Death Defied

Biographical note Readership Table of contents

Publication Type:

Book

Pages, Illustrations:

xvi, 472 pp.

Imprint:

BRILL

Language:

English

Biographical note

Luuc Kooijmans, PhD (1985) in History, Utrecht University, was Assistant Professor of History at the University of Amsterdam from 1986 to 1995. He is the author of Friendship and the Art of Survival in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (1997) and Love on Order: The Courtly Life of Willem Frederik van Nassau (2000). In 2004 he was awarded the Prince Bernhard Cultural Foundation Humanities Prize for his oeuvre, and in 2008 he received the Great History Prize for Dangerous Knowledge: Insight and Fear in the Days of Jan Swammerdam (Bert Bakker, 2007).

Diane Webb had a long career as a professional musician before devoting herself entirely to translation. Specialising in historical and art-historical subjects, she has translated books by H.L. Wesseling, Leonard Blussé, Maarten Prak, Geert Warnar, Arianne Baggerman and Rudolf Dekker. She was also a member of the team responsible for the new translation of the complete letters of Vincent van Gogh. For her translation of Herman Pleij’s Colors Demonic & Divine: Shades of Meaning in the Middle Ages & After she was awarded the Vondel Prize for Dutch Translation in 2005.

Readership

All those interested in medical history and anatomy, as well as intellectual history, biographies and early modern history.

List of Figures
Prologue in St Petersburg

1 The Anatomy Lesson
Apothecary’s Apprentice
Anatomical Knowledge
Heroes
Examination
Family
Louis de Bils
Discoveries
Idle Boasting
Vivisection
Descartes
Research
Preservation
Secret Formulas
Doctorate
Confrontation with De Bils

2 Established and Envied
Appointment in Amsterdam
Medical Bastions
An Established Anatomist
Hardened Wax
Research
Professorship
Anatomy Lesson
Intellectuals in Power
Midwifery
Opposition
Gluttonous Tipplers

3 Under Fire
Accusations
Intimidation
Opposing Ruysch
A Nobody
New Knowledge, Old Certainties
The Insolvent Estate
Radical Supporters

4 Ruysch at Work
The Surgeons’ Guild
The Battle for Bodies
The Amsterdam Hortus Botanicus
The House on the Bloemgracht
A Private Museum
Idle Inventions
Surgery
The Workplace

5 Rivals
Perfection
Rivalry
King Stupidity
Discrediting Rivals
Malice Aforethought
Peter the Great in Amsterdam
From Brain to Scrotum
Stone-cutting
Ruysch, Rau and Bidloo

6 The Collection
Capriccio Anatomico
Specimens
Animals
Wonders
The Republic of Letters
Lessons
Deceit
Visitors
Physico-theology

7 The Return of Peter the Great
Collection for Sale
A Return Visit
Secret
The Collection Moves East

8 Reproduction
Rachel
A Dutiful Father
Hendrik Ruysch’s Lessons in Obstetrics
The Placenta
The Shaft
The Development of the Embryo
The Mystery of Reproduction

9 Latter Days
Approaching Death
Late Work
Discussion with Boerhaave
Plant Anatomy
Final Work
Father and Son

10 Ruysch’s Legacy
Possible Successors
Broken Hip
The Estate
Tradition versus Enlightenment: Titsingh and Ulhoorn
Biography
The Secret
The Preparations in the Kunstkamera

Bibliography
Index

€105.00$146.00

Series:

Volume:

31/8

Version:

ISBN13:

9789004225527

Status:

Forthcoming Title

Generational Conflict and University Reform

Heather Ellis, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

This book argues that growing tensions between students and the university authorities were crucial in determining the introduction of key reforms such as competitive examination and a uniform syllabus at Oxford against the background of the American and French Revolutions.

€129.00$179.00

Series:

Volume:

30/7

Version:

ISBN13:

9789004232181

Status:

Forthcoming Title

Studies on Early Modern Aristotelianism

Paul Richard Blum, Loyola University Maryland

In Studies in Early Modern Aristotelianism Paul Richard Blum shows the Aristotelian profile of modern philosophy. Philosophy, sciences mathematics, metaphysics and theology under Jesuit leadership mark the difference of subject-centered modernity from ‘teachable’ school philosophy.

€99.00$136.00

Series:

MEMS

Volume:

29/18

Version:

ISBN13:

9789004221932

Status:

New Title

Venus Seen on the Sun

Translated with Introduction and Notes by Wilbur Applebaum, Illinois Institute of Technology

This text by Jeremiah Horrocks is his accurate prediction and the first observation of a significant astronomical event, and his analysis and comments on the changing nature and pactices of astronomy between Galileo and Newton in the 17th century.

€105.00$144.00

Series:

Volume:

28/6

Version:

ISBN13:

9789004218703

Status:

Forthcoming Title

Matter and Form in Early Modern Science and Philosophy

Edited by Gideon Manning, California Institute of Technology

Bringing together an international team of historians of science and philosophy to discuss the fate of matter and form, this volume shows how disputes about matter and form spurred innovation as well as conservatism in early modern science and philosophy.

€99.00$136.00

Series:

Volume:

27/5

Version:

ISBN13:

9789004221369

Status:

¡Darwinistas! The Construction of Evolutionary Thought in Nineteenth Century Argentina

Alex Levine and Adriana Novoa, University of South Florida

After setting out the intellectual, cultural, and political context of the reception of Darwinism in Argentina, this book presents original translations of central texts in that reception, most of which have never before appeared in English.

€99.00$136.00

Series:

MEMS

Volume:

26/17

Version:

ISBN13:

9789004218710

Status:

Medical Humanism and Natural Philosophy

Hiro Hirai, Radboud University Nijmegen

Exploring Renaissance humanists’ debates on matter, life and the soul, this volume addresses the contribution of humanist culture to the evolution of early modern natural philosophy so as to shed light on the medical context of the Scientific Revolution.

€99.00$136.00

Series:

Volume:

25/4

Version:

ISBN13:

9789004216945

Status:

National, Nordic or European?

Pieter Dhondt, Ghent University

Starting from the bicentenary of Helsinki University in 1840 and finishing with the opening of the University of Iceland in 1911, this volume analyses the importance of university jubilees in Northern Europe for the development of Scandinavist ideas.

€99.00$136.00

Series:

Volume:

24/3

Version:

ISBN13:

9789004214262

Status:

The Sixth Scottish University

Tom McInally, University of Aberdeen

This book deals with an area of Scotland’s intellectual history which previously has been neglected. The alumni of the Scots Colleges abroad gave a distinctive Catholic voice to the Enlightenment with major achievements in Arts, Architecture and scientific experimentation.

€99.00$136.00

Series:

Volume:

23/2

Version:

ISBN13:

9789004211506

Status:

From Earth-Bound to Satellite

Edited by Alison D. Morrison-Low, National Museums Scotland, Sven Dupré, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science and Free University of Berlin, Stephen Johnston, Museum of the History of Science, University of Oxford, and Giorgio Strano, Museo Galileo, Florence

Marking the anniversary of the telescope’s invention, these collected essays highlight a number of significant historical episodes concerning this well-loved instrument, which has played a crucial role in Man’s thinking about his position – literally and philosophically – in the universe.

€129.00$177.00

Series:

Volume:

22/16

Version:

ISBN13:

9789004207035

Status:

Web of Nature: Martin Lister (1639-1712), the First Arachnologist

Anna Marie Roos, University of Oxford

This first full-length biography of Dr. Martin Lister (1639-1712), vice-president of the Royal Society, Royal Physician, and the first arachnologist and conchologist, provides an unprecedented picture of a seventeenth-century virtuoso.