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Some Current Trends in the Study of Renaissance Medicine*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Extract
The following brief reflections on the present state of scholarship in Renaissance medicine make no claim to provide a comprehensive overview of the field. Medicine is of broad historical interest because a web of connections link it to the culture as a whole. Variously considered, medicine has a place in the history of science and technology, in social history, and in a wide sweep of cultural and intellectual history ranging from the history of philosophy to the study of popular mentalités. Moreover, although the field of the history of Renaissance medicine is one in which much, including fundamental work, remains to be done, it is also one that is now being vigorously developed in some widely diverse ways. Confronted with this breadth of topics and materials, I am seeking only to isolate a few major directions in current work
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- Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1984
Footnotes
*
This paper is based on a report on the current state of scholarship in the history of Renaissance medicine requested for the meeting of the Renaissance Society of America in Chicago on March 31, 1984. It also incorporates some material that previously appeared in my essay review, “Some Recent Work on Western European Medical Learning, ca. i20O-ca.i5OO,” History of Universities, 2 (1982), 225-38. I am grateful to Charles B. Schmitt of the Warburg Institute, London, editor of History of Universities, for permission to reuse this material. I should also like to express my gratitude to Vivian Nutton of the Wellcome Institute, London, and to Richard Durling of the Institut fur Geschichte der Medizin und Pharmazie der Christian-Albrechts-Universität, Kiel, both of whom were kind enough to correspond with me on the topic of this paper, and to offer helpful suggestions. The opinions (as well as the mistakes and omissions) in the present paper are, of course, my own responsibility.
References
1 Some bibliographical tools from which a fuller picture of current work in medical history can be obtained are the National Library of Medicine Bibliography of the History of Medicine (Bethesda; annual, cumulated every five years); the medieval and Renaissance medical sections of the annual Isis bibliographies of the history of science; the Wellcome Historical Medical Library Current Work in the History of Medicine (London; quarterly); the Society for Ancient Medicine Newsletter (Lexington, Ky.; twice a year. Inquiries should be addressed to the editor, Professor John Scarborough, Department of History, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Ky.) Extremely useful is the Wellcome Historical Medical Library Subject Catalogue of the History of Medicine and Related Sciences (18 vols., Munich, 1980). Scholarly articles, with bibliography, on many important individual figures in the history of medieval and Renaissance medicine are to be found in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography,ed. C. G. Gillispie (16 vols., New York, 1970- 80).
2 SAM Newsletter,No. 5 (September, 1979), 3-4.
3 Bulletin of the History of Medicine: Index to Volumes and Supplements 1933-1982,ed. Manfred Waserman and Carol Clausen (Baltimore, 1983).
4 ”… ex primis siquidem modernorum fuit,” Philippi Villani Liber de civitatis Florentiae famosis civibus ex codice mediceo Laurentiano nunc primum editus et de Florentinorum litteraturaprincipes fere synchroni scriptores,ed. C. G. Galletti (Florence, 1847), p. 26. On Taddeo and his milieu in late thirteenth-century Bologna, see Nancy G., Siraisi, Taddeo Alderotti and His Pupils (Princeton, 1981)Google Scholar. On innovation in medical studies at Montpellier in approximately the same period, see Luis Garcia, Ballester, “Arnau de Vilanova (c. 1240-1311) y la reforma de los estudios médicos en Montpellier (1309): el Hipócrates latino y la introductión del nuevo Galeno,” Dynamis: Acta Hispanica ad Meiicinae Scientiarumque Historiam Illustrandam, 2 (1982), 97–158.Google Scholar
5 Estimates of the impact of the Black Death upon confidence in physicians, the demography of the medical profession, and the content of medical learning have varied widely. On the whole, however, although the plague treatises evidently represent a new and significant genre of medical literature, one is struck by the degree of continuity in medical organization and medical thought as between the early fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries.
6 A good idea of the great importance attached to this by learned Renaissance physicians themselves can be gained from the overview in Vivian, Nutton, “Medicine in the Age of Montaigne,” inMontaigne and His Age, ed. Cameron, K. (Exeter, 1981), pp. 15- 25, 163-70.Google Scholar
7 Very large claims for the impact of printing upon medicine, and especially anatomy, are made in Elizabeth L., Eisenstein, The Printing Press As An Agent of Change (Cambridge, 1979) II, 566–574 Google Scholar. Critical examination of some of the issues involved was begun at a Wellcome Symposium on the theme “Medicine, Printing and Literacy in the European Renaissance” held October 1, 1982.
8 For example, German Somolinos d'Ardois, Capitulos de Historia Medica Mexicana, ed. J. Somolinos Palencia (Mexico: Sociedad Mexicana de Historia y Filosofia de la Medicina, 1978-80), in four parts, the last two of which consist, respectively, of a list of medical professionals active in Mexico between 1521 and 1618, and a list of medical books published in Mexico in the same period. I have not seen these volumes, and rely upon the review by Guenter Risse, B. in Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 56 (1982), 591–92.Google Scholar
9 However, in the last named area mention should at least be made of the recent appearance of Kenneth D., Keele, Leonardo da Vinci's Elements of the Science of Man (New York, 1984)Google Scholar, as well as of Kenneth D., Keele and Carlo, Pedretti, eds., Leonardo da, Vinci: Corpus of the Anatomical Studies in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen (3 vols., London, 1978-80)Google Scholar, and of William, Schupbach, The Paradox of Rembrandt's ‘Anatomy ofDr. Tulp,'Medical History, Supplement No. 2 (London, 1982).Google Scholar
10 On the influence of Paracelsan ideas on scientific thought beyond medical circles, see now Charles, Webster, From Paracelsus to Newton: Magic and the Making of Modem Science (Cambridge, 1982)Google Scholar. Within medicine, of course, the spread of Paracelsan influences and remedies constituted an important element of novelty in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the implications and extent of which are still being explored. See, for example, notes 14 and 44 below.
11 The Concept of Heart-Failure from Avicenna to Albertini (Cambridge, Mass., 1980).
l2 Ciencia y tecnica en la sociedad española de los siglos XVI y XVII (Barcelona, 1979). The author has identified 572 individuals who either wrote or worked on scientific topics between 1481 and 1600; of these, about one quarter wrote or worked on medicine and allied topics, and about one third were physicians or surgeons by profession. Accordingly, the social and intellectual aspects of Spanish medicine in this period play a prominent part in his work.
13 Cambridge, 1979.
14 Mystical Bedlam: Madness, Anxiety, and Healing in Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1981). In his preface (pp. xi-xii) the author acknowledges the influence of Foucault, while sharply distinguishing the latter's methodology and philosophy from his own concern with specific local historical detail and “the mental world of ordinary people.” Interaction between popular and elite cultures is also the theme ot'Scienze credtnze occulte livelli di cultura. Conuegno Internazionale di Studi (Firenze 20-30 giugno, 1980),Instituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento (Florence, 1982), which includes the following articles relating to medical topics: Charles Webster, “Paracelsus and Demons: Science as a Synthesis of Popular Belief; Marco Ferrari, “Alcune vie di diffusionein Italia di idee e di testi di Paracelso“; Paolo Galluzzi, “Motivi paracelsiani nella Toscana di Cosimo II e di Don Antonio dei Medici: Alchimia, medicina “chimica” e riforma del sapere“; Daniela Pesciatini, “Maestri, medici, cerusici nelle communita rurali pisane nel XVII secolo“; Margaret Pelling, “Tradition and Diversity: Medical Practice in Norwich, 1550-1640.“
15 For example, “ ‘Professores chirurgie,’ ‘medici ciroici’ e ‘barbitonsores’ a Padova nell'eta di Leonardo Buffi da Bertipaglia (m. dopo il 1448),” Quademi per la storia dell- Università di Padova,11 (1978). Also to be noted is Katharine Park, Doctors and Medicine in Early Renaissance Florence (forthcoming, Princeton University Press, Spring, 1985).
16 “Occupational Diversity: Barbersurgeons and the Trades of Norwich, 1550- 1640,“ Bulletin ojthe History ojMedicine 56(1982), 484-511, and “Tradition and Diversity: Medical Practice in Norwich, 1550-1640,” Scienze credenze occulte livelli di cultura, pp. 159-71.
17 The Studio of Venice and Its Graduates in Sixteenth Century (Padua and Trieste, 1983).
18 “The Medical Profession in Galileo's Tuscany,” in Carlo, Cipolla,Public Health and the Medical Profession in the Renaissance (Cambridge, 1976), pp. 67–124 Google Scholar, to which may now be added the essay by Daniela Pesciatini referred to in note 14, above.
19 DanielleJacquart, he milieu médical en France du XII’ au XV siècle (Geneva, 1981); Ernest, Wickersheimer, Dictionnaire biographique des médecins en France au Moyen Age (2 vols., Paris, 1936)Google Scholar, with Danielle, Jacquart, Supplément (Geneva, 1979).Google Scholar
20 However, Robert, Gottfried, Epidemic Disease in Fifteenth Century England: The Medical Response and the Demographic Consequences (New Brunswick, N.J., 1979)Google Scholar is in part based on computer analysis of fifteenth-century East Anglian wills.
21 For example, most recently, Joseph, Shatzmiller, “In Search of the ‘Book of Figures': Medicine and Astrology in Montpellier at the Turn of the Fourteenth Century,“ Association for Jewish Studies Review, 7-8 (1982-83), 383–407.Google Scholar
22 Historia social de la medicina en la España de los siglos XIII al XVI. I. La minoria musulmana y morisca (Madrid, 1976), and, most recently, Los Moriscos y la medicina: un capitulo de la medicina y la ciencia marginadas en la España del siglo XVI (Barcelona, 1984).
23 Ph.D. thesis, University of Kent at Canterbury, 1978.
24 “Plague Legislation in the Italian Renaissance,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 57(1983), 508-25.
25 Andrew W., Russell, ed., The Town and State Physician in Europe from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment (Wolfenbüttel, 1981)Google Scholar. The conference was sponsored by the Society for the Social History of Medicine, and held at Wolfenbiittel in 1979.
26 See, for example, Linda E., Voigts, “Editing Middle English [Medical] Texts,” inEditing Texts in the History of Science and Medicine,ed. Trevor H., Levere (New York and London, 1982), pp. 39–68 Google Scholar, and Faye Marie, Getz, “Gilbertus Anglicus Anglicized,“ Medical History,26 (1982) 436-42Google Scholar. Of course, the existence of a relationship between many vernacular medical works and Latin sources in no way diminishes the importance of studying the former as examples of vernacular technical prose, a subject that is currently attracting scholarly attention both from the standpoint of philology and from that of the social history of medieval and Renaissance science, medicine, and technology. In many instances, however, the Latin texts themselves also call for further study and or editions.
27 Paul Oskar, Kristeller, Iter Italicum Accedunt Alia Itinera: A Finding List ofUncatalogued or Incompletely Catalogued Humanistic Manuscripts of the Renaissance in Italian and Other Libraries. Ill(Alia Itinera 1) Australia to Germany (Leiden and London, 1983)Google Scholar. The index to this volume has not yet appeared. In this, as in the earlier volumes, a number of collections of medical lectures or commentaries are listed. Richard Durling has prepared an article drawing attention to the listings of medical material in Iter,III. His study will appear in Traditio.
28 John M., Riddle, “Dioscorides,” in Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum: Medieval and Renaissance Latin Translations and Commentaries, IV, ed. Cranz, F. Edward and Paul Oskar, Kristeller (Washington, D.C., 1980), 1–143 Google Scholar, and Eugene F. Rice, Jr., “Paulus Aegineta,” ibid.,145-91.
29 “Hippocrates Latinus: Repertorium of Hippocratic Writings in the Latin Middle Ages,” Traditio,31-38 (1975-1982), in 8 parts.
30 These include Richard J., Durling, “Corrigenda and Addenda to Diels’ Galenica. II. Codices miscellanei,” Traditio 37 (1981), 373–81Google Scholar, and Burgundio of Pisa's Translation of Galen's Peri Kraseon De complexionibus,ed. Richard J., Durling, Galenus Latinus I (Berlin, 1976)Google Scholar. In press is an edition of Burgundio of Pisa's version of Galen's De interioribus (De locis affectis).
31 Galen, , On Prognosis,ed., tr., comm. Vivian, Nutton, Corpus Medicorum Graecorum V:8, 1 (Berlin, 1979).Google Scholar
32 Galen, , On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato, ed., tr., comm. Philip De, Lacy, Corpus Medicorum Graecorum V:4, 1, 2 (2 vols., Berlin, 1978 and 1980).Google Scholar
33 Separately, by Danielle Jacquart (section on fevers, with attention to the Arabic and Latin texts and commentators before 1500), Ilona Opelt (as part of a study of the translation techniques of Gerard of Cremona), and the present writer (use as a university textbook after 1500, with special attention to Book I, fen 1). An important study of the historiography of the approach to the Canon by historians of medicine since the late eighteenth century is Ursula Weisser, “Ibn Sina und die Medizin des arabischislamischen Mittelalters—Alte and neue Urteile und Vorurteile,” Mediziiihistorischai Journal,18 (1983), 283-305.
34 Arnaldi de Villanova Opera medica omnia,ed. Ballester, L. Garcia, Paniagua, J. A., and McVaugh, M. R.. II Aphorismi de gradibus, ed. McVaugh, M. R. (Granada- Barcelona, 1974). XVI Translatio libri Galieni de rigore et remore et iectigatione et spasmo, ed. McVaugh, M. R. (Barcelona, 1981).Google Scholar
35 Louis, Dulieu, La médicine à Montpellier. II:La Renaissance,(Avignon, 1979).Google Scholar
36 Jerome Bylebyl, “The School of Padua: Humanistic Medicine in the Sixteenth Century,” in Health, Medicine, and Mortality,ed. Webster.
37 Scienza e filosofia all'Universita di Padova nel Quattrocento,ed. Antonino Poppi (Padua and Trieste, 1983). The essays pertaining to medicine in this volume are G. Movia, “Struttura logica e consapevolezza epistemologica in alcuni trattatisti padovani di medicina del sec. XV,” and L. Premuda, “Le conquiste metodologiche e tecnicooperative della medicina nella scuola padovana del sec. XV.” (Graziella Federici Vescovini, “Medicina e filosofia a Padova tra XIV e XV secolo: Jacopo da Forli e Ugo Benzi da Siena [1380-1430],” in her “ Arti” e filosofia nel secolo XIV[Florence,] 1983 was, according to a footnote on p. 233, originally intended for inclusion in the volume edited by Poppi). A companion volume to Scienza efilosofia is Tiziana Pesenti, Professor! e promotori di medicina nello Studio di Padova dal 140$ al 1509. Repertorio biobibliografico (Padua and Trieste, 1984).
38 Especially Giuseppe Ongaro, “La medicina nello studio di Padova e nel Veneto,“ Storia della Cultura Veneta,III, part 3, ed. G. Arnaldi and M. Pastore (Vicenza, 1981), 75-134.
39 Luis Garcia, Ballester, “The Circulation and Use of Medical Manuscripts in Arabic in Sixteenth-Century Spain, “ Journal of the History of Arabic Science, 3 (1979), 183-99Google Scholar (attitudes of Spanish humanist physicians to Arabic medicine); Lopez, Pinero, Ciencia, pp. 308-70 (innovations in anatomy and physiology, Renaissance Galenism); Luis Garcia Ballester, Historia social, I, 88-97 (medical humanism).Google Scholar
40 The Medical Renaissance of the Sixteenth Century,ed. Andrew Wear, Roger French, and Iain Lonie (in press, Cambridge University Press, May, 1985).
41 Fernel's thought and influence are interestingly treated in two recent (and very different) dissertations: James J. Bono, “The Languages of Life: Jean Fernel (1497- 1558) and Spiritus in Pre-Harveian Bio-Medical Thought,” Harvard University Ph.D. thesis, 1981; Linda Deer (Richardson), “Academic Theories of Generation in the Renaissance: The Contemporaries and Successors of Jean Fernel (1497—1558),” Warburg Institute Ph.D. thesis, 1980. Even a text as celebrated and much studied as Vesalius' Fabrica is still yielding new information, as may be seen from Cavanagh, G.S.T., “A New View of the Vesalian Landscape,” Medical History, 27 (1983) 77–79 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Michael, Horowitz and Jack, Collins, “A Census of Copies of the First Edition of Andreas Vesalius' De humani corporis fabrica (1543), with a Note on the Recently Discovered Variant Issue,” Journal for the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 39 (1984) 198–221.Google Scholar
42 For example much important current German scholarship pertaining to medicine is included in Fachprosa-Studien: Beiträge zur mittelalterlichen Wissenschafts- und Geistesgeschichte, ed. Gundolf Kiel, Peter Assion, Willem Frans Daems, and Heinz-Ulrich Roehl (Berlin, 1982). One may note, for instance, Peter Assion, “Der Hof Herzog Siegmunds von Tirol als Zentrum spätmittelalterlicher Fachliteratur,” which examines a princely court as a center of scientific, technical, and medical, as well as literary culture. Mention should certainly also be made of Gerhard, Baader, “Medizinisches Reformdenken und Arabismus im Deutschland des 16 Jahrhunderts,” Sudhoffs Archiv: Zeitschriftfur Wissenschaftgeschichte 63 (1979), 261-96.Google Scholar
43 For example, Per Ottosson Gunnar , Scholastic Medicine and Philosophy: A Study of Commentaries on Galen's Tegni (ca. 1300-1450) (Uppsala, 1982) and the essays by Movia and Federici Vescovini mentioned in note 37 above for the relation between scholastic medicine and philosophy in this period; other scholars emphasize the aspects of academic medical writing that relate to practica—for example, Tiziana Pesenti, Marangon, “Michele Savonarola a Padova: l'ambiente, le opere, la cultura medica,” Quaderniper la storia dell'Università di Padova, 9-10 (1976-77), 45–102 Google Scholar, and, to some extent, Danielle, Jacquart, “Le regard d'un médecin sur son temps: Jacques Despars (i38o?-i458),” Bibliothèquede l'Ecole des Chartes, 138 (1980), 35–86.Google Scholar
44 See McVaugh's introduction to Arnald of Villanova's Opera Medica Omnia,II, and Giancarlo Zanier, Medicina efilosofia tra ‘$oo e ‘600, pubblicazioni del “Centro di Studi del Pensiero Filosofico del Cinquecento e del Seicento in Relazione ai Problemi della Scienza” del Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (Milan, 1983). The stated objective is also that of Siraisi, Taddeo Alderotti.
45 Most recently, Daniela Mugnai, Carrara, “Una polemica umanistico-scolastica circa l'interpretazione delle tre dottrine ordinate di Galeno,” Annali dell'Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza di Firenze, 8 (1983), 31–57.Google Scholar
46 Durling, R.J., “Linacre and Medical, Humanism“; Charles B., Schmitt, “Thomas Linacre and Italy.” Both in Linacre Studies: Essays on the Life and Work of Thomas Linacre, ca. 1460-1524, ed. Maddison, F. et al. (Oxford, 1977).Google Scholar
47 Vivian, Nutton, “John Caius and the Linacre Tradition,” Medical History,23 (1979) 373-91Google Scholar. Anthony, Grafton,Joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship. I. Textual Criticism and Exegesis (Oxford, 1983)Google Scholar, especially Chapter 7, casts much light on Renaissance approaches to the editing of medical texts, and the controversies they involved.
48 Vivian, Nutton, “The Seeds of Disease: An Explanation of Contagion and Infection from the Greeks to the Renaissance,” Medical History, 27 (1983), 1–34.Google Scholar
49 Allen G., Debus, “Walter Pagel (1898-1983),” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 57 (1983), 611-15; passage quoted at p. 613.Google Scholar
50 Ian, Maclean,The Renaissance Notion of Woman: A Study in the Fortunes of Scholasticism and Medical Science in European Intellectual Life (Cambridge, 1980)Google Scholar. The author's definition of the term ‘feminist’ does, however, present some problems.
51 Leland L., Estes, “The Medical Origins of the European Witch Craze: A Hypothesis,“ Journal of Social History, 17 (1983), 271-83Google Scholar. The notes to this article contain bibliography regarding work on the other aspects of the connection between medicine and witchcraft just alluded to.
52 In private communications to the present author, both Vivian Nutton and Richard J. Durling have emphasized the large amounts of material that await exploration. Both noted that, in particular, work needs to be done on more of the surviving collections of letters to and from leading sixteenth-century physicians, which often served as an important means for the transmission of scientific ideas. Durling further remarked on the large number of medical lectures or commentaries that survive in manuscript from the sixteenth as well as earlier centuries and which, if investigated, might be expected to yield much information about university teaching. Nutton also emphasized the need for work even on the much studied subject of anatomy to move beyond major centers and great names.
53 On the last point, see the retrospective reviews of Critical Problems in the History of Science,ed. Marshall Clagett (Madison, Wisconsin, 1959), in Isis,72 (1981), 267-83, especially the remarks of William Coleman (pp. 271-76), who stresses the extent to which the field of the history of the life sciences after 1700 has been developed over the last twenty-five years. However, Charles B., Schmitt, “Recent Trends in the Study of Medieval and Renaissance Science,” in Information Sources in the History of Science and Medicine, ed. Pietro, Corsi and Paul, Weindling (London, 1983), p. 229 Google Scholar, points out that a great deal remains to be done in the study of Renaissance botany, zoology, and related disciplines.