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SUMMARY:The physician's Stammbuch: humanist cultures of medical networking
  - Maria Avxentevskaya (Freie Universität Berlin)
DTSTART:20160307T130000Z
DTEND:20160307T141500Z
UID:TALK63635@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:39097
DESCRIPTION:By the term Stammbuch\, German historiographical tradition mai
 nly means album amicorum or 'memory book' – a genre that first became po
 pular in the Protestant circles in mid-sixteenth century\, where a piece o
 f manu propria advice from Luther or Melanchthon could be viewed as a coll
 ectable rarity and a letter of recommendation. Stammbuch documents offer r
 ich evidence on theological\, literary\, musical\, and medical cultures of
  the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries\, as well as the vitality of huma
 nist scholarship in verbal and visual quotes. German Stammbücher depicted
  vividly the episodes of early Protestant polemics\, but also captured the
  development of essential values of early-modern medical inquiry\, as many
  of alba amicorum were kept by physicians travelling between celebrated ac
 ademic communities. My paper will explore the heuristic role which the hum
 anist cultures of collecting and transferring experience\, as displayed in
  Stammbücher\, played in promoting early-modern medical experimentalism.\
 n\nFor instance\, Johann Georg Volckamer (1616–1693)\, a well-recognized
  physician and travelling writer\, subsequently the President of Leopoldin
 a\, kept a Stammbuch where he collected notes from fellow scholars at nume
 rous European universities. In 1645\, his Stammbuch marked a significant p
 oint in an entry 'Non verbis sed HERBIS' (capitals as in the original)\, w
 hich can be translated as 'Not by words but by herbs!' In the contemporary
  context\, this mnemonic rhyme referred not to herbs as such but to the pr
 actice of paying more attention to physical symptoms\, or more broadly\, p
 ointed out the experimental character of a qualified medical inquiry. This
  disposition translated the Melanchthon's principle of experientia univers
 alis into procedures of medical observation\, and the message 'Non verbis 
 sed HERBIS' was essentially close to the later motto of the Royal Society 
 of London: nullius in verba.\n\nTravelling the Wanderstrassen across Europ
 e\, Stammbücher helped cultivating experienced collective perception by a
 ttracting attention to significant details in interpreting medical histori
 ae\, processing individual experiences into medical ontologies\, and trans
 forming the relations of intellectual trust into institutional links. My p
 aper will trace the cross-disciplinary transfer of values between humanist
  scholarly networking and experimental medical discourse\, also noting the
  amplifying cultural context of interactions\, as Stammbücher featured so
 phisticated 'paper technologies'\, including folded portraits with witty v
 erses\, drawings of animals\, plants and instruments\, views and maps of c
 ities.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 1\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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