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Enjoy exclusive benefits including discounts on conferences, workshops, and lectures with leading experts. Connect with a diverse community of scholars and receive discounts on our publications. Our membership also offers research support through grants and funding opportunities, as well as professional development programs to enhance your skills and knowledge.
Don't miss out on these incredible opportunities—become a member of CSMBR Pisa today and be part of a vibrant and scholarly community dedicated to advancing the study of medicine and the body in the Renaissance. |
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| Linnaeus on Generation, Economy of Nature, and the Human Condition
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Webinar: 16 September 2025 - 5 pm (CEST) |
The historiography of the life sciences has appreciated the work of the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) mainly for his contributions to the discipline of systematics. 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 more relational and dynamic than we usually take for granted.
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Medical Views on Sexual Pleasure in the Renaissance
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Interpreting Hippocrates' «On Generation» |
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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| 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.
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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 (https://dissections.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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| Studiolo Digital Humanities Lab |
Fabrizio Bigotti Francesco Cicala |
This Hybrid Winter School will span three days, from 10.00am to 5.30pm (CET) daily. Each day will be divided into two sessions, the morning session (10am-1pm) and the afternoon session (2-5.30pm). The two sessions will alternately focus on developing coding skills and discussing current digital projects from a variety of disciplines. Group exercises in breakout sessions are also envisaged to implement the coding skills learned during the Winter School.
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| Santorio Residential Fellowship |
Deadline: 15 September 2025 |
This new fellowship offers scholars the opportunity to reside for up to one month at the historic Palazzo Tiepolo-Gravisi (15th century) to conduct research on Mediterranean history (especially intellectual history, and the history of philosophy, science, and medicine), or to organise an event at the ZRS. Research may be carried out using local archives and resources in Koper-Capostria as well as at nearby centres such as Trieste, Gorizia, Piran, Ljubljana, and Pula. |
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Research Development Grant |
This grant supports exceptional projects in the history of medicine, science, technology, and ideas, including philology. Under this scheme, €1,500 plus the free usage of the Domus Comeliana (worth an additional €2,500 per day) will be awarded to the best proposals for a max-2-day event to be held in Pisa. |
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. |
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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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| Galen and the Question of Metabolism |
Focusing on Galen, Chiara Thumiger explores metabolism as concept in the history of biology, using that datum as starting point for the exploration of a wider metaphorical level: the regulation of the relationship, material as much as conceptual, between self and non-self, and between the human and the environment. |
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SUDHOFFS ARCHIV - Latest Issues
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This issue of Sudhoffs Archiv delves into diverse inquiries at the intersection of science, medicine, and cultural history.
Erich Meyer retraces Johannes Kepler’s pioneering methods in calculating the volume of wine barrels—an early precursor to integral calculus. Jürgen Teichmann presents three newly discovered letters from Joseph Fraunhofer, shedding light on his work on solar spectra and diffraction gratings. Niklas Lenhard-Schramm explores the neglected pharmaceutical history of Algosediv, a painkiller overshadowed by the Thalidomide scandal.
A rich reviews section engages with themes ranging from immunology and astronomical correspondence to biodynamic farming and artificial intelligence in post-war Germany. |
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PSMEMM: Latest Publications |
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| Medicine and the Body in Early Modern Europe |
| | 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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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. |
| The Language of the Universal Cure
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Alchemical Terminology in Seventeenth-Century Naples |
What did elixir and alkahest mean to early modern alchemists? In this article, Elena Morgana traces how Neapolitan physicians redefined these terms between 1620 and 1670, revealing a shift in the language of alchemical medicine. |
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© Arbor: Knowledge That Grows CSMBR Newsletter Cover image: Map of the Mediterranean Sea from Ptolemy, 'Cosmographia' Constantinople, XVI Century MS Grec 1401, f. 50v
Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris |
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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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