Alisha Rankin
Biographic Data
| ID | 3785274 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Alisha Rankin |
| GIVEN NAMES | Alisha |
| FAMILY NAME | Rankin |
| SIGNATURE | RANKIN A |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 8 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
The Great Elector’s Table
A Centaur in London
Learned Physicians and Everyday Medical Practice in the Renaissance
Institutional Reckonings in the History of Medicine
Institutional Reckonings in the History of Medicine Jeremy Greene, Alisha Rankin, and Gabriela Soto Laveaga This issue of the Bulletin includes three independently proposed articles that converge on the topic of institutional racism—and student activism against it—in the context of academic medicine in the United States. Two of the essays focus on the recent role of student activists in decrying the racist and eugenicist ideologies of vaunted phy…
New World Drugs and the Archive of Practice
This essay examines European vernacular translations of the Spanish physician Nicolás Monardes’s treatises on drugs from the New World. I use the concept of an “archive of practice,” a set of original sources based in practices rather than texts, to examine how translators articulated or disarticulated indigenous Amerindian knowledge in Italian, English, French, Dutch, and German sources. Examining practice as a kind of archive allows us to consi…
Testing Drugs and Trying Cures
This article examines traditions of testing drugs (as substances) and trying cures (on patients) in medieval and early modern Europe. It argues that the history of drug testing needs to be a more central story to overall histories of scientific experiment. The practice of conducting thoughtful-and sometimes contrived-tests on drugs has a rich and varied tradition dating back to antiquity, which expanded in the Middle Ages and early modern period.…
On Anecdote and Antidotes
This article describes the use of poison trials, in which an animal or a condemned criminal was poisoned, to test antidotes in sixteenth-century Europe. In contrast to most drug testing in medieval and early modern Europe, which was gathered in the normal course of therapeutic experience, the poison trial was a contrived, deliberate event. I argue that poison trials had an important function in both medical testing and medical writing in the peri…
Ulinka Rublack. The Astronomer and the Witch
Johannes Kepler has always been among the most enigmatic of the early modern astronomers. Famous today for his laws of planetary motion and his defense of the Copernican system, he also infused his astronomy with a religious mysticism and believed fervently in God’s celestial design and his own ability to read it. Ulinka Rublack’s The Astronomer and the Witch: Johannes Kepler’s Fight for His Mother adds a superb new view of the full complexity of…
Exotic materials and treasured knowledge
Estate inventories taken after the death of sixteenth‐ and seventeenth‐ century G erman noblewomen occasionally contain itemizations of court apothecaries. These accounts not only portray the pharmacy as squarely under the guidance of the women in question, they also give us a sense of what specific materia medica noblewomen used in their practice. At the same time, this essay argues, inventories are inherently flawed historical documents, becaus…
Panaceia's Daughters
"Panaceia's Daughters provides the first book-length study of noblewomen's healing activities in early modern Europe. Drawing on rich archival sources, Alisha Rankin demonstrates that numerous German noblewomen were deeply involved in making medicines and recommending them to patients, and many gained widespread fame for their remedies. Turning a common historical argument on its head, Rankin maintains that noblewomen's pharmacy came to prominenc…
Der Dienst Am Kranken
Reviewed by: Der Dienst Am Kranken: Krankenversorgung zwischen Caritas, Medizin und Okonomie vom Mittelalter bis zur Neuzeit Alisha Rankin Gerhard Aumüller, Kornelia Grundmann, and Christina Vanja, eds. Der Dienst Am Kranken: Krankenversorgung zwischen Caritas, Medizin und Okonomie vom Mittelalter bis zur Neuzeit. Veröffentlichungen der Historischen Kommission für Hessen 68. Marburg: N. G. Elwert Verlag, 2007. xv + 383 Ill. €24.00 (978-3-7708-131…
Duchess, Heal Thyself
This article uses the case of German noblewoman Elisabeth of Rochlitz as a window on sixteenth-century patient attitudes toward disease and the body. A widowed duchess of Saxony, Elisabeth spent the last twenty years of her life battling an increasingly serious string of illnesses. Despite her ready access to learned physicians and her friendly relationship with several of them, she used a wide variety of practitioners and frequently privileged l…
Becoming an Expert Practitioner
This essay proposes that the well-documented interest in empirical and experimental practice at the early modern German courts was not limited to male practitioners. Just as princes evinced an interest in practical alchemy, mathematics, and astronomy, a large number of gentlewomen became expert medical practitioners. Using a case study of one noblewoman, Electress Anna of Saxony, I would like to expand the notion of "prince-practitioning" to a mo…
European Expansion and Self-Definition
From the beginning of European expansion, natural knowledge was both its precondition and its constantly developing product. Over the course of the fifteenth century, the Portuguese voyages of exploration in the western and southern Atlantic and along the coast of Africa promoted the development of new knowledge regarding marine navigation and orientation, as well as the ability to rule the seas. They led to new experiences as new seas were saile…
Perfecting Aristotle
Becoming an Expert Practitioner
This essay proposes that the well-documented interest in empirical and experimental practice at the early modern German courts was not limited to male practitioners. Just as princes evinced an interest in practical alchemy, mathematics, and astronomy, a large number of gentlewomen became expert medical practitioners. Using a case study of one noblewoman, Electress Anna of Saxony, I would like to expand the notion of "prince-practitioning" to a mo…
New World Drugs and the Archive of Practice
This essay examines European vernacular translations of the Spanish physician Nicolás Monardes’s treatises on drugs from the New World. I use the concept of an “archive of practice,” a set of original sources based in practices rather than texts, to examine how translators articulated or disarticulated indigenous Amerindian knowledge in Italian, English, French, Dutch, and German sources. Examining practice as a kind of archive allows us to consi…
Perfecting Aristotle
European Expansion and Self-Definition
From the beginning of European expansion, natural knowledge was both its precondition and its constantly developing product. Over the course of the fifteenth century, the Portuguese voyages of exploration in the western and southern Atlantic and along the coast of Africa promoted the development of new knowledge regarding marine navigation and orientation, as well as the ability to rule the seas. They led to new experiences as new seas were saile…
Becoming an Expert Practitioner
This essay proposes that the well-documented interest in empirical and experimental practice at the early modern German courts was not limited to male practitioners. Just as princes evinced an interest in practical alchemy, mathematics, and astronomy, a large number of gentlewomen became expert medical practitioners. Using a case study of one noblewoman, Electress Anna of Saxony, I would like to expand the notion of "prince-practitioning" to a mo…
Duchess, Heal Thyself
This article uses the case of German noblewoman Elisabeth of Rochlitz as a window on sixteenth-century patient attitudes toward disease and the body. A widowed duchess of Saxony, Elisabeth spent the last twenty years of her life battling an increasingly serious string of illnesses. Despite her ready access to learned physicians and her friendly relationship with several of them, she used a wide variety of practitioners and frequently privileged l…
Der Dienst Am Kranken
Reviewed by: Der Dienst Am Kranken: Krankenversorgung zwischen Caritas, Medizin und Okonomie vom Mittelalter bis zur Neuzeit Alisha Rankin Gerhard Aumüller, Kornelia Grundmann, and Christina Vanja, eds. Der Dienst Am Kranken: Krankenversorgung zwischen Caritas, Medizin und Okonomie vom Mittelalter bis zur Neuzeit. Veröffentlichungen der Historischen Kommission für Hessen 68. Marburg: N. G. Elwert Verlag, 2007. xv + 383 Ill. €24.00 (978-3-7708-131…
Panaceia's Daughters
"Panaceia's Daughters provides the first book-length study of noblewomen's healing activities in early modern Europe. Drawing on rich archival sources, Alisha Rankin demonstrates that numerous German noblewomen were deeply involved in making medicines and recommending them to patients, and many gained widespread fame for their remedies. Turning a common historical argument on its head, Rankin maintains that noblewomen's pharmacy came to prominenc…
Exotic materials and treasured knowledge
Estate inventories taken after the death of sixteenth‐ and seventeenth‐ century G erman noblewomen occasionally contain itemizations of court apothecaries. These accounts not only portray the pharmacy as squarely under the guidance of the women in question, they also give us a sense of what specific materia medica noblewomen used in their practice. At the same time, this essay argues, inventories are inherently flawed historical documents, becaus…
Testing Drugs and Trying Cures
This article examines traditions of testing drugs (as substances) and trying cures (on patients) in medieval and early modern Europe. It argues that the history of drug testing needs to be a more central story to overall histories of scientific experiment. The practice of conducting thoughtful-and sometimes contrived-tests on drugs has a rich and varied tradition dating back to antiquity, which expanded in the Middle Ages and early modern period.…
On Anecdote and Antidotes
This article describes the use of poison trials, in which an animal or a condemned criminal was poisoned, to test antidotes in sixteenth-century Europe. In contrast to most drug testing in medieval and early modern Europe, which was gathered in the normal course of therapeutic experience, the poison trial was a contrived, deliberate event. I argue that poison trials had an important function in both medical testing and medical writing in the peri…
Ulinka Rublack. The Astronomer and the Witch
Johannes Kepler has always been among the most enigmatic of the early modern astronomers. Famous today for his laws of planetary motion and his defense of the Copernican system, he also infused his astronomy with a religious mysticism and believed fervently in God’s celestial design and his own ability to read it. Ulinka Rublack’s The Astronomer and the Witch: Johannes Kepler’s Fight for His Mother adds a superb new view of the full complexity of…
Institutional Reckonings in the History of Medicine
Institutional Reckonings in the History of Medicine Jeremy Greene, Alisha Rankin, and Gabriela Soto Laveaga This issue of the Bulletin includes three independently proposed articles that converge on the topic of institutional racism—and student activism against it—in the context of academic medicine in the United States. Two of the essays focus on the recent role of student activists in decrying the racist and eugenicist ideologies of vaunted phy…
New World Drugs and the Archive of Practice
This essay examines European vernacular translations of the Spanish physician Nicolás Monardes’s treatises on drugs from the New World. I use the concept of an “archive of practice,” a set of original sources based in practices rather than texts, to examine how translators articulated or disarticulated indigenous Amerindian knowledge in Italian, English, French, Dutch, and German sources. Examining practice as a kind of archive allows us to consi…
Learned Physicians and Everyday Medical Practice in the Renaissance
A Centaur in London
The Great Elector’s Table
History (10 works) · Art (9 works) · Classics (7 works) · German (5 works) · Medicine (5 works) · Archaeology (4 works) · History of Medicine Studies (4 works) · Law (4 works) · Philosophy (4 works) · Political science (4 works)