La science des propriétés naturelles

The Science of Natural Properties. Knowledge, Transmission, and Practice (6th-15th century)

International Conference

organized by:
Alessandra Scimone
Amine Xhakoni
Lucia Raggetti

Bologna, 17-19 June 2026
Aula Magna - Biblioteca Universitaria, Via Zamboni 33
Sala delle Armi - Palazzo Malvezzi, Via Zamboni 13
 

Keynote speakers:
Jean-Charles Coulon, Isabelle Draelants
(Institute de Recherche et d’Histoire des Texts – CNRS)

For further information or to join us on MS Teams, please email filo.scienceofnaturalproperties@unibo.it

June 17
Morning
| 10:00-11:00 REGISTRATION AND WELCOME
Sala delle Armi, Palazzo Malvezzi

| 11:00-12:30 NATURAL AND OCCULT PROPERTIES OF MINERALS AND METALS
MARIO LENTANO (Università di Siena), ANNA MARIA URSO (Università di Messina)
Pietre pregne e donne gravide. Una storia culturale dell’aetite
STEFANIA FORTUNA (Università Politecnica delle Marche)
I metalli nella terapia dei medici antichi greci e latini
HUSSIEN SOLIMAN ELZOHARY (Bibliotheca Alexandrina)
Defending Natural Properties of Metals: ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī on the Dispute
between the Chemist and the Theorist

Afternoon
| 14:30-15:30 TECHNICAL HANDBOOKS AND MATERIAL KNOWLEDGE
ALESSIA ZUBANI (École du Louvre – Institut Français d’ Études Anatoliennes)
Natural Properties and Mechanical Knowledge in al-Jazarī’s Compendium of the
Theory and Practice of the Mechanical Arts
LEONIE BÖTTIGER (Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte)
Valets, Velvet, and Vultures: The Properties of Animal Parts in a Fifteenth-Century
Arabic Housekeeping Manual

| 15:30 – 16:00 Coffee Break

| 16:15-17:15 KEYNOTE SPEECH
Aula Magna, Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna
ISABELLE DRAELANTS (Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes - CNRS)
Proprietas, un concetto medievale cardine tra esegesi, fisica, filosofia e magia

 

June 18
Morning

| 9:30-10:30 KEYNOTE SPEECH
Aula Magna, Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna
JEAN-CHARLES COULON (Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes - CNRS)
From Nature to Letters: Plato and the History of Arabic Occult Sciences

| 10:45 – 11:30 Coffee Break

| 11:30-13:00 STARS, STONES, AND TALISMANS
Sala delle Armi, Palazzo Malvezzi
BENNET ALBERTH (Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen)
A Lost Greek Work on Occult Properties Hidden in the Arabic Tradition?
NICOLETTA PALMIERI (Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne)
Influenze astrali e metereologiche sulla natura umana: la prima res non naturalis
secondo i maestri di medicina nel XII secolo
GIULIA FRENI (Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Storici)
Tra mineralogia e astrologia: un opuscolo astrologico sulle pietre planetarie nel XV secolo

Afternoon
| 14:30-16:00 MANIPULATION AND INTERPRETATION OF NATURE
ANGELICA GASPARI (Sapienza Università di Roma)
Magnetismo e altri fenomeni fisici nella letteratura pahlavi
EUGENIO VILLA (Università di Udine)
Astanus/Ostanes in the Bologna University Library and beyond
ALMA ELIAZ (Tel Aviv University)
The Properties of Numbers in a Fifteenth-Century Hebrew Geomantic Treatise

| 16:00 – 16:15 Coffee Break

| 16.15-17:15 PROPERTIES AND CRAFTMANSHIP
JAVIER LÓPEZ RIDER (Universidad de Córdoba)
Hojas, raíces y cortezas. El uso de sustancias de origen vegetal en la producción
cosmética de la España bajomedieval
DAVID FERNÁNDEZ SÁNCHEZ (Universidad de Córdoba)
Curtición vegetal y producción de obras de cuero en la Castilla bajomedieval

| 17:15 – 17:30 Coffee Break
 

| 17:30-18:30 PRESENTATION OF THE EDITION OF THE BOOK OF OCCULT
PROPERTIES BY ABŪ AL-ʿALĀ IBN ZUHR

 

June 19
Morning

| 10:00-12:30 NATURAL AND OCCULT PROPERTIES OF PLANTS BETWEEN
LITERATURE AND MEDICINE
Sala delle Armi, Palazzo Malvezzi
ARSENIO FERRACES RODRÍGUEZ (Universidade da Coruña)
El poder hemostático de la morera (arbor mori) en dos pasajes mágico-médicos de
la antigüedad tardía
BEHNAM ATAEI (Freie Universität Berlin)
From the “Expeller of Death” to the “Slayer of the Evil Eye”: The Apotropaic Rebirth
of Haoma/ Hōm in the Iranian World

| 11:00 – 11:30 Coffee Break
CHLOE NEWMAN (Cambridge University)
Materia Medica as Allegory: Translating the Power of Plants in the Alexander
Romance Tradition
SAMUELE FILIPPI (Università di Palermo)
Che cosa cura davvero? Virtus e farmaco nel Plusquam Commentum di Pietro
Torrigiano

Afternoon
 | 14:00-16:30 NATURAL AND OCCULT PROPERTIES OF PLANTS AND ANIMALS
IN MEDICINE
GIUSEPPE TROVATO (Università di Messina)
Proprietà occulte nei Physica di Teodoro Prisciano
ABEL DE LORENZO RODRÍGUEZ (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela –
University of Edinburgh)
Pearls, Cinnamon, and Deer Heart Bones. The Emerging Salernitan Recipes and
Medical Properties in Twelfth century Iberia

| 15:00 – 15:30 Coffee Break
MARINA DÍAZ MARCOS (Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha)
Las propiedades naturales de las plantas en la traducción latina medieval del
galénico De simplicium medicamentorum facultatibus VI
LI PARRENT (McGill University)
Agent and Ingredient: Wildness and Domesticity as Mediators of Natural Properties
in Plants and Animals in Courtly Contexts, c.1250-c.1450

| 16:30-17:00 CLOSING REMARKS
For more information or to join us on MS Teams, please email filo.scienceofnaturalproperties@unibo.it

Une histoire globale des antidouleurs

Markets of Pain: Opium, Capitalism, and the Global History of Painkillers

Benjamin Robert Siegel

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press
Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 15, 2026
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Print length ‏ : ‎ 368 pages
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0197527825


Markets of Pain offers a sweeping history of the business of licit opium--following cultivators, merchants, scientists, and policymakers--and shows how this potent crop reshaped global trade, medicine, and geopolitics.

For centuries, opium has been a source of both profit and peril, its legacy entangled with addiction, imperialism, and the complex interplay of global trade and national development. While the illicit opium trade is infamous, the history of licit opium--how it was farmed, refined, and used to build modern medicine and shape state power--has remained largely untold.

Drawing on archival sources from Asia, Europe, and the United States, Markets of Pain traces the global arc of licit opium from poppy fields and processing plants in India, Turkey, and Australia to the clinics and laboratories of modern medicine. It shows how both the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic treated the opium poppy as a national resource and a means of securing global stature. In postcolonial India, by contrast, nationalist leaders initially rejected opium's imperial legacy before embracing its strategic value amid the shifting currents of the Cold War. At the heart of this story are the cultivators, scientists, bureaucrats, and policymakers who shaped the licit opium trade and grappled with its far-reaching consequences. Their work and visions demonstrate how colonial empires and postcolonial states helped forge the global pharmaceutical industry as it struggled to govern a drug it could not abandon.

Markets of Pain reveals how a seemingly marginal crop became an unlikely engine of modernization, a tool of Cold War geopolitics, and a harbinger of today's global opioid crisis. Blending vivid scenes from opium's fields and factories with incisive analysis of scientific and diplomatic archives, Benjamin Robert Siegel recovers a buried history with urgent relevance for global supply chains, international power, and public health.

Une histoire globale de la peste noire

The Black Death: A Global History of Humanity's Most Devastating Pandemic

Thomas Asbridge


Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House
Publication date ‏ : ‎ May 26, 2026
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Print length ‏ : ‎ 544 pages
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0593129166

In the mid-fourteenth century, a lethal plague struck the medieval world, causing unimaginable suffering and destruction. The Black Death was unquestionably one of history’s defining episodes, yet a critical feature of its progress has often been ignored: the disease was not confined to Europe, but rather affected almost all of the known world, including the Near and Middle East, Byzantium, north Africa and Asia.

Tracing the pandemic’s course across the medieval globe, The Black Death contrasts the experiences of different peoples, including Christians, Muslims, and Jews, charting this catastrophe’s transformative effects on diverse aspects of medieval life. And crucially, Asbridge demonstrates that the plague was often at its most destructive in the Islamic world, where it ultimately played a role in the collapse of the mighty Mamluk Empire.

The Black Death also brings the human drama of this calamitous era to life, evoking the terror and the turmoil that beset cities such as London, Cairo, and Florence. Asbridge reconstructs the lives of the men, women and children who faced the Black Death—from ruling monarchs to peasant farmers—laying bare both the abject horror they endured and the courageous resolve they often demonstrated while striving to survive.

Uncovering a story that speaks to our own age, The Black Death highlights humankind’s capacity for compassion and resilience amidst a global crisis to explain how the medieval world confronted, and ultimately overcame, this shattering pandemic.

Les sages-femmes juives et les pratiques de guérison secrètes dans l'Europe moderne

Delivering Knowledge: Jewish Midwives and Hidden Healing in Early Modern Europe

Jordan R. Katz 

Stanford University Press (April/May 2026)
Series: Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture

This book offers a new perspective on the history of early modern Jewish communities by centering the experiences of Jewish midwives. In the wake of the Thirty Years' War, as cities and towns across northern and central Europe placed new emphasis on the regulation of healthcare and childbirth, Jewish midwives stood at the crossroads of tremendous changes in both Jewish communities and the surrounding Christian municipalities. Drawing on previously untapped archival sources, Jordan Katz reveals that Jewish midwives were integral to the expansion of medical bureaucracies, crossing boundaries between genders, between religious communities, and across classes through their work caring for pregnant women and newborn babies.

Grounded in rich historical evidence, the book shows how a focus on Jewish midwives illuminates the complex relationships between Jewish communities and local municipalities, showcasing a level of engagement between Jews and Christian civic authorities that has gone unstudied. Through the lens of midwives, this book opens up new understandings of Jewish communal history, the history of women's healing practices, Jewish-Christian relations, and cultures of record in the early modern period.

Un traité d'anatomie physiologique de la fin du XIIe siècle

L'"Anathomia" de Ricardus Anglicus. Un traité d'anatomie physiologique de la fin du XIIe siècle

 

Philippe Guillet

Honoré Champion
29/05/2026 
EAN13 9782745366290 

 

Les bases médiévales de l’anatomie moderne, définie comme une connaissance approfondie de la structure et de l’organisation du corps humain essentielle à la médecine, émergent en Italie à la fin des XIIIe et XIVe siècles. Les textes médicaux des XIIe et XIIIe siècles s’intéressent précocement à l’anatomie, non pas dans le contexte de la chirurgie, qui n’a pas encore clairement manifesté d’intérêt pour cette discipline, mais plutôt dans une perspective naturaliste plus large, visant à comprendre l’organisation et le fonctionnement des différents membres du corps humain. Un texte notable illustrant cet intérêt est l’Anathomia Ricardi, également connue sous le nom d’Anathomia Ricardi Salernitani. Les historiens allemands de la médecine, qui en ont publié les premiers manuscrits à la fin du XIXe siècle, pensaient qu’il avait été écrit à Salerne.

Il s’agit de la première synthèse intégrant les informations anatomiques et physiologiques détaillées dans le Pantegni de Constantin l’Africain, mais organisée en suivant la classification des membres principaux de Galien dans le Tegni, version médiévale de son Art médical.

Les résultats de notre enquête présentés dans ce livre, révèlent que les copies successives de ce texte, écrit à la fin du XIIe siècle, se divisent en deux traditions distinctes, chacune ayant connu un succès certain. La première tradition, écrite par un médecin du nom de Ricardus anglicus, possiblement à Montpellier, diffuse rapidement dès le début du XIIIe siècle à travers le réseau abbatial, vers le nord et l’est de l’Europe (France, Angleterre, Allemagne, Pologne). La seconde tradition résulte d’une révision significative de ce texte initial, intégrant des éléments issus des œuvres biologiques d’Aristote peu après leur traduction au XIIIe siècle. Elle semble être enseignée à Montpellier, et ses copies gagnent également rapidement les mêmes régions géographiques que la première. Ces traditions furent l’objet d’adaptations en langue vernaculaire au XVe siècle, attestant leur intérêt persistant pendant trois siècles.

Philippe Guillet, médecin et historien des sciences et des techniques est actuellement chercheur associé à l’équipe SAPRAT (Savoirs et pratiques du Moyen Âge à l’époque moderne) de l’EPHE.

Le St. Vincent’s Hospital

A Monument of Charity: St. Vincent’s Hospital and Catholic Health Care in New York City 

Thomas F. Rzeznik  



Publisher ‏ : ‎ NYU Press
Publication date ‏ : ‎ June 2, 2026
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Print length ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1479839728



Tells the history of St. Vincent's Hospital and the transformative impact of Catholic health care in New York City.

St. Vincent’s Hospital began with a simple, but radical mission: to care for all those in need regardless of race, creed, or financial means. For more than 160 years, the hospital carried out that work, serving notables and the nameless alike, from impoverished immigrants and those stricken by devastating nineteenth-century epidemics to AIDS patients and the victims of the attacks of 9/11.

A Monument of Charity provides the first comprehensive history of this remarkable institution, from its humble beginnings in 1849 to its abrupt closure in 2010. Located in the heart of Greenwich Village, St. Vincent’s earned distinction not only for the quality of its medical programs, but also for its unwavering dedication to the poor. The hospital was a testament to the vision and labor of the Sisters of Charity, who founded, staffed, and administered the hospital with remarkable skill and devotion.

Prochaine séance de la SFHM

Prochaine séance de la Société Française d’Histoire de la Médecine 

Vendredi 12 JUIN 2026 à 14 heures
à l’Académie Nationale de Médecine, 16 rue Bonaparte 75006 Paris. Salle Simone Veil.



Conférence invitée (60min) :
Jacqueline VONS
Savoir et séduction dans la Fabrique (1543) d’André Vésale
 

Communications (20min) :
Philippe ALBOU
Aperçu de la médecine médiévale à partir de « Renart médecin », épisode du Roman de Renart (XIIe s.) 

Jacques ROBERT
Les premiers temps du Bulletin de l’Association française pour l’étude du cancer

 Benoît VESSELLE
Une blessure par balle reçue à la bataille de Waterloo

Les violences sexuelles en médecine et en psychiatrie

Sexual Violence in Medicine and Psychiatry: Addressing Harms Through Interdisciplinarity 

Rhian Elinor Keyse, Adeline Moussion Esteve, Emma Yapp (Editors)
 

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Palgrave Macmillan
Publication date ‏ : ‎ May 19, 2026
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Print length ‏ : ‎ 294 pages 
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-3032107992

This book explores how medical and psychiatric knowledge, practitioners, and practices respond to sexual violence. It highlights how the medical and psychiatric fields often reproduce political and social dynamics of discrimination, othering, marginalisation, neglect, or surveillance, through their own sets of discourses and practices. Covering a wide range of geographical case studies including the UK, Australia, Kenya, and Argentina, this book is the first cohesive edited collection to unite interdisciplinary scholarship on this topic.