The close relationship between religion, medicine and natural philosophy in the post-Reformation period has been documented and explored in a body of research since the 1990s; however, the direct and continued impact of Melanchthonian natural philosophy within the individual Lutheran principalities of northern Europe in general and Scandinavia in particular still has to be fully investigated and understood. This volume provides insight into how and why medicine and natural philosophy in a 'liberal' and Melanchthonian form could continue to blossom in Scandinavia despite a growing Lutheran uniformity promoted by the State. Inspired by research emanating from the Cambridge Unit for the History of Medicine, here a number of young scholars such as Adam Mosley, Morten Fink-Jensen, Signe Nipper Nielsen and Martin Kjellgren are joined with more established scholars such as Andrew Cunningham, Jens Glebe-Møller, Terhi Kiiskinen and Ole Peter Grell to create a volume which deals with not only the major issues but also the leading personalities of the period.

The tremendous changes in the role and significance of religion during Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation affected all of society. Yet, there have been few attempts to view medicine and the ideas underpinning it within the context of the period and see what changes it underwent. Medicine and the Reformation charts how both popular and official religion affected orthodox medicine as well as more popular healers. Illustrating the central part played by medicine in Lutheran teachings, the Calvinistic rationalization of disease, and the Catholic responses, the contributors offer new perspectives on the relation of religion and medicine in the early modern period. It will be of interest to social historians as well as specialists in the history of medicine.

Winner, 2020 SRS Book Prize The sixteenth century saw an unprecedented growth in the number of educated physicians practicing in German cities. Concentrating on Nuremberg, A New Order of Medicine follows the intertwined careers of municipal physicians as they encountered the challenges of the Reformation city for the first time. Although conservative in their professed Galenism, these men were eclectic in their practices, which ranged from book collecting to botany to subversive anatomical experimentations. Their interests and ambitions lead to local controversy. Over a twenty-year campaign, apothecaries were wrested from their place at the forefront of medical practice, no longer able to innovate remedies, while physicians, recent arrivals in the city, established themselves as the leading authorities. Examining archives, manuscript records, printed texts, and material and visual sources, and considering a wide range of diseases, Hannah Murphy offers the first systematic interpretation of the growth of elite medical “practice,” its relationship to Galenic theory, and the emergence of medical order in the contested world of the German city.

The early modern era produced the Scientific Revolution, which originated our present understanding of the natural world. Concurrently, philosophers established the conceptual foundations of modernity. This rich and comprehensive volume surveys and illuminates the numerous and complicated interconnections between philosophical and scientific thought as both were radically transformed from the late sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth century. The chapters explore reciprocal influences between philosophy and physics, astronomy, mathematics, medicine, and other disciplines, and show how thinkers responded to an immense range of intellectual, material, and institutional influences. The volume offers a unique perspicuity, viewing the entire landscape of early modern philosophy and science, and also marks an epoch in contemporary scholarship, surveying recent contributions and suggesting future investigations for the next generation of scholars and students.

This monograph offers the first comprehensive treatment of the multi-faceted scholarly interests of Ole Worm, professor of medicine at the University of Copenhagen. Scholarship about Worm has focused mainly on Worm’s collecting and the creation of his cabinet of curiosity, the Museum Wormianum, resulting in Worm’s rationale for his research being largely overlooked. Worm shared his many interests with a number of other physicians of the age, but in terms of breadth, few matched the variety of his concerns. For a man who considered himself first and foremost a physician and anatomist, his interests in Paracelsianism and collecting can at times be baffling, while his interests in antiquarianism, runes, and chronology strike the modern reader as at odds with his medical and natural philosophical interests. It is important to comprehend that Worm’s multi-faceted interests in the created world were underpinned by his Lutheran, Melanchthonian natural philosophy, and this served to unify all Worm’s scholarly undertakings, inquiries, and experiments in the single aim of reaching a better understanding of God’s creation, the Book of Nature.

Gives accurate and reliable summaries of the current state of research. It includes entries on philosophers, problems, terms, historical periods, subjects and the cultural context of Renaissance Philosophy. Furthermore, it covers Latin, Arabic, Jewish, Byzantine and vernacular philosophy, and includes entries on the cross-fertilization of these philosophical traditions. A unique feature of this encyclopedia is that it does not aim to define what Renaissance philosophy is, rather simply to cover the philosophy of the period between 1300 and 1650.

Alicja Bielak's chapter in this book, 'On the Margins of Paduan Medical Lectures. Self-reflection and Critical Attitude in the Notes of Jan Brozek (1585-1652)', is published open access and free to read or download from Oxford Academic History of Universities XXXVI/1 contains the customary mix of learned articles and book reviews which makes this publication an indispensable tool for the historian of higher education.