| The University of Lisbon and the Edward Worth Library join as Funding Partners |
We are feeling proud to welcome two new funding partners into the CSMBR network. The University of Lisbon’s Centre for Classical Studies and the Edward Worth Library in Dublin have now formally joined the CSMBR, marking an important moment in the growth of our academic community.
Both partners bring exceptional strengths. The Centre for Classical Studies is internationally recognised for its work on ancient and medieval texts and traditions, while the Edward Worth Library holds one of Europe’s most important collections for the history of medicine and the book. Their scholarly depth, expertise, and remarkable sources are essential both for the Centre and for its members.
We very much look forward to working closely with our Portuguese and Irish colleagues, and we are excited about the conversations, projects, and exchanges that will grow from this new partnership. Click on the Institution Logos to Learn More |
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| Delegate of the Edward Worth Library, Dublin |
| | Delegate of the University of Lisbon |
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The Transformation of Infectious Disease Histories
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Three Decades of Paleogenetics and Historians' Responses |
13 January 2026 - 5 pm (CET) |
Since 1994, when molecular fragments of ancient pathogens were first recovered from human remains, pathogen paleogenetics has revolutionised our understanding of disease history. By reconstructing genomes of past viral and bacterial infections, researchers now trace evolutionary strains and global circulation patterns. In this lecture, Monica H. Green explores how these findings reveal intricate Afro-Eurasian and transoceanic connections, inviting us to reinterpret written sources through the lens of genomic evidence and long-distance epidemiological exchange.
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The Ancient History of Sympathy |
28 January 2026 - 5 pm (CET) |
In this lecture, Brooke Holmes presents the principal arguments of her forthcoming book, offering the first comprehensive history of the ancient concept of sumpatheia (sympathy) from its first articulation in fourth-century BCE Greek texts through Plotinus’s cosmic sympathy in the third century CE. Holmes traces how ancient thinkers located sympathy across scales — within bodies, between beings, and between celestial and terrestrial realms — and highlights its role in shaping cosmo-anthropological traditions and notions of community in ancient Afro-Eurasia.
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Renaissance Debates on Occult Qualities |
From Jean Fernel to Daniel Sennert |
10 February 2026 - 6 pm (CET) |
How did Renaissance physicians and natural philosophers explain effects whose causes seemed hidden from ordinary sense and reason? This lecture explores the debates surrounding so-called occult qualities from the sixteenth to the early seventeenth century, focusing on figures such as Jean Fernel and Daniel Sennert. By following disputes over invisible causal powers in nature, it shows how medicine and natural philosophy negotiated the limits of explanation at a moment of profound epistemological transition.
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Diagrams of the (Ventricles of the) Brain in the Medieval Islamicate Tradition |
19 February 2026 - 5 pm (CET) |
This lecture examines the role of images in the transmission of medical knowledge in the medieval Islamic world. Focusing on diagrams of the brain and its ventricles in manuscripts of Avicenna and al-Rāzī, it traces how visual forms moved across texts and were reshaped through copying. Attention to these diagrams shows how images supported interpretation and teaching, and how they functioned as active elements within medical reasoning rather than as decorative additions. |
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Editing and Translating Philoponus in the Renaissance |
10 March 2026 - 5 pm (CET) |
Philoponus is the Greek philosopher whose critique of Aristotle would later unsettle early modern natural philosophy, stands at the centre of this lecture. Tommaso De Robertis traces how his commentary on the Physics resurfaced in Renaissance Europe through translation, editing, and print. Following the text’s passage from Byzantine manuscripts to Latin editions, the lecture shows how humanist scholarship and print culture reshaped Philoponus’s authority and integrated his ideas into new scientific debates.
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| 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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VivaMente: The Garden of Ideas |
Under this scheme € 5,000 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. |
Santorio Award for Excellence in Research |
The award is designed to support scholarly excellence in intellectual history and to promote the best PhD theses in the history of medicine and science, with a focus on Europe or the Mediterranean, throughout the period 500-1800. It is open to PhD students and early career scholars of all nationalities within six years of their viva. |
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Medieval Uroscopy and the Brain |
In medieval medicine, urine was read as a visible index of cerebral processes. By reconstructing uroscopic practices and their theoretical foundations, this contribution shows how diagnostic interpretation connected fluids and brain. It highlights how uroscopy functioned as a mediating practice between sensory evidence and speculative anatomy in the absence of direct access to the brain. |
| Medical Electricity Arrives in Italy |
Eighteenth-Century Interactions between Electricity and the Body |
Using the mid-eighteenth-century treatise Dell’Elettricismo (1746) as a point of departure, this article charts how electricity was translated into Italian medical discourse, mapping experimental practices, polemics and therapeutic claims that bound physics to physiology, and arguing that electrical medicine advanced through fragile claims to knowledge while remaining an unstable boundary zone between natural philosophy and medicine. |
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'Bergsucht' and Miner’s Chest |
Health and Illness in Mining Communities |
Centred on early mining settlements, this article examines the illnesses associated with subterranean labour, the technical vocabulary miners coined to identify them, and the measures devised to address risk. It shows how practical expertise and collective arrangements operated together to manage health in these communities. |
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A Medical-Historical Satire from 1688 |
Through the lens of the 1688 pamphlet Curious Enquiries, this article traces the afterlife of Kenelm Digby’s sympathetic powder. By exploring the so-called “wounded-dog theory", it reveals how parody became a means to question the authority of medical speculation and the credibility of experimental science in Restoration England. |
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| The Science of Compound Medicaments |
In this lecture Anna Gili 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". At its centre lies Book 10 of the Practica Pantegni, read as a distinctive synthesis at the crossroads of Arabic and Latin medicine. |
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Drawing on previously unexploited materials from the Vitali Archive at the State Archives of Parma, Serena Mambriani examines the transformation of astrology’s status: from an integral part of early-modern medicine and natural philosophy to its marginalisation as superstition. |
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| Medical Views on Sexual Pleasure in the Renaissance |
What did Renaissance physicians think about sexual pleasure? And how did they approach the female body? In this talk, Bernardo Mota focuses on two Portuguese physicians, Rodrigo de Castro and Estêvão Rodrigues de Castro, who offer distinct perspectives on the topic based on the revision of Hippocrates’ "On Generation". |
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PSMEMM: Latest Publications |
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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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| Join Us and Discover Your Perks!
Membership provides access to an extensive range of grants, exclusive discounts, priority registration for events, and other benefits designed to support serious research in the history of medicine, science, philosophy and technology.
Members may pursue fellowships and research stays, develop projects at the Domus Comeliana, and engage directly with a community committed to rigorous scholarship, humanistic values and the long-term continuity of historical inquiry. Beyond these practical advantages, members become part of a truly international environment devoted to the study of premodern medicine in its intellectual, cultural, and Mediterranean contexts. |
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© Arbor: Knowledge That Grows CSMBR Newsletter Cover image: "Dominus Illuminatio Mea" Opening Letter, 13th Century Peterborough Psaltery, MS 12, f. 41v The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. |
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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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