Overview

The history of anatomy has been the subject of much recent scholarship. This volume shifts the focus to the many different ways in which the function of the body and its fluids were understood in pre-modern European thought. Contributors demonstrate how different academic disciplines can contribute to our understanding of 'physiology', and investigate the value of this category to pre-modern medicine. The book contains individual essays on the wider issues raised by 'physiology', and detailed case studies that explore particular aspects and individuals. It will be useful to those working on medicine and the body in pre-modern cultures, in disciplines including classics, history of medicine and science, philosophy, and literature. Contributors include Barbara Baert, Marlen Bidwell-Steiner, Veronique Boudon-Millot, Rainer Broemer, Elizabeth Craik, Tamas Demeter, Valeria Gavrylenko, Hans L. Haak, Mieneke te Hennepe, Sabine Kalff, Rina Knoeff, Sergius Kodera, Liesbet Kusters, Karine van 't Land, Tomas Macsotay, Michael McVaugh, Vivian Nutton, Barbara Orland, Jacomien Prins, Julius Rocca, Catrien Santing, Daniel Schafer, Emma Sidgwick, Frank W. Stahnisch, Diana Stanciu, Michael Stolberg, Liba Taub, Fabio Tutrone, Katrien Vanagt, and Marion A. Wells.

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9789004229181

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Reviews

Blood, Sweat and Tears is by no means a work that provides any 'Big Picture'. Its merit lies rather in its confirmation of the bewildering profusion of themes relevant to pre-modern physiology. It thereby invites further cooperative projects, probably each with a narrower focus, by scholars with multiple disciplinary backgrounds. The editors and their collaborators have rendered a great service to readers. As a book with a number of references to Greek and Roman works, the volume is equipped with an index locorum. A short bibliography at the end of each article provides a good overview of relevant literature. Every article has its summary that facilitates selective reading. Many black and white illustrations make the volume a delight to turn over. These editorial cares can serve as a model for any scholars who are going to edit a large number of essays into a single volume. Kuni Sakamoto, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies in Medical History, 2013. Ce collectif resulte d'une selection de communications presentees lors du colloque international tenu en avril 2009 au Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS) a Wassenaar. L'importance et la richesse de ce volume sont une indication de la richesse elle-meme de cette rencontre internationale. Le cadre culturel et chronologique propose est d'une grande amplitude et parvenir a un ouvrage coherent presentant une certaine unite etait un defi que les editeurs ont su relever a travers notamment le plan retenu pour la succession des differents articles. Frederic Le Blay in Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2013.09.55.

''Blood, Sweat and Tears is by no means a work that provides any 'Big Picture'. Its merit lies rather in its confirmation of the bewildering profusion of themes relevant to pre-modern physiology. It thereby invites further cooperative projects, probably each with a narrower focus, by scholars with multiple disciplinary backgrounds. The editors and their collaborators have rendered a great service to readers. As a book with a number of references to Greek and Roman works, the volume is equipped with an index locorum. A short bibliography at the end of each article provides a good overview of relevant literature. Every article has its summary that facilitates selective reading. Many black and white illustrations make the volume a delight to turn over. These editorial cares can serve as a model for any scholars who are going to edit a large number of essays into a single volume. Kuni Sakamoto, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies in Medical History, 2013. ''The editors can therefore rest content, for by bringing together so many outstanding studies of the variety of ways that the living human body has been understood in premodern Europe. They have done a great service.'' Harold J. Cook, Brown University. In: Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 67, No. 3, Fall 2014, p. 982. ''Given its objective of presenting an interdisciplinary overview of myriad concerns and approaches, this is a broad collection that brings forth various heuristic principles underlying both scholarly and practical inquiry. The articles do not systematize or harmonize. Instead, they complicate and contextualize intellectual and practical explorations that have often been collapse and conflated into chronology and summary. The result is a thorough representation of the intricacies involved in the definition of such a widely used term as physiology. It emphasizes the presuppositions and prejudices that influenced practice, impeded invention, and posed interpretive and practical problems'' Dorothy Stegman, Ball State University. In: Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 44, No. 4, 2013, p. 1089. ''The book is certainly a helpful and clear route into the context of early modern chemistry and its important and intimate connections with religious beliefs.'' David Knight, Durham University. In: Ambix,Vol. 60, No. 4, November, 2013, p. 428. Ce collectif resulte d'une selection de communications presentees lors du colloque international tenu en avril 2009 au Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS) a Wassenaar. L'importance et la richesse de ce volume sont une indication de la richesse elle-meme de cette rencontre internationale. Le cadre culturel et chronologique propose est d'une grande amplitude et parvenir a un ouvrage coherent presentant une certaine unite etait un defi que les editeurs ont su relever a travers notamment le plan retenu pour la succession des differents articles. Frederic Le Blay in Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2013.09.55.

Author Information

Manfred (H.F.J.) Horstmanshoff was Professor of Ancient Medicine at Leiden from 2006-11, having taught Ancient History there since 1976. He is currently a Fellow of the Internationales Kolleg Morphomata, University of Cologne, studying the history of the patient from a comparative perspective. His publications include the co-editorship (with P.J. van der Eijk and P.H Schrijvers) of Ancient Medicine in its Socio-Cultural Context (Amsterdam: Clio Medica, 1995) and editorship of the selected papers of the XIIth Colloquium Hippocraticum as Hippocrates and Medical Education (Leiden: Brill, 2010). Helen King, formerly Professor of the History of Classical Medicine at the University of Reading, is currently Professor of Classical Studies at The Open University, Milton Keynes. She works on ancient medicine and its reception until the nineteenth century, particularly on gynaecology and midwifery. Her publications include The Disease of Virgins (London: Routledge, 2003) and Midwifery, Obstetrics and the Rise of Gynaecology (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007). Claus Zittel teaches philosophy and German literature at the Universities of Frankfurt am Main, Berlin (FU) and Olstzyn (Poland) and is the co-leader of the Max-Planck Research group, The Conscious Image at the Kunsthistorisches Institut/Max-Planck-Institut Florence. His publications include Theatrum philosophicum. Descartes und die Rolle asthetischer Formen in der Wissenschaft (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2009) and (with Moritz Epple) Science as Cultural Practice Vol. 1: Cultures and Politics of Research from the Early Modern Period to the Age of Extremes (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2010).

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