–19th centuries and the history of the pharmaceutical industry in the Baltic region and Imperial Russia to medical museology. He has published numerous articles and several monographs and is co-editor of Acta Medico-Historica Rigensia. As a curator, he has created award-winning exhibitions such as the cycles “Medicine and Opera”, “Anatomy and Art”, and “Amber: Myths and Science”, developed for the programme “Riga – European Capital of Culture 2014”.

Professor Salaks is a General Secretary of the International Society of the History of Medicine. His is guided by a constant ambition to build bridges between Western and Eastern traditions in the history of medicine and in medical museology.

Börje Haraldsson: Bengt Lindskog Lecture: Development of dialysis and body water purification

Börje Haraldsson is a physician-scientist with over 40 years of experience spanning academia, clinical nephrology, and pharmaceutical innovation. In 2001–2015, he held the professorship of nephrology in Gothenburg before being recruited to build a global renal portfolio at Novartis in Basel, Switzerland for seven years. Since 2022 he is CEO of Oncorena AB and Adjunct Professor of Physiology at the University of Gothenburg. His current research is focused on molecular mechanisms behind renal damage and repair, with the aim to develop novel drugs for renal cell carcinoma and other kidney diseases.