Medical Theory and Practice in Early Modern Italy

This volume brings together scholars at the forefront of the latest developments in the history of medicine in Italy. In recent years, the traditional separation between studies of medical theory and studies of medical practice has increasingly given way to a more nuanced approach that problematizes the relationship between these fields, which is too often seen as mechanical. Building on these recent trends, this book sheds new light on the complex ways in which medical knowledge and medical experience interacted in a period characterized by the rise of empiricism, the expansion of scholarly interest in bedside medicine, and the challenges raised by the need to incorporate novel drugs into the classic paradigms of professional medicine. Focusing on a range of themes — bodies and diseases, medical treatment, pharmacy and public health — chapters in this volume challenge ingrained scholarly accounts of medical theory, highlight areas of innovation in medical treatment arising from vernacular practice, hospital experimentation, and the study of inanimate things, and the impact of these novelties on the more conservative official pharmacopeias. At the same time these essays remind us that medical innovation was not an independent process, but was also the product of commercial dynamics, political interests and religious and charitable discourses.

Sandra Cavallo and John Henderson, Introduction

Bodies and Diseases

Michael Stolberg, The Myth of Humoral Imbalance. How Renaissance Physicians Explained and Treated the Diseases of their Patients
Alessandra Quaranta, Italian Medical Practice at the Habsburg Courts (1550-1600). Encounters and Exchanges between Learned Physicians, Empirics, and Patients

Medical Treatment

Sandra Cavallo, Humoralism and the Role of Remedies in Seventeenth-Century Medical Treatment: The Case of Rome
Lucia Dacome, Between Land and Sea: Medicine and Galley Slavery in Early Modern  Livorno

Pharmacy

Elisa Andretta, Bodies and Stones in Michele Mercati’s Metallotheca: The Study of Nature and the Practice of Medicine in Late-Sixteenth Century Rome
Sharon Strocchia, Translating New World Drugs in Late Renaissance Italy: The Case of Indies Balsam
Gaston Javier Basile, Medicinal and Cosmetic Waters: Vernacular Experimentation in  Sixteenth-Century Florentine Ricettari
Sabrina Minuzzi, Circulating and Consuming Drugs in Late Seventeenth-Century Venice: Between Theory and Practice

Hospitals and Public Health

Maria Pia Donato, Assessing Treatment for Wounds and Ulcers in Eighteenth-Century Italy: Theory, Practice, and the Value of Hospital Experience
Lavinia Maddaluno, “Malignità che s’infonde”: Rice Fields, Space, and Medicine in Counter-Reformation Milan

Index