by Nancy G. Siraisi (1997)
Girolamo Cardano (1501-1576), renowned as a mathematician, encyclopedist, astrologer, and autobiographer, was by profession a medical practitioner. His copious writings on medicine reflect both the complexity and diversity of the Renaissance medical world and the breadth of his own interests. In this book, Nancy Siraisi draws on selected themes in Cardano's medical writings to explore in detail the relation between medicine and wider areas of Renaissance culture. Cardano's medical advice included the suggestion that "the studious man should always have at hand a clock and a mirror" - a clock to keep track of the passage of time and a mirror to observe the changing condition of his body. The remark, which recalls his astrological and autobiographical interests, is emblematic of the many connections between his medicine and his other pursuits. Cardano's philosophical eclecticism, beliefs about occult forces in nature, theories about dreams, and free transactions between academic and popularizing scientific writing also contributed to his medicine.
Jonathan Miller
Fantastic look at how we came to discover the human body. This book is fun to read out loud as the prose is other worldly. Dr Miller looks at select systems (eg. blood, lungs, reproductive etc) in the body and wonderfully pieces together the history, both scientific and mythologic, of how we came to our current understanding. Highly recommended for anyone considering a career in medicine. It will change your view of our body and the world.
F. González-Crussí
"In Carrying The Heart, Dr. F. Gonzalez-Crussi reveals not just how our bodies breathe air, pump blood, give birth, digest food, and discard waste, but the sometimes bizarre, often hilarious, and always fascinating history of how mankind unlocks these anatomical secrets."--Jacket.
Michael W. Charney
"Powerful Learning is the first intellectual history of one of the great Buddhist empires of Southeast Asia, Konbaung Burma, before the British conquest. The book challenges the notion of the court and the monastic order as static institutions by examining how competition within and between them prompted major rethinking about the intellectual foundations of indigenous society and culture. The catalyst for this reformation of indigenous thought was the rise of a small clique of Buddhist monks and lay people from the frontier to commanding positions in the state and monastic order over the course of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This clique had a major influence on the creation of state myths, the ways in which the throne ruled and presented itself, and, ultimately, the relationship between the throne and the state. The new state and monastic orthodoxy, however, was challenged by other Burmese literati, who, over the course of the nineteenth century, sought in Western science, technology, and political theory other ways in which to shape Burmese perspectives on state and society. In the process, the Burmese underwent a difficult transition from premodern to modern intellectual thought, one that helped usher in British rule." from publisher
Anthony Levi
"In this new survey of the development of European intellectual culture between about 1300 and 1535, Anthony Levi offers a fresh view of the Renaissance and the Reformation, calling for a reassessment of the nature of both. Through a radical and detailed examination of the significant intellectual, spiritual, and ideological developments across Europe during this period, Levi disputes the discontinuities commonly understood to explain and defend the events we term the "Renaissance" and the "Reformation." He argues that the renewed cult of the literary, visual, and educational norms of classical antiquity were a consequence - not the essence or cause - of the Renaissance. Further, the Reformation emerged from a cultural movement that neither constituted a historical break nor led to the catastrophic religious clashes of the sixteenth century. He offers a revisionist account of the collapse of scholastic intellectual systems and traces its course."--BOOK JACKET.