2017-18
FACULTY OF HISTORY
PART II, PAPER 11
EARLY MEDICINE
The course covers medical knowledge and practices in the ancient, medieval and early
modern periods. Themes include understandings of the body and of disease; the
status of medical knowledge; patient-practitioner relationships; the medical
marketplace; sex and reproduction; and medicine, magic and religion. No prior
knowledge of history of medicine is required. The paper is currently open to
students in BBS Part II; it overlaps with HPS Part II, Paper 1, but there is a
separate examination paper.
Supervisions are arranged within HPS. There will be 7 supervisions on this paper. The
course is evaluated by means of a 3-hour timed examination in June.
Breakdown of the course
24 one-hour lectures in Michaelmas and Lent, consisting of:
8 lectures on Medieval Medicine
Topics of this series will include medieval Arabo-Islamic sciences, scholastic medicine
and surgery, physiognomy and astronomy, transmission of scientific knowledge
among cultures, and the experience of being ill in the Middle Ages.
12 lectures on Early Modern Medicine
Centering on doctors, patients and diseases, these lectures introduce the major themes
and methods that historians have used to study the ways in which medical
knowledge was made, health and illness understood and diseases prevented and
cured hundreds of years ago. We will begin with questions about who did these
things, how they did them, and why.
4 lectures on Books, Instruments and Collections
One 2-hour primary source class
Preliminary reading
For introductions to the subject, see:
▪ Porter, Roy, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind (London: HarperCollins, 1997)
▪ Siraisi, Nancy, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1990)
▪ Elmer, Peter (ed), The Healing Arts: Health, Disease and Society in Europe, 1500–1800
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004)
For studies of particular periods, places and practitioners, see:
▪ Cook, Harold, Trials of an Ordinary Doctor: Joannes Groenevelt in 17th-Century London
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994)
▪ Cunningham, Andrew, The Anatomical Renaissance: The Resurrection of the
Anatomical Projects of the Ancients (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1997)
▪ Duden, Barbara, The Woman Beneath the Skin: A Doctor's Patients in 18th-Century
Germany, translated by Thomas Dunlap (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1991)
▪ Fissell, Mary, Vernacular Bodies: The Politics of Reproduction in Early Modern England
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)
▪ MacDonald, Michael, Mystical Bedlam: Madness, Anxiety and Healing in 17th-Century
England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981)
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▪ French, Roger, Medicine Before Science: The Rational and Learned Doctor from the
Middle Ages to the Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2003)
▪ Pelling, Margaret, The Common Lot: Sickness, Medical Occupations and the Urban Poor
in Early Modern England (London: Longman, 1998)
▪ Pomata, Gianna, Contracting a Cure: Patients, Healers and the Law in Early Modern
Bologna (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998)
▪ Siraisi, Nancy, The Clock and the Mirror: Girolamo Cardano and Renaissance Medicine
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997)
For further reading, see:
 Manzoni, Alessandro, The Betrothed (1827)
 Pears, Iain, An Instance of the Fingerpost (London: Jonathan Cape, 1997)
 Tomalin, Claire, Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self (London: Viking, 2002)
Medieval Medicine
LECTURES
Lecture 1. Graeco-Roman Medicine
Rebecca Flemming, “Empires of knowledge: medicine and health in the Hellenistic
World”, in A. Erskine (ed.), A Companion to the Hellenistic World (Oxford:
Blackwell 2003), pp. 449-463. ebook
R. J.Hankinson, “The man and his work”, in The Cambridge Companion to Galen
(Cambridge: Cambridge UP 2008), pp. 1-33. W1.GAL.HAN 3 and ebook.
Jacques Jouanna, Hippocrates (Baltimore-London: The Johns Hopkins UP 2001),
‘Hippocrates the Asclepiad’ pp. 3-55; ‘The Legacy of Hippocrates in Antiquity’ pp.
348-366.W1.HIP.JOU 1
Vivian Nutton, “The Rise of Methodism”, in Nutton, Ancient Medicine (London:
Routledge 2004), pp. 187-201.W1.NUT 1a
Vivian Nutton, “The fortunes of Galen”, in The Cambridge Companion to Galen
(Cambridge, Cambridge UP 2008), pp. 355-390.W1.GAL.HAN 3
Lecture 2. Reception and assimilation in the Islamicate world
J.L. Bergreen, “Islamic Acquisition of Foreign Sciences: A Cultural Perspective”, The
American Journal of Islamic Social Studies, 9 (1992), 310-24.CUL –Order in West Room L200.c.902
Dimitri Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: the Graeco-Arabic translation movement in
Baghdad and early ʻAbbāsid society (2nd-4th/8th-10th centuries) (London:
Routledge, 1998), pp. 1-104.A1.GUT 1
Max Meyerhof, “New Light on Hunain Ibn Ishaq and His Period”, Isis, 8,4 (1926), 685724. eJournal
Franz Rosenthal, The Classical Heritage in Islam (London: Routledge 1975 -1992
paperback ed.). In particular, section on medicine, pp. 182-205. CUL –North
Front 6 –632:2.c.95.113
Manfred Ullmann, Islamic Medicine (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1978 -1997 paperback
ed.), pp. 7-40. W2.ULL 1
Further readings:
George Saliba, Islamic Science and the Making of the European Renaissance (MIT
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Press: Cambridge, MA –London, 2007), pp. 1-72. L2.SAL1
Lecture 3: Early Medieval Medicine
M.L.Cameron, Anglo-Saxon Medicine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
W2.CAM.3
Peregrine Horden, Hospitals and Healing from Antiquity to the Later Middle Ages
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), ch. XIII-XV W2.HOR.2
Peregrine Horden, ‘What’s Wrong with Early Medieval Medicine?’, in Social History of
Medicine, 24.1 (2011), 5-25. See other articles in this issue too. Available via
http://shm.oxfordjournals.org/content/24/1.toc
Audrey Meaney, ‘The Anglo-Saxon View of the Causes of Disease’, in Sheila Campbell,
Bert Hall and David Klausner (eds.), Health, Disease and Healing in Medieval
Culture (Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1992) W2.CAM.2
Piers Mitchell, Medicine in the Crusades (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)
W2.MIT.1
Nancy Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine (Chicago: Chicago University
Press, 1990), ch.1
W2.SIR.1a-b http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/textidx?c=acls;idno=heb01534
Patricia Skinner, Health and Medicine in Early Medieval Southern Italy (Leiden, New York
and Cologne: Brill, 1997), ch.4, 5 W2.SKI.1
Faith Wallis, ‘The experience of the book: manuscripts, texts, and the role of
epistemology in early medieval medicine’, in Don Bates (ed.), Knowledge and the
Scholarly Medical Traditions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995),
101-26 W1.BAT.2
Primary Sources
Faith Wallis (ed.), Medieval Medicine: A Reader (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
2010). See especially texts 12, 13, 16, 22, 23, 24, 29, 30. W2.WAL.3
Lecture 4. Translation and transmission from the Islamicate to the Latin world
Charles Burnett, ‘The Coherence of the Arabic-Latin Translation Program in Toledo in
the Twelfth Century’, in Id., Arabic into Latin in the Middle Ages. The Translators
and their
Intellectual and Social Context (London: Ashgate -‘Variorum Collected Studies Series’,
2009) ch. VII. CUL –West Four E350.c.200.84
Danielle Jacquart, ‘The influence of Arabic medicine in the medieval West’, in Rashed, R.
(and Morelon, R.), Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science, 3 vols. (LondonNew York: Routledge,1996), III, pp. 963-984. REF (SCI 61 A-C)
Scott L. Montgomery, Science in Translation. Movements of Knowledge through Cultures
and Time (Chicago-London: University of Chicago Press, 2000), pp. 138-185 (‘Era
of translation into Latin’). L.MON 2
Still useful, even if dated:
Donald Campbell, Arabian Medicine and its Influence on the Middle Ages, 2 vols.(London:
Routledge 2000 -reprint of ed. Paul Trench, Trübner 1926), I, pp. 118-193. CUL
South Front, Floor 3 -300:13.c.200.2
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Lecture 5. Scholastic Medicine
Roger French, Medicine before Science: The Rational and learned Doctor from the Middle
Ages to the Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 59153. W.FRE 2.
Roger French, Canonical Medicine: Gentile da Foligno and Scholasticism (Leiden: Brill
2001), chs. 1-2. W2.GEN.FRE 1.
Faye Getz, ‘The Faculty of Medicine before 1500’, in The history of the University of
Oxford, volume II, ed. by I. Catto and Ralph Evans (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1992), 76-93. W.WEL 1.30.
Cornelius O’Boyle, The art of Medicine: Medical Teaching at the University of Paris, 12501400 (Leiden: Brill, 1998). W2.OBO 2.
Nancy Siraisi, Taddeo Alderotti and his Pupils: Two Generations of Italian Medical
Learning (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981). W2.ALD.SIR 1a-b.
Nancy Siraisi, ‘The faculty of medicine’, in A History of the University in Europe, Volume I:
Universities in the Middle Ages, ed. by Hilde de Ridder-Symoens (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1992), 360-87. M. RID 1.1
Primary Sources
Edward Grant (ed.), A Source Book in Medieval Science (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1974). Text 90 (Johannitius, Isagoge); 91 (an extract from
Avicenna’s Canon); 92 (Commentaries by Iacopo da Forlì and Haly Rodohan on
Galen’s Tegni). L2.GRA 3a-c.
Faith Wallis (ed.), Medieval Medicine: A Reader (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
2010). Texts 32-34, 39, 40-42, 43-45, 58-60. W2.WAL.3 (Reserve)
Lecture 6. Practitioners and Practices
Sheila Campbell, Bert Hall and David Klausner (eds.), Health, Disease and Healing in
Medieval Culture (Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1992) W2.CAM 2.
Mark R. Cohen, "The Burdensome Life of a Jewish Physician and Communal Leader: A
Genizah Fragment from the Alliance Israelite Universelle Collection", Jerusalem Studies
in Arabic and Islam 16 (1993),123-36.CUL –West Four -P830.c.100
M.W. Dols, Adil S. Gamal, Medieval Islamic Medicine. Ibn Riḍwān’s Treatise ‘On the
Prevention of Bodily Ills in Egypt’ (Berkeley-Los Angeles-London: University of
California Press 1984),pp. 1-74.CUL –South Front, floor 3, 300:13.c.95.198
Solomon D. Goitein, "The Medical Profession in the Light of the Cairo Genizah
Documents", Hebrew Union College Annual 34 (1963),177-94.eJournal
Solomon D. Goitein, A Mediterranean Society. The Jewish Communities of the Arab
World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Genizah, 5 vols. + indexes (Berkeley –
Los Angeles –London: University of California Press –Cambridge UP, 1967-1993),
I, Introduction, pp. 1-28; II, Medical Profession, pp. 240-260. ebook
Efraim Lev, Leigh Chipman, Medical Prescriptions in the Cambridge Genizah Collections.
Practical Medicine and Pharmacology in Medieval Egypt (Leiden-Boston: Brill
2012), pp. 1-22. CUL –South Wing 3 -7:01.b.1.56 (transcriptions and translation
of Judaeo-Arabic texts to be read together with
Bos, G., ‘On Editing Medical Fragments from the Cairo Genizah’, Journal of the American
Oriental Society, 134.4 (2014), 709-720, eJournal
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Francoise Micheau,‘The scientific institutions in the medieval Near East’, in Rashed, R.
(and Morelon, R.), Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science, 3 vols. (LondonNew York: Routledge 1996),III, pp. 985-1007. REF (SCI 61 A-C)
* Nancy Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine (Chicago: Chicago
University Press, 1990), chs. 2 and 6. W2.SIR 1a–b (copy b reserve) and ebook.
Primary Sources
Faith Wallis (ed.), Medieval Medicine: A Reader (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
2010). Chapters 10, 11. W2.WAL 3 (reserve)
Lecture 7. Diagnosis and Prognosis
Demaitre, Luke. ‘The Art and Science of Prognostication in Early University Medicine’,
Bulletin of the History of Medicine 77:4 (2003), pp. 765-788. eJournal
Edge, Joanne. ‘Licit Medicine or Pythagorean Necromancy?: The ‘Sphere of Life and
Death’ in late medieval England’, Historical Research 87:238 (November 2014),
pp. 611-632. eJournal
French, Roger. ‘Astrology in Medical Practice’, Practical Medicine from Salerno to the
Black Death, ed. Luis Garciá-Ballester, Roger French, Jon Arrizabalaga and
Andrew Cunningham (Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 30-59.W2.GAR 2ac
McVaugh, M. R. ‘Bedside Manners in the Middle Ages’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine
71:2 (1997), pp. 201-223. eJournal
Siraisi, Nancy G. Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge
and Practice (University of Chicago Press, 1990), pp. 123-33; 133-36.W2.SIR 1a–
b (copy b reserve) and ebook.
Wallis, Faith. ‘Inventing diagnosis : Theophilus’ De urinis in the classroom’, DYNAMIS:
Acta Hispanica ad Medicinae Scientiarumque Historiam Illustrandam 20 (2000),
eJournal
Primary Sources
Faith Wallis (ed.), Medieval Medicine: A Reader (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
2010). Chapter 50, ‘Signs and Diagnosis’ (I): Gilles of Corbeil on Urines (pp. 256258); chapter 65, ‘Panacea or Problem’ (I): The Case for Medical Astrology (pp.
318-323)
Lecture 8. Experience of Illness
Luke Demaitre, Leprosy in Premodern Medicine: A Malady of the Whole Body (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007). W.DEM 1
Michael R. McVaugh, Medicine before the plague: practitioners and their patients in the
Crown of Aragon, 1285-1345 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), ch.
6.
W2. MCV 2a, b
Piers D. Mitchell, ‘An evaluation of the leprosy of King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem in the
context of the medieval world’, in Bernard Hamilton, The Leper King and his Heirs
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 245-58. RESERVE folder.
Carole Rawcliffe, Leprosy in Medieval England (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006). W2.
RAW 3 6
Fernando Salmon, ‘From patient to text? Narratives of pain and madness in medieval
scholasticism’, in Between text and patient : the medical enterprise in Medieval &
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Early Modern Europe, ed. Florence Eliza Glaze and Brian K. Nance (Firenze :
Sismel - Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2011), 373-95. W2. GLA 1
Primary Sources
Faith Wallis, Medieval Medicine: A Reader (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010),
Ch. 9. WAL 3 (Reserve)
Rosemary Horrox (ed.), The Black Death (Manchester: Manchester University Press,
1994). See text 2. W2.HOR 1 and
http://manchester.metapress.com/content/H6520V
EARLY MODERN MEDICINE
A) GENERAL READINGS
On early modern medicine
Harold Cook, ‘Medicine’ in Katharine Park and Lorraine Daston (eds), The Cambridge
History of Science, vol. 3, Early Modern Science (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 407-34.
Mary Lindemann, Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1999).
Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind, chs. 8-10 (London, 1997).
Nancy Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine (Chicago, 1990).
Andrew Wear, ‘Medicine in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1700’, Chapter 6 in Lawrence I.
Conrad et al, The Western Medical Tradition (Cambridge, 1995).
On early modern history
Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, Early Modern Europe, 1450-1789 (Cambridge, 2006), or other
textbooks in your college library.
B) MONOGRAPHS
This is a selection of monographs on early modern medicine. Books are included on this
list because they either survey the subject in a particular country, or examine an
archive or source in detail. I have tried to specify where a chapter is appropriate
to a lecture, but you should read as many of these books as you can from cover to
cover. Pay attention to the dates of publication and follow up the footnotes for
points you find interesting.
England
Harold Cook, Trials of an Ordinary Doctor: Joannes Groenevelt in Seventeenth Century
London (Baltimore, 1994).
Mary Dobson, Contours of Death and Disease in Early Modern England (Cambridge,
1997).
Mary Fissell, Vernacular Bodies: The Politics of Reproduction in Early Modern England
(Oxford, 2004).
Lauren Kassell, Medicine and Magic in Elizabethan London: Simon Forman, Astrologer,
Alchemist, and Physician (Oxford, 2005).
Michael MacDonald, Mystical Bedlam: Madness, Anxiety, and Healing in SeventeenthCentury England (Cambridge, 1981).
Margaret Pelling, Medical Conflicts in Early Modern London: Patronage, Physicians, and
Irregular Practitioners 1550-1640 (Oxford, 2003).
Roy Porter, Health for Sale: Quackery in England 1660-1850 (Manchester, 1989).
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Andrew Wear, Knowledge and Practice in English Medicine, 1550-1680 (Cambridge,
2000).
Charles Webster, The Great Instauration: Science, Medicine and Reform 1626-1660
(London, 1975).
Olivia Weisser, Ill Composed: Sickness, Gender and Belief in Early Modern England (New
Haven & London, 2015).
Adrian Wilson, Making of Man-midwifery: Childbirth in England, 1660-1770 (London,
1994).
Italy
Sandra Cavallo, Artisans of the Body in Early Modern Italy: Identities, Families and
Masculinities (Manchester, 2007).
Sandra Cavallo and Tessa Storey, Healthy Living in Late Renaissance Italy (Oxford,
2013).
David Gentilcore, Healers and Healing in Early Modern Italy (Manchester, 1998).
David Gentilcore, Medical Charlatanism in Early Modern Italy (Oxford, 2006).
Gianna Pomata, Contracting a Cure: Patients, Healers, and the Law in Early Modern
Bologna (Baltimore, 1998).
Katharine Park, Secrets of Women: Gender, Generation, and the Origins of Human
Dissection (New York, 2006).
Nancy Siraisi, The Clock and the Mirror: Girolamo Cardano and Renaissance Medicine
(Princeton, 1997).
France
Laurence Brockliss and Colin Jones, The Medical World of Early Modern France (Oxford,
1997).
Susan Broomhall, Women’s Medical Work in Early Modern France (Manchester, 2004).
Germany
Barbara Duden, The Woman Beneath the Skin: A Doctor’s Patients in Eighteenth-Century
Germany, trans. Thomas Dunlap (Cambridge, Mass., 1991).
Mary Lindemann, Health and Healing in Eighteenth-Century Germany (Baltimore, 1996).
Erik Midelfort, A History of Madness in Sixteenth Century Germany (Stanford, 1999).
Bruce Moran, Chemical Pharmacy Enters the Universities (Madison, Wisconsin, 1991).
Alisha Rankin, Panacea’s Daughters: Noblewomen as Healers in Early Modern Germany
(Chicago, 2013).
The Netherlands
Harold Cook, Matters of Exchange: Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the Dutch Golden
Age (New Haven & London, 2007).
C) ON-LINE REFERENCE WORKS
The following websites contain useful information. In most cases they should be used as
a first port of call, not as a definitive authority on the subject. If material is drawn
from them for essays or dissertations, it must be appropriately footnoted. There
is also a section of reference books in the Whipple Library.
Catholic Encyclopedia: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: http://www.oxforddnb.com/
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Oxford English Dictionary: http://www.oed.com/
Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy Online: http://www.rep.routledge.com/
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/
D) WEEKLY READINGS
Lecture 1. Marketplaces (LK)
Brockliss and Jones, Medical World of Early Modern France, chs. 4, 5, 9, 10.
Cavallo, Artisans of the Body in Early Modern Italy, ch. 2.
Harold Cook, The Decline of the Old Medical Regime in Stuart London (Ithaca, 1986), chs.
3, 6.
*Harold Cook, ‘Good Advice and Little Medicine: the Professional Authority of Early
Modern English Physicians’, Journal of British Studies, 33 (1994), 1-31.
Harold Cook, Matters of Exchange: Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the Dutch Golden
Age (New Haven & London, 2007).
Mary Fissell, Patients, Power, and the Poor in Eighteenth-Century Bristol (Cambridge,
1991).
David Gentilcore, ‘“All that Pertains to Medicine: Protomedici and Protomedicati in
Early Modern Italy’, Medical History, 38 (1994), 121-42.
Gentilcore, Healers and Healing in Early Modern Italy, ch. 4.
David Boyd Haycock and Patrick Wallis (eds.), Quackery and Commerce in SeventeenthCentury London: The Proprietary Medicine Business of Anthony Daffy, Medical
History, supplement 25 (December 2005).
Mark Jenner, ‘Quackery and Enthusiasm, or Why Drinking Water Cured the Plague’, in
Grell and Cunningham (eds.), Religio Medici: Religion and Medicine in Seventeenth
Century England (Aldershot, 1996).
*Mark Jenner and Patrick Wallis (eds.), Medicine and the Market in England and its
Colonies, c. 1450-c. 1850 (Basingstoke, 2007), Introduction.
Margaret Pelling, The Common Lot: Sickness, Medical Occupations and the Urban Poor in
Early Modern England (London, 1998), chs. 1, 9, 10.
Pelling, Medical Conflicts, ch. 7.
Pomata, Contracting a Cure, ch. 5.
Porter, Health for Sale: Quackery in England 1660-1850, ch. 3.
Kevin P. Siena, ‘The ‘Foul Disease’ and Privacy: The Effects of Venereal Disease and
Patient Demand on the Medical Marketplace in Early Modern London’, Bulletin of
the History of Medicine, 75 (2001), 199-224.
Siraisi, Clock and the Mirror, ch. 2.
Webster, The Great Instauration, Pt. 4.
Lecture 2. Maintaining health (NK)
Ken Albala, Eating Right in the Renaissance (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2002).
Sandra Cavallo, ‘Secrets of healthy living. The revival of the preventative paradigm in
late Renaissance ltaly’, in Elaine Leong and Alisha Rankin eds, Secrets and
Knowledge in Medicine (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2011), pp.191-212.
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Cavallo and Storey, Healthy Living in Late Renaissance Italy (Oxford, 2013).
*Heikki Mikkeli, Hygiene: In the Early Modern Medical Tradition (Helsinki: Finnish
Academy of Science and Letters, 1999), ch. 4 ‘The fate of classical dietetics’.
Paul Lloyd, ‘Dietary advice and fruit eating in late Tudor and early Stuart England’,
Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 67 (2012), 553-586
*Richard Palmer, ‘Health, hygiene and longevity in medieval and Renaissance Europe’,
in Y. Kawakita et al eds, History of Hygiene (Tokyo: Ishiyaku Euroamerica, 1991),
pp. 75–98.
Roy Porter, ed., The Medical History of Waters and Spas, Medical History, Supplement no.
10, 1990, essays by Palmer, Brockliss and Harley.
Nancy Siraisi, ‘Time, Body, Food: the Parameters of Health’, in The Clock And The Mirror:
Girolamo Cardano and Renaissance Medicine (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1987), ch.4.
*Andrew Wear, ‘Introduction’ and ‘Preventive Medicine’, in Knowledge and Practice in
English Medicine, 1550-1680 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
Andrew Wear, ‘Place, health, and disease: the airs, waters, places tradition in early
modern England and North America’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern
Studies, 38 (2008), 443–465.
Lecture 3. Experiences of illness and healing (LK)
Lucinda McCray Beier, Sufferers and Healers: The Experience of Illness in Seventeenth
Century England (London, 1987).
Duden, Woman Beneath the Skin.
Kassell, Medicine and Magic, Part 3.
MacDonald, Mystical Bedlam, ch. 1.
*Pomata, Contracting a Cure, esp. Intro. and ch. 5.
Gianna Pomata, ‘Sharing Cases: The Observationes in Early Modern Medicine’, Early
Science and Medicine, 15 (2010), 193–236.
Roy Porter, ‘The Patient in England, c.1660-c.1800’, in Andrew Wear (ed.), Medicine in
Society (Cambridge, 1992).
*Rankin, Panacea’s Daughters, ch. 5.
Lyndal Roper, Oedipus and the Devil: Witchcraft and Sexuality in Early Modern Europe
(London, 1994), ch. 8.
Michael Stolberg, Experiencing Illness and the Sick Body in Early Modern Europe, trans.
Leonhard Unglaub and Logan Kennedy (Basingstoke, 2011)
*Weisser, Ill Composed.
See also: http://www.magicandmedicine.hps.cam.ac.uk/on-astrologicalmedicine/further-reading/select-bibliography
Lecture 4. Prolongation of life (NK)
David Boyd Haycock, Mortal Coil: A Short History of Living Longer (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2008)
Frederick M. Gale, ‘Whether it is possible to prolong man’s life through the use of
medicine’, Journal of the History of Medicine, 26 (1971), 391–9. (Includes
translation of Jourbert, Erreurs Populaires au Fait de la Medecine et Regime de
Santié, bk. 1, ch. 2.)
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G. Giglioni, ‘The Hidden Life of Matter: Techniques for Prolonging of Life in the Writings
of Francis Bacon’, in J. R. Solomon and C. Gimelli Martin eds, Francis Bacon and
the Refiguring of Early Modern Thought (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), pp. 129-144.
Gruman, G. (1966). ‘A History of Ideas about the Prolongation of Life: The Evolution of
Longevity Hypotheses to 1800’, Transactions of the American Philosophical
Society, 9, 1-102.
Thomas S. Hall, ‘Life, death and the radical moisture’, Clio medica, 6 (1971), 3-23.
Peter H. Niebyl., ‘Old Age, Fever and the Lamp Metaphor’, Journal of the History of
Medicine and Allied Sciences, 26 (1971), 351–68.
*Richard Palmer, ‘Health, hygiene and longevity in medieval and Renaissance Europe’,
in Y. Kawakita et al eds, History of Hygiene (Tokyo: Ishiyaku Euroamerica, 1991),
pp. 75–98.
Daniel Schäfer, ‘More than a fading flame. The physiology of old age between
speculative analogy and experimental method’, in M. Horstmanshoff, H. King and
C. Zittel eds, Blood, Sweat And Tears: The Changing Concepts Of Physiology From
Anitquity Into Early Modern Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp. 241-266.
R. Serjeantson, ‘Natural knowledge in the New Atlantis’ (sections on hygiene and
prolongation of life), in B. Price ed. Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis: New
Interdisciplinary Essays (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002).
Lecture 5. Medical Humanism (VP)
Jerome J. Bylebyl, ‘The School of Padua: Humanistic Medicine in the Sixteenth Century’,
in Charles Webster, ed., Health, Medicine and Mortality in the Sixteenth Century
(Cambridge, 1979), Ch. 10.
Jerome J. Bylebyl, ‘Disputation and Description in the Renaissance Pulse Controversy’, in
Wear, French and Lonie, eds., The Medical Renaissance of the Sixteenth Century
(Cambridge, 1985), Ch. 11.
Vivian Nutton, ‘The Rise of Medical Humanism: Ferrara, 1464-1555’, Renaissance
Studies 11/1 (1997): 2-19.
Anthony Grafton, New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of
Discovery (Harvard, 1992), Ch. 1.
Andrew Wear, Roger K. French, Ian Lonie, eds., The Medical Renaissance of the Sixteenth
Century (Cambridge, 1985), Introduction.
Nancy G. Siraisi, Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge
and Practice (Chicago, 1990), Epilogue.
Nancy G. Siraisi, History, Medicine and the Traditions of Renaissance Learning (Michigan,
2008), Introduction.
Brian V. Ogilvie, The Science of Describing (Chicago, 2006), Ch. 2.
Lecture 6. Sex and generation (LK)
Patricia Crawford, ‘Attitudes to Menstruation in Early Modern England’, Past & Present,
91 (1981), 47-73.
*Silvia De Renzi, ‘Resemblance, Paternity and Imagination in Early Modern Courts’, in
Staffan Müller-Wille and Hans-Jörg Rheinberger (eds.), Heredity Produced: At the
Crossroads of Biology and Politics, 1500-1870 (Cambridge, Mass, 2007), 61-83.
Duden, The Woman Beneath the Skin.
Fissell, Vernacular Bodies, esp. ch. 2
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*Lauren Kassell, ‘Medical Understandings of the Body, c.1500-1750’, in Kate Fisher and
Sarah Toulalan (eds), The Routledge History of Sex and the Body 1500 to the
Present (Routledge, 2013), pp. 57-74
Helen King, Hippocrates’ Woman: Reading the Female Body in Ancient Greece, chs. 10, 11
Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge,
Mass. 1990)—and esp. the review by Park and Nye, New Republic, 18 Feb. 1991
[available via WL/camtools].
*Cathy McClive, Menstruation and Procreation in Early Modern France (Farnham, 2015),
esp. ch. 3 & ch. 5.
Ian Maclean, The Renaissance Notion of Woman: A Study in the Fortunes of Scholasticism
and Medical Science in European Intellectual Life (Cambridge, 1983)
*Park, Secrets of Women.
Gianna Pomata, ‘Menstruating Men: Similarity and Difference of the Sexes in Early
Modern Medicine’, in Finucci and Brownlee (eds.), Generation and Degeneration:
Tropes of Reproduction in Literature and History from Antiquity to the
Enlightenment, 109-52
Lecture 7. Disease (NK)
Jon Arrizabalaga and Roger French, The Great Pox: The French Disease in Renaissance
Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), esp. ch. 9.
L. Deer Richardson, ‘The Generation of Disease: Occult Causes and the Diseases of the
Total Substance’, in Wear, French, and Lonie (eds.) The Medical Renaissance of
the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 175–194.
Lauren Kassell, Medicine and Magic in Elizabethan London: Simon Forman, Astrologer,
Alchemist, and Physician (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), ch. 9.
Helen King, The Disease of Virgins: Green Sickness, Chlorosis, and the Problems of Puberty
(London: Routledge, 2004), chs 1 and 2.
Vivian Nutton, ‘The seeds of disease: an explanation of contagion and infection from the
Greeks to the Renaissance’, Medical History, 27 (1983) 1-34.
Claudia Stein, ‘The Meaning of Signs: Diagnosing the French Pox in Early Modern
Augsburg’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 80 (2006), 617-48.
Claudia Stein, Negotiating The French Pox in Early Modern Germany (Aldershot: Ashgate,
2009), ch. 1.
Lloyd G. Stevenson, ‘New diseases in the seventeenth century’ Bulletin of the History of
Medicine, 39 (1965), 1-21.
A. Wear, Knowledge and Practice in English Medicine, 1550-1680 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2000), ch. 4.
Andrew Wear, ‘Place, health, and disease: the airs, waters, places tradition in early
modern England and North America’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern
Studies, 38 (2008), 443–465.
Lecture 8. Melancholy (NK)
Angus Gowland, ‘The Problem of Early Modern Melancholy’, Past & Present, 191 (2006),
77-120.
Angus Gowland, The Worlds of Renaissance Melancholy: Robert Burton in Context
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
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Robert Iliffe, ‘Isaac Newton: Lucatello professor of mathematics’, in S. Shapin and C.
Lawrence eds, Science Incarnate: Historical Embodiments Of Natural Knowledge.
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998) pp. 121-155, esp. pp. 121-130.
Stanley Jackson, ‘Melancholia and the waning of the humoral theory’, Journal of the
History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 33 (1978), 367-76.
Mary Ann Lund, Melancholy, Medicine and Religion in Early Modern England: Reading
‘The Anatomy of Melancholy’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
Michael MacDonald, Mystical Bedlam: Madness, Anxiety, and Healing in SeventeenthCentury England (Cambridge, 1981), chs 4 and 5.
Erik Midelfort, A History of Madness in Sixteenth Century Germany (Stanford, 1999), ch.
4, ‘Witchcraft and the melancholy interpretation of the insanity defence’.
G. Williamson, ‘Mutability, decay and sixteenth-century melancholy’, Journal of English
Literary History, 2 (1935), 121–50.
Sidney Anglo, ‘Melancholia and Witchcraft: The debate between Wier, Bodin, and Scot’,
in Folie et deraison à la Renaissance… (Brussels: Editions de l'universite de
Bruxelles, 1976), pp. 209-28.
Jeremy Schmidt, Melancholy and the care of the soul: Religion, moral philosophy and
madness in England, 1580-1750 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007).
Lecture 9. Renaissance Pharmacy and Medical Botany (VP)
James Shaw and Evelyn Welch, Making and Marketing Medicine in Renaissance Florence
(Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2011).
Paula De Vos, “European Materia Medica in Historical Texts: Longevity of a Tradition
and Implications for Future Use”, Journal of Ethnopharmacology 132/1 (2010):
28–47.
Wiliam Eamon, “Pharmaceutical Self-Fashioning, or How to Get Rich and Famous in the
Medical Marketplace”, Pharmacy in History 45/3 (2003).
Christiane Nockels Fabbri, ‘Treating Medieval Plague: The Wonderful Virtues of
Theriac’, Early Science and Medicine 12/3 (2007): 247-83.
Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting and Scientific Culture in Early
Modern Italy (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994), Chapter 6
‘Museums of Medicine’.
Richard Palmer, ‘Medical Botany in Northern Italy in the Renaissance’, Journal of the
Royal Society of Medicine 78 (1985): 149-57.
Karen Meier Reeds, Botany in Medieval and Renaissance Universities (New York: Garland,
1991), Introduction and Chapters 1-2.
Nancy G. Siraisi, History, Medicine and the Traditions of Renaissance Learning (University
of Michigan, 2007), Chapter 6 ‘Beyond Europe’.
Online exhibition “Drug Trade: Theraphy, Pharmacy and Commerce in Early Modern
Europe”:
http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/drugtrade/index.htm
Lecture 10. New Spaces of Medical Knowledge (ES)
The anatomy theatre: a space for making order out of death
Andrea Carlino, ‘Anatomical theaters’, in John Heilbron, ed., The Oxford Companion to
the History of Modern Science (Oxford and New York, 2003)
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Cynthia Klestinec, Theaters of Anatomy: Students, Teachers, and Traditions of Dissection
in Renaissance Venice (Baltimore, 2011), chapters 3 & 4
Anita Guerrini, ‘Alexander Monro “Primus” and the moral theatre of anatomy’,
Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, 47.1 (2006): 1-18
The hospital: a space between body and soul
N. Finzsch and R. Jütte, eds., Institutions of Confinement: Hospitals, Asylums and Prisons in
Western Europe and North America, 1500-1950, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1996, chapter by Jones*
Timothy J. McHugh, ‘Establishing medical men at the Paris Hôtel-Dieu, 1500-1715’,
Social History of Medicine 19.2 (2006): 209-224
John Henderson, ‘Healing the body and saving the soul: hospitals in Renaissance
Florence’, Renaissance Studies 15.2 (2001): 188-216
Martin Scheutz et al., eds., Hospitals and Institutional Care in Medieval and Early Modern
Europe Oldenbourg, 2008), essays by Archer, Hickey, Bressan, Majorossy and
Szende, and Krasz
Günter Risse, Mending Bodies, Saving Souls: A History of Hospitals (Oxford, 1999),
chapter 4
Spaces of confinement and cordons sanitaires: borderlands of security
Peter Bräunlein, ‘The frightening borderlands of Enlightenment: the vampire problem’,
Studies in History & Philosophy of Biological & Biomedical Sciences 43.3 (2012):
710-719*
Charles Ingrao and Jovan Pesalj, ‘The transitional empire’, Hungarian Studies, 27.2
(2013): 277-290
Duane Osheim, ‘Plague and foreign threats to public health in early modern Venice’,
Mediterranean Historical Review, 26.1 (2011): 67-80
Mika Kallioinen, ‘Plagues and governments’, Scandinavian Journal of History, 31.1
(2006): 35-51
Medical bureaucracy and tables of mortality: setting the stage for absolutism
Dorothy Porter, Health, Civilization and the State: A History of Public Health from Ancient
to Modern Times (London, 1999), chapter 3*
Will Slauter, ‘Write up your dead’, Media History, 17.1 (2011): 1-15
Conevery Bolton Valenčius, ‘Histories of medical geography’, in Nicolaas Rupke, Medical
Geography in Historical Perspective, supplement to Medical History 20 (2000): 328
Lecture 11. Transnational Networks (ES)
Anagnostou, Sabine, ‘Jesuits in Spanish America: contributions to the exploration of the
American materia medica,’ Pharmacy in history 41:1 (2005), 3–17
Id., ‘The international transfer of medicinal drugs by the Society of Jesus (sixteenth to
eighteenth centuries) and connections with the work of Carolus Clusius,’ in F.
Egmond, P. Hoftijzer and R. Visser (eds.), Carolus Clusius: towards a cultural
history of a Renaissance naturalist (Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of
Arts and Sciences, 2007), 293–312
Breen, Benjamin, ‘Portugal, early modern globalization and the origins of the global
drug trade’, Perspectives on Europe 42.1 (2012): 84-88
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Burke, Peter and R. Po-Chia Hsia, Cultural translation in early modern Europe,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, chapter 9
Chakrabarti, Pratik, ‘Empire and alternatives: Swietenia febrifuga and the cinchona
substitutes’, Medical History 54.1 (2010): 75-94
Cook, Harold J., Matters of exchange: commerce, medicine, and science in the Dutch
Golden Age (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007), chapter 2
Cooper, Alix, Inventing the indigenous: local knowledge and natural history in early
modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), introduction
*Huguet-Termes, Teresa, ‘New World materia medica in Spanish Renaissance medicine:
from scholarly reception to practical impact’, Medical history, 45 (2001), 359–
376
Romaniello, Matthew, ‘Through the filter of tobacco: the limits of global trade in the
early modern world’, Comparative studies of society and history (2007), 914-937
Schiebinger, Londa, and Claudia Swan, eds., Colonial botany: science, commerce, and
politics in the early modern world, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
2005, introduction
Smith, Pamela H., and Paula Findlen, eds., Merchants & marvels: commerce and the
representation of nature in early modern Europe, New York: Routledge, 2002,
chapters 6 and 8
*Walker, Timothy D. ‘The medicines trade in the Portuguese Atlantic world: acquisition
and dissemination of healing knowledge from Brazil (c. 1580–1800)’, Social
history of medicine (2013), 403-431
Wallis, Patrick, ‘Exotic drugs and English medicine: England’s drug trade, c.1550c.1800’, Social history of medicine (2012), 20-46
De Vos, Paula, ‘The science of spices: empiricism and economic botany in the early
Spanish empire,’ Journal of world history 17.4 (2006): 399-427
Walker, Timothy, ‘Acquisition and circulation of medical knowledge within the early
modern Portuguese colonial empire’, in Daniela Bleichmar et al., eds., Science in
the Spanish and Portuguese Empires, 1500-1800, Stanford: Stanford University
Press, 2009, 247-270
Lecture 12. Medical advertising around 1700 (ES)
*Wear, Andrew, ‘Popular medicine and the new science in England: crossroads or
merging lanes?’, in Kaspar von Greyerz et al., eds., Wissenschaftsgeschichte und
Geschichte des Wissens im Dialog—Connecting Science and Knowledge, Göttingen:
V&R Unipress, 2013, pp. 61-84
Ramsey, Matthew, Professional and popular medicine in France, 1770-1830: the social
world of medical practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988
Curth, Louise Hill, From physick to pharmacology: five hundred years of British drug
retailing (Ashgate, 2006)
Curth, Louise Hill, ‘The Medical Content of English Almanacs, 1640-1700', Journal of the
History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Vol. 60, No 3 (July 2005), 255-282
*Curth, Louise Hill, ‘Medical advertising in the popular press’, Pharmacy in history 50.1
(2008): 3-16
Brewer, John, and Roy Porter, eds., Consumption and the world of goods (Routledge,
1993), chapter 4
Siena, Kevin, ‘The ‘foul disease’ and privacy: the effects of venereal disease and patient
demand on the medical marketplace in early modern London’, Bulletin of the
history of medicine 75.2 (2001): 199-224
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Gentilcore, David, Healers and healing in early modern Italy, chapter 4
Haycock, David Boyd, and Patrick Wallis, eds., Quackery and commerce in seventeenthcentury London: the proprietary medicine business of Anthony Daffy, Medical
history, supplement no. 25 (December 2005)
*Jenner, Mark S. R., and Patrick Wallis, Medicine and the market in England and its
colonies, c.1450-c.1850, introduction
*Porter, Roy, Health for sale: quackery in England 1660-1850, chapter 2
Porter, Roy, ‘Lay medical knowledge in the eighteenth century: the evidence of the
'Gentleman's magazine', Academic journal 29.2 (1985): 138-168
Jones, Colin, ‘The great chain of buying: medical advertisement, the bourgeois public
sphere, and the origins of the French Revolution’, American historical review
101.1 (1996): 13-40
Pomata, Gianna, Contracting a cure, chapter 5
Stobart, Jon, Sugar and spice: grocers and groceries in provincial England, 1650-1830,
chapter 5; for a comparison with an earlier period, see Shaw, James, and Evelyn
Welch, Making and marketing medicines in Renaissance Florence, Amsterdam:
Rodopi, 2011
Furnée, Jan Hein, and Clé Lesger, eds., The landscape of consumption: shopping streets
and cultures in Western Europe, 1600-1900. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan,
2014, esp. Chapters 4-7
You can browse the collection of early modern trade cards at Waddesdon here:
http://collection.waddesdon.org.uk/advancedSearch.page.do?collection=27&pr
eSelect=true
INSTRUMENTS, BOOKS AND COLLECTIONS
Professor Liba Taub (lct1001), Dr Dániel Margócsy, Dr Seb Falk (sldf2), Dr Emma
Perkins (ep297)
Tuesday 12 noon Weeks 1-6
Lent 2017
OUTLINE OF THE COURSE
24 January What is a scientific instrument? (Liba Taub)
31 January Ancient instruments, models, and tools (Liba Taub)
7 February Instruments in medieval Europe (Seb Falk)
14 February Manuscripts, Books, Libraries and Collections (Seb Falk)
21 February Astronomical instruments and books in early modern Europe (Emma
Perkins)
28 February Medical collections, specimens, and books in early modern Europe
(Dániel Margócsy)
Lecture 1: What is a scientific instrument? (Liba Taub)
J.V. Field, “What is scientific about a scientific instrument?”, Nuncius 3 (1988): 3-26.
[WL]
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D. d. S. Price, “Philosophical Mechanism and Mechanical Philosophy: Some Notes
towards a Philosophy of Scientific Instruments”, Annali dell’ Istituto e Museo di
storia della scienza di Firenze V (1980): 75-85. [WL]
L. Taub, “On Scientific Instruments”, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 40
(2009) 337–343.
A.J. Turner, “Interpreting the History of Scientific Instruments”, in Making Instruments
Count: Essays
in honour of Gerard Turner (1993), pp. 17-26. [WL]
A. van Helden and T.L. Hankins, “Introduction: Instruments in the History of Science”,
Osiris 9 Instruments (1994): 1-6. [WL]
D.J. Warner, “What is a scientific instrument, when did it become one, and why?”, British
Journal for the History of Science 23 (1990): 83-93. [WL]
Lecture 2: Ancient instruments, models and tools (Liba Taub)
Babylonian Instruments
O. Neugebauer, “The Water Clock in Babylonian Astronomy”, Isis 37 (1947): 37-43. [WL]
J. Britton and Christopher Walker, “Astronomy and Astrology in Mesopotamia”, in
Astronomy before the Telescope, ed. C. Walker, pp. 42-67. [WL]
Ancient Greek and Roman Instruments
A. Barker, “Ptolemy and the meta-helikôn”, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science
40 (2009). 344–351
*D.R. Dicks, “Ancient Astronomical Instruments”, Journal of the British Astronomical
Association 64 (1953-54): 77-85. [UL]
J. Evans, The History and Practice of Ancient Astronomy, chap. 3. [WL]
J. Evans, “The Material Culture of Greek Astronomy”, Journal for the History of
Astronomy 30 (1999): 237-307. [WL]
*J.V. Field, “European Astronomy in the First Millennium: The Archeological Record”, in
Astronomy before the Telescope, ed. C. Walker, pp. 110-122. [WL]
*Derek J. Price, “Precision Instruments: to 1500.” In A History of Technology, ed. Charles
Singer, E.J.Holmyard, A.R.Hall, and Trevor I.Williams, vol. 3, pp. 582-619. [WL]
*L. Taub, 'Instruments of Alexandrian Astronomy: The Uses of the Equinoctial Rings',
Science and
Mathematics in Ancient Greek Culture, ed. C. J. Tuplin and T. E. Rihll, pp. 133-149.
[WL]
A.J. Turner, Mathematical Instruments in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. [WL]
Lecture 3: Instruments in medieval Europe (Seb Falk)
J. Bennett, ‘Knowing and Doing in the Sixteenth Century: What Were Instruments For?’
The British Journal for the History of Science 36 (2003): 129–50
B. Eastwood, “Early-Medieval Cosmology, Astronomy, and Mathematics”, in The
Cambridge History of Science, volume II: Medieval Science, 302-322.
J. Gimpel, “The Mechanical Clock: The Key Machine”, chap. 7 in his The Medieval
Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages. [WL A2.GIM 1]
A. Mosley, ‘Objects of Knowledge: Mathematics and Models in Sixteenth-Century
Cosmology and Astronomy’. In Transmitting Knowledge: Words, Images, and
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Instruments in Early Modern Europe, ed. Kusukawa and Maclean (2006), 193–
216.
*Derek J. Price, “Precision Instruments: to 1500.” In A History of Technology, ed. Charles
Singer, E. J. Holmyard, A. R. Hall, and Trevor I.Williams, vol. 3, pp. 582-619. [WL]
*A. J. Turner, “The Instruments of Later Medieval Europe” and “The Development of an
Instrument-Making Trade”, chaps 1-2 in his Early Scientific Instruments. [WL]
*G. L’E. Turner, “Later Medieval and Renaissance Instruments”, in Astronomy before the
Telescope, ed. C. Walker, pp. 231-244. [WL]
Also browse the EPACT: Scientific Instruments of Medieval and Renaissance Europe
website, at http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/epact/.
Additional reading:
Islamic Instruments
A.I. Sabra, “The Appropriation and Subsequent Naturalization of Greek Science in
Medieval Islam: A Preliminary Statement”, History of Science 25 (1987): 223-243.
[WL]
David Lindberg, “The Transmission of Greek and Arabic Learning to the West”, in his
Science in the Middle Ages, pp. 52-90. [WL].
D.A. King, “Science in the service of religion: the case of Islam”, Impact of Science on
Society 159. Reprinted in his Astronomy in the Service of Islam [WL].
François Charette, 'The Locales of Islamic Astronomical Instruments', History of Science
44 (June 2006): 123-138. [WL]
Astrolabes
National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, The Planispheric Astrolabe. [WL REF FILE]
As an introduction to the history of astronomy:
Michael J. Crowe, Theories of the World from Antiquity to the Copernican Revolution.
[WL]
Lecture 4: Manuscripts, Books, Libraries and Collections (Seb Falk)
Manuscripts and Books
J. Chabás “Characteristics and typologies of medieval astronomical tables”, Journal for
the History of Astronomy 43 (2012), 269-286.
*E. Eisenstein, ‘The Book of Nature Transformed: Printing and the Rise of Modern
Science’, Chapter 7 in The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe
(Cambridge, 1983) [WL] —or— Volume 2 of The Printing Press as an Agent of
Change, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1979) [WL]
*A. Grafton, ‘The Importance of Being Printed’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 11
(1980), 265-86. [reference folder]
R. McKitterick, “Books and sciences before print”, in M. Frasca-Spada & N. Jardine (eds.)
Books and the Sciences in History, pp. 13-34. [WL E.898 – also worth looking at
other chapters in this book]
L. E. Voigts, ‘Scientific and Medical Books’, in Book Production and Publishing in Britain
1375-1475, ed. Griffiths and Pearsall (Cambridge, 1989), 345-402.
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For books, manuscripts, and libraries within the British Isles, see also The Cambridge
History of the Book in Britain, vol. III (1400-1557), and vol. IV (1557-1695). [WL].
Online resources include the American Historical Review Forum: How Revolutionary Was
the
Print
Revolution?,
at
http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ahr/107.1/index.html,
with
contributions by Grafton, Eisenstein and Johns.
Libraries and Collections
E. Fucíková, “The Collection of Rudolf II at Prague: Cabinet of Curiosities or Scientific
Museum?”, in O. Impey & A. MacGregor (eds.), The Origins of Museums. [WL– and
also browse other chapters in this collection]
P. Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting and Scientific Culture in Early Modern
Italy. [WL C.450]
L. Jardine, Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance, chs. 3 & 4. [WL].
*J. Leopold, “Collecting Instruments in Protestant Europe before 1800”, Journal of the
History of Collections 1 (1995): 151-157. [WL]
M. Parkes, “The Provision of Books”, in J. Catto & R. Evans (eds.), The History of the
University of Oxford II. Late-Medieval Oxford, pp. 407-483. [WL]
*J. Roberts and A. Watson (eds.), John Dee’s Library Catalogue (London, 1990),
Introduction, pp. 146. [WL REF PER 16].
D. Thornton, The Scholar in His Study: Ownership and Experience in Renaissance Italy,
Introduction
and ch. 5, “The Collector’s Study”. [UL]
You
may
also
be
interested
in
https://exhibitions.lib.cam.ac.uk/linesofthought/case/history/ about the history
of Cambridge University Library, and J. W. Clark’s photographs of medieval
libraries, taken more than 100 years ago, and available online at
http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/gallery/clarke/intro.htm.
For those interesting in doing research on instruments, see also:
Anthony Turner et al., “The Archives of Scholars, Collectors, and Dealers: Their Place in
the Study of the History of Scientific Instruments,” Nuncius, 2001, 16:675–766.
Lecture 5: Astronomical instruments and books in early modern Europe (Emma
Perkins)
*G. L’E. Turner, “Later Medieval and Renaissance Instruments”, in Astronomy before the
Telescope, ed. C. Walker, pp. 231-244. [WL]
*A. Johns, The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (Chicago, 1998),
especially Chapter 1. [WL E.792]
D. McKitterick, Print, Manuscript and the Search for Order 1450-1830, (Cambridge, 2003)
[WL D.294 – this book covers much more than is within the scope of this lecture,
so concentrate on earlier portions ]
J. Bennett, & D. Bertoloni Meli, Sphaera Mundi: Astronomy Books in the Whipple Museum
1478-1600. [WL Ref File 35]. (Browse rather than read from cover to cover).
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Collections
E. Fucíková, “The Collection of Rudolf II at Prague: Cabinet of Curiosities or Scientific
Museum?”, in O. Impey & A. MacGregor (eds.), The Origins of Museums. [WL– and
also browse other chapters in this collection]
P. Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting and Scientific Culture in Early Modern
Italy. [WL C.450]
L. Jardine, Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance, chs. 3 & 4. [WL].
*J. Leopold, “Collecting Instruments in Protestant Europe before 1800”, Journal of the
History of Collections 1 (1995): 151-157. [WL]
*J. Roberts and A. Watson (eds.), John Dee’s Library Catalogue (London, 1990),
Introduction, pp. 146. [WL REF PER 16].
D. Thornton, The Scholar in His Study: Ownership and Experience in Renaissance Italy,
Introduction
and ch. 5, “The Collector’s Study”. [UL]
Tycho Brahe
Tycho Brahe's Description of His Instruments and Scientific Work, trans. Raeder,
Stromgren and Stromgren [WL N4.BRA]
Adam Mosley, Bearing the Heavens: Tycho Brahe and the Astronomical Community of the
Late Sixteenth Century, 209-288 (chapter 4, “Instruments”).
Lecture 6: Medical collections, specimens, and books in early modern Europe
(Dániel Margócsy)
Skeletons and Specimens
Monique Kornell. “Vesalius’s Method of Articulating the Skeleton and a Drawing in the
Collection of the Wellcome Library.” Medical History 44 (2000): 97-110.
Anita Guerrini, “Inside the Charnel House: The Display of Skeletons in Europe, 15001800,” in R. Knoeff and R. Zwijnenberg, The Fate of Anatomical Collections
(Aldershot: 2015), 93-109.
H. J. Cook, “Time’s Bodies: Crafting the Preparation and Preservation of Naturalia,” in: P.
Smith and P. Findlen (eds), Merchants and Marvels: Commerce and
Representation of Nature in Early Modern Europe (London, 1990), 223-247.
R. Knoeff, “Touching Anatomy: On the Handling of Preparations in the Anatomical
Cabinets of Frederik Ruysch,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science C 49
(2015), 32-44.
A. Maerker, “’Turpentine Hides Everything’: Autonomy and Organization in Anatomical
Model Production for The State in Late Eighteenth-Century Florence,” History of
Science 40 (2007), 257-286.
Paper Instruments
A. Carlino, Paper Bodies: A Catalogue of Anatomical Fugitive Sheets, 1538-1637,
London, 1999.
S. Dackerman, Prints and the Pursuit of Knowledge (New Haven: 2011). Focus on the
entries on medicine and anatomy in the sections on “Printmaking and
Knowledge”, “Observing Nature,” and “Theater of Nature.”
Living Instruments
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D. B. Meli, “Blood, Monsters, and Necessity in Malpighi’s De Polypo Cordis,” Medical
History 45 (2001), 511-522.
D. B. Meli, “Early Modern Experimentation on Live Animals,” Journal of the History of
Biology 46 (201): 199-226.
E. G. Ruestow. The Microscope in the Dutch Republic: The Shaping of Discovery
(Cambridge, 1996), chapters 1-4.
PRIMARY SOURCE
Astrological Casebooks▪Lauren Kassell, Rob Ralley
Simon Forman (1552–1611) was probably the most popular astrologer in Elizabethan
London. His casebooks survive for 1596–1603 and contain records of approximately
10,000 consultations. The majority of the cases are about medical questions, with
matters of health and well-being, personal affairs, romantic interests, worldly affairs,
and the occult sciences also represented. This is a rich resource for the history of
dynamics between patients and practitioners and experiences of illness and healing.
The Casebooks Project presents a digital edition of Forman's records, an image archive
of the original manuscripts, and innovative facilities for searching and sorting the
corpus. This primary source is a unique opportunity to work with four hundred yearold manuscripts through cutting edge digital humanities.