History, Medicine, and the Traditions of Renaissance Learning (Cultures Of Knowledge In The Early Modern World)

A path-breaking work at last available in paper, History, Medicine, and the Traditions of Renaissance Learning is Nancy G. Siraisi’s examination of the intersections of medically trained authors and history from 1450 to 1650. Rather than studying medicine and history as separate traditions, Siraisi calls attention to their mutual interaction in the rapidly changing world of Renaissance erudition. With remarkably detailed scholarship, Siraisi investigates doctors’ efforts to explore the legacies handed down to them from ancient medical and anatomical writings.

Nancy G. Siraisi is one of the preeminent scholars of medieval and Renaissance intellectual history. Now Distinguished Professor Emerita of History at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center, and a 2008 winner of a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, her books include The Clock and the Mirror (1997), and the widely used textbook Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine (1990), which won the Davis Prize from the History of Science Society. In 2004 she received the Renaissance Society of America’s Paul Oskar Kristellar Award, and in 2005 she received the American Historical Association Award for Scholarly Distinction.