Editors: Sandra Cavallo (University of London) & John Henderson (University of London / Cambridge)
Publisher: Brepols, 2025
This volume brings together scholars at the forefront of the latest developments in the history of medicine in Italy. In recent years, the traditional separation between studies of medical theory and studies of medical practice has increasingly given way to a more nuanced approach that problematizes the relationship between these fields, which is too often seen as mechanical.
Building on these recent trends, this book sheds new light on the complex ways in which medical knowledge and medical experience interacted in a period characterized by the rise of empiricism, the expansion of scholarly interest in bedside medicine, and the challenges raised by the need to incorporate novel drugs into the classic paradigms of professional medicine.
Focusing on a range of themes — bodies and diseases, medical treatment, pharmacy and public health — chapters in this volume challenge ingrained scholarly accounts of medical theory, highlight areas of innovation in medical treatment arising from vernacular practice, hospital experimentation, and the study of inanimate things, and the impact of these novelties on the more conservative official pharmacopeias.
At the same time these essays remind us that medical innovation was not an independent process, but was also the product of commercial dynamics, political interests and religious and charitable discourses.
Contents
Introduction – Sandra Cavallo & John Henderson
The Myth of Humoral Imbalance: How Renaissance Physicians Explained and Treated the Diseases of their Patients – Michael Stolberg
Italian Medical Practice at the Habsburg Courts (1550-1600): Encounters and Exchanges between Learned Physicians, Empirics, and Patients – Alessandra Quaranta
Humoralism and the Role of Remedies in Seventeenth-Century Medical Treatment: The Case of Rome – Sandra Cavallo
Between Land and Sea: Medicine and Galley Slavery in Early Modern Livorno – Lucia Dacome
Bodies and Stones in Michele Mercati’s Metallotheca: The Study of Nature and the Practice of Medicine in Late-Sixteenth Century Rome – Elisa Andretta
Translating New World Drugs in Late Renaissance Italy: The Case of Indies Balsam – Sharon Strocchia
Medicinal and Cosmetic Waters: Vernacular Experimentation in Sixteenth-Century Florentine Ricettari – Gaston Javier Basile
Circulating and Consuming Drugs in Late Seventeenth-Century Venice: Between Theory and Practice – Sabrina Minuzzi
Assessing Treatment for Wounds and Ulcers in Eighteenth-Century Italy: Theory, Practice, and the Value of Hospital Experience – Maria Pia Donato
“Malignità che s’infonde”: Rice Fields, Space, and Medicine in Counter-Reformation Milan – Lavinia Maddaluno