Renaissance Physicians Research Articles

Thomas Erastus and the Palatinate. A Renaissance physician in the second reformation. By Charles D. Gunnoe, Jr. (Brill's Series in Church History, 48.) Pp. xvi+525. Leiden–Boston: Brill, 2010. €119. 978 90 04 18792 4; 1572 4107

Thomas Erastus and the Palatinate. A Renaissance physician in the second reformation. By Charles D. Gunnoe, Jr. (Brill's Series in Church History, 48.) Pp. xvi+525. Leiden–Boston: Brill, 2010. €119. 978 90 04 18792 4; 1572 4107

Rheumatic diseases at the court of the Medici of Florence: the so-called “gout” of the Medici

According to the archive documents several members of the Medici family of Florence suffered from gout. The word "gout", with which the Renaissance physicians indicated pain episodes localised to hands, feet, spine and shoulders, was in general improperly used, and hint other nosological entities. A paleopathological investigation carried out on the skeletal remains of the Grand Dukes of Florence and their relatives, revealed the true nature of the diseases they suffered from, allowing to diagnose two cases of diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis (DISH), a case of rheumatoid arthritis in an advanced stage, and a case of gout.

Witnessing through the skin: the hysteric’s body as text

How does the hysteric bear witness through her body?This article looks at ways in which, from antiquity to the present day, the hysteric has borne witness to the anxiety of her time, age and sex through the speaking surface of her skin. In the eighth century CE a doctor tears the veil off the caliph’s concubine; in the Renaissance physicians and witchfinders look for stigmata; in the eighteenth century hysteria is located in ‘the nerves’; in the early twentieth century Charcot displays hysteria to audience or camera and Freud ‘wipes away’ the memories of Frau Emmy von N.What anxieties mark the surface of the troubled young woman of today? In its conclusion, this article suggests that it is exposure that haunts the outside of her body, circling it without protection, in a world where ‘health’ is not a pleasure but a duty.

Witnessing through the skin: the hysteric's body as text

How does the hysteric bear witness through her body?This article looks at ways in which, from antiquity to the present day, the hysteric has borne witness to the anxiety of her time, age and sex through the speaking surface of her skin. In the eighth century CE a doctor tears the veil off the caliph’s concubine; in the Renaissance physicians and witchfinders look for stigmata; in the eighteenth century hysteria is located in ‘the nerves’; in the early twentieth century Charcot displays hysteria to audience or camera and Freud ‘wipes away’ the memories of Frau Emmy von N.What anxieties mark the surface of the troubled young woman of today? In its conclusion, this article suggests that it is exposure that haunts the outside of her body, circling it without protection, in a world where ‘health’ is not a pleasure but a duty.

Abdominal pregnancy and lithopaedion

Irving Loudon (May 2003 JRSM1) is quite right to accept the plausibility of the French Renaissance writer Boaistau's account of a ‘five-year pregnancy’. Two Renaissance physicians, d'Ailleboust and de Provancheres,2 describe an even more remarkable case. In 1582 in the French town of Sens, a necropsy was performed on a Madame Chatri who died at the age of 68. She had become pregnant for the first and only time 28 years previously. A normal pregnancy, prolonged labour and breaking of her waters ensued without the delivery of a child. Her abdomen remained swollen, hard and painful throughout her life. At necropsy her abdomen contained a perfectly formed and calcified ‘newborn’ female child. An earlier JRSM article by Bondeson3 recounts the story in some detail, provides copies of contemporary illustrations and traces the subsequent history of the ‘stone baby’. Eminent figures who examined the baby and made drawings included Ambroise Pare4 and Thomas Bartholin.5 The stone baby became famous and was exhibited in various centres before disappearing from the museum of the king of Denmark during the nineteenth century. The condition in which a fetus, probably extrauterine, remains in the abdominal cavity and becomes calcified is known as ‘lithopaedion’. A Medline search of lithopaedion/lithopedion yields 56 articles which, taken together, provide information on over 300 cases. The condition is compatible with a long life expectancy and there are several instances of the mother carrying the calcified fetus for over 50 years. Recent cases are from countries deficient in obstetric and surgical care; probably many cases go unreported. For instance, the last to come to my attention was by way of a report last year in the French newspaper, Le Figaro: Professor Ouazzani of Rabat, Morocco, successfully removed a calcified fetus weighing four kilos from the abdomen of a woman 46 years after her last pregnancy.6

Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Book ReviewsFull AccessUncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical BoyhoodSheldon Benjamin, M.D.Sheldon BenjaminSearch for more papers by this author, M.D.Published Online:1 Jul 2003https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ps.54.7.1050AboutSectionsView EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail Perhaps more so than any other work by Oliver Sacks, Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood draws the reader into the world of voracious learning in which Sacks lives. Reading Sacks' other books—The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Awakenings, An Anthropologist on Mars, Migraine, A Leg to Stand On, Seeing Voices, The Island of the Colorblind, and Oaxaca Journal—one imagines the formative experiences that led to the author's unusual penchant for observation and description. In Uncle Tungsten we see a young Oliver Sacks go after chemical knowledge with obvious joy, developing personal relationships with the elements, each evoking its own memories of family members, museums, accidents, and incidents. In Sacks' gallery of chemical heroes were Humphry Davy, who discovered laughing gas; John Dalton, who worked with atoms; and Dimitri Mendeleev, who developed the periodic table.Sacks' maternal uncle Dave, whom Sacks called Uncle Tungsten, was a manufacturer of tungsten filament lightbulbs and the son of a Russian Jewish immigrant scholar who had corresponded with the Wright brothers. He was the uncle whom young Oliver went to with his myriad questions about chemistry when his obstetrician mother—herself something of a chemistry aficionado—could not satisfy him. Sacks' 18 maternal aunts and uncles—and some of his paternal family as well—had been drawn to science. Thus Sacks grew up among physicians, mathematicians, chemists, biologists, metallurgists, sociologists, and teachers.In Uncle Tungsten we learn of Sacks' boyhood exile to a rural boarding school during the bombing of London in World War II, of his preadolescent fascination with "stinks and bangs" that led to his learning about the chemistry of esters and of sulfur compounds, and of his childhood memories of accompanying his neurologist-cum-general practitioner father on house calls. Painful memories, too, are revealed, such as his mother's macabre practice of bringing home malformed fetuses to dissect with 11-year-old Oliver—his parents had arranged for him to begin human dissection in an anatomy lab at the age of 14. Given these more bizarre elements of his upbringing, it's no wonder Sacks understates his feelings about having had his career chosen for him by his parents.Drifting from chapter to chapter—paralleling the author's associative organizational scheme—meeting illustrious relatives, learning esoterica about the chemistry of everyday life, and even encountering an octopus the young Sacks tried keeping as a pet in a hotel bathtub, the reader is startled to learn, on reaching the final chapter, that this autobiography concludes at the author's 14th year. Can it really be that the 300 or so pages of insights, reflections, and verbal caricatures contained in this unique volume encompass only Sacks' memories through the age of 14? What were the early-life ingredients in the recipe for the renaissance physician raconteur that is Oliver Sacks? A fascinating family that supremely values learning? A voracious appetite for knowledge? Extraordinary powers of observation and recall? More than a little suffering? All of these play a role. But perhaps the most important ingredient is the ability to appreciate experience in the moment. Oliver Sacks became a neurologist who could recognize not only the syndromes but also the unique experiences of his patients. In Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood we see the birth of this sensitivity.Dr. Benjamin is associate professor of psychiatry and neurology at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester.by Oliver Sacks; New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 2001, 337 pages, $25 FiguresReferencesCited byDetailsCited byNone Volume 54Issue 7 July 2003Pages 1050-1050 Metrics History Published online 1 July 2003 Published in print 1 July 2003

The medical practice of Amatus Lusitanus in Dubrovnik (1556-1558). A short reminder on the 445th anniversary of his arrival.

The paper presents an outline of the medical practice of Amatus Lusitanus, one of the most prominent Renaissance physicians, during his stay in Dubrovnik. He recorded 100 case histories of patients he treated. Special attention is given to his treatment of the poet Sabo Bobaljevic.

Concussion: the history of clinical and pathophysiological concepts and misconceptions.

Concussion is a well-recognized clinical entity; however, its pathophysiologic basis remains a mystery. One unresolved issue is whether concussion is associated with lesser degrees of diffuse structural change seen in severe traumatic brain injury, or is the mechanism entirely caused by reversible functional changes. This issue is clouded not only by the lack of critical data, but also by confusion in terminology, even in contemporary literature. This confusion began in ancient times when no distinction was made between the transient effects of concussion and severe traumatic brain injury. The first clear separate recognition of concussion was made by the Persian physician, Rhazes, in the 10th century. Lanfrancus subsequently expanded this concept as brain "commotion" in the 13th century, although other Renaissance physicians continued to obscure this concept. By the 18th century, a variety of hypotheses for concussion had emerged. The 19th century discovery of petechial hemorrhagic lesions in severe traumatic brain injury led to these being posited as the basis of concussion, and a similar logic was used later to suggest diffuse axonal injury was responsible. The neuropathology and pathophysiology of concussion has important implications in neurology, sports medicine, medicolegal medicine, and in the understanding of consciousness. Fresh approaches to these questions are needed and modern research tools, including functional imaging and experimental studies of ion-channel function, could help elucidate this puzzle that has evolved over the past 3,000 years.

Dance and Health: The Renaissance Physicians' View

In pre-modern European culture and society, dance was regarded as having a bearing on health in a number of ways. On one hand dance was believed to be one of the symptoms or one of the remedies of some illnesses in some cases, both.' On the other hand, dance was classified as a physical exercise. Consequently, its effect on the general well-being of its practitioners (or even, in a few cases, of its spectators) was an issue that found its place both in the literature of dance and of medicine. On the whole, dance was regarded as an exercise in all its many forms and styles, and the varying levels of physical activity they involved. It was quite common to recommend it when a balanced development of the human body and an alternation of motion and rest was required. It is this latter aspect of dance, as related to human health rather than to specific forms of illness and therapy, that forms the subject of this study. Dance as exercise was usually considered in the literature of preventive medicine (hygiene or prophylaxis), as it could be recommended as part of an integrated regime that helped to avoid health problems, rather than seeking to treat them. In fact, such literature was principally addressed to the healthy, rather than the illalthough to some extent this seemed to go against the general purpose of the art of medicine which was to treat illness.2 The theoretical background of preventive (and indeed of most) medicine in Europe, at least until 1700, was provided by humoral doctrine, the ancient medical tradition going back to the corpus of Greek writings attributed to Hippocrates (who lived around 400 BC) and Galen (second century AD). Human health was conceived as depending on a balance between four humours (blood, phlegm,

Dance and Health: The Renaissance Physicians' View

Dance and Health: The Renaissance Physicians' View

Le «vrai» médecin à la Renaissance

According to Erasmus, the true Renaissance physician is also a philosopher. What does that statement really mean? The answer lies in the medical theories that are influenced by the theological, social and philosophical contexts.

Anatomizing the Past: Physicians and History in Renaissance Culture*

In many different ways Renaissance physicians concerned themselves with the reading and writing of history. This article examines the role of historical interests in learned medical culture and the participation of physicians in the broader historical culture of the period.

The Clock and the Mirror: Girolamo Cardano and Renaissance Medicine (review)

Reviewed by: The Clock and the Mirror: Girolamo Cardano and Renaissance Medicine Winfried Schleiner Nancy G. Siraisi. The Clock and the Mirror: Girolamo Cardano and Renaissance Medicine. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997. xiv + 361 pp. $49.50; £37.50. Requisite prepublication praise on the dust jacket calls this book “the liveliest of works” on Cardano—a grand understatement, for the phrase calls for comparison just with books about the great Renaissance physician, rather than with the best on the subject of Renaissance medicine. In ten chapters (which are paired under five headings in five “parts”), Siraisi characterizes Cardano’s medical work and contextualizes it. She begins with his self-presentation as a practitioner and places his accounts of himself in the context of the Italian cities where he practiced medicine. Part 2 (“Theory and Practice”) deals primarily with his conceptual framework in medicine (particularly his project of identifying medical “contradictions” and publishing them), and then turns to one area of practical application—namely, his work on diet. Part 3 (“The Old and the New”) shows how in the area of anatomy Cardano blended what he thought the best of the old anatomy, Hippocrates, with the new, Vesalius. Part 4 (“Medical Wonders”) presents Cardano’s ideas of occult forces in nature: his belief in his personal gifts (clustered around subtlety as the key term) and his notions about the prophetic quality of certain dreams. In Part 5 (“Medical Narratives”), Siraisi discusses Cardano’s attention to medical narratives: his collecting of case histories of his patients, as well as his way of referring to his own health history. While she points out that he used personal narrative throughout his life, and that the thematic arrangement of her book therefore is not in a narrow sense chronological, she insists that “the arrangement does . . . mirror one kind of development in Renaissance medicine” (p. 22)—namely, from the subversion of scholastic arguments at the beginning to narratives of experience. Absolutely invaluable in this book are the repeated attempts at contextualizing Cardano’s works in different areas of medicine. These usually take the form of minihistories of genres of medical writing: books on “controversies,” diet books, books on dreams, de mirandis literature, and forms of medical narrative (including medical consilia). There is no concession here to “fashionable” tastes of early [End Page 759] modern cultural historians with their predilection for sexuality, gender, or the plight of the disempowered, although Siraisi of course builds on studies of material culture and expresses her indebtedness to them. As indicated by her subtitle, she unabashedly thinks of the period as “Renaissance,” ignoring present ideological divisions between those who work in the “Renaissance” and the self-styled antielitists who think of themselves as working in early modern studies. She uses the term “early modern” only once, and then somewhat loosely (on p. 71: “in the Renaissance and early modern period”). Thus, in spite of all the innovative edge of this book (particularly the emphasis on Cardano’s self-fashioning in narrative), there is something almost charmingly old-historicist about it. It is full of quotations from works not easily accessible (or not at all accessible) in English, and the English translations of those passages (given in Latin in the very complete endnotes) are reliable. With all its learning, this book reads extremely well. There are even occasional touches of humor: when commenting on Cardano’s avoidance of patients with certain preexisting conditions, Siraisi is reminded of the language of modern American medical insurance (p. 36); she reports that, “like most of us,” Cardano had only limited success in putting his dietary theories into personal practice (p. 71); and, when noting that he found Vesalius’s manner of presentation rough and brief, she opines that “Cardano must surely be the only person ever to have found the more than six hundred folio pages of labyrinthine Latin prose in the first edition of the Fabrica excessively succinct” (p. 109). Siraisi’s deliberate limitation of her scope to Cardano’s medical works (almost half of his published output) is unquestionably wise, although it has the unfortunate consequence that Julius Caesar Scaliger (who attempted to refute one of Cardano’s other works point by point...

Subterranean Fire. Changing theories of the earth during the Renaissance.

Aristotle described the earth as a cold and dry body and paid no attention to the phenomenon of terrestrial heat. Renaissance physicians, by contrast, when seeking to understand the origin of hot springs in the context of their balneological studies, came to defend a theory of subterranean fires. This tradition, which started in Italy, became widely known through the works of Georgius Agricola. But although it had implications for the explanation of further natural phenomena, it remained almost exclusively confined to medical circles. As far as physics as an academic discipline was concerned, the ideas concerning subterranean fire were hardly taken note of. Only with the collapse of Aristotelian philosophy in the seventeenth century could these by then "old innovations" obtain a wider significance.

Jacob Da Silva Solis-Cohen: America's first head and neck surgeon.

Jacob Da Silva Solis-Cohen was a Renaissance physician and healer, who possessed great technical and intellectual skills. He was a self-made specialist in aerodigestive tract disease at a time when this was generally perceived as charlatanism. Unlike his contemporaries in laryngology, he was a trained surgeon, and he believed strongly that the laryngologist should be capable of doing his own surgery. Solis-Cohen was not a general surgeon who did work in the head and neck, but rather the first general surgeon who became a specialist in diseases of the upper air and food passages. His educational development is the model by which today's conventional paradigm in the training of Head and Neck Surgeons is designed. He fathered a medical and surgical specialty in America from its infancy in the 19th century until it was firmly grounded in the beginnings of this century. Just as Mosher was known as the "Chief" in the first half of this century, Jacob Da Silva Solis-Cohen had been designated the "Nestor" and "Chief" in laryngology many decades earlier. He died 2 months shy of 90 years on December 22, 1927.

Mexican Medicine Comes to England

Medicine Comes to England. The great Spanish Renaissance physician and naturalist, Francisco Hernandez (1515-1587) wrote descriptions of over 3,000 native Mexican plants and their medicinal applications, but his work was published posthumously only in selections and translations during the seventeenth century. One country that had no cordial relations with Spain and virtually no relations at all with Mexico at the time was England, yet it was there that translations of Hernandez began to appear from 1659 to 1725, some in obscure places, others more conspicuous, all of them neglected until now. The reasons for English interest in Hernandez's work include the arrival in England of similar or identical plants from Jamaica, along with continuing attempts at new forms of botanical classification, the search for new drugs, and sheer intellectual curiosity. All of these reasons somehow contradicted official policy, which, paradoxically, brought together scientists and physicians, apothecaries and natur...

Girolamo Cardano andDe sanitate tuenda:A Renaissance Physician's Perspective on Exercise

Abstract The concepts of exercise as presented in De sanitate tuenda (Care of Health), 1560, written by the Renaissance physician, Girolamo Cardano (1501–1576), were the focus of the inquiry. In this work, as well as in his personal and professional life, Cardano was an advocate of physical activity for the development of physical and mental well-being. The benefits accrued from participation were: the harmonious development of mind and body; good health; emotional stability; a strong, firm, beautiful body; and a long, robust life. Physical exercise was perceived as a lifelong task ranging from childhood to old age, with activities geared for the needs and limitations of each age grouping. Vigorous activities were recommended for both children and youth. As one grew older, moderate physical exercise with longer rest periods was advised. A comparison of this work with Sir Thomas Elyot's Castel of Helth, 1541, revealed that Cardano was significant in the realm of Renaissance exercise for his advocacy of phy...

The role of imagination in the disease process: pre-Cartesian histroy (the role of imagination in the disease process).

Ancient and Renaissance physicians implicated the soul's imaginative faculty in the genesis and remission of disease. The theory stated that images of objects of desire or aversion aroused emotions, which in turn set up humoral imbalances, disturbing digestion and other vital functions, culminating in various forms of pathology. This concept explained the therapeutic efficacy of 'placebos' in forms such as spells, charms and talismans. The theory merits close attention by contemporary physicians and researchers.

October 1972 Cover of the ARCHIVES

<i>To the Editor</i>.—I am writing you about the October 1972 cover of theArchives. A short time back I had occasion to go over a number of prints of Renaissance physicians in the Oliver Wendell Holmes Room of the Countway Library. One of the persons I was interested in was Ambroise Paré. The same painting shown in the OctoberArchivesappeared a number of times in the Countway collection of prints and is labeled<i>Ambroise Paré</i>(1517-1590). Other prints of Paré show a striking likeness to the central figure of the Ed Hamman painting. Is this man supposed to be Ambroise Paré or not? <i>Dr. Thompson is quite correct. The label for the cover illustration for the October</i>Archives,<i>which was "an Elizabethan 'Wounded man and his dresser,'" was wrong. The original engraving by Hamman was labeled Ambroise Paré (1517-1590). Apologies to Doctors Thompson and Paré!—</i>Ed.

Tobias Smollett

Physicians, in addition to their medical skill, often possess talents in music and literature. Few doctors do not either play musical instruments competently or at least enjoy classical music; and the last three centuries attest to the extraordinary literary gifts of men of medicine: Boyle, Smollett, Goldsmith, Keats, our own William Carlos Williams, to mention a few. As early as the 17th century, Bartholinus compiled a list of medieval and Renaissance physicians who had been poets, and Pierre Bayle was so deeply impressed with his findings that he reprinted the list in hisDictionary. The reasons for these particular leanings, rather than, say, painting, sculpture, or the dance, are not perfectly clear, but a number of theories exists, ranging from broad social factors to individual psychological ones. And yet the matter remains something of a mystery. Tobias Smollett (1721-1771), a contemporary of Fielding, Richardson, Sterne, Goldsmith, and Dr. Johnson, is