Communities of Learned Experience: Epistolary Medicine in the Renaissance
Nancy G. Siraisi is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of the City
University of New York. She is author of History, Medicine, and the
Traditions of Renaissance Learning.
- Hardcover: 176 pages
- Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press (Nov 22 2012)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1421407493
- ISBN-13: 978-1421407494
During the Renaissance, collections of letters both satisfied
humanist enthusiasm for ancient literary forms and provided the
flexibility of a format appropriate to many types of inquiry. The
printed collections of medical letters by Giovanni Manardo of Ferrara
and other physicians in early sixteenth-century Europe may thus be
regarded as products of medical humanism. The letters of mid- and late
sixteenth-century Italian and German physicians examined in "Communities
of Learned Experience" by Nancy G. Siraisi also illustrate practices
associated with the concepts of the Republic of Letters: open and
relatively informal communication among a learned community and a
liberal exchange of information and ideas. Additionally, such published
medical correspondence may often have served to provide mutual
reinforcement of professional reputation. Siraisi uses some of these
collections to compare approaches to sharing medical knowledge across
broad regions of Europe and within a city, with the goal of illuminating
geographic differences as well as diversity within social, urban,
courtly, and academic environments of medical learning and practice. The
collections she has selected include essays on general medical topics
addressed to colleagues or disciples, some advice for individual
patients (usually written at the request of the patient's doctor), and a
strong dose of controversy.
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