Bodily Fluids, Chemistry and Medicine in the Eighteenth-Century Boerhaave School

Ruben E. Verwaal is NWO Rubicon Research Fellow at the Institute for Medical Humanities, Durham University, and curator of the medical collections at the Erasmus University Medical Centre, Rotterdam. He specialises in history of early modern science and medicine, material culture, and critical medical humanities.

• 1 Introduction.- 2 Savouring Alchemy.- 3 The Nature of Blood.- 4 Piss Prophets and Urine Matters.- 5 Crying Over Spilt Milk.- 6 Sweat it Out.- 7 Semen in Flux.- 8 Conclusion.

“Verwaal’s book builds on these studies and adds to this growing body of work new insights about the complex interdependence between physiological theory and the diverse chemical practices developed in relation to medicine during the early 18th century. ... Verwaal’s book offers extremely readable descriptions of medical research practices in the early 18th century, which are in fact too little researched to this day.” (Barbara Orland, Nuncius, Vol. 38 (3), November, 2023)