Susan Holman: Shaping Water: Public Health and the ‘Medicine of Mortality’ in Late Antiquity

This paper explores medical and religious texts from Christian late antiquity to consider the ethics of water aid in public or social policy and humanitarian relief at the intersection of past and present global health concerns. Drawing from geographical theorist Doreen Massey and South African theologian, Steve de Gruchy, on theology and sanitation today, it considers points of commonality and difference with medical and Christian writers in late antiquity, the role of water in health and mortality, the moral ethic of water equity and justice for all, and how water shapes the holy in ways relevant to public health. It concludes with examples of how the literal shape of water may image liturgical space and the narrative flow of social intersections across politics, productivity, and history.