
Osiris, Volume 37: Volume 37
Translating Medicine across Premodern Worlds
University of Chicago Press
Published on 20. July 2022
Book
Paperback/Softback
312 pages
978-0-226-82156-6 (ISBN)
Description
Highlights the importance of translation for the global exchange of medical theories, practices, and materials in the premodern period.
This volume of Osiris turns the analytical lens of translation onto medical knowledge and practices across the premodern world. Understandings of the human body, and of diseases and their cures, were influenced by a range of religious, cultural, environmental, and intellectual factors. As a result, complex systems of translation emerged as people crossed linguistic and territorial boundaries to share not only theories and concepts, but also materials, such as drugs, amulets, and surgical tools. The studies here reveal how instances of translation helped to shape and, in some cases, reimagine these ideas and objects to fit within local frameworks of medical belief.
Translating Medicine across Premodern Worlds features case studies located in geographically and temporally diverse contexts, including ninth-century Baghdad, sixteenth-century Seville, seventeenth-century Cartagena, and nineteenth-century Bengal. Throughout, the contributors explore common themes and divergent experiences associated with a variety of historical endeavors to "translate" knowledge about health and the body across languages, practices, and media. By deconstructing traditional narratives and de-emphasizing well-worn dichotomies, this volume ultimately offers a fresh and innovative approach to histories of knowledge.
This volume of Osiris turns the analytical lens of translation onto medical knowledge and practices across the premodern world. Understandings of the human body, and of diseases and their cures, were influenced by a range of religious, cultural, environmental, and intellectual factors. As a result, complex systems of translation emerged as people crossed linguistic and territorial boundaries to share not only theories and concepts, but also materials, such as drugs, amulets, and surgical tools. The studies here reveal how instances of translation helped to shape and, in some cases, reimagine these ideas and objects to fit within local frameworks of medical belief.
Translating Medicine across Premodern Worlds features case studies located in geographically and temporally diverse contexts, including ninth-century Baghdad, sixteenth-century Seville, seventeenth-century Cartagena, and nineteenth-century Bengal. Throughout, the contributors explore common themes and divergent experiences associated with a variety of historical endeavors to "translate" knowledge about health and the body across languages, practices, and media. By deconstructing traditional narratives and de-emphasizing well-worn dichotomies, this volume ultimately offers a fresh and innovative approach to histories of knowledge.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Chicago
United States
Publishing group
The University of Chicago Press
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 254 mm
Width: 171 mm
Thickness: 23 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-226-82156-6 (9780226821566)
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 Classification
Persons
Tara Alberts is a senior lecturer in early modern history at the University of York and the author of Conflict and Conversion: Catholicism in Southeast Asia, 1500-1700. Sietske Fransen is a research group leader at the Bibliotheca Hertziana-Max Planck Institute for Art History and coeditor of Translating Early Modern Science. Elaine Leong is a lecturer in history at University College London and the author of Recipes and Everyday Knowledge: Medicine, Science, and the Household in Early Modern England, also published by the University of Chicago Press.
Content
Translating Medicine, ca. 800-1900: Articulations and Disarticulations
Tara Alberts, Sietske Fransen, and Elaine Leong
Translation and the Making of a Medical Archive: The Case of the Islamic Translation Movement
Ahmed Ragab
Unveiling Nature: Liu Zhi's Translation of Arabo-Persian Physiology in Early Modern China
Dror Weil
New World Drugs and the Archive of Practice: Translating Nicolas Monardes in Early Modern Europe
Alisha Rankin
When the Tallamys Met John French: Translating, Printing, and Reading The Art of Distillation
Elaine Leong
Vernacular Languages and Invisible Labor in ?ibb
Shireen Hamza
Where There's Smoke, There's Fire: Pyric Technologies and African Pipes in the Early Modern World
Benjamin Breen
Translating the Inner Landscape: Anatomical Bricolage in Early Modern Japan
Daniel Trambaiolo
Casting Blood Circulations: Translatability and Braiding Sciences in Colonial Bengal
Projit Bihari Mukharji
Female Authority in Translation: Medieval Catalan Texts on Women's Health
Montserrat Cabre
[Un]Muffled Histories: Translating Bodily Practices in the Early Modern Caribbean
Pablo F. Gomez
Translating Surgery and Alchemy between Seventeenth-Century Europe and Siam
Tara Alberts
"Use Me as Your Test!": Patients, Practitioners, and the Commensurability of Virtue
Hansun Hsiung
Notes on Contributors
Index
Tara Alberts, Sietske Fransen, and Elaine Leong
Translation and the Making of a Medical Archive: The Case of the Islamic Translation Movement
Ahmed Ragab
Unveiling Nature: Liu Zhi's Translation of Arabo-Persian Physiology in Early Modern China
Dror Weil
New World Drugs and the Archive of Practice: Translating Nicolas Monardes in Early Modern Europe
Alisha Rankin
When the Tallamys Met John French: Translating, Printing, and Reading The Art of Distillation
Elaine Leong
Vernacular Languages and Invisible Labor in ?ibb
Shireen Hamza
Where There's Smoke, There's Fire: Pyric Technologies and African Pipes in the Early Modern World
Benjamin Breen
Translating the Inner Landscape: Anatomical Bricolage in Early Modern Japan
Daniel Trambaiolo
Casting Blood Circulations: Translatability and Braiding Sciences in Colonial Bengal
Projit Bihari Mukharji
Female Authority in Translation: Medieval Catalan Texts on Women's Health
Montserrat Cabre
[Un]Muffled Histories: Translating Bodily Practices in the Early Modern Caribbean
Pablo F. Gomez
Translating Surgery and Alchemy between Seventeenth-Century Europe and Siam
Tara Alberts
"Use Me as Your Test!": Patients, Practitioners, and the Commensurability of Virtue
Hansun Hsiung
Notes on Contributors
Index