History of science society distinguished lecture

¹¹ For the various aspects of Ficino’s thought see James Hankins, Plato in the Italian Renaissance (Leiden: Brill, 1990), Vol. 1, pp. 267–360; and Michael J. B. Allen, Valery Rees, and Martin Davies, eds., Marsilio Ficino: His Theology, His Philosophy, His Legacy (Leiden: Brill, 2001).

¹² Jean Fernel, De abditis rerum causis libri duo (Paris, 1548) (and numerous later editions); and Fernel, De naturali parte medicinae libri septem (Paris, 1542). The latter was subsequently incorporated as the physiological section of his Medicina (Paris, 1554) and Universa medicina (Paris, 1567). Some idea of the diffusion of the last-named work can be gained from the fact that the holdings of the National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Maryland, include more than twenty-five editions of Universa medicina published between 1567 and 1683. See also James J. Bono, The Word of God and the Languages of Man (Madison: Univ. Wisconsin Press, 1995); Linda Deer Richardson, “The Generation of Disease: Occult Causes and Diseases of the Total Substance,” in The Medical Renaissance of the Sixteenth Century, ed. Wear et al. (cit. n. 10), pp. 175–194; and Hiro Hirai, “Ficin, Fernel et Fracastor autor du concept de semence: Aspects platoniciens de seminaria,” in Girolamo Fracastoro fra medicina, filosofia e scienze della natura, ed. Alessandro Pastore and Enrico Peruzzi (Florence: Olschki, 2006), pp. 245–260.

¹³ See William R. Newman, Atoms and Alchemy: Chymistry and the Experimental Origins of the Scientific Revolution (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2006), Chs. 4, 5.

¹⁴ See Stefano Perfetti, Aristotle’s Zoology and Its Renaissance Commentators, 1521–1601 (Leuven: Leuven Univ. Press, 2000), p. 231: “Many of the new zoological monographs, which began to appear in the middle of the century, were born of the conscious contamination of Aristotelian elements (epistemological and contentual) with new observational data.”

¹⁵ Ian Maclean, Logic, Signs, and Nature in the Renaissance: The Case of Learned Medicine (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2002), esp. pp. 76–84, 290–330. As the title suggests, this study is primarily concerned with, and provides a perceptive analysis of, medical “discourse … in terms of its logical procedures and its dogmas” (p. 333).

¹⁶ I make no attempt to list the extensive literature on Paracelsus, but see Walter Pagel, Paracelsus: An Introduction to Philosophical Medicine in the Era of the Renaissance, 2nd rev. ed. (Basel/New York: Karger, 1982); Charles Webster, Paracelsus: Medicine, Magic, and Mission at the End of Time (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 2008); and Bruce T. Moran, Distilling Knowledge: Alchemy, Chemistry, and the Scientific Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 2005), Ch. 3.

¹⁷ Francisco Sanches, That Nothing Is Known (Quod nihil scitur), ed. Elaine Limbrick and Douglas F. S. Thomson (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1988); for the remarks on experience, judgment, and their limitations see pp. 157–160 (Latin text), 278–284 (English translation). On Sanches as a philosopher see R. H. Popkin, The History of Scepticism from Savonarola to Bayle, rev. ed. (Oxford/New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2003), pp. 38–41; Sanches, That Nothing Is Known (Quod nihil scitur), pp. 28–47 (Limbrick’s introduction); and A. Moreira de Sá, Francisco Sanches, filósofo e matemático, Vol. 1 (Lisbon, 1947). Limbrick suggests in her introduction to Sanches, That Nothing Is Known (Quod nihil scitur), pp. 50–55, that one source of Sanches’s objection to scholastic Aristotelianism may have been his appreciation of Galen as less methodologically rigid.

¹⁸ Francisco Sanches, Opera medica (Toulouse, 1636). For citations and fuller discussion see Nancy G. Siraisi, “Theory, Experience, and Customary Practice in the Medical Writings of Francisco Sanches,” in Between Text and Patient: The Medical Enterprise in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Florence Eliza Glaze and Brian Nance (Florence: SISMEL/Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2011), pp. 441–464.

¹⁹ On Mercuriale see Alessandro Arcangeli and Vivian Nutton, eds., Girolamo Mercuriale: Medicina e cultura nell’Europa del Cinquecento (Florence: Olschki, 2008). Among the printed editions of his lectures, transcribed by auditors and authorized by himself, are Girolamo Mercuriale, De morbis cutaneis et omnibus corporis humani excrementis tractatus locupletissimi, … ex ore Hieronymi Mercurialis medici clarissimi diligenter excepti, atque in libros quinque digesté: Opera Pauli Aicardii ... (Venice, 1572); Mercuriale, De pestilentia … lectiones habitae Patavii MDLXXVII mense Ianuarii: In quibus de peste in universum praesertim vero de Veneta, et Patavina, singulari quadam eruditione tractatur (Venice, 1577); Mercuriale, De morbis puerorum tractatus locupletissimi …: Ex ore Excellentissimi Hieronymi Mercurialis Foroliuiensis medici clarissimi diligenter excepti, atque in libros tres digesti (Venice, 1583); Mercuriale, De morbis venenosis et venenis: Ex voce Hier. Mercurialis (Venice, 1583); and Mercuriale, De morbis muliebribus: Praelectiones ex ore Hieronymi Mercurialis (Venice, 1587) (each of these publications also went into several subsequent early editions). In other instances students published unauthorized editions of Mercuriale’s lectures in northern Europe, which met with his vigorous disapproval; see Nancy G. Siraisi, “Medicina Practica: Girolamo Mercuriale as Teacher and Textbook Author,” in Scholarly Knowledge: Textbooks in Early Modern Europe, ed. Emidio Campi et al. (Geneva: Droz, 2008), pp. 287–305.