The Practice of Reform in Health, Medicine, and Science, 1500 2000

Abstract

Few historians have had as broad and fundamental an intellectual impact on their field as Charles Webster. Preparing a festschrift that reflects his range of interests and the extent of his contribution to the discipline is an almost impossible challenge. Despite this, Margaret Pelling and Scott Mandelbrote have achieved a worthy tribute in this very substantial collection of 18 essays by his students, friends and colleagues. Like Webster himself, the volume ranges freely through a wide swathe of the history of medicine and science from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, with a loose focus on the theme of reform in many guises. The quality is generally very high, and most of the pieces deserve to be widely read; several, particularly Clericuzio, Feingold and Lewis, should be standard items for reading lists. The first ten chapters explore aspects of early modern medicine and science. Howard Hotson discusses ideas of reform and education in Alsted and Comenius, showing the theological heterodoxy of their concept of restoration. Penelope Gouk seeks to explain music's place in Paracelsian medical thought, arguing that it was integrated, despite Paracelsus's own neglect of the subject, as part of the process of redefining his ideas into a form compatible with humanist and courtly traditions. Lauren Kassell extends her work on Forman to Lilly and Ashmole, to explore some of the paths of transmission of magical objects and knowledge in the seventeenth century and the transformations in value they underwent in the process.