Mos Historicus: A Critical Review of European History

The outbreak of new diseases in an era of religious and spiritual crisis: medical humanism and the control of the body and soul as a method of medical treatment

The outbreak of new diseases in an era of religious and spiritual crisis
Published: Apr 23, 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.12681/mh.34277
Keywords:
New diseases French Disease Rome Counter-Reformation body culture medical gymnastics
Maria Kavvadia
Abstract

The paper examines how the humanist physician and later professor of medicine at the great Universities of Italy, Girolamo Mercuriale of Forlì (1530-1606), addressed the issue of new diseases in medical as well as religious-social terms in his medical book De arte gymnastica (Venice, 1569), while he served as the personal physician of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese (1520-1589). Mercuriale's medical gymnastics, as a medical method for the treatment of new diseases, stands out as paradigmatic, on the one hand, of the scientific-medical culture of mid-sixteenth century Rome and, on the other hand, the political-religious strategies of the Catholic Church regarding the control of body culture in the context of the Counter-Reformation.

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