Summer School: Cutting and Curing. Anatomy and Surgery in Early Modern Europe (1500-1700)

Cutting and Curing. Anatomy and Surgery in Early Modern Europe (1500-1700)

8-10 July 2025

Keynote Speakers: Sandra Cavallo, Heidi Hausse, Vivian Nutton, Katharine Park, Michael Stolberg, Tillmann Taape

Anatomy held an important place in Renaissance learned medicine. Anatomists continued to draw on the writings of the ancients but, together with botany and clinical medicine, anatomy now became a major driving force behind the growing appreciation for empirical approaches.

Anatomists prided themselves of their new findings and began to embark on priority disputes. Medical students flocked to places like Ferrara and Padua, where the leading anatomists of their time taught, taking detailed notes of what they heard and saw, and sometimes performing dissections themselves. Learned physicians also became more conscious of the fundamental anatomical differences between men and women. Rather than adhering to some kind of a “one sex-model” they underlined the different anatomical build of women, which accordingly called for a different treatment of their diseases.

Animal dissections acquired a new importance as well. Animals no longer just served as a substitute when the supply of human corpses for teaching purposes was inadequate. Their dissection also led the way to what we today would call comparative anatomy: anatomist sought to understand how God and Nature had given the various anatomical structures in the body very different forms in animals with different shapes, postures and habitats, so they could ultimately serve the same functions in the body.

Last but not least, post-mortems, the dissection of deceased patients, came to be practiced on a rapidly growing scale in the 16th and 17th centuries. They were now perceived as crucial for a better understanding of the pathological processes and changes inside the sick body, which the physician had to know if he wanted to attack or eradicate them.

Surgery was closely connected to anatomy, in the world of learned medicine. Both fields were frequently taught by the same professor, who might even demonstrate surgical procedures to his students on corpses. In their everyday medical practice, however, most doctors, certainly outside of Italy, refrained from treating surgical cases. They considered surgery a less dignified, manual task which they largely left to the numerous artisanal barber-surgeons who had trained as apprentices and journey-men to an experienced master-surgeon rather than studying at a university.

Historians of surgery have often focused on the development of major operations and on the sophisticated instruments some famous surgeons designed. Ordinary surgical practice was much more mundane, however, as recent research has shown. Minor injuries and fractures, ulcers, boils, and other skin conditions, and diseases of the mouth and throat prevailed. Most surgical cases thus called for conservative treatment, with ointments, oil, plasters etc., rather than for the use of the knife, which most of the time only served for blood-letting – and shaving. Amputations were done even more rarely in ordinary surgical practice.

By contrast, military surgeons on the battle-fields frequently found them to be the last resort. Amputations gave rise, in turn, to a culture of prosthetic devices. The major, more invasive operations, finally, such as removing bladder stones, fixing hernias and “harelips”, and couching cataracts, largely remained the domain of a small group of mostly itinerant “operateurs” who advertised their services on “theatres” in the market-places.

Organisation

The summer school will provide an overview of the current state of the art in the field, of the major historiographical debates, and of promising perspectives and sources for future research. It is designed, in particular, for students and early-career researchers but also warmly welcomes participants at later career stages and with diverse backgrounds and interests.

Over three full days, the programme will feature a combination of keynote lectures and hands-on workshops. The latter will explore a variety of written and visual sources as well as material objects.

Dates: 8-10 July 2025

Venue: Domus Comeliana (Pisa)

Format: Hybrid

The number of participants present in Pisa will be limited to a maximum of 20 but the summer school is hybrid and we invite those who cannot come to Pisa to attend online.

The deadline for registrations is 30 June 2025. Visit this website for additional information on the Summer school and how to sign up.