'Objects', pp.111-39.

ABSTRACT: No object is medical per se but in the early modern period a large number of artefacts and specimens became the focus of medical attention or acquired health-giving significance. The prime medical material object was the human body. Increased research into its secrets aroused the curiosity not only of specialists but of a large strata of the population. It spurred the creation of new spaces, equally devoted to scholarly investigation and to display and urged the production of a vast new material culture aimed at visualizing human anatomy in vivid two or three-dimensional forms. Similar enthusiasm surrounded objects from the mineral, animal and vegetable worlds: they were widely-regarded not just for purposes of study and collection, but as means of cure and protection. The focus on objects and the ways in which they were understood, produced and used contributes significantly to reformulate categories and assumptions in the history of early modern medicine that are still reflected in museum displays. It leads in particular to question the tendency to distinguish medical from religious/magical objects, to separate popular from learned medicine, and to portray the production of natural and medical knowledge as an elite occupation, confined to the professionals and the learned members of the ‘republic of letters.’ Instead, studying objects suggests that the less-educated and socially disadvantaged participated broadly in the new culture of the body and the natural world. They were informers and collectors of specimens, producers of health-significant artefacts; but also recipients of anatomical displays, and consumers of medically-efficacious images and amulets. Meanwhile, in the home, domestic furnishings were increasingly attributed a role in health maintenance. The study of material culture broadens considerably, therefore, our understanding of what is medicine and who makes it in the early modern period.