Materia Médica

Materia médica exploresthe intersection of the sciences and humanities in Spanish sixteenth-and seventeenthcentury representations of the extraordinary within the larger scheme of the Baroque. Medical and chirurgicaltreatises, discourses, letters, broadsheets, and paratexts of the period share with the humanities thought processes,methods, patterns, and—most importantly—some forms of description. Archival evidence broadens the spectrum ofthese texts, and cases are frequently compared to similar instances in disciplines such as theology, literature, andthe law.

Materia médica maps, among other notions, the imagination, the spectacular, the legendary, and the “novelesque” in scientific writing and examines the influence of the theatrical in representations of medical cases as stated by doctors themselves. The analyses of Materia médica tilt between the world of fact and fantasy and explore the effect of the descriptions of its cases on the social sphere.