Edited by
Céline Cherici, University of Picardie Jules Verne (Amiens), France.
ISBN : 9781789452099
Publication Date : March 2026
Hardcover 294 pp
170 USD
Co-publisher
Studying and understanding the history of life sciences and medicine in the modern era requires an in-depth reflection on knowledge that is often seen as contradictory.
History of Life Sciences and Medicine 2 presents key concepts from the 16th to the 18th century in an accessible way. It analyses the history of anatomic pathology, clinical practice, experimentation, different life systems, transformism, and the role of images and classifications.
This conceptual study of the history of life sciences thus redefines the links between medicine and biology in a period when the exploration and understanding of the body oscillated between different models, ranging from mechanism to vitalism.
The analyses presented invite reflection on the singularity of ancient concepts such as ‘life’, ‘anatomy’ and ‘experience’, whose definitions are renewed according to techniques and experiments.
1. From Dissection to the Origin of Diseases: 16th–18th Centuries, Céline Cherici.
2. The Clinic or the Art of Diagnosis, Jean François Thurloy.
3. Experimentation on Living Beings in the Modern Era, Jean-Claude Dupont.
4. The Visible and the Invisible: Images of the Body, From Descartes to the Encyclopedists, Paolo Quintili.
5. The Observation and Classification of Living Beings: The Animal, 16th–18th Centuries, Jean-Luc Guichet.
6. Observation and Classification of Living Beings: Plants, Olivier Perru.
7. Models, Systems, and Metaphors for Living Beings, from Descartes to Barthez, Paolo Quintili.
8. The Emergence of Transformism in the 18th and 19th Centuries, Stéphane Tirard.
Céline Cherici is Senior Lecturer in the History and Philosophy of Medicine at the University of Picardie Jules Verne, Amiens, France. Her research interests focus on the history of neuroscience.
