Between 1497 and 1512, Hieronymus Brunschwig (ca. 1450–ca. 1530), an obscure craftsman from Strasbourg, wrote books on surgery and pharmacy that transformed medical expertise, how it was codified in print, and how it was communicated to new audiences. Brunschwig was an unlikely author. He apprenticed as a surgeon in the local guild and dispensed medicines from his own shop. But he was remarkably well-read in surgery, alchemy, and medical theory, even if he lacked a university education. His unique authorial voice spoke to the healing practices of craftsmen and common people in a down-to-earth German dialect.
 
The book is the first in-depth study of Brunschwig and his works. In it, the author argues that Brunschwig’s writings shaped a nascent tradition of vernacular medicine. Brunschwig’s books represent a key moment in the history of medical print, for they conveyed medical expertise to a new readership of nonacademic practitioners, who became a key audience for a flood of vernacular medical publications during the sixteenth century. Using Brunschwig’s books as a unique window into the past, the book beautifully reconstructs the world of science inhabited by Brunschwig, his fellow craftsmen, his translators, and his readers.

Contents

Abbreviations and Conventions

Introduction: Medicine, Artisans, Books, and Knowledge

1. Artisans, Healers, Humanists: Practicing and Writing Medicine in Strasbourg, ca. 1500

2. Between Craft and Learning: Negotiating the Place of Surgery in the Medical Landscape

3. Body, Honor, Health, and Handwork: Surgeons in the City of Artisans

4. Distilling Medicine: Subtle Remedies for Fluid Bodies

5. Working with Matter

6. “The Habit of Those Who Have Done It Often”: From Embodied Experience to the Virtual Apprenticeship of Print

7. Gathering Breadcrumbs: Experience and Erfarung in Brunschwig’s Vernacular Empiricism

8. Dreaming of Vernacular Readers: “Common Medicine” and the Striped Layman

9. Cutting Words, Distilling Experience: The Vernacular Text Work of Translation

10. Reading and Writing Medicine: Annotations in Brunschwig’s Books

Conclusion: Crafting Knowledge in Early Modern Europe

Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Source: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo254560672.html