History of science society distinguished lecture

³⁴ Later editions of Ars … de statica medicina contained a well-known illustration of Santorio in his weighing chair; the story of his use of it appears in eighteenth-century accounts but, according to Robert P. Multhauf, “On the Use of the Balance in Chemistry,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 1962, 106:210–218, on p. 212 n 14, an earlier source has not been traced.

³⁵ On fever see Iain M. Lonie, “Fever Pathology in the Sixteenth Century: Tradition and Innovation,” in Theories of Fever from Antiquity to the Enlightenment, ed. W. F. Bynum and V. Nutton (Medical History, Suppl. 1) (London: Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 1981), pp. 19–44; and Don G. Bates, “Thomas Willis and the Fevers Literature of the Seventeenth Century,” ibid., pp. 45–70. For detailed exposition of the concept of the humoral qualities see Michael R. McVaugh, “The Development of Medieval Pharmaceutical Theory,” in Arnald of Villanova, Opera medica omnia, Vol. 2: Aphorismi de gradibus, ed. McVaugh (Granada/Barcelona: Univ. Barcelona, 1975), pp. 1–136.

³⁶ On the relationship between Santorio’s work on heat-measuring devices and that of Galileo see W. E. Knowles Middleton, A History of the Thermometer and Its Use in Meteorology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1966), pp. 5–14. Santorio’s fullest accounts of his thermoscope and “pulsilogium” (for measuring the pulse) and their diagnostic uses are embedded in his commentaries on texts of Galen and Avicenna long traditional in the medical curriculum. See ibid., pp. 8–9; and Nancy G. Siraisi, Avicenna in Renaissance Italy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1987), p. 210.

³⁷ Some notable publications on alchemy/chymistry of the last few years include Newman, Atoms and Alchemy (cit. n. 13); Lawrence M. Principe, The Aspiring Adept (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1998); Principe, ed., Chymists and Chymistry: Studies in the History of Alchemy and Early Modern Chemistry (Sagamore Beach, Mass.: Science History Publications, 2007); Didier Kahn, Alchimie et Paracelsisme en France (1567–1625) (Geneva: Droz, 2007); Tara Nummedal, Alchemy and Authority in the Holy Roman Empire (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2007); and Pamela H. Smith, The Business of Alchemy: Science and Culture in the Holy Roman Empire (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1994).

³⁸ Claude Dariot, Trois discours de la preparation des medicamens (Lyon, 1589), preface to the reader (dated 1581), pp. 6–12. On Dariot see Kahn, Alchimie et Paracelsisme en France, pp. 324–325, 334–335; an appendix on pp. 350–351 reproduces Dariot’s account of his conversion to Paracelsianism from pp. 8–11 of Trois discours.

³⁹ Principe, Aspiring Adept (cit. n. 37), pp. 41–42; and Kahn, Alchimie et Paracelsisme en France.

⁴⁰ Recent contributions to the study of Renaissance and early modern natural history include Representation of Animals in the Early Modern Period, special issue of Annals of Science, 2010, 67(3), guest edited by Domenico Bertoloni Meli and Anita Guerrini; Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley/Los Angeles: Univ. California Press, 1994); Ogilvie, Science of Describing (cit. n. 22); Florike Egmond, Paul Hoftijzer, and Robert P. W. Visser, eds., Carolus Clusius: Towards a Cultural History of a Renaissance Naturalist (Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, 2007), pp. 221–246; and Kusukawa, Picturing the Book of Nature (cit. n. 22).

⁴¹ For an example of a controversy over theriac ingredients see Findlen, Possessing Nature, pp. 272–286.

⁴² Pier Andrea Mattioli, Commentarii, in libros sex Pedacii Dioscoridis Anazarbei, De medica materia (Venice, 1554), “Epistola nuncupatoria.” On Mattioli see Sara Ferri, ed., Pietro Andrea Mattioli, Siena 1501–Trento 1578: La vita, le opere (Ponte San Giovanni: Quattroemme, 1997).

⁴³ Compare Mattioli, Commentarii (1554), Bk. 4, Chs. 72–73, pp. 479–482, and Mattioli, Commentarii (Frankfurt, 1598), Bk. 4, Ch. 72, pp. 761–766. On Mattioli’s dispute with Gesner see Candice Delisle, “The Letter: Private Text or Public Place? The Mattioli–Gesner Controversy about the Aconitum Primum,” Gesnerus, 2004, 61:161–176.

⁴⁴ Antonio Musa Brasavola, Examen omnium simplicium medicamentorum, quorum usus in publicis est officinis (Venice, 1545) (this work was first published in Rome in 1636). On Brasavola see Vivian Nutton, “The Rise of Medical Humanism: Ferrara, 1464–1555,” Renaissance Studies, 1997, 11:2–19. On the compilation of local plant lists see Alix Cooper, Inventing the Indigenous: Local Knowledge and Natural History in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2007), pp. 55–57, 76–77.

⁴⁵ Pamela H. Smith and Paula Findlen, eds., Merchants and Marvels: Commerce, Science, and Art in Early Modern Europe (New York/London: Routledge, 2002); Harold J. Cook, Matters of Exchange: Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the Dutch Golden Age (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 2007), esp. p. 141; Richard Palmer, “Pharmacy in the Republic of Venice in the Sixteenth Century,” in Medical Renaissance of the Sixteenth Century, ed. Wear et al. (cit. n. 10), pp. 100–117; and Johann Lange, Medicinalium epistolarum miscellanea … (Basel, [1554]), letter 68, pp. 293–303.

⁴⁶ According to Laurent Joubert, “Gulielmi Rondeletii vita,” in Joubert, Operum latinorum tomus primus … secundus, 2 vols. in one (Frankfurt, 1599), Vol. 1, p. 154, Guillaume Rondelet, who was professor of medicine at the University of Montpellier, lectured to apothecaries as well as medical students; for Francisco Sanches’s lectures to apothecaries at Toulouse see above.

⁴⁷ Orazio Augenio, Epistolarum et consultationum medicinalium prioris … alteris tomi libri XII, 2 vols. in one (Venice, 1602), Vol. 2, Bk. 9, no. 52: “Senatui Pedemontano: Quod medicamenta componere non deroget nobilitati artis: Pro Domino Iulio Contarino medico,” fols. 127r–129r (for the list see fol. 127v). Augenio perhaps had in mind the arrangement for the supervision of pharmacists in Rome, where the protomedico and the College of Physicians were responsible for licensing and supervising all medical practitioners and apothecaries in the city. See David Gentilcore, “‘All That Pertains to Medicine’: Protomedici and Protomedicati in Early Modern Italy,” Med. Hist., 1994, 38:121–142; and Fausto Garofalo, Quattro secoli di vita del protomedicato e del Collegio de Medici di Roma: Regesto dei documenti dal 1471 al 1870 (Pubblicazioni dell’Istituto di Storia della Medicina dell’Università di Roma: Collezione C: Studi e Ricerche Storico-Mediche) (Rome, 1950). See also Gentilcore, Medical Charlatanism in Early Modern Italy (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2006), esp. pp. 216–226.

⁴⁸ On early modern domestic medicine and on women and health care see Women, Health, and Healing in Early Modern Europe, special issue of the Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 2008, 82(1), esp. Mary E. Fissell, “Introduction,” pp. 1–17; and, on the sixteenth century, Deborah Harkness, “A View from the Streets: Women and Medical Work in Elizabethan London,” pp. 52–85, and Alisha Rankin, “Duchess, Heal Thyself: Elisabeth of Rochlitz and the Patient’s Perspective in Early Modern Germany,” pp. 109–144. In addition, Elaine Leong, “Making Medicines in the Early Modern Household,” pp. 145–168, although mainly focused on the later seventeenth and the early eighteenth century, includes extensive bibliographical notes on domestic medicine in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England.

⁴⁹ Owen Hannaway, “Georgius Agricola as Humanist,” J. Hist. Ideas, 1992, 53:553–560; the dialogue is Georgius Agricola, Bermannus sive De re metallica (Basel, 1530).

⁵⁰ Christoph Schilling to Johannes Crato of Crafftheim, Andreas Dudith, and Thomas Erastus, in Joubert, Operum latinorum tomus primus … secundus (cit. n. 46), Vol. 2, pp. 190–191; and Laurent Joubert, Oratio de praesidiis futuri excellentis medici, ibid., pp. 192–196. For another similar account see Lorenz Gryll, Oratio de peregrinatione studii medicinalis ergo suscepta, deque summa utilitate eius medicinae partis, quae medicamentorum simplicium facultates explicat, fols. 1r–16r, printed with his De sapore dulci et amaro libri duo (Prague, 1566). On medical travel within Europe Ole Peter Grell, Andrew Cunningham, and Jon Arrizabalaga, Centres of Medical Excellence? Medical Travel and Education in Europe, 1500–1789 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010)—which I have not seen—should also be noted.

⁵¹ Sabine Anagnostou, “The International Transfer of Medicinal Drugs by the Society of Jesus (Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries) and Connections with the Work of Carolus Clusius,” in Carolus Clusius, ed. Egmond et al. (cit. n. 40), pp. 293–312; A. G. Keller, “Orta, Garcia D’ (or Da Orta),” in Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography, ed. Gillispie et al. (cit. n. 33), Vol. 10, pp. 236–238; and José Pardo-Tomás, “Two Glimpses of America from a Distance: Carolus Clusius and Nicolás Monardes,” in Carolus Clusius, ed. Egmond et al., pp. 173–193.

⁵² On Hernandez’s career and writings and on the publication history and influence of his works see Simon Varey, ed., The Mexican Treasury: The Writings of Dr. Francisco Hernández (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univ. Press, 2000), “Introduction,” pp. 3–39; there is a translation of the royal letter of instructions to Hernandez on pp. 46–47.

⁵³ Siraisi, History, Medicine, and the Traditions of Renaissance Learning (cit. n. 8), pp. 247–250, and sources cited therein; and Sonja Brentjes, “The Interests of the Republic of Letters in the Middle East, 1550–1700,” Science in Context, 1999, 12:435–468.

⁵⁴ Prospero Alpino, De medicina methodica libri tredecim (Padua, 1611); Alpino, De medicina Aegyptiorum libri quatuor (Paris, 1646); and Alpino, Historiae Aegypti naturalis … Rerum Aegyptiarum libri quatuor (Leiden, 1735). On Alpino see Giuseppe Ongaro, “Contributi alla biografia di Prospero Alpini,” Acta Medicae Historiae Patavina, 1961–1963, 8–9:79–168; and Prospero Alpini medico e viaggiatore, nel 450 della nasciata: Atti della conferenza di studi, 23 novembre 2003, Sala consiliare del castello inferiore, Marostica (Marostica: Comune di Marostica, 2005). On Renaissance enthusiasm for Egypt more generally see Brian Curran, The Egyptian Renaissance: The Afterlife of Ancient Egypt in Early Modern Italy (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 2007).

⁵⁵ Candice Delisle, “Accessing Nature, Circulating Knowledge: Conrad Gessner’s Correspondence Networks and His Medical and Naturalist Practices,” History of Universities, 2008, 23:35–58.

⁵⁶ For the letters to Zwinger see the online catalogue of Basel University Library; the letters are discussed in Carlos Gilly, “Zwischen Erfahrung und Spekulation: Theodor Zwinger und die religiöse und kulturelle Krise seiner Zeit,” Basler Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Altertumskunde, 1977, 77:57–137, 1979, 79:125–233. Most of the letters received by Clusius are at Leiden University, where they have been digitized as part of the university’s ongoing “Clusius project”; see http://www.library.leiden.edu/special-collections/scaliger-institute/projects/clusius-project.html.

⁵⁷ Regarding the letters on the concept of contagion see Vivian Nutton, “The Reception of Fracastoro’s Theory of Contagion: The Seed That Fell among Thorns,” Osiris, 1990, N.S., 6:196–234, esp. pp. 221–225. On published medical letter collections see Ian Maclean, “The Medical Republic of Letters before the Thirty Years War,” Intellectual History Review, 2008, 18:15–30; the appendix (pp. 29–30) lists published collections of medical letters, 1521–1626.

⁵⁸ Maclean, Logic, Signs, and Nature in the Renaissance (cit. n. 15), p. 338.

⁵⁹ Guillaume Plancy, Ioannis Fernelii vita, in Jean Fernel, Universa medicina (Leiden, 1645), fols. *3r–**4v, trans. in Charles Sherrington, The Endeavour of Jean Fernel (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1946), pp. 150–170 (the relevant passage is on p. 162); and Ambroise Paré, Les oeuvres de M. Ambroise Paré (Paris, 1575), p. 359. My thanks to Domenico Bertoloni Meli for the latter reference.

⁶⁰ Maclean, “Medical Republic of Letters before the Thirty Years War” (cit. n. 57).
Figure 1. Andreas Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica libri septem (Basel, 1543), 1.12, p. 44. (Courtesy of the New York Academy of Medicine Library.) Vesalius used this illustration of a human skull superimposed upon a canine skull twice in the Fabrica, here and in 1.9, p. 36, in both instances to show specific errors of Galen. More generally, the image is a vivid expression of Vesalius’s intention clearly to distinguish human anatomy from that of other animals and his critique of Galen for failing to do so.
Figure 2. William Gilbert, De magnete, magneticisque corporibus, et de magno magnete tellure; physiologia nova, plurimis & argumentis, & experimentis demonstrata (London, 1600), p. 185. (Wellcome Library, London.)
Figure 3. Guillaume Rondelet, Libri de piscibus marinis, in quibus verae piscium effigies expressae sunt (Lyon, 1554), p. 445. (Courtesy of the New York Academy of Medicine Library.) Rondelet (1507–1566) was professor of medicine at the University of Montpellier; although the title of his encyclopedic work on natural history refers only to marine fish, it encompasses aquatic animals in general.
Figure 4. Claude Dariot, Trois discours de la preparation des medicamens (Lyon, 1589), p. 117. (Courtesy of the New York Academy of Medicine Library.) Dariot devoted the second section of his treatise on Paracelsian medicaments to detailed instructions for the distillation of a long list of medicinal ingredients (not only the minerals and metals often associated with Paracelsian therapy, but also vegetable and animal substances); he included illustrations of several different types of distillation apparatus, one of which is shown here.
Figure 5. William Clowes, A Briefe and Necessarie Treatise, Touching the Cure of the Disease Called Morbus Gallicus (London, 1585), fol. 9v (Wellcome Library, London). Clowes (1540–1604), a London barber-surgeon, shared the disdain of academic physicians for unlicensed medical practitioners who peddled remedies. In some of his milder remarks on the subject he described such men as “as proude as Iccarus, as craftie as Prometheus, and as bosting as Golia [Goliath], which garison or beastly bande doe enter meddle to farre into Phisicke and Chirurgerie, to the great slaunder and discredit of so noble a Misterie, and to the reproche of the learned Phisition and Chirurgion: to the daunger, nay to the utter undoing of a great number of pore affflicted creatures, whome they doe most wickedly practise upon, and cruelly torment” (fol. 9r). According to Clowes, the illustration depicts how “they delight most commonly to proclaime their dealings, in open streets and market places by prating, bragging and liyng, with their libelles, bannars, and wares, hanging them out abroade, after the like order as it is here set downe” (fol. 9v).
Figure 6. Francisco Hernandez, Rerum medicarum Novae Hispaniae thesaurus (Rome, 1651), p. 104. (Wellcome Library, London.) The illustration depicts a New World plant shown at different stages of growth (with and without flowers and fruit). In his accompanying account, Hernandez described the appearance of leaves, flowers, and root, noted the plant’s habitat, and indicated its medicinal use as a remedy for inflammation of the eyes. He also took care to record several indigenous names for the plant.