Physician, Patient, Experimenter and Observer: Isaac Beeckman’s Accounts of Illness and Death

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Abstract

On 6 September 1618, Isaac Beeckman received his doctorate in medicine from the university of Caen. Although Beeckman pursued a number of occupations in his life, such as candle maker, schoolmaster and lens grinder, the received opinion is that he never really put his medical degree into practice and that his medical interests were mainly theoretical. This is illustrated by the many notes in the Journal on medical disputations, often in relation to his developing mechanical philosophy of atomism. However, apart from writing about medicine from an exclusively theoretical angle, Beeckman also engaged with illness and bodily ailments he encountered during his everyday life, including a few cases in which he himself was the patient. Considering the fact that he was a trained man of medicine, the question arises: in what manner did Beeckman write about his everyday aches and illnesses? Did he follow the common narrative of many patients at that time, or was he primarily looking at himself, and perhaps even others, through the lens of a trained physician?

The study of lay perceptions of illness and medicine, in addition to the common approach to the physician's view, has become a major subject in the field of medical history since Roy Porter's famous 1985 article ‘The Patient's View: Doing Medical History from Below’.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationKnowledge and Culture in the Early Dutch Republic
Subtitle of host publicationIsaac Beeckman in Context
EditorsKlaas van Berkel, Albert Clement, Arjan van Dixhoorn
PublisherAmsterdam University Press
Chapter8
Pages181-200
ISBN (Electronic)9789048551477
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2022
Externally publishedYes

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