Professor Mary E. Fissell teaches at the Department of the History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University, where she also co-edits the Bulletin of the History of Medicine. Her scholarly work explores how ordinary people in early modern England understood health, healing, and the natural world.

Her scholarly work focuses on how ordinary people in early modern England understood health, healing, and the natural world. Her current work continues to examine vernacular knowledge -- ideas about the natural world that ordinary people used, made, shaped, and practiced.

Fissell has published on a wide range of topics, including the histories of vermin; medical ethics; midwifery; and patients’ narratives.