The following sources provide overviews of ideas, people, and branches of study in the early history of science and medicine. They are a quick way to find out the basic facts and current points of debate.
When using an article in an encyclopedia or handbook, always check the bibliography for further reading at the end of the article. It will provide a selective list of the books, articles, and, frequently, Web resources considered to be the most up-to-date and reliable.
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History 118 : Medieval Science and Medicine (HC)
I. Encyclopedias and Other Background Readings:
This three volume set features essay-length chapters rather than short encyclopedia articles. The authors are leading scholars who write insightful, lively analyses that help readers understand the importance of the issues.
This 2005 encyclopedia has over 300 articles written by more than 150 specialist authors. Note , for example, the three page article on the calendar with a bibliography of books and articles as well as the See Also references to related articles on almanacs, astrology, astronomy, and clocks and timekeeping. This volume is good for browsing.
This collection of short essays on secondary sources includes medicine and technology topics (e.g. "Plague," "Herbalism"). While many of the articles address topics from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, others focus on the Middle Ages or begin with scholarship on the medieval period. This guide is useful for sorting out the most significant scholarly writings on an issue.
This set addresses the varied social impacts of science, medicine, and technology. Volumes One and Two include the Middle Ages. There is good coverage of Islamic and Chinese science in these volumes as well as many biographical articles and shorter entries for the time period.
II. Finding Journal Articles:
Journal articles and similar essay publications often provide current information on a focused topic. The following indexes are good ways to identify and find these useful materials.
History of science, technology, and medicine
Provides citations and some brief abstracts to journal articles, conference proceedings, books, book reviews, and dissertations in the history of science, technology and medicine and allied historical fields from prehistory to the present.
International medieval bibliography-online.
Provides abstracts and citations to articles on medieval subjects in journals, Festschriften, conference proceedings, and collected essays. Covers all aspects of medieval studies within the period 450 to 1500 for Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.
Journals of Special Interest
Watch for these authoritative journal titles when you are searching indexes and scanning footnotes. You can also browse the latest issues online or in paper because it takes some time for indexes to add newly published articles and essays.
Early science and medicine
Holdings:
(Bryn Mawr College) Available from 1996-2003.
(Haverford College) Available from 1996-present.
(Swarthmore College) Available from 1996-2003.
Publisher: Leiden [Netherlands] : E.J. Brill,
Isis (Chicago, Ill. : Online)
Holdings:
(Bryn Mawr College) Available from 1913-present.
(Haverford College) Available from 1913-present.
(Swarthmore College) Available from 1913-present.
Publisher: Chicago, Ill. : Published by the University of Chicago Press for the History of Science Society,
Journal of the history of medicine and allied sciences
Holdings:
(Bryn Mawr College) Available from 1996-present.
(Haverford College) Available from 2000-present.
(Swarthmore College) Available from 2000-present.
Publisher: Oxford, UK : Oxford University Press.
III. Finding Primary Sources:
You can find some primary sources in Tripod. Look for the subject word "sources" along with subject words like medieval or middle ages:
Popular and practical science of medieval England
Publisher: East Lansing : Colleagues Press, c1994.
Sources for the history of medicine in medieval England
Publisher: Kalamazoo, Mich. : Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, c1995.
Tripod also has translations of important individual texts. Search for these by the authors' names or by the original titles:
Science in the medieval world
Publisher: Austin : University of Texas Press, 1991.
"During the Middle Ages, a thriving center for learning and research was Muslim Spain, where students gathered to consult Arabic manuscripts of earlier scientific works and study with famous teachers. One of these teachers was Said al-Andalusi (Said of Andalusia), who in 1068 wrote Kitab Tabaqat al-Umam, or "Book of the Categories of Nations," which recorded the contributions to science of all known nations. Today, it is one of few surviving medieval Spanish Muslim texts and is here translated into English for the first time." --BOOK JACKET.
A dialogue on natural philosophy
Publisher: Notre Dame, Ind. : University of Notre Dame Press, c1997.
Editions of scientific and medical texts are also available in the original Latin and European vernaculars. If you have even a little experience reading the language in question, take a look at a short passage. You may find that it is easier to understand than you expected because of your course readings.
Commentarius in VIII libros physicorum Aristotelis;
Publisher: Boulder, Col., University of Colorado Press, 1963.
Middle English medical texts
Publisher: [Amsterdam] : John Benjamins Pub. Co., c2005.
Electronic corpus of half-a-million words including three traditions of medical writing (surgical treatises, specialized texts, and remedy books) from c. 1375 to c. 1500, and an appendix of recipes from c. 1330. Most text samples come from printed editions, but new material (unpublished theses, new transcripts) is also offered. Includes MEMT presenter software suite to view and browse texts and perform corpus searches.