Centres of Medical Excellence?

Ole Peter Grell is Professor in Early Modern History and Director of the Renaissance and Early Modern Research Group at The Open University, UK. Andrew Cunningham is Senior Research Fellow in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge, UK. He also wrote and presented the BBC Radio 4 series The Making of Modern Medicine; and Jon Arrizabalaga is Senior Researcher in History of Science at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Institución Milà i Fontanals (IMF), Barcelona, Spain

• Contents: Part I Where to Go and How to Get There: The Bartholins, the Platters and Laurentius Gryllus: the peregrinato medica in the 16th and 17th centuries, Andrew Cunningham; Medical education and centres of excellence in 18th-century Europe: towards an identification, Laurence Brockliss; The mobility of medical students from the 15th to the 18th centuries: the institutional context, Hilde Ridder-Symoens. Part II The Peregrinato Medica, from the Peripheries to the Centres and Back Again: Spanish medical students' peregrinato to Italian universities in the Renaissance, Jon Arrizabalaga; On Portuguese medical students and masters travelling abroad: an overview from the early modern period to the Enlightenment, Mário Sérgio Farelo; Pieter van Foreest and the acquisition and travelling of medical knowledge in the 16th century, Catrien Santing; 'Like bees, who neither suck nor generate their honey from one flower': the significance of the peregrinato academica for Danish medical students in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, Ole Peter Grell. Part III The Centres of Excellence: Medical education in Padua: students, faculty and facilities, Cynthia Klestinec; Paris: 'certainly the best place for learning the practical part of anatomy and surgery', Toby Gelfland; Medical education in 18th-century Montpellier, Elizabeth A. Williams; Herman Boerhaave at Leiden: communis Europae praeceptor, Rina Knoeff; Science, practice and reputation: the University of Göttingen and its medical faculty in the 18th century, Hubert Steinke; The importance of being Edinburgh: the rise and fall of the Edinburgh medical school in the 18th century, Helen Dingwall; Index.

'... an engaging and insightful volume... Although the evidence based on student responses to university life may sometimes be scant and problematic, it is to the contributors' credit to have successfully based their accounts on fresh documentary material and a subtle reading of the student records.' Renaissance Quarterly 'It is richly detailed and the scope of its component methodologies impressive, managing to balance individual case studies with broader contextual discussions... The breadth and scope of the research throughout the work is truly impressive, and it is pleasing to note that the spread of essays is truly pan-European, with no one area especially privileged... this work will doubtless make a strong contribution not only to the increasing historiography of medical education in the early modern period, but to the history of European medicine more generally.' British Journal for the History of Science '[Centres of Medical Excellence]'s real contribution is to revitalize and reorient the existing historiography on medical education by directing more attention to students and by explicating the dynamically interactive quality of learning in the early modern world.' European History Quarterly