CSMBR Upcoming Lecture
Gabriel Silva
12 May 2026 – 5 PM (CET)
Pliny the Elder's 'Natural History' is one of the most important sources for Renaissance gynaecological treatises. Books 7 and 28 are the most frequently quoted, particularly in explanations of medical phenomena relating to anthropology, extraordinary births, and the miraculous properties of menstrual blood. Apart from the medical knowledge contained within his works, the writings also preserved a particular kind of information, names and figures that would otherwise have been lost, and which became source material for the so-called 'Wunderkammern'.
This presentation will focus on two works which both rely on Pliny's corpus as their main source:
Ludovico Bonaccioli's (1475–1536) Enneas muliebris, which was included in a compendium of treatises on women's medicine known as the Gynaeciorum libri (last edition in 1597), and Rodrigo de Castro Lusitano's (1546–1627/29) De universa mulierum medicina. Castro's work deals more generally with the theory and practice of women's nature and conditions.
My main goal is to use these treatises to demonstrate the Roman naturalists' importance, and to identify how the knowledge he conveyed was used and preserved by physicians.
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