Acknowledgements

The richness of the medical register with its recent discoveries of long-forgotten materials and new digital databases offers ample opportunities for original research. The contributors of this volume have been inspired by this state of affairs, and we are very happy to see this collective volume come true without overdue delay, in spite of the challenges posed by the pandemic. Several contributors faced problems from COVID-19, as some countries were particularly hard hit, libraries were shut down for longer periods and their role in supporting research activities suffered. Nevertheless, the difficulties were overcome, and we would like to thank these institutions for their collaboration and permission to use images from their collections.

The point of departure for this book, the CHIMED-2 Conference in 2019, received funding from the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies and the University of Helsinki. We would like to thank these institutions for their support. Our thanks are also due to the devoted and efficient conference secretary Noora Kumpulainen, who worked tirelessly behind the scenes to make sure the event became friendly and inspiring. As editorial secretary, Noora’s contribution to preparing the book for publication was also invaluable.

We would like to thank the CUP team – Helen Barton, Isabel Collins and Stephanie Taylor – for their support, advice and collaboration. The series editor Merja Kytö deserves our special word of thanks for her constructive and helpful comments during the editorial process, and for accepting our volume into the series.

We are also grateful to the anonymous reviewers of the book proposal and the individual chapters for their insightful comments and constructive criticism that improved the volume as a whole a great deal.