It is generally considered that Vesalius pioneered the study of anatomy, however he did have a number of significant predecessors whose contributions were essential in the history of anatomy. It is argued that the most notable was Berengario da Carpi, who lived in the 15th/16th Century and is considered by […]
The Anatomy of Melancholy is a patchwork quilt of almost half-a-million words of miscellaneous learning, an inexhaustible quarry of quotations, a rambling, often irrelevant, irregularly systematised commentary on the human comedy, always excessive and overspilling. It is the life work of a melancholy philosopher who in spite of his depression […]
On April 22, 1721, the HMS Seahorse arrived in Boston from the West Indies, carrying goods, cargo, and unbeknown to its crew, a deadly virus. Soon, a smallpox epidemic had broken out in Boston, causing hundreds of deaths and panic accross the city. The clergy, including the famed Cotton Mather, […]
Marco Santagata's 'Dante: The Story of His Life' illuminates one of the world's supreme poets from many angles—writer, philosopher, father, courtier, political partisan. Santagata brings together a vast body of Italian scholarship on Dante's medieval world, untangles a complex web of family and political relationships, and shows how the composition of the 'Commedia' was […]
Marcus Porcius Cato, also known as Cato the Younger, was an aristocrat who walked barefoot and slept on the ground with his troops. He was a political heavyweight who cultivated the image of a Stoic philosopher and a hardnosed defender of tradition. Cato was a figure who presented himself as a […]
Florence was the Athens of the Renaissance. Cosimo de Medici laid the foundation for Medici power in Florence through his international banking power and patronage of art, architecture, and humanism. Using modern methods of war and diplomacy, Cosimo was instrumental in maintaining Florentine power and prestige. A shrewd judge of […]
