Abstracts

“Ancient Knowledge, Growing Counterevidence: The Four Versions of Daniel Sennert’s Handbook of Natural Philosophy”

Christoph Lüthy, Center for the History of Philosophy and Science, Radboud University Nijmegen

It is striking that Daniel Sennert, despite his promotion to professor in medicine, continued to rework his handbook of natural philosophy. His original series of student disputations of 1599/1600 was published as an Epitome scientiae naturalis in 1600. A book version of the Epitome followed in 1618, was revised for a first time in 1624 and then again in 1633. The 34 years between the first and the last versions span roughly his entire academic career.

For any university student, natural philosophy provided the basis for all further studies, and well into the seventeenth century, that basis was rigorously Aristotelian at all institutions of higher learning, not just in its terminology, but also in its analysis of nature and its principles. At the same time, however, evidence in different fields of study began to suggest ever more forcefully that Aristotle's system was not flawless and required modification. This lecture examines the ways in which Sennert tried to incorporate novel results from natural history, cosmology, medicine and chymistry into his ever-expanding handbook of natural philosophy, until that old receptacle began to break up.

“Fear of Atheism and the Defence of Galenism: Problems with Substance rather than Quality”

Harold Cook, History of Medicine, Brown University, Providence RI, USA

The paper will address the contemporary struggles in academic medicine over whether change is qualitative (associated with classical Aristotelian and Galenic physiological explanations) or is related to physical substance (associated with the new anatomy and some versions of chemistry as well as the 'matter in motion' view of the experimental philosophy). The shift from putting qualities first to putting physical substance first not only drew a line between bodily experience and tangible experiment but raised the threat of  philosophical materialism, deism, and atheism, causing many physicians to develop countervailing explanatory strategies that kept within acceptable norms.

“Sennert and Renaissance Debates on Occult Diseases”

Hiro Hirai, Research Associate at Center for Science and Society, Columbia University

Abstract TBD

“Sennert’s Compromise between Galenic and Paracelsian Pharmacology”

Elisabeth Moreau, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, UK

The German physician Daniel Sennert (1572-1637) was a major actor of the compromise between the medical tradition based on Galen and the “new” chymical philosophy inspired by the writings of Paracelsus. Such a compromise was flourishing in early seventeenth-century Germany, where many physicians, such as Andreas Libavius (c.1550-1616) and the leaders of the Chymiatria chair in Marburg, Johannes Hartmann (1568-1631) and Heinrich Petraeus (1589-1620), attempted to reconcile both currents. A central issue was therapy, as Paracelsus and his disciples introduced innovative views about the preparation of chymical remedies that went against the principles of Galenic pharmacology. In this paper, I examine Sennert’s views on drugs and method of treatment in his De chymicorum cum Aristotelicis et Galenicis consensu ac dissensu liber (1619), where he addressed important issues such as the notion of universal medicine, the doctrine of “signatures,” and the use of metallic ingredients for making drugs. In doing so, I will attempt to situate Sennert’s stance among the various degrees of harmonization that were proposed by his contemporaries.

“Sennert’s Critique of Emergent Properties and the Question of Confessionalization”

Andreas Blank, Private Docent in Philosophy at Universität Klagenfurt, Institut für Philosophie

In his De chymicorum cum Aristotelicis et Galenicis consensu ac dissensu, Sennert formulated his theory of the multiplication of the souls of living beings. Some of his interpreters (such as Michael Stolberg) understand this theory as being motivated by the dynamics of confessionalization, in particular by the preponderance of traducianism (the view that humans souls are transmitted from parents to their children) in the Lutheran tradition. While the fit between Sennert's multiplication theory and traducianism is uncontestable, I would like to argue that Sennert's theory is more proximately motivated by specifically philosophical concerns about the theory of emergent properties as articulated by thinkers such as Jacob Schegk, Antonio Ponce de Santacruz and Juan Gallego de la Serna. Charting the field of these controversies brings to light that theory choices were motivated by philosophical arguments rather than by demands of confession building. I will argue for two claims: (1) The forces of confessionalization were not specific enough. This can be shown by the fact that traduciansim allowed for alternative interpretations, and that emergentism and the multiplication theory of souls were seen as theoretical alternatives to explicate the nature of tradux-relation.(2) Confessionalization left open much concerning the origin of human souls. This is why Lutheran natural philosophers such as Jacob Schegk adopted creationism about human souls, while Catholic natural philosophers such as Emilio Parisano adopted traducianism, including a multiplication theory of souls. Strikingly, what motivated Parisano's defense of traducianism were theoretical concerns about emergentism, especially of the kind advocated by Gallego de la Serna.

“Making Knowledge in Experimental Chymistry and Medicine: The Correspondence of Daniel Sennert and Michael Döring”

Joel A Klein, Molina Curator for the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Huntington Library, San Marino, California

This paper explores the extensive correspondence between Daniel Sennert and his brother-in-law, Breslau municipal physician Michael Döring. The correspondence provides a valuable historical source for understanding how learned physicians pursued chymical medicines in the seventeenth century. These candid letters escaped editorial redaction by the original authors and are thus a useful source for delineating the social, intellectual, religious, and personal context of chymistry and chymical medicine in the first half of the seventeenth century, during the tumult of the Thirty Years’ War. Working together, Sennert and Döring carried out chymical and medical trials, sometimes upon themselves. They reported successes and failures to one another, traded recipes, books, and chymico-medical compounds, and reflected at length on the meaning of the trials they had carried out. The chymico-medical pursuit which occupied Sennert and Döring’s interest first and foremost, and for the greater part of their careers, was the synthesis of chymical medicines made from noble metals. The letters demonstrate the extensive collaborative experimentation undertaken by Sennert and Döring and shed light on their attempts to synthesize chymical medicines. I suggest that the correspondence not only provides a glimpse into Sennert’s experimentalist methodology but is also a case study of an epistemological transformation representative of larger changes occurring in the seventeenth century. In sum, the correspondence is an important historical source that allows for a close study of how and why learned physicians pursued chymical medicines in the seventeenth century.

"Daniel Sennert: Anti-Paracelsian or Quasi-Paracelsian?"

Charles Gunnoe, Jr., Professor of History, Aquinas College

Theophrastus von Hohenheim, aka Paracelsus (c. 1493/4–1541), represented both the greatest stimulus and challenge to early modern Central European medical theory and praxis. While the itinerate Paracelsus published little in his lifetime, by the 1560s a wide-spread revival of the publication of Paracelsian texts was afoot. Some academics such as Johann Winter von Andernach sought to mediate between Paracelsian and traditional medical theory; Others such as Thomas Erastus repudiated the entire Paracelsian project. Erastus’s “Anti-Paracelsian” critique found a wide reception with many, including the chemical innovator Andreas Libavius who maintained Erastus’s humanist critique of Paracelsus while rejecting his repudiation of alchemical theory. By the early 1600s, orthodox Lutheran theologians such as Nicholas Hunnius were increasingly alarmed by the spiritual threat posed by the Weigelian and pseudepigraphal theological revival of Paracelsus’s religious ideas. Influenced by both Erastus and the Lutheran critique, Daniel Sennert stepped into this fray with his 1619 De Chymicorum Cum Aristotelicis Et Galenicis Consensu Ac Dissensu. This presentation will engage Sennert’s broad embrace of the anti-Paracelsian religious and humanistic critique paired with his generally positive reception of the Paracelsian chemical theory, including the famous tria prima (Salt, Sulphur and Mercury). The paper will ultimately grapple with the question or whether Sennert should more fairly be regarded as an Anti-Paracelsian or a Quasi-Paracelsian.

“An Aristotelian Experimentalist? Daniel Sennert as a Pre-Baconian Case-Study”

William R. Newman, Ruth N. Halls Professor, History and Philosophy of Science and Medicine, Indiana University Bloomington

This talk is about Sennert’s experimental practices in the areas of chymistry and spontaneous generation, seen in the context of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century developments in experiment more generally.

“‘Epitomizers’, Pirates, and Translators: Seventeenth Century Publications of Sennert’s Works in France, Italy, The Netherlands, and England”

Kaspar von Greyerz, em. Professor in History at University of Basel

The origin of the practice of epitomizing can be traced back to the Hellenistic age when the steady growth of literature came to be felt as a burden which could be alleviated conveniently by the abridgement of long works. However, as a reviewer once exclaimed: “No two epitomizers will work in the same way” and that it would be foolish not to recognize this. The seventeenth century abounds with epitomes and some of them are interpretations rather than more or less authentic reproductions of the original text. How could it be otherwise for there are no generally established rules for the production of abridgments. Authors could avoid such pitfalls in publishing their own epitomes. That’s what Daniel Sennert did with his Epitome naturalis scientiae first published in 1618 and reedited in 1624 and 1633. All three editions contain Sennert’s letter of dedication, but, more importantly, they were all published in Wittenberg. Sennert’s authorship is thus assured.

The present paper is a contribution to book history. It will examine the relationship between these Wittenberg epitomes and others published elsewhere in France, Italy, The Netherlands, and England, and, more generally, the printing of Sennert’s work in these four countries. My contribution will highlight the fact that, a couple of exceptions considered, translations of Sennert’s works (originally all published in Latin) only appeared in England, and discuss possible explanations for the particular kind of reception Sennert’s works received across the Channel.

“Daniel Sennert and the University of Padua: Circulation of Medical Knowledge and Scholars across the Confessional Divide”

Pietro Daniel Omodeo, Associate Professor, Ca' Foscari, Venice

Abstract TBD

“The Dissertation in the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries”

Kevin (Ku-ming) Chang, Academia Sinica, Taiwan

There has been a body of literature on early modern “dissertations,” texts that were produced to announce the dates, venues, participants, and subjects of public disputations. So far studies on this subject have lumped together all dissertations that were produced from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. It took dissertations time to settle into their forms in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that scholars have been familiar with. This paper will be a focused study on the dissertations that were produced in the first century of its appearance. It hopes to shed light on the origins and early developments of dissertations into their later forms in different European countries.

“Teaching and Making Medical Knowledge in Early Modern Europe: The Case Study of Scurvy in Wittenberg”

Anja-Silvia Goeing, Associate in History, Harvard University; Professor at Institute of Education, University of Zurich

How does medical knowledge get made and disseminated and what role do institutions, teachers, students and publications play? By working through three generations of 16th and 17th ct medical writers and their take on scurvy, I want to discuss mechanisms of knowledge making and its dissemination.

Scurvy, the deficiency of vitamin C that befalls people and animals who can’t eat fresh food over a long time, is known today as an illness that was not fully understood until the 19th and early 20th centuries. But starting from the second half of the 16th century, this illness received attention in universities of the Holy Roman Empire. This attention coincided with the opening of medical studies to the empirical and more practical faculties of anatomy and practical medicine. The university of Wittenberg had a leading role for a long time in studies on scurvy, and Daniel Sennert prepared an ideal publication for teaching that collected all known knowledge on scurvy and left it in its original form of argumentation, just adding new developments at the end and putting an introduction at the beginning. This treatise would not only be important for his own students and their work, but also for other universities. Professors of the next generations such as Werner Rolfinck used scurvy many times as pro gradu disputation for his students, and I would like to investigate in this paper,  how these dissertations on scurvy fitted into the flow of information between university groups, and how they helped to build up new knowledge.

“The Unknowing Disciples of Daniel Sennert and his Inconspicuous Impact in the Ottoman Empire”

Natalia Bachour, Research Associate in Islamic Studies, Institute of Asian and Oriental Studies, University of Zurich

During the sixteenth and seventeenth century, the Ottoman Empire attained the height of its power, controlling Southeast Europe, Western Asia, and North Africa. As a multireligious and multilingual domain, it enabled scientific and technological exchange between eastern and western cultures. Correspondingly, Ottoman medicine combined several medical traditions. On the one hand, it represented a continuation of Graeco-Arabic medicine. On the other hand, it interacted with medical systems and concepts developed in other cultures, especially in Europe, and incorporated them into the local medical culture after a process of selection, practical realignment, and assimilation. Several books of Daniel Sennert played a crucial role in this transition, especially by introducing chemistry into medical practice, and bringing about the associated development of chemical medicine. This paper outlines the historical context relevant to this case, introduces several key historical figures and scrutinizes some aspects of the encounter with and diffusion of information about medical theories and methods through several translations of Sennert`s books into Arabic, Ottoman Turkish and Persian.

“Sennert’s Works in Baltic Dissertations”

Meelis Friedenthal, Associate Professor of Intellectual History and Intellectual History of the Baltic Sea Region, University of Tartu, Estonia

In 1632, the Swedish state established a university in Tartu, Livonia (modern Estonia), to which renowned professors were invited. This meant that new philosophical ideas quickly reached the university. The Tartu professors of medicine Johannes Raicus, Johann Below and Sebastian Wirdig had studied in Wittenberg and were influenced by Daniel Sennert's ideas, but other professors also drew on and quoted Sennert. The paper examines the influence of Daniel Sennert in the disputations conducted in Tartu, focusing on the reception of his concept of the soul.

“ ‘Medicinae Alumni Witebergenses’. A Digital Analysis of the Influence of Wittenberg University on Contemporary Medicine (1502-1648)”

Manuel Huth, Institute for the History of Medicine, University of Würzburg

The University of Wittenberg was one of the most famous and most visited educational institutions in the 16th and 17th centuries. It played a crucial role in the formation and spread of Protestant ideas throughout the Holy Roman Empire. This was also true of its medical faculty, whose members consciously combined ancient medicine with Protestant concepts. In recent years, research has shown, how these attempts led to the development of a specific perspective on the human soul as well as on anatomy, natural philosophy and embryology. However, there is a lack of studies that map and analyse the influence of these ideas in their temporal and geographical dimensions.

The digital database project “Medicinae Vitebergenses Alumni” aims at filling this gap and pursues a twofold strategy: On the one hand, the prosopographical data of the students and graduates of the Medical Faculty of Wittenberg are recorded. For each person, these data are arranged in the form of a digital CV, which is automatically compared with the CVs of all other persons, so that both explicit and implicit connections become visible. On the other hand, the basic data of the printed works of each alumnus are recorded. A small number of these will be examined in more detail (i.e. works on subjects, that can be considered typical of Wittenberg medicine). This combination of prosopographic and literary data provides an excellent opportunity to trace the geographical and temporal spread of medical concepts throughout the HRR. The research possibilities offered by the database are illustrated using the example of Daniel Sennert and his students.