Centered on the history of medicine and dietetics, this volume examines the types of medical knowledge in the Renaissance, in particular their disciplinary and textual forms. At that time, medical treatises were dedicated to diverse theoretical and practical branches, shaped by various editorial, rhetorical, and institutional strategies. The broad palette of their discursive practices is explored in the first part of the volume, on the basis of case studies in French medical literature. The second part further investigates this theme in the “regimens of health” from antiquity to the seventeenth century. By including the ancient and medieval periods in its scope, the volume aims to show the permanence of early medical theories in Renaissance medicine, reappraising its rhetorical claim of innovation or of departure from the tradition.

The first part of the volume addresses the flourishing of vernacular and Latin translations of medical texts according to their target audience and professional plans (Valérie Worth-Stylianou). The following contribution considers the aesthetic, didactic, and demonstrative function of iconography in surgical and anatomical treatises (Jacqueline Vons). Special attention is paid to Andreas Vesalius's De Humani Corporis Fabrica and its frontispiece, oscillating between “realism and allegory,” “spectacle and vanity” (57, 59). The next essay studies the relation to tradition in the emerging epistemic genres of curationes and observationes, along the lines of Gianna Pomata's research (Mila Maselli). The question of the reception of medical authorities is surveyed in Ambroise Paré’s critical account of “dragon worms” and unicorns (Guylaine Pineau). By pointing to lexical errors related to these creatures, Paré sought to “establish linguistic barriers, control the functioning of figures of speech, and detach textual images from reality” (90). Finally, the articulation of the medical tradition with Paracelsian alchemy is considered in the argumentation of the preface to the French translation of Paracelsus's Chirurgia Magna (Magdalena Kozluk).

The volume's second part offers a chronological and thematic overview of the varying forms of dietetic treatises. The first two essays are related to the diet of women and children in antiquity and the Middle Ages. One examines the nutrition of the newborn child and the nurse in the works of Soranos and Muscio (Danielle Gourevitch). The other looks at the medical sources of the fourteenth-century Reggimento by the Tuscan poet Francesco de Barberino (Cristina Panzera). Healthy regimens are also considered through the prism of religious and philosophical currents rising in the Renaissance. In this regard, the Hygiasticon of the Flemish theologian Leonard Lessius proposed a Jesuit reading of dietetics (Hervé Baudry). In the same period, the Pourtraict de la santé (The picture of health) by the French physician Joseph du Chesne integrated the Paracelsian system in its account of the physician's ethos and the alchemical properties of food (Violaine Giacomotto-Charra). In turn, the virtues of food and the environment are surveyed in early modern treatises on cider (Jacqueline Vons) and on thermal cures in the town of Spa (Geneviève Xhayet). The role of the five senses is explored in the dietary treatises of French physicians Pierre Jaquelot, Nicolas-Abraham de La Framboisière, and André du Laurens, among others (Magdalena Kozluk).

By offering a clear and didactic analysis of a wide range of medical texts, this volume presents a valuable survey of the rhetorical and epistemological strategies proper to Renaissance scholarly literature. The postface, by Marilyn Nicoud, also makes an important point in stressing the continuities and ruptures between the Renaissance texts investigated in the volume and Latin-Arabic medieval culture. The contributions do tend to focus rather closely on primary sources, at times neglecting to provide a broader contextualization and bibliography of the topic under study. Moreover, despite the initial emphasis on the diversity of medical knowledge, practical branches such as anatomy, surgery, and dietetics take priority at the expense of theoretical disciplines like physiology and pathology. It would also have been desirable to provide more contributions on alchemy, given its significance in the transformation of medical knowledge and discourse. But these remarks are by no means intended to diminish the importance of this volume, which is a welcome contribution to the history of early modern medicine.