How an early modern surgeon and his accessible writings changed medical expertise and the communication of medical knowledge.
Between 1497 and 1512, Hieronymus Brunschwig (ca. 1450–ca. 1530), an obscure craftsman from Strasbourg, wrote books on surgery and pharmacy that transformed medical expertise, how it was codified in print, and how it was communicated to new audiences. Brunschwig was an unlikely author. He apprenticed as a surgeon in the local guild and dispensed medicines from his own shop. But he was remarkably well-read in surgery, alchemy, and medical theory, even if he lacked a university education. His unique authorial voice spoke to the healing practices of craftsmen and common people in a down-to-earth German dialect.
Crafting Medicine, by Tillmann Taape, is the first in-depth study of Brunschwig and his works. In it, Taape argues that Brunschwig's writings shaped a nascent tradition of vernacular medicine. Brunschwig's books represent a key moment in the history of medical print, for they conveyed medical expertise to a new readership of nonacademic practitioners, who became a key audience for a flood of vernacular medical publications during the sixteenth century. Using Brunschwig's books as a unique window into the past, Crafting Medicine beautifully reconstructs the world of science inhabited by Brunschwig, his fellow craftsmen, his translators, and his readers.
By:
Tillmann Taape
Imprint: University of Chicago Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
Spine: 28mm
Weight: 454g
ISBN: 9780226840604
ISBN 10: 0226840603
Series: Synthesis
Pages: 320
Publication Date: 02 February 2026
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
College/higher education
,
Undergraduate
,
Further / Higher Education
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Abbreviations and Conventions Part I. Crafting Medicine in the Early Age of Print Introduction: Medicine, Artisans, Books, and Knowledge 1. Artisans, Healers, Humanists: Practicing and Writing Medicine in Strasbourg, ca. 1500 Part II. Crafting Surgical Identities 2. Between Craft and Learning: Negotiating the Place of Surgery in the Medical Landscape 3. Body, Honor, Health, and Handwork: Surgeons in the City of Artisans Part III. Distilling Knowledge 4. Distilling Medicine: Subtle Remedies for Fluid Bodies 5. Working with Matter Part IV. Crafting Medicine: Embodied Knowledge, Experience, and Print 6. “The Habit of Those Who Have Done It Often”: From Embodied Experience to the Virtual Apprenticeship of Print 7. Gathering Breadcrumbs: Experience and Erfarung in Brunschwig’s Vernacular Empiricism Part V. Crafting Text: Readers, Editors, Translators 8. Dreaming of Vernacular Readers: “Common Medicine” and the Striped Layman 9. Cutting Words, Distilling Experience: The Vernacular Text Work of Translation 10. Reading and Writing Medicine: Annotations in Brunschwig’s Books Conclusion: Crafting Knowledge in Early Modern Europe Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index
Tillmann Taape is a researcher at the Institute for the History of Medicine and Ethics in Medicine at the Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin.
Reviews for Crafting Medicine: Artisans, Knowledge, and the Common Man in Hieronymus Brunschwig's Books on Surgery and Distillation
“Hieronymus Brunschwig pioneered vernacular how-to books about surgery and distillation—two key sites of innovation in early modern European medicine—but until now we’ve lacked up-to-date scholarship about him. Taape’s book gives us a dynamic and inventive Brunschwig, situated in the culture of artisanal Strasbourg, garnering authority from experience and the use of his senses, while staking a claim to better social status for surgeons.” -- Mary Fissell, author of “Pushback: The 2,500-Year Fight to Thwart Women by Restricting Abortion”
