MEDICINE EMBODIED: PERSONIFICATIONS OF THE MEDICAL ARTS IN MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN EUROPE

This paper examines the way the various medical disciplines (medicine, surgery, pharmacy) were personified in medieval and early modern Europe. Following in the footsteps of Katharine Park’s work on personifications of nature, it draws on historical, art historical, and literary sources and methodologies to explore the evolution of emblematic depictions of medicine (as a discipline) in early modern Europe and situate these changes within professional disputes in the healing arts.  In contrast to Nature, who had a recognizable emblematic persona despite significant historical developments, personifications of medicine varied widely. While Medicina tended to be depicted as a woman holding a urine flask in the Middle Ages, her image became far more disjointed in the sixteenth century. A 1574 Philips Galle engraving depicted the goddess Panacea as the embodiment of all medical arts, emphasizing the hands-on aspect of medicine. This depiction also resonated with other contemporary textual comparisons between the goddess Panacea and real women active in pharmacy. While Galle’s depiction of Panacea united the disciplines under one image and drew on the increasing artisanal presence in the healing disciplines, other emblematic depictions instead portrayed the Greek medical god Aesculapius, Panacea’s father, asserting the male tradition of medical learning. Still other emblems continued to portray Medicina as a bland woman. These disjointed personifications of medicine can also be seen in textual descriptions of the medical arts, whichran the gamut from deploring the debasement of learned medicine to calling for a great attention to medicine as a handicraft.