The Centre for the Study of Medicine and the Body in the Renaissance (CSMBR) is an international institute of advanced studies belonging to the Institutio Santoriana – Fondazione Comèl and based at the Domus Comeliana in Pisa. It carries on the scientific legacy of the Italian physician, philosopher
philosopher, scientist, and inventor Santorio Santori (1561-1636) and it furthers the values of Medical Humanism and the advancement of scientific knowledge as inspired by the intellectual, cultural and social development of the European Medical Renaissance (1300-1700).
The CSMBR is constituted as an independent research institute open to scholars of any nationality, without discrimination (either direct or indirect) of ethnicity, gender, age, political, religious, or sexual orientation.
It neither seeks nor promotes any political goal: advocacy research, as well as activities or fields of study directly related to political purposes of any nature (religious, social, economic, sexual, etc.), are irreconcilable with the CSMBR mission.
The centre is run by a Governing Board of international scholars and representatives of funding institutions, in accordance with the CSMBR General Regulations.
Our fundamental principles are rooted in the philosophy of Medical Humanism, as developed historically in the Italian Renaissance.
The Renaissance (Italian Rinascimento) saw a revival in the study of classical antiquity, which from Italy spread across Western Europe, in the period between the 14th and the 16th century.
During this period, the term umanista (“humanist”) was adopted by scholars concerned with the development of humanity by means of the litterae humaniores, which included dialectic, rhetoric, history, poetry, and philosophy.
In accordance with this historical legacy, we developed the tenets of Medical Humanism:
Medical Humanism is the commitment to acknowledging, respecting, and developing the human potential proper to each individual. An individual is a living being provided with a biological and social nature, a personal memory, a shared history, and a spiritual dimension that renders each human being as an existential singularity.
The work carried out at the CSMBR is meant to allow and reflect the plurality of opinions of our scholars, so that each individual is able to form his/her own opinion, as freely and independently as possible.
This is the reason behind the centre not committing to any specific political and religious views. While we do acknowledge that our members are part of society and therefore political actors, we mean the attribute political in the sense that is open to a plurality of opinions and values as long as these are compatible with the respect for human dignity and the law.