How or what were doctors in the Renaissance trained to think, and how did they interpret the evidence at their disposal for making diagnoses and prognoses? This 2001 book addresses these questions in the broad context of the world of learning: its institutions, its means of conveying and disseminating information, and the relationship between university faculties. The uptake by doctors from the university arts course - the foundation for medical studies - is examined in detail, as are the theoretical and empirical bases for medical knowledge, including its concepts of nature, health, disease and normality. Logic, Signs and Nature in the Renaissance ends with a detailed investigation of semiotic, which was one of the five parts of the discipline of medicine, in the context of the various versions of semiology available to scholars. From this survey, Maclean makes an interesting assessment of the relationship of Renaissance medicine to the new science of the seventeenth century.

The second in a sequence exploring the foundations of learning in the Renaissance, here focusing on medicine.

About the Author
Ian Maclean is Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, and Titular Professor of Renaissance Studies at the University of Oxford. His many publications include The Renaissance Notion of Women (1980), Montaigne (1982), The Political Responsibility of Intellectuals (edited, with Alan Montefiore and Peter Winch; 1990), Interpretation and Meaning in the Renaissance: The Case of Law (1992) and Montaigne: Philosophe (1996).

Reviews
'... a sine qua non for all historians of medicine ...' History
'... to fail to read this book would be to ignore one of the most original contributions to the intellectual history of medieval and Renaissance medicine in recent years.' Isis
'In this important book Ian Maclean has opened up what for many medical historians is one of the most abstruse and difficult areas of Renaissance medicine.' Renaissance Studies
'Maclean's book contributes to our appreciation of the vitality of the late Renaissance intellectual world.' The American Historical Review
'This is a dense, rewarding and remorselessly intelligent study of a neglected aspect of European learned culture written by one of the most original early-modern intellectual historians currently working.' History of Universities
'... provides Renaissance historians and historians of science and medicine with a valuable addition to our picture of early modern intellectual life.' Journal of the History of Medicine



Book Information
ISBN 9780521806480
Author Ian Maclean
Format Hardback
Page Count 430
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 800g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 29mm