Program

This conference uses the career and achievements of one of the most important medical scholars of the seventeenth century, Daniel Sennert, to construct a systematic analysis of how medical knowledge was created and disseminated in the early modern era.[1] Sennert (1572-1637) was one of the most prolific, innovative and influential physicians of the period. [2] A professor at Wittenberg, he played an important part in developing a precocious atomic theory, transformed medicine through the use of chemistry, worked in anatomy and botany, published numerous successful medical handbooks and treatises, affected everyday medical practice, and had more than one hundred students who spread his methods and ideas through large parts of Europe.  He wrote and taught a combination of classical medicine and new empirical knowledge, enriching and elaborating the views of such canonical medical authors as Galen, Hippocrates and Aristotle.[3]

            Recent scholarship in the fields of the history of medicine, intellectual history, social history, the history of the book and publishing, and the history of education have begun in their discrete ways to reveal the extraordinary ramifications of Sennert’s work.[4] But there has yet to be a synthesis of his contribution that properly identifies his importance to the history of medicine and its related sciences. The proposed conference seeks to build this synthesis by bringing together the major scholars who have worked on different aspects of Sennert and his milieu. Using the techniques of the recently developing fields of the history of information and Wissensgeschichte, it analyses Sennert’s contribution to the history of medicine systemically, i.e. by attending to the institutional and intellectual structures that shaped the construction of knowledge.[5] The history of information focuses on the processes of knowledge creation and the mechanisms of its subsequent dissemination and reception.[6] It sees these (in this case medical issues) not just as matters of intellectual problem solving (important as these may be), but as parts of a process that produces knowledge through techniques and practices – laboratory work, experimentation, observation, scholarly disputation – that help explain how new knowledge is created. Such knowledge is not treated statically but seen as part of an on-going process whose history involves channels, mechanisms, and networks by which such knowledge is spread. The aim, in short, is not just to identify the content of (medical) knowledge but to reconstruct its history within a larger system of information. 

            To that end the project for the conference is divided into four related fields of inquiry: the first looks at Sennert’s position between ancient and new knowledge in his medical and natural philosophal inquiries, the second at medical and chemical practices, the third investigates Sennert’s relations to medical publications and the book market, and the final section, devoted to networks, maps the mechanisms and connections that reveal the remarkable scope of Sennert’s influence. Throughout the aim is to use the source-rich case of Sennert to look at larger processes of knowledge creation and dissemination.

            Pioneering research, including important work by participants in the conference (Hiro Hirai, Joel Klein, Bill Newman), has shown how Sennert changed medical practices through chemical analysis and experimentation, development of new tinctures, distillations and medicines for the treatment of patients.[7] What are less clear are the processes by which this was achieved, the role that Sennert’s colleagues and students played in these developments, and how extensive was the use of his/their discoveries.  Hence our attention both to the practices of experimentation, and to everyday medical work, such as that recently examined in Michael Stolberg’s Learned Physicians and Everyday Medical Practice in the Renaissance (2022).[8] We need both a fuller understanding of what went on in the laboratory, but also a more wide-ranging history of medical practices in different cities and towns.  We need to capture medical practitioners (including women, servants, and workshop collaborators) to see how medical information was acquired, negotiated, noted down and delivered.[9]

One stream of medical information flowed through the medical book market.  Both Sennert and his students published works that included information based on empirical observation and chemical experiments. Professors taught from Sennert’s practical handbooks, medical students read them, and medical practitioners worked with them.[10] Though we have yet to map the book market fully, we can document the circulation of Sennert’s works in the Eastern regions of the Holy Roman Empire and beyond its borders in the Kingdom of Poland, the Ottoman Lands (Transylvania), Denmark, Sweden, Austria, the Netherlands, the British Isles,  and even Dutch Brazil.[11] While Sennert’s handbooks influenced medical practice, his students’ works influenced political recommendations on issues of public health during times of plague and famine, and their published dissertations contained new descriptions of illnesses and healing practices; some of them became professors in turn who shaped their students’ medical education. Sennert’s work also reached a vernacular audience, through authorized and unauthorized translations for a broader audience, in the descriptions of novel surgical practices by eye-witness reports, and in public health recommendations by governments dealing with plague and famine.[12]

            The book market was just one of the several networks to which Sennert belonged. (He was connected to several printers in Wittenberg, working directly with them or through his students who published dissertations with him.[13] ) Sennert is one of the few professors of the time for whom we can trace a series of extensive networks. Locally, he was connected not only to printing houses, but to his colleagues in the university, and to the court in Wittenberg, where he was appointed as court physician.[14] He had more than one hundred students who came from many different territories, notably Thuringia and Saxony, Bohemia, Poland, Silesia, Franconia and Brandenburg.[15] Many went on to become medical practitioners in towns and at courts, and some of them had the opportunity to teach, most notably at the newly established academies, gymnasia and universities in the eastern parts of the Baltic, such as the Russian Kaliningrad (then: Königsberg in the Duchy of Prussia) and the Estonian Tartu (then: Dorpat in the Duchy of Livonia).[16] Through letters, personal friendships and visits, many of them stayed in contact, thus forming a network of medical scholars that had its origins in Sennert’s classes and personal supervision at Wittenberg. These networks span the less well researched eastern parts of the Holy Roman Empire and the Baltic states.[17] Their importance is only just being understood, and we need to investigate how they worked, how they were used for gathering, negotiating and spreading information about the scope, subject matter and methods used in medicine.

The 17^th century was a crucial period of change in both the structures and content of knowledge, long known as the “Scientific revolution.” Changes in medicine and chemistry in this period were not as famous as the developments in physics or astronomy either at the same or since, but they reward study nonetheless. Sennert’s example teaches us about the nature of changes that were more incremental than paradigm-shifting, as they spawned new theories and long-lasting experimental practices. Secondly, the unusually rich documentation of Sennert’s work and its impact, when approached from the emerging fields of the history of information and of knowledge, enables us to study the social and institutional structures that shaped the production and diffusion of scientific and medical knowledge. Sennert’s case illustrates the role of the market for books across a range of informational genres (from short dissertations to bulky treatises) and of social and professional networks which applied throughout the world of academic medicine. This conference brings together historians and historians of science and medicine to discuss one particularly productive and influential figure as a way to understand in more detail the often collaborative methods for creating and transmitting medical knowledge in the 17^th century. The conference will itself be a site for the collaborative advancement of knowledge the results of which we plan to share with the scholarly community. Early Science and Medicine is a very well respected peer-reviewed journal founded in 1996; the editors have indicated an interest in considering the results from this conference for publication in a special issue of the journal as soon as possible after the conference.

Author: Anja-Silvia Goeing

[1] On scholarly practices around the creation of knowledge in medicine and the sciences in early modern times see Lauren Kassell ‘Casebooks’ in Ann Blair, Paul Duguid, Anja-Silvia Goeing, Anthony Grafton, eds. Information: A Historical Companion (Princeton NJ, 2021), 61-85; 358-365; Ann Blair, Too much to know. Managing scholarly information before the modern age (New Haven, London 2010); Harold J. Cook, ‘Victories for empiricism, failures for theory. Medicine and science in the seventeenth-century’, in: Charles T. Wolfe und Ofer Gal, eds. The body as object and instrument of knowledge. Embodied empiricism and early modern science (Dordrecht, 2010), 9–32; Lorraine Daston, ‘Taking note(s)’, in: Isis 95 (2004): 443–448; Martin Dinges, Kay Peter Jankrift, Sabine Schlegelmilch and Michael Stolberg, eds. Medical practice, 1600–1900. Physicians and their patients (Leiden, 2016); Anthony Grafton, Cardano’s cosmos. The worlds and works of a Renaissance astrologer (Cambridge, MA 1999); Volker Hess and J. Andrew Mendelsohn, ‘Case and Series: Medical Knowledge and Paper Technology, 1600–1900’, History of Science 48, no. 3–4 (2010): 287–314; Ursula Mache, Anatomischer Unterricht in Padua im 16. Jahrhundert. Edition, Übersetzung und Kommentierung der Aufzeichnungen eines böhmischen Studenten (Duisburg, 2019, also diss. med. dent. Regensburg 2019); Roy Porter, ‘The rise of physical examination’, in: W. F. Bynum and Roy Porter, eds. Medicine and the five senses (Cambridge, 2004), 179–197; Nancy G. Siraisi, ‘Medicina practica. Girolamo Mercuriale as teacher and textbook author’, in: Emidio Campi, Simone De Angelis, Anja-Silvia Goeing und Anthony T. Grafton, eds. Scholarly knowledge. Textbooks in early modern Europe (Geneva, 2008), 287–305; Nancy G. Siraisi, ‘Medicine, 1450–1620, and the history of science’, in: Isis 103 (2012): 491–514; Michael Stolberg, ‘Medical note-taking in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’, in: Alberto Cevolini, ed. Forgetting machines: Knowledge management evolution in early modern Europe (Leiden/Boston 2016), 243–264; Michael Stolberg, ‘Medizinische Loci communes. Formen und Funktionen einer ärztlichen Aufzeichnungspraxis im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert’, in: NTM – Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Wissenschaften, Technik und Medizin 21 (2013): 37–60; Michael Stolberg, ‘Kommunikative Praktiken. Ärztliche Wissensvermittlung am Krankenbett im 16. Jahrhundert’, in: Arndt Brendecke, ed. Praktiken der Frühen Neuzeit. Akteure – Handlungen – Artefakte. (Köln, Weimar, Wien 2015), 111–121; Andrew Wear, Knowledge & Practice in English Medicine, 1550–1680 (Cambridge, 2000); Helmut Zedelmaier, ‘Navigieren im Text-Universum. Theodor Zwingers Theatrum vitae humanae’, in: metaphorik.de 14 (2008): 113–135.

[2] The bibliography at Anja-Silvia Goeing, Sennert Collaborators (Website In Progress), https://sennertcollab.omeka.fas.harvard.edu/bibliography on literature about Daniel Sennert is regularly updated. For a recent evaluation of Sennert’s contributions to medicine and the sciences see William R. Newman, Atoms and Alchemy: Chymistry and the Experimental Origins of the Scientific Revolution (Chicago, 2006), 83-154; Joel A Klein, ‘Daniel Sennert and the Chymico-Atomical Reform of Medicine’, in Ole Grell and Andrew Cunningham, eds. Medicine, Natural Philosophy and Religion in Post-Reformation Scandinavia (London, 2017), 30–47; and Kaspar von Greyerz, ‘Early Modern Protestant Virtuosos and Scientists: Some Comments’, in: Zygon, vol. 51, no. 3 (2016): 698–717. 

Sennert’s recent biographies are concise. Among them are: Hans Kangro, 'Sennert, Daniel' in Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography, vol. 12 (Detroit, MI, 2008), 310-313; Andreas Lesser, Die albertinischen Leibärzte vor 1700 und ihre verwandtschaftlichen Beziehungen zu Ärzten und Apothekern (Petersberg, 2015), 160-163; and William R. Newman, ‘Sennert, Daniel’, Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Vol. 12, (2008), 310–313. The most revisionist biography of Sennert’s early studies is Christoph Lüthy and William R. Newman, ‘Daniel Sennert’s Earliest Writings (1599–1600) and their Debt to Giordano Bruno’, Bruniana & Campanelliana vol. 6, no. 2 (2000): 261-279.

[3] For a highly complete and useful bibliography of Sennert’s many works see the Union Catalogue of Books Printed in German Speaking Countries in the 17th Century (VD 17), http://www.vd17.de/ , search term ‘Sennert, Daniel’. On Sennert’s teaching see Joel A. Klein, ‘Alchemical Histories, Chymical Education, and Chymical Medicine in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Wittenberg’, in: Harald Meller, Alfred Reichenberger, and Christian-Heinrich Wunderlich, eds. Alchemie und Wissenschaft des 16. Jahrhunderts: Fallstudien aus Wittenberg und vergleichbare Befunde: International Conference in Halle (Saale). (Tagungen des Landesmuseums für Vorgeschichte Halle 15, Halle (Saale), 2016), 293-302.

[4] Compare Richard Arthur, ‘Animal generation and substance in Sennert and Leibniz’, in: Justin E. H. Smith, ed. The Problem of Animal Generation in Early Modern Philosophy (Cambridge, 2006), 147-174; Wolfgang Eckart, ‘“Auctoritas” versus “Veritas” or: Classical Authority and Its Role for the Perception of Truth in the Work of Daniel Sennert (1572-1637)’, Clio Medica, vol. 18, no. 1, (1983): 131-140; Anja-Silvia Goeing, ‘Sennert’s Dissertations and the Furthering of Knowledge in 17^th Century Medicine’, in peer review for History of Universities (2023); Charles D. Gunnoe, Jr., and Dane T. Daniel, ‘Anti-Paracelsianism from Conrad Gessner to Robert Boyle’, Daphnis 48, 1-2 (2020): 104-139; Joel A. Klein, ‘Chymical Medicine, Corpuscularism, and Controvery: A study of Daniel Sennert’s Works and Letters’, Unpublished PhD thesis, Indiana University Bloomington, Bloomington, IN, [2014]; Joel A. Klein, ‘Daniel Sennert, The Philosophical Hen, and The Epistolary Quest for a (Nearly-) Universal Medicine’, Ambix, vol. 62, no. 1 (2015): 29–49. Emily Michael, ‘Daniel Sennert on Matter and Form: At the Juncture of the Old and the New’, Early Science and Medicine, vol. 2, no. 3 (1997): 272–299; Elisabeth Moreau, ‘Chapter 13: Vegetal Analogy in Early Modern Medicine: Generation as Plant Cutting in Sennert’s Early Treatises (1611–1619)’, In: Fabrizio Baldassarri and Andreas Blank, eds. Vegetative Powers: The Roots of Life in Ancient, Medieval and Early Modern Natural Philosophy. (Cham, 2021), 221-240; Michael Stolberg, ‘Das Staunen vor der Schöpfung: “Tota substantia”, “calidum innatum”, “generatio spontanea” und atomistische Formenlehre bei Daniel Sennert’, Gesnerus : Swiss Journal of the history of medicine and sciences, vol. 50, no. 1–2 (1993): 48-65; Michael Stolberg, ‘Particles of the Soul. The Medical and Lutheran Context of Daniel Sennert’s Atomism’, Medicina Nei Secoli, vol. 15, no. 2, (2003): 177-203.

[5] The anthology edited by Marian Füssel provides an orientation to the field of ‘Wissensgeschichte’, that is very close to the history of information envisioned here: Marian Füssel, ed., Wissensgeschichte, Basistexte Frühe Neuzeit, vol. 5 (Stuttgart, 2019). On early modern practices in the history of information, see the entries on ‘libraries and catalogues’ (Paul Nelles, 567-578); ‘cards’ (Markus Krajewski, 353-357), ‘note books’ (Richard Yeo, 636-640); ‘observing’ (Lorraine Daston, 641-646); ‘scribes’ (Ann Blair, 759-753); ‘networks’ (John Brewer, 620-627); in Information, A Historical Companion 2021 (as in note 1); Ann Blair, Anja-Silvia Goeing: ‘Manuscripts as pedagogical tools in the philosophy teaching of Jean-Robert Chouet (1642-1731)’, in: Susanna Berger, Dan Garber, eds., Teaching Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century: Text and Image (Archimedes, vol. 61, Cham [Switzerland], 2022), 165-203; Suzanne Marchand, “How Much Knowledge is Worth Knowing? An American Intellectual Historian's Thoughts on the Geschichte des Wissens”, Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, vol. 42, nos 2-3 (2019): 126-149.

[6] Compare for the many approaches to information history and its goals: Paul Duguid, ‘Introduction’, in: Ann Blair, Paul Duguid, Anja-Silvia Goeing, Anthony Grafton, Information: A Historical Companion (Princeton NJ, 2021), VII-XII.

[7] Arthur 2006 (as in note 4); Andreas Blank, ‘Daniel Sennert on Poisons, Epilepsy, and Subordinate Forms’, Perspectives on Science, vol. 19, no. 2 (2011): 192–211; Davide Cellamare, ‘Controversies over the Soul and Its Origin’, Early Science and Medicine 25, no. 2 (2020): 195–204; Hiro Hirai, ‘Atomes vivants, origine de l’âme et génération spontanée chez Daniel Sennert’, Bruniana e campanelliana : ricerche filosofiche e materiali storico-testuali, no. 2, Fabrizio Serra Editore, 2007; Hiro Hirai, ‘Daniel Sennert, Chymistry, and Theological Debates,’ Ambix, 68:2-3, 2021, 198-213; Hiro Hirai, Living Atoms, Hylomorphism and Spontaneous Generation in Daniel Sennert. 2012, 77–98; Hiro Hirai, Medical Humanism and Natural Philosophy: Renaissance Debates on Matter, Life, and the Soul. (Leiden, 2011); Christoph Lüthy, ‘Daniel Sennert’s Slow Conversion from Hylemorphism to Atomism’, Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, vol. 26, no. 2, 2005, 99–121; Lüthy and Newman 2000 (as in note 2); Emily Michael, ‘Daniel Sennert on Matter and Form: At the Juncture of the Old and the New’, Early Science and Medicine, vol. 2, no. 3, (Leiden, 1997), 272–299; Newman 2006 (as in note 2); William R. Newman, ‘Corpuscular Alchemy and the Tradition of Aristotle’s Meteorology, with Special Reference to Daniel Sennert’, International Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. 15, no. 2 (2001): 145–153; Idem, ‘Elective Affinity Before Geoffroy: Daniel Sennert's Atomistic Explanation of Vinous and Acetous Fermentation’, in: Gideon Manning, ed. Matter and Form in Early Modern Science and Philosophy (Leiden, 2012, 99–124); Idem, Promethean Ambitions: Alchemy and the Quest to Perfect Nature (Chicago, 2004; Chicago Scholarship Online, 2013); Idem, ‘The Significance of ‘Chymical Atomism’, Early Science and Medicine, vol. 14, no. 1-3, (2009): 248–264; Giancarlo Zanier, ‘Studi - La presenza di Patrizi nella filosofia naturale di Daniel Sennert’, Bruniana e campanelliana : ricerche filosofiche e materiali storico-testuali, no. 2, (2004).

[8] Michael Stolberg, Learned Physicians and Everyday Medical Practice in the Renaissance. Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2022. Open Access, see also the exhibition catalogue Sascha Salatowsky and Michael Stolberg (eds.), Eine göttliche Kunst. Medizin und Krankheit in der Frühen Neuzeit (Katalogband zur Ausstellung in der Forschungsbibiothek Gotha). Gotha 2019. For early modern alchemical laboratories, see Pamela Smith’s groundbreaking work, Pamela H. Smith, The Business of Alchemy Science and Culture in the Holy Roman Empire (Princeton, NJ, 1994, online edition 2016). For the practice on experimentation in 17^th century university see the articles in the special edition of Ambix (2021) on alchemy and the early modern university: Lawrence M. Principe, ‘The Changing Visions of Chymistry at Seventeenth-Century Jena: The Two Brendels, Rolfinck, Wedel, and Others’, Ambix 68, no. 2–3 (2021): 180–97; Elisabeth Moreau, ‘Learning the Chymical Compromise: Paracelsian and Galenic Medicine in Marburg Disputations on Chymiatria’, Ambix 68, no. 2–3 (2021): 154–79; Didier Kahn, ‘The First Private and Public Courses of Chymistry in Paris (and Italy) from Jean Beguin to William Davisson’, Ambix 68, no. 2–3 (2021): 247–72; Hiro Hirai, ‘Daniel Sennert, Chymistry, and Theological Debates’, Ambix 68, no. 2–3 (2021): 198–213; Georgiana D. Hedesan, ‘The Influence of Louvain Teaching on Jan Baptist Van Helmont’s Adoption of Paracelsianism and Alchemy’, Ambix 68, no. 2–3 (2021): 231–46; Ute Frietsch, ‘Making University Fields for Chymistry: A Case Study of Helmstedt University’, Ambix 68, no. 2–3 (2021): 273–301; Ute Frietsch, ‘Alchemy and the Early Modern University: An Introduction’, Ambix 68, no. 2–3 (2021): 119–34.

[9] See Tara Nummedal, Anna Zieglerin and the Lion's Blood: Alchemy and End Times in Reformation Germany (Philadelphia PA, 2019), and Elaine Leong, Recipes and everyday knowledge. Medicine, science and the household in early modern England (Chicago/London, 2018); Volker Hess and Sabine Schlegelmilch: ‘Cornucopia officinae medicae: Medical practice records and their origin’, in: Martin Dinges, Kay Peter Jankrift, Sabine Schlegelmilch and Michael Stolberg, eds. Medical practice, 1600–1900. Physicians and their patients (Leiden 2016), 11–38; and Lauren Kassell, ‘Casebooks in early modern England. Medicine, astrology, and written records’, in: Bulletin of the history of medicine 88 (2014), 595–625. 

[10] Two examples: Emmanuel de Grouchy, ‘Documents relatifs à l’impression des oeuvres de Daniel Sennert (1650) et de François Tallemant (1666)’, Revue des Bibliothèques, vol. 5 (1895), 48-52, publishes an agreement between Lyon and Paris booksellers (-printers) on publishing Sennert’s Medica Opera in three volumes, which shows the demand for Sennert’s work in France thirty years after his death. The English botanist, physician and astrologer Nicolas Culpeper (1616-1654) translated many of Sennert’s works from Latin to English and had them published in London for the education of the wider English public. Digitized copies of these are available in the database Early English Books Online (EEBO), search word ‘Culpeper’. 

[11] Case studies include: Neil Safier, ‘Beyond Brazilian Nature: The Editorial Itineraries of Marcgraf and Piso's Historia Naturalis Brasiliae’, in Michiel Van Groesen (ed.), The Legacy of Dutch Brazil (New York, 2014), 168-186; Natalia Bachour, Oswaldus Crollius und Daniel Sennert im fruhneuzeitlichen Istanbul: Studien zur Rezeption des Paracelsismus im Werk des osmanischen Arztes Ṣāliḥ b. Naṣrullāh Ibn Sallūm al-Ḥalabī. Centaurus Verlag & Media, 2015; Daria Barow-Vassilevitch, ‘Who Needs Albertina Dissertations in Russia? Königsberg Dissertations from the Early Modern Age in the Russian State Library (Moscow)’, in: Meelis Friedenthal, Hanspeter Marti, and Robert Seidel, eds. Early Modern Disputations and Dissertations in an Interdisciplinary and European Context. (Intersections, 71. Leiden, 2021), 577-599, here pp. 581-582 on four dissertations from the former State University Library in Koenigsberg that Johann Lösel--one of Sennert's former students and now professor—presided.  On genres on the medical book market see Nancy G. Siraisi, Communities of learned experience. Epistolary medicine in the Renaissance (Baltimore, 2013), presenting printed medical letters; Ian Maclean, Episodes in the Life of the Early Modern Learned Book (Library of the Written Word, 84, Leiden, 2021), especially the chapters dealing with the time after the Thirty-Year-War until the end of the 17^th century, and Ku-ming Chang, ‘For the Love of the Truth: The Dissertation as a Genre of Scholarly Publication in Early Modern Europe’, Know (2017) 5, no. 1 (2021): 113-166 with important insights into the use and dissemination of medical university exam dissertations.

[12] See in note 10 the Culpeper-translations; an example for public health recommendations is Sennert’s student Michael Doering’s recommendation for Breslau (today Wroclaw in Poland): Michael Doering, Bericht/ Wessen Man Sich in Bevorstehender Infections-Gefahr/ Nicht Allein Mit Praeserviren/ Sondern Auch Mit Curiren Verhalten Solle : Auff Eines Ehrenvesten Rathes Der Käyser: Und Königlichen Stadt Breßlaw Verordnung (Breßlaw, 1625).

[13] Sennert published regularly with more than twenty printing presses at Wittenberg over the course of more than 37 years, including Auerbach, Crato (Krafft), Gormann, Gronenberg, Henckel, Meissner, Müller, Richter, Schürer, Tham and many more, see for a non-conclusive list Anja-Silvia Goeing, Sennert Collaborators (Website In Progress) at https://sennertcollab.omeka.fas.harvard.edu/items/browse?collection=24 . For an evaluation of the world of printing in late 16th and early 17th century Wittenberg compare the essays in Stefan Oehmig, ed. Buchdruck und Buchkultur im Wittenberg der Reformationszeit (Leipzig, 2015), which collectively show that ‘printers transformed the provincial university town of Wittenberg into a major European book publisher by the end of the sixteenth century’, as the reviewer Louis J. Reith pointed out in Lutheran Quarterly, vol. 30, no. 4, 2016, 483–85. On Wittenberg as a place for 17th century medicine and theology, see Martin Mulsow, ‘Introduction’, In: Urban Gottfried Bucher, Zweyer Guten Freunde Vertrauter Brieff (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 2021), 9-170.

[14] Lesser 2015 (as in note 2), 160-163.

[15] Compare Goeing (c. 2023, as in note 4) and Anja-Silvia Goeing, Sennert Collaborators (Website In Progress): http://dighist.fas.harvard.edu/projects/sennertcollab/: As of 2022, we count 109 students who did one or more exercise or exam disputations with Sennert. We know of their origins through the details published in these disputations.

[16] 38 of Sennert’s 109 disputation students (see note 15) can be traced into their professional life, so far, of which sixteen had positions in academia. See the list of Sennert’s students with biographical data at https://sennertcollab.omeka.fas.harvard.edu/exhibits/show/3danielsennertsstudents/respondents-that-we-can-trace-. The following research works localize three of Sennert’s students in academia at Tartu and Kaliningrad: Kaarina Rein, ‘Tartu as the Eastern Outpost of European Medicine in the First Half of the 17th Century’, Acta Baltica Historiae et Philosophiae Scientiarum, 2, no. 1 (2014): 37-52, here p. 40; for Daniel Beckher compare Hanspeter Marti, Manfred Komorowski: Die Universität Königsberg in der Frühen Neuzeit. Köln, 2008, 63-64, for Johann Lösel, Dietrich von Engelhardt: Biographische Enzyklopädie deutschsprachiger Naturwissenschaftler. Band 1, München, 2003, 539. 

[17] Compare in general, Ian Maclean, ‘The medical republic of letters before the Thirty Years War’, in: Intellectual history review 18 (2008): 15–30. A list of medical students at Wittenberg is in Hans Theodor Koch, ‘Die Wittenberger Medizinische Fakultät (1502–1652) – Ein biobibliographischer Überblick’, in: Stefan Oehmig, ed. Medizin und Sozialwesen in Mitteldeutschland zur Reformationszeit. Leipzig, 2007, 289-348; short biographies showing Wittenberg connections and relations between physicians, the court in Saxony and pharmacists in Lesser 2015 (as in note 2). Case studies on Sennert’s students include Goeing (c. 2023, as in note 4); Barow-Vassilevitch 2021 (as in note 11); Klein 2017 (as in note 2).