Panel 21: Crossing Borders, Containing Disease: Networks of Health Knowledge in Early Modern Europe (EN)

Chair: Joana Balsa de Pinho (ARTIS, Universidade de Lisboa) & Edite Martins Alberto (CHAM, FCSH, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa)

Part I: 17 April, 2:00 pm | Hall B2

Medical practitioners and their books: Evidencing a constellation of actors in the dissemination of medical knowledge in late Renaissance Europe

Andrea Ottone (University of Oslo) & Giovanna Granata (University of Cagliari)

In his polemic against the state of medical education in the mid-sixteenth century, Andreas Vesalius went to great lengths to criticize the book-based knowledge of his contemporaries, championing direct observation and manual practice instead. However, even at the height of the debate upheld by medical empiricists, books remained the swiftest vehicles for transferring medical knowledge. For instance, Vesalius himself was a published author, and his famous critique of book-based knowledge was contained within his own De humani corporis fabrica, a book that saw multiple transnational reprints during his lifetime. Considering the indisputable role of books in transmitting and consolidating early modern medical knowledge as a transnationally shared tradition, this paper investigates medics as a community of readers. Drawing from a vast repertoire of bio-bibliographic information provided by the Congregation for the Index of Forbidden Books, this study compares over thirty libraries belonging to physicians, surgeons, and barbers located in Italian territories at the very end of the sixteenth century, specifically 1599, with a few exceptions dating no later than 1601. The close synchronicity of the data allows for an intellectual snapshot in medical history. The varied provenance of the book collections permits a comparison of readers across different Italian states and a contrast between urban and rural communities. Finally, the near-completeness of the bibliographic data allows for an analysis of the provenance of the books across sub-Alpine and trans-Alpine areas, helping to involve diverse actors in the dissemination of medical knowledge—such as authors, commentators, editors, and publishers—across the continent and beyond. After outlining the sources, methodology, and technologies used in this research, the paper will present a survey that combines bibliometrics with social network analysis. This approach aims to provide a model of the cultural standing of the different strata of medical practitioners of the time. Both medical and non-medical books will be investigated to highlight intersections and differences, ultimately seeking to outline the intellectual morphology of the medical community and find commonalities and differences in the reading diet of Renaissance medics.

Keywords: medical books; medical libraries; medical learning; Renaissance science; social network analysis

At the Periphery of the Network: The Azores Islands and Disease Control in Early Modern Europe

Tiago Simões da Silva (CHAM, FCSH, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa)

The Azores archipelago, strategically located in the central Atlantic, historically functioned at the periphery of European knowledge and information networks, including those emanating from the Mediterranean. This paper examines Faial Island, whose port emerged as the principal maritime hub in the region from the mid-17th century onward. During this period, a network of merchants, consular agents, and institutional actors – including Customs and the Health House – facilitated connections across both margins of the Atlantic and beyond. The Health House inspections were made by "guarda-mores da saúde," officers appointed by the municipal council, who were responsible for preventing the introduction of contagious diseases via incoming ships. Although archival records on health surveillance are very incomplete, the existing documentation, as well as foreign visitors’ accounts, reveal operational models analogous to those employed in other contemporary ports. Even in the religious sphere, we find locally the main devotions that were adopted by Venice as protections against plagues and from there spread across Europe. One of the main approaches is the notices of epidemic crises, to elucidate how information concerning contagious diseases circulated. Town records contain multiple references to disease outbreaks in the Mediterranean, coupled with preventive measures, including advisories to avoid contact with ships arriving from affected areas. A particularly detailed case, dated 1768-1769, reports a plague outbreak aboard a French vessel originating from Tripoli, information then transmitted by a Genoese consul to the “guarda-mor de saúde” of Lisbon and subsequently to the municipal council in Faial. These findings indicate a transnational network of individuals and institutions that communicated and coordinated preventive measures against epidemic threats, demonstrating the interconnectedness of public health governance across the Mediterranean and the Atlantic.

Keywords: public health; epidemics; health authorities; circulation of information; Azores

Tesoro de Medicinas: a case of knowledge transfer across the Atlantic

Lia Nunes (Município de Celorico da Beira)

This paper´s aim is to bring forward an example of health knowledge circulation across the Atlantic and the early modern Iberian worlds. The case study is the Tesoro de Medicinas, written in the Hospital de la Santa Cruz de Cristo of Oaxtepec (New Spain), sometime in the 1580s, by Gregorio Lopez (c.1541-1596). It was a work on pharmaceuticals made in the Oaxtepec hospital for the use of its doctors, nurses and hospitalier friars; sold and distributed for the profit of that institution. Regarding the Tesoro de Medicinas, the scholar Francisco Guerra diligently attempted to unveil the story of Lopez’s manuscript. He identifies Luis de Velasco, marquis of Salinas, as the carrier of the manuscript to the Court, having deposited it at the Royal Monastery of the Incarnation in Madrid. Guerra also summarises the history of Tesoro’s publication in 1672. The physician Mathias de Salcedo Mariaca obtained the manuscript from Puebla’s captain, Alonso Raboso de la Plaza, a “close friend” of the publication’s promoter, Juan Francisco Montemayor de la Cuenca, who had been governor of San Domingo and had held office at the Mexican Audiencia. Montemayor de la Cuenca, too, was a great devotee to Gregorio Lopez’s canonisation cause, as Rubial García also mentions. As many scholars have shown, the merit of Gregorio Lopez’s pharmaceutical treatise was not academic in nature, given that it was most likely a copy and collection of diverse traditions of knowledge previously studied and compiled by famous doctors of the time (such as Francisco Hernández). Gregorio’s book aimed to condense and make readily available such knowledge by compiling translations of other treatises (usually written in Latin) into Spanish and organising them into an easily consultable database of medicines, diseases, and their cures. We do know how he accessed his sources, whether they were available in the hospital´s library or whether they were borrowed. The paper´s scope is to reconstitute the networks of users, promoters, translators, and publishers of the Tesoro de Medicinas in order to present it as a case study of knowledge transfer across the Atlantic.

Keywords: Gregorio Lopez; Tesoso de Medicinas; pharmaceutic treaty; orature translation

Part II: 17 April, 3:45 pm | Hall B2

Guarding the Gates between sea and land: marine pollution and disease vectors in Early Modern Atlantic Ports (sanitary control and biological invasions in the Azores 16th–17th Centuries)

Ana Catarina Garcia (CHAM, FCSH, Universidade Nova de Lisboa)

The intensification of Atlantic maritime navigation during the Early Modern Age transformed ports and port cities into essential hubs for trade, but also for the spread of disease pathogens and invasive species. This paper focuses on the case studies of Angra (Terceira, Azores), a strategic port in the Portuguese maritime empire, to analyze how local authorities managed the interface between sea and land to mitigate sanitary threats. Using archival sources and archaeological evidence, including the insect faunas recovered from the 17th-century shipwrecks Angra D (Spanish) and Angra C (Dutch) in Angra Bay, this research reveals the presence of synanthropic insects such as Dohrniphora cornuta, Periplaneta americana, and Musca domestica, which thrived in the foul conditions of ships and harbors. These species, identified in two shipwrecks within the harbor and associated with the abundant lost cargoes from each wreck, reveal potential agents that acted as vectors for disease and biological invasions, exacerbating public health risks in port cities of the time. Local governance, through town ordinances and empirical practices, implemented prophylactic measures to control debris, waste disposal, and water contamination, while also addressing the challenges posed by shipwrecks. The analysis of these rules demonstrates a growing awareness of the connection between marine pollution, ship calling and epidemic outbreaks. By examining the specificity of these measures in the Azores, one of the most important ports of call for transatlantic routes, this paper argues that Atlantic ports developed localized systems of sanitary control that were essential for colonial resilience, even as they exposed the limits of imperial oversight in distant territories.

Keywords: Atlantic ports; plagues; insects, sanitary control; shipwrecks

News Flow during the Epidemics in Early Modern Italy: networks, diplomatic practices, and conspiracies (based on 16th–17th century Florentine correspondence)

Anna Slesar (NRU HSE Saint Petersburg)

In the 16th century, the newly established Grand Duchy of Tuscany started developing the wide information networks of its own despite the political and religious crises and constant epidemic threat. While historians have traced the emergence of modern epidemic management practices, the significance of mobility limitations for the diplomatic news exchange in this context is yet to be studied. Digitized sources from the Medici Interactive Archive allow processing the large amount of letters and avvisi for notions of diplomatic and bureaucratic practices, conspiracies, and the agents of information exchange. In this study, I analyze the content of Florentine Medici court correspondence in the 16th and early 17th centuries through the optics of the history of information & news, diplomatic history, and history of epidemics. The sources show a variety of practices that represent the ways citizens and officials of Italian Early Modern states dealt with the plague and other diseases. I argue that the process of letter exchange involved many actors, from the Medici and their ambassadors to physicians and couriers, all of whom tried to protect Tuscany’s borders from the elusive contagious diseases. With the news of an epidemic outbreak in some region, communication with it was to be cut off: any goods from there, including letters, were often burned. Any travelling groups, such as the couriers, brought on themselves the suspicion of being the untori and spreading the plague. Nevertheless, the Medici court kept the news flowing, particularly that which contained information on how the infected cities tried to fight the disease. Hence, correspondence reveals not only the political and economic ambitions of the Medici dukes but also the anxieties that arose in the face of epidemic threat, and the obstacles this threat created for the mobility of people, things, and information.

Keywords: News exchange; avvisi; epidemics; conspiracies; Early Modern Florence

From Venice to Dalmatia – Sanitary Measures and the Handling of Epidemics on the Venetian-Ottoman Border in the 18th Century

Zrinko Novosel & Maja Katušić (Croatian Institute of History)

The Venetian Republic, one of the largest economic centers of the Mediterranean, based its power on trade and maritime affairs. With the aim of safeguarding these economic interests and protecting the health of its subjects, Venice began to develop mechanisms intended to hinder the appearance of disease as early as the 15th century. During the early modern period, the network of public health institutions was extended to many areas of Venetian administration. Following the example of Venice, health magistracies, medical colleges, and lazarettos were established in Dalmatia, serving as quarantines for the reception of people and goods arriving from both sea and land. Towns situated on the eastern coast of the Adriatic represented significant maritime hubs, but also nourished trade with the Ottoman hinterland. Strict control of border and caravan routes was imposed in order to suppress epidemics from the inland. This system was further developed as the border between Venice and the Ottoman Empire shifted from the coastal zone into the hinterland, especially in the early 18th century. This paper will showcase Venetian management of the anti-epidemic defence system on the Ottoman border. The aim is to tackle the questions: How were the anti-epidemic mechanisms activated and operated in Venetian Dalmatia during a disease outbreak? How were communication protocols developed and information about the epidemic disseminated? Which circumstances impacted the efficacy of these measures? The research is based on sources kept in the State Archives of Venice (fund: Provveditori e sopraprovveditori alla sanità), the State Archives of Zadar (Cartographic Collection), and the Library of the Franciscan Monastery in Dubrovnik (Description of the border by the Venetian military engineer Francesco Rossini).

Keywords: Venice; Dalmatia; sanitary measures; epidemics; border control