Andrea Cesalpino's ›De Plantis Libri XVI‹ (1583) and the Transformation of Medical Botany in the 16th Century PDF Download

Author: Quentin Hiernaux
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3111001105
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
In 1583 the Italian botanist and physician Andrea Cesalpino (1524–1603) published De Plantis Libri XVI, made of 16 books (libri), considered to be the first treatise where botany is treated independently from medicine. In so doing, he broke with a long tradition inherited in Western science from Antiquity and perpetuated during the Middle Age through the early Renaissance. De Plantis lays the foundations of scientific systematics through a new focus on plant morphology and natural similarities and became a milestone in the history of Western botany. It is a precious testimony to the evolution of botanical and physiological knowledge in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and illustrates the role of Aristotelian philosophy in 16th-century knowledge. The volume includes an introductory essay about Cesalpino's philosophy and botany, a critical edition of the Latin text, a translation, a commentary, and indexes. It should interest scholars in Renaissance studies, historians, and philosophers of science and medicine, as well as botanists and plant scientists curious about the history of plant sciences.

Author: Cristina Bellorini
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 131701149X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
In the sixteenth century medicinal plants, which until then had been the monopoly of apothecaries, became a major topic of investigation in the medical faculties of Italian universities, where they were observed, transplanted, and grown by learned physicians both in the wild and in the newly founded botanical gardens. Tuscany was one of the main European centres in this new field of inquiry, thanks largely to the Medici Grand Dukes, who patronised and sustained research and teaching, whilst also taking a significant personal interest in plants and medicine. This is the first major reconstruction of this new world of plants in sixteenth-century Tuscany. Focusing primarily on the medical use of plants, this book also shows how plants, while maintaining their importance in therapy, began to be considered and studied for themselves, and how this new understanding prepared the groundwork for the science of botany. More broadly this study explores how the New World's flora impacted on existing botanical knowledge and how this led to the first attempts at taxonomy.

Author: Paolo Galluzzi
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 900434232X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 538

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Book Description
The Lynx and the Telescope challenges the traditional interpretation of a programmatic convergence between the visions of Galileo and Cesi’s Academy, while offering a new interpretation of the dynamics that led to the condemnation of Galileo in 1633.

Author: Nicholas Tiho Mirov
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 624

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Book Description
Preface: Working for many years with pines, I have been asked many questions I could not answer. Often I have thought how useful it would be for bothe the curious layman and the busy scholar to have assembled together as much information as possible on pines. Being a biologist, I am primarily interested in the biology of pines-their origin and development, their chemical composition, and their physiological processes. These considerations have naturally led me to the past and present distribution of pines. Difficulties of presenting these aspects of the subject are many The literature on pines is enormous; it is scattered through scientific, trade, and popular journals. What should be included and what omitted were not easy decisions. For instance, chemical components of pine and wood are considered; but physical properties of pine lumber are not, although there is a wealth of published information in that field. Keeping in mind the traditional remoteness of chemistry from plant taxonomy, I have perhaps oversimplified, in a conciliatory mood, the presentation of the chemical aspects of pines. On the other hand, I have attempted to make the presentation of taxonomy palatable to chemists, who are not always concerned with the ways and rules of classifying plants and are apt either to disregard accepted nomenclature entirely or to accept it in an amazingly uncritical manner. Our knowledge of the genus Pinus is rather uneven. Certain groups of chemical substances (polyphenols, terpenes) have been studies extensively; others, such as fats, are still known only sporadically. Alkaloids have been discovered in some pines only recently. Some physiological processes, such as mineral nutrition, have been investigated more thoroughly than others, for example, transpiration. Such unevenness will be noticed throughout the book. I have attempted to give ansers to many questions about pines; many have remained unanswered, and new ones have arisen. I have even attempted to offer some gerealizations and speculations, hoping that their presentation would not be condemned as heresy but, rather, would be accepted as a stimulus to more research along controversial lines. I have always been encouraged by Darwin's remark, in one of his letters to Wallace, that without speculation there would be no progress. N.T. Mirov--Berkeley, California, January, 1967.

Author: George Sarton
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 1512806625
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.

Author: Peter Assion
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Civilization, Medieval
Languages : de
Pages : 752

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Book Description
Betrifft die Handschriften Codd. 87 (S. 97, 99) und 299 (S. 97) der Burgerbibliothek Bern (S. 162-163, 172-173).

Author: Holden Arboretum
Publisher: Kent State University Press
ISBN: 9780873384339
Category : Reference
Languages : en
Pages : 1072

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Book Description
More than 970 rare books, dating from 1479 to 1830 and covering such categories as gardening, herbals, botanical books and landscape architecture are catalogued in this bibliography.

Author: Florike Egmond
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1780236875
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 495

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Book Description
Image-transforming techniques such as close-up, time lapse, and layering are generally associated with the age of photography, but as Florike Egmond shows in this book, they were already being used half a millennium ago. Exploring the world of natural history drawings from the Renaissance, Eye for Detail shows how the function of identification led to image manipulation techniques that will look uncannily familiar to the modern viewer. Egmond shows how the format of images in nature studies changed dramatically during the Renaissance period, as high-definition naturalistic representation became the rule during a robust output of plant and animal drawings. She examines what visual techniques like magnification can tell us about how early modern Europeans studied and ordered living nature, and she focuses on how attention to visual detail was motivated by an overriding question: the secret of the origins of life. Beautifully and precisely illustrated throughout, this volume serves as an arresting guide to the massive European collections of nature drawings and an absorbing study of natural history art of the sixteenth century.

Author: Wilbur Applebaum
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1135582564
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1298

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Book Description
With unprecedented current coverage of the profound changes in the nature and practice of science in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe, this comprehensive reference work addresses the individuals, ideas, and institutions that defined culture in the age when the modern perception of nature, of the universe, and of our place in it is said to have emerged. Covering the historiography of the period, discussions of the Scientific Revolution's impact on its contemporaneous disciplines, and in-depth analyses of the importance of historical context to major developments in the sciences, The Encyclopedia of the Scientific Revolution is an indispensible resource for students and researchers in the history and philosophy of science.

Author: Anna Pavord
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408820765
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 802

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Book Description
For centuries, some of the most brilliant minds in Europe searched for the rules of nature's game. In a world full of plagues and poisons, many medicines were made from plant extracts and there was a practical need to differentiate between one plant and another. Alongside this was an overwhelming desire to make sense of the natural world. Scholars, aided by the artists who painted the first pictures of plants, set out looking, writing and classifying, but 2,000 years were to pass before any rules became clear. Anna Pavord takes us on an exhilarating and fascinating journey through botanical history, travelling from Athens in the third century BC, through Constantinople and Venice, Padua and Pisa to the present day.