Ärzte, Astronomen und Astrologen — wissenschaftsgeschichtliche Genealogie als Einblattdruck

Summary

With its power to construe and legitimize origins, genealogical discourse proved of great significance for early modern conceptions of the history of science and played an important role in its popularization. To these ends, new media were developed in the context of vehement calls for the renewal of the present. Jakob Ruf (1505–1558), a city surgeon, playwright and member of Zürich’s intellectual community, wrote a catalogue with approximately 400 names of figures famous in medical and astronomical history, ranging from Greco-Roman antiquity, the bible, the Middle Ages and Renaissance. The preface of this Latin manuscript connects the present to this honorific genealogical compendium of medical and iatromathematical thought and deduces from it the urgency of a reformation of medical practice in Zürich. The second text to be presented — the Astrologentafel — takes the form of an ensemble of three single-leaf-prints with woodcuts and four-verse couplets in the vernacular. The two texts are interconnected and can only be understood in the context of the genealogical discourse of medical and, more generally, scientific historiography.