Tag: Renaissance
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Citizen Zinsser: Portrait of a Renaissance man
Philip R. Liebson In the September 16, 1940 issue of TIME Magazine an intriguing obituary was found: After a patient wait, death came last week to Hans Zinsser, bacteriologist, physician, philosopher, poet, ironist, historian, raconteur. At 61, he died of chronic leukemia, a slow-moving, mysterious disease of the blood for which there is no known…
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The sweating sickness in Tudor England: a plague of the Renaissance
Philip R. Liebson Chicago, Illinois, United States Portrait of Henry VIII, c. 1537 Hans Holbein the Younger Oil on canvas 11” × 8” Introduction In the recent semi-fictional work by Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall, which takes place in the early 16th century, the protagonist Thomas Cromwell, counsel and henchman of Henry VIII, awakens in…
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Carl von Rokitansky (1804-1881)
For a brief period between 1860 and 1910, Vienna became the cultural capital of Europe, just as Constantinople had been in the Middle Ages and Florence during the Renaissance. It had become an attractive metropolis of two million people, capital of an empire that in the wake of two serious military defeats had abandoned its…
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Doctors and illness in Boccaccio’s Decameron
Maria SgouridouGreece Introduction Giovanni Boccaccio was born in Tuscany in 1313, the illegitimate son of a merchant of Certaldo, who launched him on a commercial career hoping he would follow in his steps. Sent to Naples for that reason, he soon abandoned commerce and the study of canon law, and began instead to write stories…
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Birth trays in the Italian Renaissance
Rachel Baker Recurring outbreaks of plague and their resulting demographic catastrophes largely contributed to the Renaissance emphasis on family and procreation. After the initial epidemic in 1348, the plague returned more than a dozen times over the next two centuries. Childbirth was seen as a vital measure to combat plague’s devastation, and a woman’s most…
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Neuroanatomy: A transition in understanding and observation
Charlene OngSt. Louis, Missouri, United States Western medicine’s understanding of neuroanatomy over the last several millennia has reflected the dynamic cultural values and social norms regarding the human body and its function. The journey that culminated in accurate and reproducible representations of the brain required a tolerance of human inquiry, advances in preservation technology, and…