Monday, December 15, 2025
4:00PM – 5:00PM
Venue
This will be a virtual event. Login information will be included in your confirmation email.
The event is free; advance registration is required.
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About the Event
Before the large-scale archaeological excavations of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, reading ancient sources was often the only means to recover the material culture of the past. In the culture of the European Renaissance, learned surgeons turned to the treatises by ancient and medieval authors like Celsus, Galen, and al-Zahrāwī to learn about the surgical tools in use in classical Rome and in the Islamicate world. The encounter with complex textual descriptions prompted humanist surgeons to resort to their philological and exegetical skills to understand and reimagine the shape and use of ancient surgical instruments, and they devised extensive sets of images to better communicate highly practical information to their readers. While engaging in the practices of humanist medicine, erudite surgeons were also embedded in the artisanal culture of vibrant economic centers like Paris and Venice, and they often repurposed the drills of masons and carpenters, the needles of tailors and cobblers, and the knots of luthiers to the needs of surgical practice. Focusing on the illustrated treatises of three Renaissance surgeons, this talk will offer a new definition of the ‘material Renaissance’, while showing that surgical innovation emerged away from ivory towers in the small urban environments of European cities.
Click here for more information on The Audrey and William H. Helfand Fellowship in the History of Medicine and Public Health.
About the Speaker
Silvia M. Marchiori recently defended her doctoral dissertation at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge, and she is currently the postdoctoral Rome Fellow at the British School at Rome. Her research explores the long-term transmission and reception of medical knowledge and practices between antiquity and the early modern age.