The reception of Celsus' 'De medicina' from the middle ages to the modern era

Lead Research Organisation: University of Cambridge
Department Name: History and Philosophy Of Science

Abstract

My project addresses the reception of Celsus' De medicina, which consists in eight book on Hippocratic medicine that
were written in Latin in the first century AD. Its tradition concerns the history of medicine from antiquity to the modern era.
I will focus on the main steps in the transmission of Celsus' text to explain different readings and the different purposes it
was employed for. By examining the manuscripts copied in Nonantola in the ninth and tenth century, I will address the
role of monastic scriptoria and I will provide insights on medieval medical knowledge and bookmaking. Fifteenth-century
Florence is another crucial step in De medicina's history, as it was printed there for the first time in 1478. The members
of the Florentine Academia compared manuscript exemplars and debated on the editio princeps' philological accuracy
and Celsus' identity. In addition to exploring the role of humanists and physicians in the printing house, my project will
shed new light on the circulation of printed medical knowledge by taking into consideration the material spread of books,
epistolary correspondence, and oral communication. In the sixteenth and seventeenth century, readers of De medicina
highlighted its medical and surgical contents and erudite medical circles fostered philosophical interpretations. To
address this themes, I will focus on the works of a few important authors in the Paduan and Bolognese medical arena,
namely Falloppio, Malpighi, and Morgagni.

Publications

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