PUBLIC LECTURE: ARC Network for Early European Research Lecture - The Medical Republic of Letters in Europe before the Thirty Years War

Abstract: After a brief history of the Republic of Letters as a concept and a practice in the Early Modern Period, I shall turn to one intellectual group in particular, the learned medical profession, and concentrate on one manner of transmitting knowledge which it actively developed between about 1500 and 1630: the published collection of medical letters. I shall investigate their importance by asking the following questions: how self-aware and self-critical was the world of learned doctors? how did it regulate itself? how free was it? how open? how universal? how collaborative? Finally, how ‘scientific’ was its approach to nature?

This event forms part of the ‘Humanism and Medicine in the Early Modern Era’ symposium taking place at the University of Western Australia on 20-22 September 2006. The symposium is co-presented by the ARC Network for Early European Research (NEER). For more information on the symposium please go to http://www.ias.uwa.edu.au/activities_and_programs