题目：Medicinal Botany in the Renaissance: Actors, Works, Results
主讲人：Alain Touwaide and Emanuela Appetiti（Institute for the Preservation of Medical Traditions）
主持人：蒋澈（清华大学科学史系）
主办单位：
清华大学科学史系
清华大学科学人文经典研究中心
第一讲 尼古劳·列奥尼切诺、普林尼与药用植物：从传统到研究
Nicolao Leoniceno, Pliny, and Medicinal Plants: From Tradition to Investigation
主讲人：Alain Touwaide
时间：2026年11月13日（周五）16:00–17:30
地点：清华大学蒙民伟人文楼B206
讲座摘要
The Ferrarese physician Nicolao Leoniceno (1428–1524) is currently recognized as a book collector, scholarly editor and translator of Galenic texts, and the author of a short untitled work conventionally identified as De Plinii et aliorum in medicina erroribus. In the scholarly debate identified in contemporary history of science as the Pliniana controversio, he is credited with challenging the authoritative status of Pliny’s Natural History and the medieval pharmacotherapeutic tradition. While he indeed promoted a critical reassessment of existing pharmacotherapeutic literature and practice resulting in a reorientation toward their Greek foundational sources during the early sixteenth century, he implicitly established the groundwork for an innovative epistemic strategy capable of renewing scientific practice through a return to the elements. This lecture investigates the significant transformative influence of Leoniceno’s contributions as an instrument for observation and systematic classification.
第二讲 马蒂奥利论迪奥斯科里德斯《论药物》：古代药用植物学的瓦解
Mattioli on Dioscorides, De materia medica: The Collapse of Ancient Medical Botany
主讲人：Emanuela Appetiti
时间：2026年11月16日（周一）10:00–11:30
地点：清华大学蒙民伟人文楼B206
讲座摘要
During the 16th century, Pietro Andrea Mattioli (1501–1578), a renowned Italian physician, established himself as a leading international figure through his translation and extensive commentary on De materia medica—Dioscorides’ seminal first-century work on the natural substances employed for the preparation of medicines. Though scholarly studies have often examined Mattioli’s Dioscorides, particularly in art history due to its striking botanical illustrations, comprehensive analysis of it as a complete body of work—encompassing its multilingual versions and successive editions—remains surprisingly scarce. Through exhaustive and comparative examination of all available versions and editions, and their meticulous analysis, this presentation unveils a more nuanced and precise understanding of Mattioli’s scholarly production as an evolving project that resulted in collapsing the classical authority in matter of medicinal plants, including because of the introduction of species from beyond the Mediterranean perimeter and the New Worlds.
第三讲 16世纪药用植物学中的迪奥斯科里德斯和盖伦：艰难的抉择
Dioscorides and Galen on Medical Botany in the 16th Century: A Difficult Strategic Choice
主讲人：Alain Touwaide
时间：2026年11月17日（周二）10:00–11:30
地点：清华大学蒙民伟人文楼B206
讲座摘要
During Classical Antiquity, the pharmaceutical substances derived from natural sources constituted the subject matter of two seminal treatises: De materia medica by Dioscorides and De simplicibus by Galen. Despite their identical topic, these two works result from fundamentally different methods: Dioscorides was predominantly descriptive, whereas Galen was definitely analytical. Already in the Late Antique period, these divergent scientific approaches generated a significant dilemma for both scientists and practitioners. Just like Byzantium before it, the Renaissance confronted this essential epistemological question. A comprehensive examination of scholarly production during the first half of the sixteenth century unveils a noteworthy yet discernible strategic choice that this presentation will elucidate.
主讲人简介
Alain Touwaide earned a PhD in Classics at the University of Louvain (Belgium, 1981) and a Habilitation à diriger des recherches in Ancient and Medieval History at the University of Toulouse (France, 1997). He researches the history of ancient science, particularly botany, medicinal plants, medicine and therapeutics in the Mediterranean World from archaic Greece to the Ottoman Empire. With such interests he has been in residence in medical schools, colleges of pharmacy, and faculties of sciences across the globe in a scientific Grand Tour that included over the past twenty years the Botany Department of the Smithsonian Institution, the University of California, Los Angeles, The Huntington Gardens and Library, the Pharmacognosy Institute at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and the Center for Hellenic Studies of Harvard University. At the same time, he has been searching for Greek manuscripts and texts on these topics in libraries all over the world and has been doing research and teaching in departments of Classics and History, centers for Byzantine studies, and faculties of Humanities worldwide. To better foster the development of original research in this vast and complex field of research he co-founded the Institute for the Preservation of Medical Traditions in 2007 with his wife and long-term research partner, Emanuela Appetiti. Among his multiple publications is A Census of Greek Medical Manuscripts (London and New York: Routledge, 2016) published in the series Medicine in the Medieval Mediterranean that he has created, and Greek Medical Manuscripts, Diels Catalogues in 5 tomes published by De Gruyter in the series Medical Traditions that he has created and directs. In 2025 he has been honored by the publication of the 3-tome collection of essays Manuscripts, Plants, Remedies published in Medical Traditions, that offers 80 original contributions penned by 100 authors and aptly expresses the meaning of this 50-year long pioneering research activity.
Emanuela Appetiti is a Sociologist with a specialization in Ethno-Anthropology (La Sapienza University, Rome, Italy, 1987). She is a co-founder and the President and CEO of the Institute for the Preservation of Medical Traditions (Washington, DC, USA), and a co-founder of the UNESCO Chair Plantae Mediterraneae- Plants for Health in the Mediterranean Traditions, established at the University of Salerno, Italy, in 2020. She is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Pharmaceutical Sciences (October 2021), an Affiliate Scholar at the University of Oklahoma, Department of History of Science, Technology, and Medicine (January 2022), an Adjunct Fellow in the National Centre for Naturopathic Medicine, Southern Cross University, Lismore, NSW, Australia (May 2022), and a Research Associate at the Center for Hellenic Studies, Harvard University, Washington DC (May 2023).
For the past thirty years, she has focused her research on the history of medicine and ethnobotany, dividing her interests between Australian Aboriginal traditional medicine and the transmission of knowledge on the uses of medicinal plants in the ancient Mediterranean world. She has done research in institutions throughout the world and has been a co-organizer of several international congresses and exhibitions.
Fluent in Italian (mother tongue), English, French, and Spanish, she is a member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)—Species Survival Commission—Medicinal Plant Specialist Group, of the Editorial Boards of ISIS-Current Bibliography, the journal Chinese Medicine and Culture, and of the book collection Ciências e Culturas (Science and Cultures), Coimbra University Press (Portugal), and a member of the Scientific Committee of the Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences. She has been the Editor of the quarterly e-newsletter of the International Society for the History of Medicine, from its creation in 2014 until 2018.