If you hear the word dracunculus in a vacuum, chances are you’ll think of dragons. The frontispiece to the 1674 edition of Georg Hieronymus Welsch’s Exercitatio de Vena Medinensi certainly supports that association. Sitting next to the two Greco-Roman deities Diana and Mercury (identifiable by their shield and staff, respectively) is a dragon, which acts [Read more]
Last month, the Center for the History of Medicine at Becker Library once again sponsored a spring break trip to Europe for Phase I medical students. While last year’s trip went to northern Italy to explore the origins of dissection in European medicine, this year focused on the medical legacy of the Dutch Golden Age [Read more]
One of the distinguishing features of early modern Europe is its fascination with and embrace of the Greco-Roman past. While this is perhaps most obvious in the literary and visual arts—think of the many new editions of classical works such as Ovid’s Metamorphoses, or paintings such as Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus—medicine was equally enamored [Read more]
Modern medical texts tend to be straightforward in their content, presenting the necessary information without artistic embellishment. Their medieval and early modern counterparts, however, made ample use of visual allegory. We’ve already talked about several famous examples, such as Vesalius’s evocation of classical statuary and the various Greco-Roman deities tucked into frontispieces, but today we’re [Read more]
There are plenty of treasures scattered throughout our rare book holdings, but we’re currently enamored with Leonhard Thurneisser zum Thurm’s Quinta Essentia, a wonderfully illustrated alchemical poem that’s a definite highlight of the Robert E. Schlueter Paracelsus Collection. Like Paracelsus himself, Thurnheisser led an itinerant life. Born in 1531 in Basel, he learned the craft [Read more]
One of the joys of reading primary sources is that it can provide us with a direct window into the past—browsing through an old distillation manual can lead down the path of researching medicinal cannibalism, or mentions of moon phases can provoke a segue into medical astrology. But it isn’t just the words that can [Read more]
On March 18, sixteen intrepid Phase I medical students headed to Italy to spend spring break exploring the connections between anatomy and art in Renaissance Italy. Spending three nights in Venice and three nights in Florence, they went on a whirlwind tour of some of the most important sites in the history of medicine and [Read more]
When you think of fortunetelling, what comes to mind? Tarot cards? Horoscopes? Chances are you’ve come across palmistry at some point, but what about metoposcopy?
Since June is Cataract Awareness Month, we’ll be taking a closer look at one of the most common surgical operations of the early modern period: couching a cataract.
The portrayal of anatomy is not necessarily objective. Anatomical atlases are products of both the individuals and the culture that produced them, and this is reflected in their pages. In some instances, anatomical texts show an association with eroticism, particularly regarding the female form. One of the most well-known instances of this is Charles Estienne’s [Read more]