Thomas Schlich
Thomas Schlich (born 8 June 1962) is a German-Canadian historian of medicine known for his work on the history of surgery. Education. Thomas Schlich studied medicine at the University of Marburg, Germany, and worked at the centre of internal medicine, department of Nephrology as a physician. He holds an MD research degree (1990) from the Philipps-University of Marburg, and was awarded habilitation (1998) by the Albert-Ludwigs-University of Freiburg. Career. In 1991/92 he spent a year at the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, at the University  of Cambridge, England. From 1992 to 1997 he was Research Officer at the Institute for the History of Medicine at the Robert Bosch Foundation in Stuttgart, Germany. From 1997 to 2000 he held the position of Assistant professor at the Institute for the History of Medicine of the University of Freiburg, Germany. From 2000 to 2002 he held a Heisenberg Fellowship awarded by the German Research Council/Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). In 2002 he moved to Montreal, Canada to take up a position as a professor at the Department of Social Studies of Medicine at McGill University, a position which he  holds currently. He held a Canada Research Chair from 2002 to 2012 and has since then held the James McGill Professorship in the History of Medicine. He is department chair (head) of the Department Social Studies of Medicine (2021-). Schlich has been a visiting scholar or professor at many institutions, including the Institute for the History of Medicine at the University of Giessen, Germany (2006), the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany (2009/10), the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, University of Marseille, France (2016), and the Institut universitaire d’histoire de la médecine et de  la santé publique, University of Lausanne, Switzerland (2016/17). He has given various named and key note lectures, among them the Rausing Lecture in the History of Technology at Cambridge University and the Stanley R. Friesen Lecture in the History of Surgery at the University of Kansas, and the Biennial Kass Lecture in the History of Medicine at King's College London. Awards and honours. In 1991 he was awarded the prize conferred by the 'Universitätsbund Marburg' for the best dissertation on the subject of the history of the university, and the Harold Ellis Prize in 2007 awarded by the International  Journal of Surgery. Since 2019 he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (FRSC). Editorial board. He presently serves on the editorial boards the monograph series “Forschungen zur Kultur der Medizin. Geschichte – Theorie – Ethik” [Studies on Culture and Medicine. History – Theory – Ethics], Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science. Research. His research interests include the history of modern medicine and science (18th-21st centuries), medicine and technology, history of medical innovation, and body history, with a special focus on the history of modern surgery (1800 to the present time). Most of his recent publications  contribute to his research project “Cutting into the Living Body: The Emergence of Modern Surgery, 1800-1914”. This research looks at two issues: the history of the rationale of modern surgery—why surgeons open up their patient's living bodies to restore their health; and the practices of modern surgery—how surgeons have learned to repair structures within the living body, and making sure that the patient survives. Schlich and his team have examined the recent emergence of minimally invasive surgery in a project with the title "Disrupting Surgical Practice: The Rise of Minimally Invasive Surgery, 1980-2000", funded by  the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). His most current CIHR-funded project is about patients’ role in the development of new technologies in modern medicine, using Minimally Invasive Surgery as an example, "Medical Innovation and the Patient Consumer: Explaining the Rise of Minimally Invasive Surgery".