The World of Plants in Renaissance Tuscany

Medicine and Botany

Cristina Bellorini (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

276 Seiten

2021
Routledge (Verlag)
978-1-032-17957-5 (ISBN)

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In the sixteenth century medicinal plants, which until then had been the monopoly of apothecaries, became a major topic of investigation in the medical faculties of Italian universities, where they were observed, transplanted, and grown by learned physicians both in the wild and in the newly founded botanical gardens. Tuscany was one of the main European centres in this new field of inquiry, thanks largely to the Medici Grand Dukes, who patronised and sustained research and teaching, whilst also taking a significant personal interest in plants and medicine. This is the first major reconstruction of this new world of plants in sixteenth-century Tuscany. Focusing primarily on the medical use of plants, this book also shows how plants, while maintaining their importance in therapy, began to be considered and studied for themselves, and how this new understanding prepared the groundwork for the science of botany. More broadly this study explores how the New World's flora impacted on existing botanical knowledge and how this led to the first attempts at taxonomy.

Cristina Bellorini received her PhD from the History Department at Birkbeck College, University of London. Her current research project is a study of sixteenth-century agrarian and horticultural history in Italy, based on archival sources in Florence and Milan.

Contents

Acknowledgements

List of Illustrations

List of Tables

List of Abbreviations

Introduction

Chapter 1

Plants and Medicine at the Court of Cosimo,

Francesco, and Ferdinando de’ Medici

The Construction of a Cultural Identity

The Importance of the Name Medici:

Cosmas and Damian

The Grand Dukes’ Commitment to Medicine

The Fonderie

Plants and Gardens

Conclusion

Chapter 2

Medical Botany at the Re-founded University of Pisa

Cosimo I’s Cultural Project and the University

Luca Ghini and the New Teaching of materia medica

Ghini’s Placiti and Lectures

Andrea Cesalpino

Cesalpino’s Herbarium (1563): A First Attempt

at Plant Classification

Cesalpino’s De plantis

Conclusion

Chapter 3

New Ways of Studying Plants

Gardens of Simples

Herbaria

Field Trips

Botanical Illustration

Cosimo’s Scrittoio

Brunfels and Fuchs

The Debate on Images

Iacopo Ligozzi

Conclusion

Chapter 4

Plants from the New World

The New plants

Florence and Discovery

American Plants in the Nuovo ricettario fiorentino

Luca Ghini on the French Disease

Gabriele Falloppio’s Tractatus de morbo gallico

New plants in Mattioli’s Discorsi

Nicolas Monardes’s Historia Medicinal

American Plants in Cesalpino’s De Plantis

Conclusion

Chapter 5

The Nuovo ricettario fiorentino

and the Understanding of Therapy

The First Edition of the Nuovo ricettario fiorentino

The Evolution of the Ricettario

The Penetration of Paracelsus’s Theories into Tuscany

Plants and Chemistry: Distillation

Plants and Therapy in Paracelsus’s Herbarius

The Doctrine of Signatures

Conclusion

Chapter 6

Theory and Practice

Medical Practice in the Faculty of Medicine

Three Texts of Mercuriale on Quartan Fever

Some Cases of Fever in the Medici Family

Cosimo I’s Illness in 1572

The Account Books of the Speziale al Giglio

Simples

Medicines

Conclusion

Conclusion

Bibliography

Erscheinungsdatum	01.10.2021
Reihe/Serie	The History of Medicine in Context
Verlagsort	London
Sprache	englisch
Maße	156 x 234 mm
Gewicht	408 g
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Archäologie
	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Neuzeit (bis 1918)
	Studium ► Querschnittsbereiche ► Geschichte / Ethik der Medizin
	Naturwissenschaften ► Biologie ► Ökologie / Naturschutz
	Technik ► Architektur
ISBN-10	1-032-17957-0 / 1032179570
ISBN-13	978-1-032-17957-5 / 9781032179575
Zustand	Neuware