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New light on medicine in early modern culture

October 27, 2006

AlburySouthw.thumb.JPGTwo scholars from The University of New England contributed to an international symposium on “Humanism and Medicine” held recently at the University of Western Australia.

The symposium explored the complex – and sometimes troubled – relationship between humanism and medicine in the “early modern” era: from the fourteenth century to the eighteenth century.

Randall Albury (Adjunct Professor, School of Classics, History and Religion) gave a paper titled “Vernacular humanism, medicine and political philosophy in The Book of the Courtier”. Professor Albury’s paper analysed the use of the ancient philosophical analogy between medicine and statecraft as it appears in Castiglione’s influential sixteenth-century work, The Book of the Courtier. He argued that this analogy was a key to understanding the political dimensions of this widely-translated and frequently-published work of the Renaissance.

Jane Southwood (Lecturer in French, School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics) presented a paper titled “Why Galen’s teeth fell out: shifting medical attitudes among Nicolas Baudin’s doctors”. Dr Southwood’s paper, prepared for presentation with the technical assistance of Robert Brennan (UNE), focused on scurvy and its traditional link with “melancholy”. It examined the shift to empirical observation exemplified by the youngest member of the five-man medical team on board the two Baudin expedition ships during their 1800-1804 voyage of exploration to “les terres australes” (Australia). It contrasted the newer approach of a doctor trained after the Revolution in the Ecole de Médecine - founded in Paris in 1794 - with that of the older members of the medical team, who were educated before the Revolution and whose post-expedition writings reveal the extent to which their thinking was informed by a tradition built on the authority of ancient texts.

Professor Albury and Dr Southwood are pictured here.

Funded by the Australian Research Council Network for Early European Research and the Cassamarca Foundation, and hosted by the Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of Western Australia, the symposium brought together speakers from around the world, including the eminent historians Vivian Nutton (the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine, University College London) and Ian Maclean (All Souls, Oxford). Subjects covered during the symposium were as diverse as the tensions caused by the arrival of the plague in Saxony in 1575; the transmission of knowledge in published collections of medical letters between 1500 and 1630; ancient theories of tears and weeping; “greensickness” – a disease of virgins; the treatment of medicine in early modern drama; psychosomatic illness in early modern Italy; the definition of madness during a murder trial in Bologna in 1588; the understanding of the body in Renaissance architecture; the “culture of dissection” in seventeenth-century Holland, exemplified in Rembrandt’s paintings "The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp" (1632) and "The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Joan Deyman" (1658); Caravaggio’s personality, physical appearance, behaviour and painting style, and links with the doctrine of “humours”.

Posted by Jim Scanlan at October 27, 2006 05:06 PM