The material culture of health: hospitals in renaissance Italy

Book synopsis: The question of health and disease has been central to medicine since Hippocrates. Centuries later, the Greek-Roman physician Galenus was anxious to compile the knowledge of ancient medicine in a uniform system. This synthesis entered the Western tradition and shaped the medicine mainly from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Age. A transfer of medical knowledge took place through the inclusion of the Arab-Islamic and the Byzantine cultural space. The present volume is a reflection of this exchange through the epochs and cultures: for example, the side-by-side and co-existence of Christian-Arab and Samaritan physicians in the 12th-century crusaders, where there was a special mobility between cultures. The importance of Jewish scholars for the mediation of medical knowledge in the Middle Ages as well as the traditions of Early Age healing, which have been derived since ancient times, are discussed