Centre for the Study of Medicine and the Body in the Renaissance - CSMBR

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Centre for the Study of Medicine and the Body in the Renaissance - CSMBR

This is the official page of the Centre for the Study of Medicine and the Body in the Renaissance

The core mission of the CSMBR is to further the values of humanism and the advancement of scientific knowledge as inspired by the intellectual, cultural, and social development of the European Medical Renaissance (1300–1700).

07/09/2026

𝐋𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐔𝐑𝐄 𝐑𝐄𝐒𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐃𝐔𝐋𝐄𝐃

Dear Members of the CSMBR community,

Please note that, due to unforeseen technical problems, the lecture "John of Rupescissa's Quintessential Medicine" — originally scheduled to take place on 8 September 2026 — has been rescheduled.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused.
The CSMBR Team

07/09/2026

Medical Humanism Series 14:
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𝐀 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐟𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐨𝐫 𝐨𝐟 𝐌𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐧𝐞, 𝐁𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐧𝐚 𝟏𝟑𝟒𝟎
White marble, Inventory no: Cl. 11115, Musée de Cluny – Musée national du Moyen Âge, Paris.
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As the first university in Europe, Bologna acquired a symbolic status among other European universities. The prestige of the professors teaching there remained almost unmatched until the late fourteenth century. It was particularly famous for law and theology, but medicine was also well established and widely practised.

This sculpture testifies to that sense of academic pride. While we do not know whether the scholar represented was indeed a medical doctor, his status and attire make this identification possible.

The Musée de Cluny identifies the figure more generally as a "professeur enseignant" ('teaching professor'). The sculpture was acquired by the museum in 1884 as an Italian work, without a precise provenance, and had previously belonged to the Baur Collection. It originally formed part of a larger funerary monument and belongs to a distinctive group of Bolognese professorial tombs that document the growing social prestige of university teachers during the fourteenth century. The professor would have occupied the centre of the composition, seated in his chair and teaching, with his students gathered around him.

These monuments also mark an important transformation in medieval funerary representation. Instead of depicting the deceased principally within a religious rhetoric of salvation, they increasingly celebrated his earthly life, profession and social status. Comparable monuments survive for Bolognese professors such as Giovanni d’Andrea (d. 1348) and Bonifacio Galluzzi (d. 1346), supporting a date around 1340.

The identity of both the professor and the sculptor remains unknown. Whether a jurist, physician or another university master, the figure offers a striking representation of the new authority enjoyed by learned professionals in the urban and intellectual culture of fourteenth-century Bologna.

Special thanks to Noel Golvers for inspiring this post.
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05/09/2026

The CSMBR website is currently undergoing maintenance. We are working to restore full access as soon as possible, and well in time for all upcoming deadlines and lectures. We apologise for any inconvenience caused and thank you for your patience.

04/09/2026

Weird Physicians Series 26:
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𝐏𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐚 𝐏𝐡𝐲𝐬𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐧, 𝐜𝐚. 𝟏𝟕𝟔𝟎
Oil on canvas (96x 75.5 cm) by Alessandro Longhi, Inventory number: O 304, Slovak National Gallery, Bratislava.
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One does not get more eighteenth-century than this. At first sight, the sitter appears to be a nobleman. In fact, he is a physician. His profession is disclosed by the surgical instrument he holds, those laid upon the table, and the open medical book beneath his hand, whose headings read "[De] sanguinis missione" and "De curatione pleuritidis". Catalogues have often reconstructed the first as "Ecce sanguini", which is not grammatical Latin.

By the eighteenth century, medicine had become an increasingly entrepreneurial and socially prominent profession. Physicians participated in experimental debates alongside natural philosophers, worked with chemists, organised learned academies and moved comfortably within aristocratic circles. Yet their status remained divided along lines of class. Their services were not equally accessible, while laypeople—and especially the poor—often regarded them with suspicion.

This distrust arose partly from social exclusion, but also from the limited efficacy and occasional dangers of widely practised treatments, which still included bloodletting and potentially toxic chemical preparations. Longhi thus portrays a gentleman-physician who has secured his place in polite society, while his authority among other social strata remains less certain.

There is, of course, also a pictorial strategy at work. By the middle of the eighteenth century, this relaxed mode of presentation had become a deliberate feature of portraiture. It allowed patrons to display not only their status but also their taste and ability to appreciate the portraitist’s skill. Alessandro Longhi (1733–1813), a Venetian artist celebrated for his intimate and colourful portraits of a decadent Venetian nobility.

The result is a physician portrayed as a nobleman or, more precisely, a physician claiming the visual language of nobility.
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03/09/2026

Opening Soon
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𝐂𝐒𝐌𝐁𝐑-𝐁𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐨𝐥𝐬 𝐑𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐅𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩 𝐢𝐧 𝐃𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐥 𝐇𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬
Applications open on: 𝟏𝟎 𝐒𝐞𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟔
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Stay Tuned!
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02/09/2026

Medicine in Customs and Traditions Series 8:
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𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐀𝐠𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐭 𝐅𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐋𝐢𝐜𝐞, 𝟏𝟓𝟑𝟔
from Johannes de Cuba, "Hortus Sanitatis" (Strasbourg: Matthias Apiarius, 1536), p. 33, Shelfmark: FOL-TE138-26, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris.
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Fleas, bedbugs, and lice were everyday companions of the lower and middle classes in the premodern period, although even the upper classes were not always spared. Remedies were few and often ineffective. These woodcuts from the Hortus sanitatis (1536), traditionally attributed to Johannes de Cuba (fl. 1484–1503), show only one practical measure: thoroughly cleaning the scalp. The first woman, beside a bed infested with fleas or bedbugs, can do little more than show us the extent of the infestation.

Extremely prolific, malodorous, and aggressive, bedbugs tend to bite repeatedly. Their bites typically appear as itchy red bumps—sometimes arranged in a line or cluster—on exposed areas such as the face, neck, arms, and hands. Other symptoms include swelling, a burning sensation, and, on darker skin, purplish discolouration. Above all, however, they made sleep impossible. Together with fleas, they were among the most hated of insects.

Fleas are described in medical literature both as a remedy and as a scourge. As a scourge, they were said to make sleep impossible; as a remedy, they were swallowed with broad beans to cure quartan fever and were also believed to relieve urinary difficulties. The Italian physician Pietro Andrea Mattioli (1501–1577) later reported that certain Renaissance physicians inserted live fleas into the urinary tract, believing that their movements could relieve obstructions of the urethra...
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01/09/2026

Reminder
𝐉𝐎𝐇𝐍 𝐎𝐅 𝐑𝐔𝐏𝐄𝐒𝐂𝐈𝐒𝐒𝐀'𝐒 𝐐𝐔𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐒𝐒𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐈𝐀𝐋 𝐌𝐄𝐃𝐈𝐂𝐈𝐍𝐄
𝐎𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐄𝐯𝐨𝐥𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬
Lawrence M. Principe
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To register for this lecture: https://form.jotform.com/262003398456358
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31/08/2026

Frontispiece Series 16:
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𝐇𝐞𝐫𝐛𝐨𝐥𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐮𝐦 𝐝𝐞 𝐕𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐛𝐮𝐬 𝐇𝐞𝐫𝐛𝐚𝐫𝐮𝐦, 𝟏𝟒𝟗𝟏
Frontispiece with Arnaldus de Villa Nova and Avicenna (Vicenza: Leonardus Achates de Basilea and Guilielmus de Papia, 27 October 1491), Shelfmark: Rare Books Collection, Ballard 368, Boston Medical Library, Boston.
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Based on the first Latin edition, published in Mainz in 1484, the Vicenza edition (1491) marks the first printing of this popular herbal in Italy. Wrongly attributed to Arnaldus de Villa Nova (c. 1240–1311) by the Venetian printer, the herbarium collects opinions of authors and medicinal plants that were common during the late Middle Ages, including Galen, Hippocrates, Pseudo-Apuleius, Mesue, and Avicenna.

The plates differ substantially from those of the earlier German editions. According to Agnes Arber (Herbals, Their Origin and Evolution: A Chapter in the History of Botany, 1470–1670, pp. 192–193), the drawings in the 1491 herbarium are "more ambitious than those in the original German [editions], and, on the whole, they are more naturalistic. A delightful example, almost Japanese in style, shows an iris at the edge of a stream, from which a graceful bird is drinking. In another picture the fern called 'capillus veneris', which is perhaps intended for the maidenhair, is represented hanging from rocks over water".

After the Italian edition, all subsequent editions retained the misattribution to Arnaldus de Villa Nova.
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28/08/2026

Medical Allegories series 31:
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𝐅𝐚𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐇𝐢𝐩𝐩𝐨𝐜𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐚, 𝟏𝟖𝟑𝟖
Coloured lithograph by Edward William John Hopley, known as Pillbox, from "The Chirurgico Comico Alphabet" (London: Henry Renshaw, 1838), pages unnumbered [p. 21], Shelfmark: Closed stores EPB/B/29388/1, Wellcome Library, London.
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We seldom publish works from the early nineteenth century, given the premodern remit of the Centre, but this one deserved an exception. This caricature offers a vivid rendering of the "facies Hippocratica" ('Hippocratic aspect') and a striking testimony to the long projection of ancient medical ideas into modernity.

The "facies Hippocratica", still known in medicine today, was first described in the Hippocratic corpus as the characteristic appearance of a patient approaching death. It is usually associated with sunken eyes, a pinched nose, hollow temples, and altered complexion, although the original Hippocratic description is considerably more detailed and accompanies these visible signs with the impairment of bodily functions, including changes in urination and vomiting.

This representation by the English painter Edward William John Hopley (1816–1869) is particularly striking for its satirical tone. Death is imagined as a guillotine about to fall, while the "facies Hippocratica" becomes quite literally the face of the unfortunate condemned man.

Hopley, who adopted the comic pseudonym ‘Pillbox’, produced the image for "The Chirurgico Comico Alphabet" (1838), a satirical booklet lampooning the medical establishment of the early Victorian era through fifty caricatures of medical professionals, practices, and terminology. The joke could also become self-referential: Zygomaticus, named after the facial muscle involved in smiling, shows a group of men laughing uproariously while reading the booklet itself.
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27/08/2026

Call for Papers
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𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐢𝐬 𝐎𝐍
𝐀𝐫𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐒𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞: 𝐖𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐒𝐞𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠, 𝐖𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐊𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐠, 𝐖𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐌𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠
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The journal ARTis ON invites the submission of articles for a thematic issue dedicated to the interaction between Art and Science, understood in a broad, historical, and contemporary sense. Far from conceiving these domains as autonomous or opposed spheres, this issue seeks to explore the multiple ways in which artistic and scientific practices have intersected, entered into dialogue, and, in many instances, mutually constituted one another.
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The theme statement welcomes diverse approaches, including, but not limited to:

• Historical relations between art and science (Antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, Modernity, and the Contemporary period);
• Art as experimental practice, visual laboratory, or form of research;
• Pictorial science, optics, geometry, perspective, anatomy, and cosmography;
• Scientific visuality and the production of images of knowledge;
• Artist-scientists, scientist-artists, and figures of intellectual mediation;
• Knowledge transfer, circulation of ideas, and trading zones between disciplines;
• Epistemology of the image, regimes of visibility, and visual culture;
• Art, technology, science, and critical thought in the contemporary world;
• Interdisciplinary methodologies and hybrid practices between artistic and scientific research.
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Types of submission:

• Scholarly articles between 6,000 and 9,000 words;
• Critical and theoretical-historiographical essays;
• Methodological reflection texts;
• Contributions to the Varia section, including critical reviews and shorter texts, provided they align with the spirit of the issue.
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Languages: Portuguese, English, French, or Spanish.

Submitted texts must include: an abstract; keywords; complete bibliographical references; anonymisation for the purposes of peer review.
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𝐈𝐧𝐟𝐨 𝐚𝐭: [email protected] (Prof. Vasco Nuno Figueiredo De Medeiros)
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