| Advancing Strategic Cooperation |
We are delighted to announce a new collaboration with The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
This partnership strengthens our international network and fosters new opportunities for scholarly exchange. With its renowned expertise in intellectual history, manuscript studies, and Graeco-Roman medicine, the Hebrew University is a natural partner for CSMBR. Together, we look forward to joint projects and initiatives that will deepen research on the circulation of medical and scientific knowledge across time and space.
|
|
|
|
Leonhard Thurneisser's Alchemy of Urine and the «Homo Alembicus» |
Webinar: 11 March 2025 - 5 pm (CET) |
How do you look inside your patients to see what ails them? For the alchemist Leonhard Thurneisser, the answer lay in distilling his patients’ urine. This talk shows how Thurneisser's analogy between bodily and technical processes offered a new and lucrative diagnostic technique that changed the agencies of patients and practitioners. I also explore how distillation shaped Thurneisser’s understanding of human health in terms of matter and its transformations, and of the human body’s place in the material world.
|
|
|
| Animals and the Recipe Tradition |
Webinar: 25 March 2025 - 5 pm (CET) |
The staggering number and variety of animal ingredients recorded in early modern medical recipes across Europe attest to the believed healing virtues of bodily matter. In highlighting the interconnected issues of potency, efficacy, and vitality, this lecture illuminates a domestic perspective on the utility of animals, as well as unveils a system of beliefs regarding the ways in which the emotional and embodied experiences of living creatures were understood to deeply and directly impact the power of medicines.
|
|
|
| Monitoring Water Quality in Early Modern European Cities |
Webinar: 8 April 2025 - 5 pm (CET) |
In the Republic of Venice, fresh water quality was monitored by the “Provveditori alla Salute” (or Health Office), the body responsible for overseeing public health and hygiene, established in late fifteenth century to deal with plague epidemics. This talk will present the results of research in progress into the role of the Venice’s Health Office in monitoring and managing Venice's fresh water supply during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, demonstrating that pre-modern societies did not take water quality for granted and did indeed have methods for evaluating and managing it.
|
|
|
| Coptic Medicine and its Remedies |
Exploring an Ancient Pharmacopoeia |
Webinar: 22 April 2025 - 5 pm (CET) |
Through an examination of ancient texts, medical papyri, and recent archaeological findings, this lecture sheds light on the sophisticated understanding of pharmacology possessed by the Copts. It will highlight the continuity and transformation of Coptic medical practices over centuries, illustrating their influence on both medieval and modern medicine. Mona Sawy claims that, by understanding Coptic pharmacopoeia, we gain insights into the cultural and scientific heritage of one of the world's oldest civilizations.
|
|
|
| Reading the Destiny in Your Face |
Avicenna on Sign-Based Inferences |
Webinar: 6 May 2025 - 5 pm (CET) |
Is it possible to discern what is concealed within the human soul through what is outwardly manifest? Adopting a theoretical, particularly logical, perspective, this lecture will explore attempts to formalize the reasoning characteristic of physiognomic practices as sign-based inference within the medieval Arabic tradition. Special attention will be given to the contribution of one of the most prominent figures of this tradition, the philosopher and polymath Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā, 980–1037). |
|
|
WOMEN'S IDEAS IN THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE 2025 |
|
|
|
Fertility, Maternity, and Reproduction |
Women's Ideas in the History of Medicine |
Jill Muller and Fabrizio Bigotti |
Organised in collaboration with the Centre for the History of Women Philosophers and Scientists – University of Paderborn, this series seeks to understand the role of women in the history of medicine by exploring their contributions in fields such as natural philosophy, household remedies, plant manipulation and selection, as well as midwifery. |
|
|
|
Anatomy and Surgery in Early Modern Europe (1500-1700) |
The summer school examines Renaissance anatomy and surgery, focusing on empirical approaches, anatomical debates, and surgical practices. It covers historiographical debates and key sources through lectures and workshops. Open to all career stages, it offers hybrid participation, with a limited in-person cohort in Pisa and online attendance available. |
|
|
| Medical Education in Europe (1350-1750) |
Texts, Institutions, Practices |
Elizabethanne Boran, Vivian Nutton, Fabrizio Bigotti |
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 the ways in which knowledge was created, transmitted, and adapted across formal and informal networks.
|
|
|
Five Santorio Fellowships, worth €500 each, will be offered throughout as a gratuity to join the 2025 CSMBR Summer School. |
The Comèl Grant offers financial support to young scholars (Bachelor’s, Master’s, and PhD candidates pre-defense) participating in CSMBR events, including both online and in-person opportunities. |
| |
|
| Astrology in University Disputations |
The marginalisation of astrology (the process by which the field migrated into the margins of European intellectual culture) is still not fully understood. In this lecture, Michelle Pfeffer—formerly Aroney— suggests that we can learn more about this by studying the evidence provided by university student disputations. |
|
|
|
The last 15 years have seen many new discoveries about Andreas Vesalius, the great renaissance anatomist, and his De humani corporis fabrica. In this talk, Vivian Nutton explores some of the consequences of these discoveries for our understanding of Vesalius and his Fabrica from the 1530s right through the last years of his career. |
|
|
| Popular Diseases and Thaumaturgic Specialisations |
Through a variety of written testimony and religious records, this lecture examines how illness is represented in a collection of legends surrounding the foundation of Italian Marian sanctuaries, written in the early 18th century and drawing on earlier sources. |
|
|
SUDHOFFS ARCHIV: Latest Issue |
|
|
|
This issue of Sudhoffs Archiv explores a whole new range of new themes in medical and scientific history.
Anastasia Nikolaou examines the use of snake flesh in theriac recipes, while Dominik Fugger investigates perceptions of Prunus domestica in dysentery discourse. Michael Eckert traces Jonathan Zenneck’s role in ionospheric research, and Andreas Jüttemann discusses Canada’s first tuberculosis preventorium. Reviews address Romantic medicine and radiation research, offering insights into historical medical practices, scientific developments, and their broader implications. |
|
|
PSMEMM: Latest Publications |
|
|
|
Medicine and the Body in Early Modern Europe |
| |
The 'Kiss' and the Medicine of Love |
|
|
|
Andreas Vesalius and his 'Fabrica' 1537-1564 |
| |
|
|
FORMA FLUENS: Histories of the Microcosm |
|
|
Healing in the Homeric World |
How did ancient Greek warriors and heroes recover from wounds, sickness, and divine afflictions? From battlefield surgery to sacred healing rituals, this article examines how Homeric poetry reflects early Greek medical knowledge. |
| Indigenous Plants in 17th-Century Medicine |
What role did indigenous plants play in 17th-century medicine? De usu plantarum indigenarum in medicina (1690) by the Danish physician Ole Borch provides an in-depth look at how local flora was used to treat diseases. |
|
|
© Arbor: Knowledge That Grows CSMBR Newsletter Cover image: Flora or 'La Columbina' Francesco Melzi, c. 1520
Oil on panel (transferred to canvas) Accession no: ГЭ-107; ИР.-4564 Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg. |
|
|
consider supporting our activities with a donation. |
|
|
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 |
|
|
|
.jpeg)
%20justcover.jpg)
