Held on Tuesday, 4 June 2026 at 6:30pm

Venue: Apothecaries' Hall, Black Friar's Lane, London EC4V 6EJ

Presenting Norah Schuster: Life and Times of a Pioneer Cytopathologist (Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Lecture)

To be given by Dr Tina Matthews

Norah Schuster was born in the late 19th century to a professor of physics at Manchester who enabled entrance to medical education at a time when female students were not welcome. As a student WW1 placed Norah into pathology laboratories in Manchester, and after qualification she followed her family to London and the greater availability of posts for women. Norah worked around South East England and published papers on general pathology and historical matters. She was a founder member of the Royal College of Pathologists in 1963 making a generous donation to start a library and later many significant books. She died in 1991 aged 99 years.

Dr Tina Matthews BM FRCPath DHMSA DPMSA is a retired consultant cellular pathologist whose association with the Apothecaries began in 1995 with the history of medicine course. As president of the history of medicine section at the RSM she became aware of the Norah Schuster prize and a fascination with this remarkable but overlooked pioneer cytopathologist was born.

Tina is currently the convenor of examiners for the DHMSA and also serves as the honorary librarian for the Royal College of Pathologists.

Presenting Oliver Sacks and the Hidden History of Neurodivergent Reading (MacDonald Lecture)

To be given by Prof Matthew Rubery

Oliver Sacks’s bestselling books played a pivotal role in raising public awareness of neurodiversity, especially around unconventional or stigmatized forms of reading. Building on the concept of metagnosis, or the belated recognition of a neurological condition, this lecture proposes that Sacks’s humane and compassionate case studies helped many individuals become aware of their own cognitive differences for the first time. Rather than pathologizing atypical cognition, Sacks’s narratives enabled readers to identify with neurodivergent experiences, reframing so-called ‘bad’ or ‘impaired’ reading as simply different. This talk ultimately endorses Sacks’s idea of ‘reading pluralism,’ advocating for a more inclusive understanding of reading that embraces the diverse ways in which people do it.

Prof Matthew Rubery is Professor of Modern Literature at Queen Mary University of London. His books include Reader’s Block: A History of Neurodivergent Reading (2022), The Untold Story of the Talking Book (2016), and Further Reading (2020), a collection of essays for the series Oxford Twenty-First Century Approaches to Literature. He has curated several exhibitions including ‘Projected Books: How Bedbound WWII Veterans Were Enabled to Read’ at the British Academy Summer Showcase and ‘How We Read: A Sensory History of Books for Blind People’ at the inaugural Being Human Festival.