Secrets and Knowledge in Medicine and Science, 1500-1800 (The History of Medicine in Context)

260 Pages·2011·1.39 MB·English

by  Elaine Leong

Secrets and Knowledge in Medicine
and Science, 1500–1800
Edited by
Elaine Leong and Alisha Rankin
SecretS and Knowledge in Medicine
and Science, 1500–1800
the History of Medicine in context
Series editors: andrew cunningham and ole Peter grell
department of History and Philosophy of Science
University of cambridge
department of History
open University
titles in this series include
Henri de Rothschild, 1872–1947
Medicine and Theater
Harry w. Paul
The Anatomist Anatomis’d
An Experimental Discipline in Enlightenment Europe
andrew cunningham
Centres of Medical Excellence?
Medical Travel and Education in Europe, 1500–1789
edited by ole Peter grell, andrew cunningham and Jon arrizabalaga
Ireland and Medicine in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
edited by James Kelly and Fiona clark
Negotiating the French Pox in Early Modern Germany
claudia Stein
Before My Helpless Sight
Suffering, Dying and Military Medicine on the Western Front, 1914–1918
leo van Bergen
Secrets and Knowledge in
Medicine and Science,
1500–1800
edited by
elaine leong
University of Cambridge, UK
and
aliSHa ranKin
Tufts University, USA
© elaine leong and alisha rankin 2011
all rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
elaine leong and alisha rankin have asserted their right under the copyright, designs and
Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work.
Published by
ashgate Publishing limited ashgate Publishing company
wey court east Suite 420
Union road 101 cherry Street
Farnham Burlington
Surrey, gU9 7Pt Vt 05401-4405
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www.ashgate.com
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Secrets and knowledge in medicine and science, 1500-1800.
-- (the history of medicine in context)
1. Medicine--europe--History--16th century. 2. Medicine--europe
--History--17th century. 3. Medicine--europe--History--18th century.
4. discoveries in science--europe--History--16th century. 5. discoveries
in science--europe--History--17th century. 6. discoveries in science--
europe--History--18th century. 7. Secrecy--europe--History--16th century.
8. Secrecy--europe--History--17th century. 9. Secrecy--europe--History
--18th century.
i. Series ii. leong, elaine Yuen tien, 1975- iii. rankin,
alisha Michelle.
610.9'4'0903-dc22
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Secrets and knowledge in medicine and science, 1500-1800 / [edited by] elaine leong
and alisha rankin.
p. cm.
includes bibliographical references and index.
iSBn 978-0-7546-6854-1 (hbk) -- iSBn 978-0-7546-9501-1 (ebk)
1. Medicine--europe--Philosophy--History. 2. Science--europe--Philosophy--History.
3. Medicine, Magic, mystic, and spagiric--europe--History. 4. Secret (Philosophy) i.
leong, elaine Yuen tien, 1975- ii. rankin, alisha Michelle.
r484.S43 2011
610.94--dc22
2010049695
iSBn 9780754668541 (hbk)
iSBn 9780754695011 (ebk)
II
Printed and bound in great Britain by the
MPg Books group, UK.
Contents
Notes on Contributors vii
Acknowledgements xi
Introduction: Secrets and Knowledge 1
Elaine Leong and Alisha Rankin
Part I DefInIng SecretS
1 How to Read a Book of Secrets 23
William Eamon
2 What is a Secret? Secrets and Craft Knowledge
in Early Modern Europe 47
Pamela H. Smith
Part II Secrecy anD OPenneSS
3 The Secrets of Sir Hugh Platt 69
Ayesha Mukherjee
4 Robert Boyle and Secrecy 87
Michael Hunter
5 Openness vs. Secrecy in the Hartlib Circle: Revisiting
‘Democratic Baconianism’ in Interregnum England 105
Michelle DiMeo
Part III IllIcIt SecretS
6 Anna Zieglerin’s Alchemical Revelations 125
Tara Nummedal
7 Face Waters, Oils, Love Magic and Poison:
Making and Selling Secrets in Early Modern Rome 143
Tessa Storey
vi SECRETS AnD KnOWLEDgE In MEDICInE AnD SCIEnCE, 1500–1800
Part IV SecretS anD HealtH
8 Keeping Beauty Secrets in Early Modern Iberia 167
Montserrat Cabré
9 Secrets to Healthy Living: The Revival of the Preventive
Paradigm in Late Renaissance Italy 191
Sandra Cavallo
10 Secrets of Place: The Medical Casebooks of Vivant-Augustin ganiare 2 13
Lisa Wynne Smith
Index 233
Notes on Contributors
Montserrat Cabré is Associate Professor of the History of Science at the
Universidad de Cantabria, Spain. Her research interests include the history of
medieval and early modern women’s healthcare, medical conceptions of the
female body as well as cultural representations of sexual difference. Her work
has focused on late medieval and Renaissance constructions of the gendered body
through medical discourse and practical experience; as a related issue, she has
worked on the significance and types of bodywork provided by women in the
household setting. She is currently completing a book on women’s self-care in late
medieval Iberia.
Sandra Cavallo is Professor of Early Modern History at Royal Holloway,
University of London and specializes in the history of medicine, gender and
material culture. She is the author of Charity and Power in Early Modern Italy
(Cambridge University Press, 1995), Artisans of the Body in Early Modern Italy:
Identities, Families, Masculinities (Manchester University Press, 2007), and the
co-editor of Widowhood in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Longman, 1999),
Spaces, Objects and Identities in Early Modern Italian Medicine (Blackwell,
2008), Domestic Institutional Interiors in Early Modern Europe (Ashgate, 2009)
and A Cultural History of Childhood and the Family vol. 3, The Early Modern
Age (Berg, 2010). Her current research project looks at the construction of the
healthy domestic environment and the healthy body in Renaissance and early
modern Italy.
Michelle DiMeo recently completed an interdisciplinary PhD in English and
History at the University of Warwick. Her thesis concerns the scientific and
medical manuscripts of Katherine Jones, Lady Ranelagh (1615–1691). She has
published essays on early modern women and medicine, contributed to the Oxford
DNB, and is currently working on the collection of essays Reading and Writing
Recipe Books, 1600–1800 (co-edited with Sara Pennell).
William Eamon is Regents Professor of History and Dean of the Honors College
at New Mexico State University. His research focuses on the history of science
and medicine in Renaissance Italy and Spain, and on science and popular culture
in early modern Europe. He is the author of Science and the Secrets of Nature:
Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Princeton, 1994), The
Professor of Secrets: Mystery, Medicine, and Alchemy in Renaissance Italy
(Washington, 2010), and over 50 articles and book chapters on various aspects of
viii SECREtS AND KNoWLEDgE IN MEDICINE AND SCIENCE, 1500–1800
early modern science and medicine. He is also the co-editor (with Victor Navarro
Bròtons) of Más allá de la Leyenda Negra: España y la Revolución Científica
(Valencia, 2007). He is currently at work on two book projects: Science and
Everyday Life in Early Modern Europe, 1500–1750 (Cambridge), and Discovery
and the Origins of Science.
Michael Hunter is Professor of History at Birkbeck, University of London. He
has written or edited many books on the history of ideas and their context in late
seventeenth-century Britain, including a biography of Robert Boyle. He is also the
Principal Editor of Boyle’s Works (14 vols., 1999–2000), Correspondence (6 vols.,
2000) and workdiaries (www.livesandletters.ac.uk/wd/index.html). From 2006 to
2009 he was Director of the AHRC-funded project, ‘British Printed Images to
1700’ (www.bpi1700.org.uk), and he edited the volume Printed Images in Early
Modern Britain: Essays in Interpretation (Ashgate, 2010).
Elaine Leong is a Wellcome trust Research Fellow at the Department of History
and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge. Previously, she was a
Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the Department of History, University of
Warwick and a visiting lecturer in the Department History and Philosophy of
Science at the University of Cambridge. She has published articles on medicinal
recipes and domestic medicine and is currently completing a monograph titled
Treasures for Health: Medical Knowledge and Practice in the Early Modern
Household.
Ayesha Mukherjee is Lecturer in Renaissance Literature and Culture at the
Department of English, University of Exeter. Her PhD dissertation (University
of Cambridge, 2007) was on the works of Sir Hugh Platt (1552–1608). She is
currently turning this into a monograph titled Penury into Plenty: Dearth and the
Making of Knowledge in Early Modern England.
Tara Nummedal is Associate Professor of History at Brown University, where
she teaches courses on early modern Europe and the history of science. She is
the author of Alchemy and Authority in the Holy Roman Empire (University of
Chicago Press, 2007). Her current book project, The Lion’s Blood: Alchemy,
Apocalypse, and Gender in Reformation Europe, examines the intersection of
gender and apocalypticism in the life of the sixteenth-century german alchemist
Anna Maria Zieglerin.
Alisha Rankin is Assistant Professor of History at tufts University, where she
teaches early modern history and the history of science and medicine. Previously
she was a Junior Research Fellow at trinity College, University of Cambridge. She
has published several articles on gentlewomen’s medicine and empirical healers,
particularly as related to the history of pharmacy. Her monograph, Panacea’s
Daughters: Noblewomen and the Art of Healing in Early Modern Germany, is
NotES oN CoNtRIBUtoRS ix
currently under review, and she is working on a second book, Wonder Drugs and
Popular Pharmacy in Early Modern Germany.
Lisa Wynne Smith is an Associate Professor at the University of Saskatchewan.
She is working on two projects, a monograph titled Domestic Medicine: Gender,
Health and the Household in Eighteenth-Century England and France and an
online database of medical and scientific letters (Sir Hans Sloane’s Correspondence
online). the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council supported her
research.
Pamela H. Smith is a Professor of History at Columbia University where she
teaches history of early modern Europe and the history of science. She is the
author of two award-winning books, The Business of Alchemy: Science and
Culture in the Holy Roman Empire (Princeton, 1994) and The Body of the Artisan:
Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution (Chicago, 2004). She co-edited
Merchants and Marvels: Commerce, Science, and Art in Early Modern Europe
(with Paula Findlen, Routledge, 2002) and Making Knowledge in Early Modern
Europe: Practices, Objects, and Texts, 1400–1800 (with Benjamin Schmidt,
Chicago, 2008). Her current book project is entitled Making and Knowing: The
Reconstruction of Historical Experience.
Tessa Storey is Research Assistant on a Wellcome trust funded project, ‘Domestic
Culture and the Prevention of Disease in Renaissance and Early Modern Italy’ at
Royal Holloway College, University of London. Prior to this she was Research
Associate at Leicester University collaborating on a database of Italian Renaissance
‘Books of Secrets’. In 1999 she held a Leverhulme Special Research Fellowship
at Royal Holloway College. She has published the book Carnal Commerce in
Counter Reformation Rome (Cambridge, 2008). Her other publications focus
on the material culture of prostitution in seventeenth-century Rome and on the
identity narratives of prostitutes.