Article ID: CBB000850533

Doctor's Order: An Early Modern Doctor's Alchemical Notebooks (2008)

unapi

Timmermann, Anke (Author)


Early Science and Medicine: A Journal for the Study of Science, Technology and Medicine in the Pre-modern Period
Volume: 13
Pages: 25--52


Publication Date: 2008
Edition Details: Part of special issue “Medieval and Early Modern Medicine, Alchemy and Magic (Part III)”
Language: English

This is a case study on a series of at least thirty-four sixteenth-century notebooks from the Sloane collection, which reconsiders early modern note taking techniques and the organisation of knowledge. These notebooks were written by an anonymous compiler, a physician who read widely in the alchemical and medical literature available in his lifetime, the late sixteenth century. In the alchemica, he devotes individual volumes to specific alchemical substances, which are connected with each other by means of a complex system of cross-referencing; they are constantly revised and change appearance according to the physician's latest ideas about alchemical medicines. As a result, the notebooks not only preserve received information (a task otherwise performed by commonplace books in this period)--- they also represent an equivalent to the alchemical workshop, where the combination of different textual elements generates knowledge.

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Article Kusukawa, Sachiko (2008) Introductory Note. Early Science and Medicine: A Journal for the Study of Science, Technology and Medicine in the Pre-modern Period. unapi

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Authors & Contributors
Baldassarri, Fabrizio
Penman, Leigh T. I.
Lotti, Francesca
Di Gennaro Splendore, Barbara
Zini, Marco
Webster, Charles
Concepts
Medicine
Alchemy
Physicians; doctors
Pharmacy
Natural magic
Plants
Time Periods
Renaissance
16th century
17th century
15th century
Early modern
Medieval
Places
Italy
Europe
Basel (Switzerland)
England
Peru
Granada (Spain)
Institutions
British Library
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