Lecture Three – Pox and Prejudice: The Story of Chlamydia Through the Ages
Often called the “silent infection,” Chlamydia trachomatis has shaped far more than modern sexual health statistics—it has left its mark on human history, medicine, and even cultural perceptions of disease. In this third part of our series, we trace chlamydia’s journey from obscure ancient ailments to one of the most reported infections worldwide. We will explore its medical recognition, the shifting social stigma surrounding it, and the transformative breakthroughs in diagnosis and treatment. Drawing on case studies from archaeology, literature, and public health campaigns, this lecture uncovers how an organism smaller than a grain of dust has influenced law, policy, and intimate relationships for centuries.
Prepare for a vivid, evidence-based exploration that moves seamlessly between the microscope and the macrocosm—where biology meets history, and medicine meets morality.
Speaker Bio
Lena Schattenherz Heide-Brennand is a Norwegian lecturer with a master degree in language, culture and literature from the University of Oslo and Linnaeus University. She has been lecturing and teaching various subjects since 1998. Her field of interest and main focus has always been topics that others have considered strange, eccentric and eerie, and she has specialised in a variety of dark subjects linked to folklore, mythology and Victorian traditions and medicine. Her students often point out her thorough knowledge about the subjects she is teaching, in addition to her charismatic appearance. She refers to herself as a performance lecturer and always gives her audience an outstanding experience, Lena’s New Book – Mythical Creatures in Scandinavian Folklore is now available on Amazon
Speaker Bio:
Cat Irving has been the Human Remains Conservator for Surgeons’ Hall since 2015 and has been caring for anatomical and pathological museum collections for over twenty years. After a degree in Anatomical Science she began removing brains and sewing up bodies at the Edinburgh City Mortuary. Following training in the care of wet tissue collections at the Royal College of Surgeons of England she worked with the preparations of William Hunter at the Hunterian Museum at Glasgow University, where she is now Consultant Human Remains Conservator. Cat is a licensed anatomist, and gives regular talks on anatomy and medical history. She recently carried out conservation work on the skeleton of serial killer William Burke
don’t worry if you miss it – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day