John Riddle
John Riddle is a retired professor from the University of North Carolina. He’s the author of eight books primarily on the history of medicine but also on Roman and medieval history. He’s written two books on the history of abortion and contraception from ancient times to Roe vs. Wade. The thesis was that pre-modern women had effective drugs to control pregnancies. He took on a major project of identifying and describing all of the manuscripts of Dioscorides, the famous Roman medical writer and one of John’s favorite sources of information from that time. John’s specialty is to decipher the ancient texts, interpret their contents by introducing medicine, pharmacy, and chemistry into historical studies to answer the underlying question, did these ancient remedies work? This has been described as John’s most original achievement and one that will undoubtedly be his most enduring contributions.
