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SUMMARY:Reading Rivière in early modern England: tracing early modern epi
 stemic itineraries - Elaine Leong (Max Planck Institute for the History of
  Science)
DTSTART:20160303T153000Z
DTEND:20160303T170000Z
UID:TALK63505@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Marta Halina
DESCRIPTION:In the late 1630s\, Lazare Rivière\, professor at the Univers
 ity of Montpellier\, delivered a series of lectures on practical medicine.
  Later\, in response of requests from physicians writing from all over Eur
 ope\, Rivière expanded these to include the theory of diseases and the re
 sulting _Praxis medica cum theoria_ was printed in 1645. The work was huge
 ly popular and translated into French and English. Peter Cole\, the Englis
 h printer of the work\, claims that by 1663 over 1700 copies of the folio-
 sized tome had been sold. Moreover\, the book did not only leap off the sh
 elves of booksellers but was actually read. Surviving copies are often ann
 otated and extracts from the work appear in contemporary medical notebooks
 . In bringing Rivière's work to English audiences\, Cole and his team mad
 e two crucial changes to the text. Firstly\, in his preface\, Cole specifi
 cally targeted 'Ladies and Gentlewomen' as potential purchasers and reader
 s. Thus\, bringing knowledge originating in the University setting into th
 e domestic sphere. Secondly\, later editions were often sold and bound wit
 h the English translation of Rivière's _Observationes medicae_ (1646) so 
 mixing the older _practica_ with the new medical genre of _observationes_.
  This paper traces the _Praxis medica_'s journey from university settings 
 into early modern homes. I examine three crucial stages in this journey. F
 irstly\, the codification of the original _practica_ lectures into print. 
 Secondly\, the transformation from the _Praxis medica_ to _The Practice of
  Physick_ and\, finally\, how readers engaged with and appropriated the kn
 owledge offered by the book. Each one of these steps\, I show\, left its o
 wn epistemic footprint on Rivière's _practica_ and when taken together fo
 rm what might be termed an 'epistemic itinerary'. By that I mean itinerari
 es in which bodies of knowledge (as small as a one-line recipe and as larg
 e as multi-volume work) become entangled as they journey through the windi
 ng\, convoluted processes of early modern book production and reading and 
 writing practices. Historians of science and medicine have recently argued
  that reading\, writing and note-taking practices are now also themselves 
 recognised as knowledge codification processes. The story of Rivière's _P
 raxis medica_\, I suggest\, demonstrates that there is much to be gained b
 y paying close attention to the route (and pit stops) which knowledge take
 s in this process.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 2\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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