BETWEEN THE ART OF WORDS AND ART OF MEDICINE: ANDREAS LIBAVIUS AND JOHANNES JESSENIUS
BETWEEN THE ART OF WORDS AND ART OF MEDICINE: ANDREAS LIBAVIUS AND JOHANNES JESSENIUS

Summary/Abstract: Renaissance, as a period of transition between the Middle Ages and the era of scientific knowledge, was represented by polymaths who understood the need for renewal, openness to a new stage that would break away from dogma and enter the field of science. The ideal of this age was to create a more rational man, inclined to science and less and less tributary and bound by religious precepts. The microscope, introduced by Antoni Van Leeuwenhoek in 1879, had behind it stages of development in just one century: from 1590 when Hans Jansen and his son Zacharias invented the first optical microscope. We must not forget the cosmologist, mathematician and priest Nicolaus Copernicus and what gave to the world in 1543. This period of intellectual fervor would also challenge the way people understood medicine. This branch of human knowledge, at the junction of the applied sciences and the humanities, had the most to gain from the freedom that human spirituality experienced during the Renaissance. This article focuses on two personalities of medicine whose contributions would open the horizon of medicine that was in its first steps on the path of evolution, but which also enriched the German culture through their writings.

• Details
• Contents