Early Modern Medicine

This collection offers readers a guide to analyzing historical texts and objects using a diverse selection of sources in early modern medicine.

Olivia Weisser is Associate Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts Boston where she teaches and writes about the history of health and healing in the 1500s-1700s. Her first book, Ill Composed (2015), examined how gender shaped patients' perceptions of sickness. She is finishing a new book on the history of venereal disease.

Introduction Part 1: Instituions 1. The Transatlantic Business of Medicine 2. Medicine in the Convent 3. The Curious Case of the Two Antonios: What Hospital Records Can and Cannot Tell Us 4. Legal Records in Early Modern Spain 5. Brotherhoods, Poor Relief, and Healthcare Part 2: Medical Writing 6. Medical Casebooks 7. Experimenting with Drugs 8. An Imperial Doctor's Guide to Bone Setting, 1742 9. Physicians' Treatises: the Ottoman Case 10. Missionary Remedies 11. Vernacular Medical Print: Or How to Read a Recipe Book Part 3: The Everyday 12. Life Writing 13. Family Letters 14. Newspaper Advertisements from the Eighteenth-Century Caribbean 15. Disability History from Slavery's Archive 16. Reproducing Ballads Part 4: Objects & Images 17. Book Illustrations: Jane Sharp's The Midwives Book 18. Medicine Containers and Healing Vessels