Past Lectures

Below you will find our past events and seminars, ordered chronologically (click on the image to access the content). Some lectures are recorded and made available on our YouTube Channel.

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2024

Andreas Blank

Too Complex to Explain?
Poisons, Antidotes, and Emergent Properties in the Early Modern Period

Razieh Sadat Mousavi

Ptolemaic Theories in Galenic Language
Al-Farghani’s “Elements of Astronomy” at the Meeting Point of Astronomical and Medical Traditions

Ian Maclean

Cardano's Late Writings
The Roman Years (1571-1576)  in the Context of Renaissance Philosophy

Sylvain Roudaut

Action, Resistance, and Force
Debating the Law of Reaction in Natural Philosophy and Medicine (1300-1600)

Pablo José Alcover Cateura

Childbearing in the Early Modern Period
Breastfeeding Remedies in the Kingdom of Majorca (1470-1778)

Tawrin Baker

A Dead Eye is not Really an Eye
Analysis and Synthesis in Sixteenth-Century Anatomy

Quentin Hiernaux &  Corentin Tresnie

Cesalpino and Aristotelian Science
The Transformation of Medical Botany in the 16th Century

John Wilkins

Food, Famine, and Social Class
Galen on Food and Diet in the Roman Empire

David Gentilcore

Drinking Plain Water in the Early Modern Period
Disease Prevention and Therapeutics

Audrey Borowsky

Emulating God on Earth
Leibniz on the Organisation of Life and the Structure of Ideas Societies

Elena Berger

Ambroise Paré and His Context
Mapping the Territory of a Renaissance Surgeon

Paula De Vos

Medicine on the Margins of Colonial Mexico
Galenic Pharmacy in Home-Made Remedies

Guido Giglioni

The Wonders of Gastroscience in Rabelais
A Few Galenic Salvos from the Renaissance

Cecilia Martini Bonadeo

The Human Body according to al-Farabi
An Image of the Cosmos and a Model of the Virtuous City

Marco Vespa

Non-Human Animals and Ancient Medicine
A Shared History in the Constitution of Medical Knowledge

Brooke Holmes

Galen on Contagion and Material Imagination
A Reading of “On Problematical Movements”

2023

Fabrizio Bigotti

Measuring the Intensity of Diseases
New Notes and Discoveries on the Invention of Early Modern Precision Instruments

Jil Muller

Melancholy and Fever in the Early Modern Period
The Role of the Mesentery in Descartes and Montaigne

Nephele Papkanstantinou

Poisoning and Suspicious Deaths in the Classical World
Venoms in Roman Legal and Rhetorical Treatises

Noël Golvers

Early 17th-Century Physicians and the "Peregrinatio Academica"
The Case of Johan Schreck Terrentius (1576-1630)

Joana M. Balsa Carvalho De Pinho

Hospital Architecture in Portugal at the Dawn of Modernity
Solutions, Models, and Practices

Ivano Dal Prete

On the Edge of Eternity
Deep Time and Vernacular Science in Medieval and Early Modern Italy

Nuno Castel-Branco

At the Roots of 17th-Century Geology
Nicolaus Steno (1638-1686) from Human Anatomy to Fossils

Marina Inì

The System of Lazzaretti Reconsidered
The Materiality of Quarantine in the Early Modern Mediterranean

Orna Harari

Aristotle's Theory of Knowledge and Hellenistic Epistemologies
The Ancient Commentary Tradition

Meagan Allen

Delaying Death
The Role of Alchemy in Roger Bacon’s Works

Edoardo Pierini

From Dangerous Drug to Miraculous Medicine
Uses, Abuses, and Medical Rationale of Opium in the Early Modern Period

Luana Salvarani

The Right Man in the Right Place
Education, Pre-Eugenics, and the Brain in Huarte’s “Examen de Ingenios”

Marco Papasidero

Miraculous Healings
Thaumaturgical Practices and Saints’ Devotion in Early Modern Sicily

Stefania Buosi-Moncunill

The Golden Wine or the Fifth Essence
John of Rupescissa’s Medical Alchemy

Irene Calà

Sickness and Healing in Byzantium
From the Imperial Court to the City Hospitals

Amalia Cerrito

Plastic Forces and Medieval Theories of Generation
Albert the Great and the “Virtus Formativa”

2022

Christian Kleinbub

Art and Internal Anatomy
Michelangelo, Bronzino and Mannerist Bodies

Sabine Schlegelmilch

'It is More Respectable for Women to Deal with Such Things'
Surgeons, Midwives and the Question of Shame in Early Modern Germany

Vivian Nutton

Sources and Problems in Renaissance Medicine
Rewriting the History of Western Medicine

Giulia Martina Weston

The Skin of Saint Bartholomew
Flaying Bodies in Early Modern Art and Anatomy

Georgiana Hedesan

Medical Alchemy in Renaissance Florence
Transforming Materials at Palazzo Vecchio and the Casino di San Marco

Ivano Dal Prete

The Enlightenment and the History of Deep Time
The Invention of a Historiographical Myth

Ivana Bicak

The Muse of the Lens
Microscopes, Telescopes and Poetic Imagination in 17th- and 18th-Century England

Vittoria Feola

Paduan Physicians and Heretics
Confessional Mobility and Intelligence in Elizabethan London

Michael Stolberg

Between Trust and Controversy
The Doctor-Patient Relationship in the Renaissance

Jonathan Barry & Fabrizio Bigotti

Going Beyond Weight-Watchers
Santorio and the Role of Medicine in the Quantification of Nature

Justin Begley & Benjamin Goldberg

The Medical World of Margareth Cavendish
Findings and Discoveries from the Manuscript Pw V90

Matyáš Havrda

Persuasive Arguments in Galen’s Physiology
A New Reading of “On Semen” and “On the Use of Breathing”

John Henderson

The War of Torments
Imagining and Experiencing the Great Pox in Renaissance Florence

Ruben Verwaal

Sweat It Out!
Insensible Perspiration in the Eighteenth Century

2021

Fabrizio Bigotti

A Natural History of the Soul
Galenic Themes in Early Modern Philosophy

Alain Touwaide

Identifying Pathologies through Therapy
A New Approach to Ancient Diseases

William R. Newman

Principles Beyond Ordinary Practice
A New Picture of Isaac Newton’s ‘Chymystry’