| STUDIOLO: Digital Humanities Lab
Winter School Series: Humanities for the Future |
This new, interdisciplinary format allows participants to get a feel for the potential of the digital revolution by acquiring basic coding skills, knowledge of 3D modelling, key concepts in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Large Language Models (LLM). Participants will interact with leading academics who have or are currently working as PIs in important digital humanities projects. The programme is designed to offer a comprehensive skillset at the end of which participants will have the tools to shape their own projects. Emphasising the acquisition of practical skills, the Winter School requires no prior knowledge of coding or other skills.
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Members Enjoy the Early Bird Rate Throughout! |
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| Autonomous University of Barcelona |
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| | | The American University of Florence |
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| Medical Views on Sexual Pleasure in the Renaissance |
Interpreting Hippocrates' «On Generation»
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Webinar: 30 September 2025 - 5 pm (CEST) |
In the sixteenth century, Girolamo Mercuriale (1530–1606) proposed a philological correction to On Generation 4, a Hippocratic passage long debated for its account of sexual pleasure in men and women. This talk examines how two Portuguese physicians, Rodrigo de Castro and Estêvão Rodrigues de Castro, responded to Mercuriale’s intervention, either by supporting the correction and expanding it by introducing ‘modality’ as a third category of analysis, or by questioning the emendation and shifting the attention to physiological rather than temperamental explanations.
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Transformations in Medical Theory in Islamic Societies (1200-1520) |
Webinar: 7 October 2025 - 5 pm (CEST) |
Nahyan Fancy shows how Ibn al-Nafīs advanced medical theory beyond the works of Galen, Aristotle and even earlier Islamic physicians through his commentaries on Avicenna’s Canon of Medicine and its abridgements. Examining four commentaries on the Canon plus four on its Epitome, this lecture argues that post-classical practices of taḥqīq (verification) – lexical, philosophical, empirical – played a key role in assessing, revising or rejecting inherited theoretical frameworks.
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New Evidence on Early Modern Astro-Medicine in the Manuscripts of the Vitali Archive |
Webinar: 24 October 2025 - 5 pm (CEST) |
In the eighteenth century, Buonafede Vitali Senior (1686–1745), court physician in Parma, and his son Buonafede Vitali Junior defended the role of astrology in medicine at a time when many considered it superstition. Drawing on manuscripts preserved in the Vitali Verga Archive, this lecture explores the shift of astrology from a discipline intertwined with astronomy and natural philosophy to one increasingly marginalised within medical thought. |
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The Arabic and Latin Science of Compound Medicaments
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A New Reading of Book Ten of the «Practica Pantegni» |
Webinar: 11 November 2025 - 5 pm (CEST) |
This lecture explores the Arabic and Latin traditions of compound medicaments through al-Maǧūsī’s Kitāb al-Malakī and its Latin translation in Constantine the African’s Practica Pantegni. It highlights how al-Maǧūsī framed antidotes as essential tools in the contest between disease and nature, and how Constantine reshaped this material into a more philosophically charged discussion enriched with earlier Latin learning. At its centre lies Book X of the Practica Pantegni, read as a distinctive synthesis at the crossroads of Arabic and Latin medicine.
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| Medical Education in Europe (1350-1750) |
Texts, Institutions, Practices |
Elizabethanne Boran, Vivian Nutton, Fabrizio Bigotti |
Pisa 21-22 October 2025 - Online Slots Still Available! |
From Bologna, Montpellier, and Paris to Padua, Ferrara, and, later, Leiden, medical education in Europe evolved within a complex landscape of texts, institutions, and practices. Co-funded by the Edward Worth Library - Dublin, this conference examines the long-term development of medical education, focusing on how knowledge was created, transmitted, and adapted across formal and informal networks. |
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Technical Knowledge in Human History |
Imri Lavi, Gabriele Torcoletti, Marco Vespa |
This conference, based on the ERC Project ATLOMY (Anatomy in Ancient Greece and Rome: An Interactive Visual and Textual Atlas, PI: Orly Lewis), is based on a developing interactive atlas (www.atlomy.com) of ancient anatomical knowledge and lexica that shall be presented and discussed in Pisa with top international scholars. Topics include Illustrations and Visualisations, Re-Enactments and Replications, and Digital Interfaces.
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This talk provides an overview of the extensive, but lesser-known work that Linnaeus produced alongside his systematic writings. It touches on themes that we would classify as belonging to ecology, reproductive biology and anthropology today, and demonstrates that his thinking was much moredynamic than we usually take for granted. |
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| Mercantile Cultures of Health |
In the late Middle Ages, merchants were not solely engaged in trade and finances, they were also key transmitters of medical knowledge. This lecture explores the deep entanglement between commerce and hygiene by analyzing trade manuals, personal memoirs, and zibaldoni of Italian merchants from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. |
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| Twins and Nobility in the Middle Ages |
Is nobility a hereditary trait? In this talk, Gabriella Zuccolin explores the medieval debate on twins and nobility, drawing on the works of Dante Alighieri and Cecco d’Ascoli. Their dispute over nobility leads to distinct outcomes: While Cecco conceives of nobility as a virtue, Dante treats it as the natural root of the virtues. |
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| Medical Practitioners in Early Modern England |
Drawing on the ongoing project Early Modern Practitioners, Jonathan Barry discusses the challenges of identifying medical practitioners and the rationale for organizing related material in biographical registers of practitioner careers arranged by county, as opposed to other types of databases. |
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PSMEMM: Latest Publications |
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Medicine and the Body in Early Modern Europe |
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Automata, Cyborgs and Mutants |
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Galen's Remedies in the Early Modern Period |
Fabrizio Bigotti John Wilkins |
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FORMA FLUENS: Histories of the Microcosm |
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In this article, Mona Sawy investigates the place of honey in Coptic medicine, examining its therapeutic applications, preserved terminology, and enduring connections to ritual, magic, and everyday practice. |
| The Medicine of Merchants |
Health, Spices, and Commerce in the Late Middle Ages |
Through an analysis of trade manuals, personal notebooks (zibaldoni), and family records, this article illustrates how merchants were also active in the acquisition, adaptation, and dissemination of medical knowledge. |
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© Arbor: Knowledge That Grows CSMBR Newsletter Cover image: Portrait of a Doctor c. 1572 Oil on wood by Ludger Tom Ring 'The Younger' Gift of Mrs. Booth Tarkington, 59.13 Indianapolis Museum of Art, Newfields |
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consider supporting our activities with a donation. |
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Centre for the Study of Medicine and the Body in the Renaissance (CSMBR)
Domvs Comeliana, Via Pietro Maffi 48
56126 Pisa, Italy info@csmbr.fondazionecomel.org |
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