Medicine Matters in Five Comedies of Shakespeare

Luisa Camaiora is former full professor of English linguistics at the Catholic University of Milan, where she was also Dean. She was previously professor of English Literature at the Universities of Udine, Milan State and Verona. She has published on Shakespeare and English Renaissance poets and has written books and articles on eighteenth and nineteenth-century poets and novelists.Andrea A. Conti, M.D., is researcher and aggregate professor in the history of medicine at the University of Florence. His publications in Italian and international scientific journals, many indexed on the Medline database, treat the history of Western medicine, and particularly infectious diseases, bioethics, clinical epidemiology, and the methodology of biomedical research.

• Luisa Camaiora/Andrea A. Conti: Premise – Andrea A. Conti: Part I: Some Features of the Renaissance Context – Introduction – Humours and the Body – Pestilences and Diseases – Medical Interventions and Preparations – Practitioners – Institutions, Medical Progress and Health Care – Luisa Camaiora: Part II: A Reading of Five Comedies of Shakespeare – Note on the Chronology of the Comedies – Undifferentiated Diagnoses in The Comedy of Errors: Reliance on Visual Evidence – Logorrhoeic Symptoms in Love’s Labour’s Lost: Indigestion of Words – The Chameleon Syndrome in The Two Gentlemen of Verona: Mutation in Love – Homoeopathic Necessity in The Taming of the Shrew: Interactive Therapy – Tempers and Distempers in The Merry Wives of Windsor: Variable Humours – Bibliography.

«The book as a whole adds meaningful and original insights into Shakespeare’s study.»(Elisa Fortunato, Le Simplegadi Vol. XV-No. 17 November 2017)Read the full review here