How an early modern surgeon and his accessible writings changed medical expertise and the communication of medical knowledge.
Between 1497 and 1512, Hieronymus Brunschwig (ca. 1450-ca. 1530), an obscure craftsman from Strasbourg, wrote books on surgery and pharmacy that transformed medical expertise, how it was codified in print, and how it was communicated to new audiences. Brunschwig was an unlikely author. He apprenticed as a surgeon in the local guild and dispensed medicines from his own shop. But he was remarkably well-read in surgery, alchemy, and medical theory, even if he lacked a university education. His unique authorial voice spoke to the healing practices of craftsmen and common people in a down-to-earth German dialect.
Crafting Medicine, by Tillmann Taape, is the first in-depth study of Brunschwig and his works. In it, Taape argues that Brunschwig's writings shaped a nascent tradition of vernacular medicine. Brunschwig's books represent a key moment in the history of medical print, for they conveyed medical expertise to a new readership of nonacademic practitioners, who became a key audience for a flood of vernacular medical publications during the sixteenth century. Using Brunschwig's books as a unique window into the past, Crafting Medicine beautifully reconstructs the world of science inhabited by Brunschwig, his fellow craftsmen, his translators, and his readers.
Rezensionen / Stimmen
"Hieronymus Brunschwig pioneered vernacular how-to books about surgery and distillation-two key sites of innovation in early modern European medicine-but until now we've lacked up-to-date scholarship about him. Taape's book gives us a dynamic and inventive Brunschwig, situated in the culture of artisanal Strasbourg, garnering authority from experience and the use of his senses, while staking a claim to better social status for surgeons." -- Mary Fissell, author of "Pushback: The 2,500-Year Fight to Thwart Women by Restricting Abortion" "In this compelling, in-depth account of artisan-author Hieronymus Brunschwig, Taape tells a remarkable story of healing knowledge that emerged from a crucial intersection of hands-on craft experience and writing in the lively milieu of innovative printers, artisans, and humanists during Strasbourg's first era of print. Taape paints a vivid picture of Brunschwig's striving in his surgical and distillation books to provide a virtual apprenticeship in the use of the senses and the hands for vernacular readers of his city. Translated into Dutch and English, Brunschwig's techniques, his tools, and his material imaginary, derived from distilling knowledge, went on to influence and raise the status of generations of practitioners." -- Pamela H. Smith, author of "From Lived Experience to the Written Word: Reconstructing Practical Knowledge in the Early Modern World" "Excellent. Right from the start, Crafting Medicine grips the reader with its clarity of technical focus. It is highly specific in the best possible way, drawing on a deep engagement with a single writer to produce a novel and imaginative book." -- Hannah Murphy, author of "A New Order of Medicine: The Rise of Physicians in Reformation Nuremberg"
Reihe
Sprache
Verlagsort
Verlagsgruppe
The University of Chicago Press
Zielgruppe
Illustrationen
Maße
Höhe: 229 mm
Breite: 152 mm
Gewicht
ISBN-13
978-0-226-84060-4 (9780226840604)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Klassifikation
Tillmann Taape is a researcher at the Institute for the History of Medicine and Ethics in Medicine at the Charite - Universitaetsmedizin Berlin.
Abbreviations and Conventions
Part I. Crafting Medicine in the Early Age of Print
Introduction: Medicine, Artisans, Books, and Knowledge
1. Artisans, Healers, Humanists: Practicing and Writing Medicine in Strasbourg, ca. 1500
Part II. Crafting Surgical Identities
2. Between Craft and Learning: Negotiating the Place of Surgery in the Medical Landscape
3. Body, Honor, Health, and Handwork: Surgeons in the City of Artisans
Part III. Distilling Knowledge
4. Distilling Medicine: Subtle Remedies for Fluid Bodies
5. Working with Matter
Part IV. Crafting Medicine: Embodied Knowledge, Experience, and Print
6. "The Habit of Those Who Have Done It Often": From Embodied Experience to the Virtual Apprenticeship of Print
7. Gathering Breadcrumbs: Experience and Erfarung in Brunschwig's Vernacular Empiricism
Part V. Crafting Text: Readers, Editors, Translators
8. Dreaming of Vernacular Readers: "Common Medicine" and the Striped Layman
9. Cutting Words, Distilling Experience: The Vernacular Text Work of Translation
10. Reading and Writing Medicine: Annotations in Brunschwig's Books
Conclusion: Crafting Knowledge in Early Modern Europe
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
