Poynter Lecture

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The Poynter Lecture is given every two years at the British Society for the History of Medicine in memory of Noël Poynter,^[1] past president of BSHM, who was Director of the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine from 1964 to 1973.

Poynter made a number of important contributions to the study of the history of medicine and his influence was felt throughout the world.^[2] He devoted much time and energy to societies devoted to the study of the history of medicine. He was a prime mover in the founding of the Faculty of the History of Medicine of the Society of Apothecaries in 1958. He was an active member of the Société Internationale d’Histoire de la Médecine, contributing to its reorganisation. He went on to become Secretary-General and then President of the International Academy of the History of Medicine. His links with American historians led to his appointment to the editorial board of the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences.

Poynter was a regular contributor to journals and author of a series of books, many of which dealt with medicine in Tudor and Stuart times. These included The Selected Writings of William Clowes (1544–1608), A Seventeenth Century Doctor and His Patients: John Symcott, William Harvey: Lectures on the Whole of Anatomy.

In 1961, he published A Short History of Medicine, a brief account of the evolution of medicine aimed at a younger readership, while Medicine and Man (1971) addressed social aspects of the history of medicine.

He founded and then edited the journal Medical History from 1957 until 1973.^[3]