William H. Welch Medal

The William H. Welch Medal is an annual award given by the American Association for the History of Medicine to the author or co-authors of an outstanding book in medical history. According to the current rules, the award is not for editorial work. The book must be published during the five years preceding the award, which is presented at the AAHM's annual meeting. Any author who is awarded the William H. Welch is ineligible for subsequent awards of the medal — this rule of ineligibility was instituted in 1973, after Erwin Ackerknecht received the medal in 1953 and in 1972. The medal is named in honor of William H. Welch, M.D., a pathologist, bacteriologist, and first dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. The inaugural medal was awarded in 1950 to Henry E. Sigerist. He grew up in Paris and Zurich and in 1932 moved to the United States as the successor to William H. Welch as director of the Johns Hopkins University Institute of the History of Medicine.

Past recipients

The medal has been awarded every year since 1971. Before 1971, there were some years in which the medal was not awarded.

2023 — Yan Liu, Healing with Poisons: Potent Medicines in Medieval China
2022 — Jaipreet Virdi, Hearing Happiness: Deafness Cures in History
2021 — Benjamin Breen, The Age of Intoxication: Origins of the Global Drug Trade ; 10-digit
2020 — Nicole Barnes, Intimate Communities: Wartime Healthcare and the Birth of Modern China, 1937–1945
2019 — Pablo Gómez, The Experiential Caribbean: Creating Knowledge and Healing in the Early Modern Atlantic ;
2018 — Cristian Berco, From Body to Community: Venereal Disease and Society in Baroque Spain
2017 — Johanna Schoen, Abortion After Roe: Abortion After Legalization
2016 — Sean Hsiang-Lin Lei, Neither Donkey Nor Horse: Medicine in the Struggle Over China’s Modernity
2015 — Leslie J. Reagan, Dangerous Pregnancies: Mothers, Disabilities, and Abortion in Modern America
2014 — Julie Livingston, Improvising Medicine: An African Oncology Ward in an Emerging Cancer Epidemic
2013 — Michael Willrich, Pox: An American History
2012 — Gregg Mitman, Breathing Space: How Allergies Shape Our Lives and Landscapes
2011 — Allan M. Brandt, The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product That Defined America
2010 — Warwick Anderson, The Collectors of Lost Souls: Turning Kuru Scientists into Whitemen
2009 — Katharine Park, Secrets of Women: Gender, Generation, and the Origins of Human Dissection
2008 — Frank M. Snowden III, The Conquest of Malaria: Italy, 1900-1962
2007 — Ruth Rogaski, Hygienic Modernity: Meaning of Health and Disease in Treaty-Port China
2006 — Barron H. Lerner, Breast Cancer Wars: Hope, Fear, and the Pursuit of a Cure in Twentieth Century America
2005 — Keith Wailoo, Dying in the City of the Blues: Sickle Cell Anemia and the Politics of Race and Health
2004 — Kenneth Ludmerer, Time to Heal: American Medical Education from the Turn of the Century to the Era of Managed Care
2003 — Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity from Antiquity to the Present ;
2002 — Nancy Tomes, The Gospel of Germs: Men, Women and the Microbe in American Life.
2001 — Shigehisa Kuriyama, The Expressiveness of the Body and the Divergence of Greek and Chinese Medicine
2000 — W. Bruce Fye, American Cardiology: The History of a Specialty and its College
1999 — Jack D. Pressman, Last Resort: Psychosurgery and the Limits of Medicine ;
1998 — Mary Lindemann, Health and Healing in Eighteenth-Century Germany
1997 — Harold J. Cook, Trials of an Ordinary Doctor: Joannes Groenevelt in Seventeenth-Century London
1996 — Gerald L. Geison, The Private Science of Louis Pasteur
1995 — Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, A Midwife’s Tale
1994 — Michael R. McVaugh, Medicine Before the Plague: Practitioners and Their Patients in the Crown of Aragon, 1285–1345
1993 — Heinrich von Staden, Herophilus: The Art of Medicine in Ancient Alexandria
1992 — Philip Curtin, Death by Migration
1991 — John Harley Warner, The Therapeutic Perspective: Medical Knowledge and Identity in America, 1820–1855
1990 — Rosemary Stevens, In Sickness and in Wealth: American Hospitals in the Twentieth Century
1989 — Richard J. Evans, Death in Hamburg: Society and Politics in the Cholera Years, 1830–1910
1988 — Guenter B. Risse, Hospital Life in Enlightenment Scotland: Care and Teaching at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh
1987 — James H. Cassedy, American Medicine and Statistical Thinking, 1800–1860 ; and Medicine and American Growth, 1800–1860
1986 — Gerald N. Grob, The State and the Mentally Ill: A History of the Worcester State Hospital ; and Mental Institutions in America ; and Mental Illness and American Society, 1897–1940
1985 — Nancy G. Siraisi, Taddeo Alderotti and His Pupils: Two Generations of Italian Medical Learning
1984 — Michael Bliss, The Discovery of Insulin
1983 — Robert Gregg Frank, Harvey and the Oxford Physiologists: Scientific Ideas and Social Interaction
1982 — James Harvey Young, "for scholarly contributions to the history of medicine"
1981 — Erna Lesky, "for significant contributions to the history of medicine"
1980 — John Ballard Blake, "for his valuable scholarly contributions to the history of medicine"
1979 — Charles Webster, The Great Instauration: Medicine and Reform, 1626–1660
1978 — Frederic L. Holmes, Claude Bernard and Animal Chemistry: The Emergence of a Scientist
1977 — Lester S. King, ”for his scholarly contributions to the history of medicine”
1976 — Lelland J. Rather, Addison and the White Corpuscles ; and Mind and Body in Eighteenth-Century Medicine, ; and for “his important continuing studies in the history of medicine”
1975 — George W. Corner, "for invaluable contributions"
1974 — Walter Pagel, "for extensive and most valuable publications"
1973 — Margaret Tallmadge May, Galen on the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body
1972 — Erwin H. Ackerknecht, Medicine at the Paris Hospital, 1794–1848
1971 — Charles Donald O’Malley, "for scholarly contributions"
1970 — No award
1969 — Charles E. Rosenberg, The Cholera Years ;
1968 — Saul Benison, Tom Rivers: Reflections on a Life in Medicine and Science
1967 — Howard B. Adelman, Marcello Malpighi and the Evolution of Embryology
1966 — Whitfield J. Bell Jr., John Morgan: Continental Doctor ;
1965 — No award
1964 — No award
1963 — Saul Jarcho, "for scholarly contributions"
1962 — Genevieve Miller, The Adoption of Inoculation for Smallpox in England and France
1961 — George Rosen, "for contributions to the social history of medicine"
1960 — Richard H. Shryock, "for scholarly contributions"
1959 — No award
1958 — Charles F. Mullett, The Bubonic Plague and England: An Essay in the History of Preventive Medicine
1957 — No award
1956 — Lyman Henry Butterfield, Letters of Benjamin Rush ;
1955 — No award
1954 — Jerome Pierce Webster and Martha Teach Gnudi, The Life and Times of Gaspare Tagliacozzi
1953 — Erwin H. Ackerknecht, "for scholarly contributions"
1952 — Owsei Temkin, "for scholarly contributions"
1951 — No award
1950 — Henry E. Sigerist, "for scholarly contribution"