Communities of Learned Experience: Epistolary Medicine in the Renaissance

Sixteenth-century physicians had their letters on medical topics published in printed collections to record their exchange of ideas and make known their professional expertise.

During the Renaissance, collections of letters both satisfied humanist enthusiasm for ancient literary forms and provided the flexibility of a format appropriate to many types of inquiry. The printed collections of medical letters by Giovanni Manardo of Ferrara and other physicians in early sixteenth-century Europe ma...