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Kitchen alchemy in the 16th century
Since late antiquity, alchemical texts have had a reputation for being difficult to read. Besides often being written in Latin, which automatically limited the readership, these treatises employed a hermetic language, following the tradition of the secrecy of esoteric knowledge.… Continue reading
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Ambroise Paré’s medical ‘monsters’
In the collected works of Ambroise Paré (c. 1510–90), first published in French in 1575, a ‘Book of monsters and prodigies’ appears alongside other subjects including the setting of bones, the identification of parasites, and the treatment of wounds. Paré,… Continue reading
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Censorship of medieval English recipes
A late medieval manuscript in the Wellcome Library contains intriguing marks of censorship. MS. 406 is a collection of Middle English texts and recipes produced in the 15th and early 16th centuries. The recipes are from the ‘Practica phisicalia’ composed… Continue reading
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The Vesalius Census: the reception history of the ‘Fabrica’ from 1543 to 2016
The next seminar in the 2016–17 History of Pre-Modern Medicine seminar series takes place on Tuesday 28 February. Speaker: Dr Dániel Margócsy (University of Cambridge) From its very beginnings, Andreas Vesalius’ ‘De humani corporis fabrica’ of 1543, this most fabulous of anatomy atlases,… Continue reading
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Who was the inspiration for Shakespeare’s Prospero?
In Shakespeare’s play The Tempest the character Prospero uses magical powers to intimidate his enemies and to manipulate the natural world. The character may have been inspired by the Elizabethan mathematician, astrologer and book collector John Dee. Prospero is the… Continue reading
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Shakespeare’s twins
Why was Shakespeare so interested in twins? Did they have a special meaning for his audience? Dr Daisy Garofalo investigates in the second of our Shakespeare themed posts. Shakespeare features twin characters in two of his comedies, The Comedy of… Continue reading
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Shakespeare’s medical world
Why should a library that specialises in the history and culture of medicine commemorate the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death? Dr Anna Maerker, who provides a Shakespeare and Medicine lecture at the Wellcome Library for acting students, kicks off our… Continue reading
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‘Doctor’ Dee: John Dee and medical practice
John Dee (1527–1609) was a true Renaissance polymath. He pursued many different branches of learning, including medicine. The current Royal College of Physicians (RCP) exhibition, ‘Scholar, courtier, magician: the lost library of John Dee’, explores Dee’s life and legacy through… Continue reading
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Materia medica at the grand-ducal court in 16th century Tuscany
The next seminar in the 2015–16 History of Pre-Modern Medicine Seminar Series takes place on Tuesday 16 February. Speaker: Dr Cristina Bellorini (Independent scholar, Milan) Materia medica at the grand-ducal court in 16th century Tuscany Abstract: In Tuscany in the second half… Continue reading
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Humanist self-fashioning and ordinary medical practice
The next seminar in the 2015–16 History of Pre-Modern Medicine Seminar Series takes place on Tuesday 24th November. Speaker: Professor Michael Stolberg Humanist self-fashioning and ordinary medical practice. The Bohemian physician Georg Handsch (1529–c. 1578) and his notebooks Abstract: The professional identity of… Continue reading