Medical Publishing in the first age of Print, 1460-1600. (360G-Wellcome-089363_Z_09_Z)

This project will study the production of medical literature in north-western Europe: England, Netherland, France and the Swiss Confederation, together with a more focused case study of ownership in 16th century England and Scotland. Together these countries made up one of the three main zones of book production in Europe (the others being Italy and Germany.) From Paris, Lyon, Geneva and Basle, they supplied a large part of the learned market for medicine. They also served three distinct vernacu lar communities, the English, French and Dutch. They therefore provide an ideal laboratory for studying the marketplace of medical books. This project will first assemble the extant corpus of books published. Medical books will all be tagged for content. Secondly, the project will investigate the relationship between production and ownership through a pilot study of collections in 16th century Britain. The investigation of ownership will show whether a complex scholarly medical collection co uld be assembled without recourse to the larger centres of production in Venice or Germany. It will demonstrate how widely ownership of medical books had spread into the general book buying population. It will cast light on the importance of medical publishing in the general marketplace of books.