Renaissance Medicine A Short History of European Medicine in the Sixteenth Century

This volume offers a comprehensive historical survey of medicine in sixteenth-century Europe and examines both medical theories and practices within their intellectual and social context. Nutton investigates the changes brought about in medicine by the opening-up of the European world to new drugs and new diseases, such as syphilis and the Sweat, and by the development of printing and more efficient means of communication. Chapters examine how civic institutions such as Health Boards, hospitals, town doctors and healers became more significant in the fight against epidemic disease, and special attention is given to the role of women and domestic medicine. The final section, on beliefs, explores the revised Galenism of academic medicine, including a new emphasis on anatomy and its most vocal antagonists, Paracelsians. The volume concludes by considering the effect of religious changes on medicine, including the marginalisation, and often expulsion, of non-Christian practitioners. Based on a wide reading of primary sources from literature and art across Europe, Renaissance Medicine is an invaluable resource for students and scholars of the history of medicine and disease in the sixteenth century.

Introduction Part 1: Contexts 1. New Lands, New Drugs and New Diseases 2. Protecting the Health of the City 3. Medical Communications: Print and the Post 4. The Rediscovery of Ancient Medicine Part 2: People 5. The Kaleidoscope of Healing 1: Physicians 6. The Kaleidoscope of Healing 2: Surgeons, Apothecaries and Charlatans 7. On the Margins of Medical History: Women and Patients Part 3: Beliefs 8. Learned Medicine 9. Anatomy – the Touchstone of Modernity 10. Paracelsus and Paracelsianiam 11. Religion and Medicine Conclusion

Vivian Nutton FBA is emeritus professor of the History of Medicine at UCL. He has written widely on pre-modern medicine. His many books include Galen, a Thinking Doctor in Imperial Rome, Routledge, 2020. He is at present revising his Ancient Medicine (2nd edition, Routledge, 2013).