EDCMA

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This event has been cancelled. 

A seminar delivered by Professor Mackenzie Cooley.

Professor Mackenzie Cooley is an Assistant Professor of History and Director of the Latin American Studies Program at Hamilton College. Her first book, The Perfection of Nature: Humans, Animals, and Race in the Renaissance, was just published by the University of Chicago Press.

Bioprospecting and Ecologies of Medicine in the Early Modern World’ draws from material from Professor Cooley’s second book project, which she describes as follows, ‘My second book, provisionally titled Treasury of Knowledge: Medicine in Renaissance Empire, weaves together the histories of European physicians and local medical experts, the medical commodities they used, and ideas of health to reveal a polycentric Iberian empire that rested on the interconnected medical expertise of its subjects. This revisionist account argues that the Iberian empire was motivated not solely by conquistadors’ obsession with gold, glory, and God, but also by a desperate search for good health. New territories brought new local expertise and medicines, which would in turn foster a healthy population who might acquire yet more lands in a cycle of conquest and cures. Given the high stakes, it was no wonder that imperial administrators, wealthy families, and local lords dispatched some of their best medical contacts onto vessels that set sail for the East and West Indies. Though marred by violence and unequal power relations, an informal network of medical practitioners – including Spanish, Portuguese, and Italians connected through a Medical Republic of Letters – worked in this new imperial framework to develop the first global pharmacopeia to confront the catastrophic health consequences of early globalization. In light of the symbiotic relationship between Italian intellectual culture and medical and nature studies in the Iberian World, this study depends on archival research in numerous Italian collections.