Mat-Med in Transit

MAT-MED in Transit is a three-year project which investigates the circulation of scientific knowledge about the therapeutic properties mainly of plants as well as of animal and mineral substances – the so-called materia medica – in early modern Italy.

Through an interdisciplinary approach combining the history of medicine and book history, it focuses on the reconstruction of medical practices and of pharmacopoeia notions possessed not only by professionals but by ordinary people too, with the ultimate aim of also raising our current awareness of the value of nature as a resource for everyday life.

CDS is developing the digital presence of MAT-MED in Transit through a website, both for disseminating research results among scholars and also for communicating them to a wider public.

The core contribution of CDS is a TEI encoded edition of Pietro Antonio Michiel’s herbal I Cinque Libri di Piante, in which the text, with links to the current identification of plants, will be accompanied by page images from the manuscript. Two minor – but not less crucial – sections, developed in cooperation with CDS, will help the web visitor gain an understanding of where natural substances were available and how they became used as drugs. A woodcut map of Venice will display the distribution of early modern local gardens and a third section will explore the apothecary shops, where medicinal plants and substances were handled and dispensed.

Sabrina Minuzzi, the PI, is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow visiting Brown in 2020 and 2021 from Università Ca’ Foscari in Venice.

Contributors to this project include Sabrina Minuzzi (PI), Elli Mylonas (CDS Lead), Cody Carvel