The World of Plants in Renaissance Tuscany: Medicine and Botany

ISBN-13: 9781032179575 / Angielski / Miękka / 2021 / 276 str.

Cristina Bellorini

Opis

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

Spis treści

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

O autorze

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.