Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England is a seminal collection that critically examines the transformative period of medical practice and theory. Through a meticulously curated selection of essays, the anthology navigates the vast terrain of 17th-century medical advancements, from the burgeoning of anatomical studies to the early inklings of empiricism shaping the methodologies of investigation. The collection stands out for its comprehensive analysis and inclusion of pieces that collectively highlight the evolution of medical thought, underscored by an interdisciplinary approach that marries historical insights with the intricacies of medical science. The anthology provides an invaluable literary context that showcases the era's diversity in thought and practice, making significant contributions to the understanding of early modern medicine. The editors, Charles W. Bodemer and Lester S. King, bring together contributing authors whose backgrounds span a broad spectrum of expertise. These contributors, through their unique lenses, shed light on the historical and cultural underpinnings of 17th-century medical investigations, offering a cohesive narrative that aligns with pivotal movements of the time. The anthology encapsulates the essence of collaboration among pioneers of medicine, whose collective endeavors significantly pushed the boundaries of contemporary medical knowledge and practice. Scholars, students, and enthusiasts of medical history and early modern studies are the primary audience for this collection. Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England presents a unique opportunity to delve into a critical epoch that shaped modern medical inquiry. Through its array of perspectives and thematic depth, the anthology invites readers to explore the confluence of historical events, cultural contexts, and scientific thought that characterized the period. It is an essential read for those keen on understanding the continuum of medical evolution, offering a platform for education, reflection, and further research into the multifaceted landscape of medical history.

This monograph, the first detailed study of seventeenth-century popular medicine, depicts the major role which lay or popular medical practitioners played in the provision of seventeenth-century health care in England.

The writing of science in the period 1580-1700 is artfully, diffidently, carelessly, boldly, and above all self-consciously literary. The Poetics of Scientific Investigation in Seventeenth-Century English Literature considers the literary textures of science writing — its rhetorical figures, neologisms, its uses of parody, romance, and various kinds of verse. The experimental and social practices of science are examined through literary representations of the laboratory, of collaborative retirement, of virtual, epistolary conversation, and of an imagined paradise of investigative fellowship and learning. Claire Preston argues that the rhetorical, generic, and formal qualities of scientific writing are also the intellectual processes of early-modern science itself. How was science to be written in this period? That question, which piqued natural philosophers who were searching for apt conventions of scientific language and report, was initially resolved by the humanist rhetorical and generic skills in which they were already highly trained. At the same time non-scientific writers, enthralled by the developments of science, were quick to deploy ideas and images from astronomy, optics, chemistry, biology, and medical practices. Practising scientists and inspired laymen or quasi-scientists produced new, adjusted, or hybrid literary forms, often collapsing the distinction between the factual and the imaginative, between the rhetorically ornate and the plain. Early-modern science and its literary vehicles are frequently indistinguishable, scientific practice and scientific expression mutually involved. Among the major writers discussed are Montaigne, Bacon, Donne, Browne, Lovelace, Boyle, Sprat, Oldenburg, Evelyn, Cowley, and Dryden.

Across early modern Europe, men and women from all ranks gathered medical, culinary, and food preservation recipes from family and friends, experts and practitioners, and a wide array of printed materials. Recipes were tested, assessed, and modified by teams of householders, including masters and servants, husbands and wives, mothers and daughters, and fathers and sons. This much-sought know-how was written into notebooks of various shapes and sizes forming “treasuries for health,” each personalized to suit the whims and needs of individual communities. In Recipes and Everyday Knowledge, Elaine Leong situates recipe knowledge and practices among larger questions of gender and cultural history, the history of the printed word, and the history of science, medicine, and technology. The production of recipes and recipe books, she argues, were at the heart of quotidian investigations of the natural world or “household science”. She shows how English homes acted as vibrant spaces for knowledge making and transmission, and explores how recipe trials allowed householders to gain deeper understandings of sickness and health, of the human body, and of natural and human-built processes. By recovering this story, Leong extends the parameters of natural inquiry and productively widens the cast of historical characters participating in and contributing to early modern science.

A Nobel Prize–winning cancer biologist, leader of major scientific institutions, and scientific adviser to President Obama reflects on his remarkable career. A PhD candidate in English literature at Harvard University, Harold Varmus discovered he was drawn instead to medicine and eventually found himself at the forefront of cancer research at the University of California, San Francisco. In this “timely memoir of a remarkable career” (American Scientist), Varmus considers a life’s work that thus far includes not only the groundbreaking research that won him a Nobel Prize but also six years as the director of the National Institutes of Health; his current position as the president of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center; and his important, continuing work as scientific adviser to President Obama. From this truly unique perspective, Varmus shares his experiences from the trenches of politicized battlegrounds ranging from budget fights to stem cell research, global health to science publishing.

Empiricisms is about the value of experience and experiments. Why do we esteem them and what is their contribution to knowledge? The work is unique in the detail with which it explains empiricism, from its beginning in ancient medicine to its emergence as a philosophy of modern science. It elucidates the ideas of the so-called radical empiricists, clarifying their relation to historical empiricism, and explaining what is "radical" about them, and develops a comparison between European empiricism and ideas and practice in traditional China. Bringing China into the argument is an unexpected innovation, and makes the work a model for comparative philosophy.

A re-evaluation of Boyle in the light of new evidence of his tortured religious life and his difficult relations with his contemporaries.