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The Battle of Medical Books: Publishing Strategies and the Medical Market in the Dutch Republic (1650–1750)

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Books in Motion in Early Modern Europe

Part of the book series: New Directions in Book History ((NDBH))

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Abstract

This chapter explores the spatial and temporal aspects of medical publishing strategies in the Dutch Republic in the period 1650–1759. Taking the relation between publication strategies, location and medical knowledge as a starting point, it studies the interaction between cheap, locally oriented print and more durable, widely circulating books, between established and itinerant practitioners and between the local and regional trade in medical publications. The chapter shows how practitioners and publishers, using ephemeral material such as newspaper advertisements and promotional material, created new geographical, commercial and social spaces, for example the ways in which public spaces such as bookshops, squares and coffee houses connected patients, doctors and booksellers on the one hand, and therapies, medicines and medical publications on the other. It also shows how printed material with more durability or broader geographical diffusion was employed to solidify professional reputations.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Livingston describes the relation between reading and locations as follows: ‘The argument is that where scientific texts are read has an important bearing on how they are read. This realization points to a fundamental instability in scientific meaning and to the crucial significance of what might be called located hermeneutics.’ D.N. Livingstone, Putting Science in Its Place. Geographies of Scientific Knowledge (Chicago, 2003).

  2. 2.

    See more on these concepts in the introduction to this volume. See also A. Johns, The Nature of the Book. Print and Knowledge in the Making (Chicago and London, 1998), 62–74; M. Ogborn and C.W.J. Withers, ‘Book geography, book history’, in Geographies of the Book, ed. idem (Farnham, 2013), 1–25.

  3. 3.

    M. Pelling, Medical Conflicts in Early Modern London. Patronage, Physicians, and Irregular Practitioners 1550–1640 (Oxford, 2003); H.J. Cook, Matters of Exchange. Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the Dutch Golden Age (London, 2007).

  4. 4.

    The Popularisation of Medicine, 1650–1850, ed. R. Porter (London, 1992).

  5. 5.

    H. van Goinga and J. Salman, ‘Expansie en begrenzing van de interne markt. De achttiende eeuw’, Jaarboek voor Nederlandse boekgeschiedenis, 16 (2010), 171–219; R. Houston, Literacy in Early Modern Europe. Culture and Education 1500–1800 (New York, 1988).

  6. 6.

    Medicine and the Market in England and its Colonies c. 1450–c. 1800, ed. M. Jenner and P. Wallis (New York, 2007); M. Lindemann, Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2010), 281–283.

  7. 7.

    D.E. Harkness, The Jewel House. Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution (New Haven, 2007), 57–96.

  8. 8.

    D. Gentilcore, Medical Charlatanism in Early Modern Italy (Oxford, 2006); Pelling, Medical Conflicts in Early Modern London, 225–274.

  9. 9.

    Lindemann, Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe, 262–277; M. Ramsey, Professional and Popular Medicine in France, 1770–1830 (Cambridge, 1988), 17–65; A. Wear, Knowledge and Practice in English Medicine 1550–1680 (New York, 2000), 21–28.

  10. 10.

    H. Mikkeli and V. Marttila, ‘Change and continuity in early modern medicine (1500–1700)’, in Early Modern English Medical Texts. Corpus Description and Studies, ed. I. Taavitsainen and P. Pahta (Amsterdam, 2010), 13–27.

  11. 11.

    Pelling, Medical Conflicts in Early Modern Europe, 136–188; Lindemann, Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe, 261–262; Ramsey, Professional and Popular Medicine in France, 129–175.

  12. 12.

    L. Kassel, Medicine and Magic in Elizabethan London. Simon Forman: Astrologer, Alchemist, and Physician (Oxford, 2005).

  13. 13.

    Some positive exceptions are: M.J. van Lieburg, Woord en boek in de geschiedenis van de geneeskunde. Een beschouwing over de toegankelijkheid van medische kennis (Rotterdam, 1988); I. Maclean, Learning and the Market Place. Essays in the History of the Early Modern Book (Leiden, 2009); Books and the Sciences in History, ed. M. Frasca-Spada and N. Jardine (Cambridge, 2000).

  14. 14.

    Harkness, The Jewel House, 75–96.

  15. 15.

    J. Salman, Populair drukwerk in de Gouden Eeuw. De almanak als lectuur en handelswaar (Zutphen, 1999), 103–134.

  16. 16.

    R. Porter, ‘Introduction’, in The Popularisation of Medicine, 1650–1850, ed. idem (London, 1992), 1–16; M.E. Fissell, ‘Popular medical writing’, in The Oxford History of Popular Print Culture. Vol. 1: Cheap Print in Britain and Ireland to 1660, ed. J. Raymond (Oxford, 2011), 398–430.

  17. 17.

    Fissell, ‘Popular medical writing’; A. Pettegree, The Book in the Renaissance (New Haven, 2010), 297–318.

  18. 18.

    J. Salman, Pedlars and the Popular Press. Itinerant Distribution Networks in England and the Netherlands 1600–1850 (Leiden, 2014), 190; Ramsey, Professional and Popular Medicine in France, 166–167.

  19. 19.

    Harkness, The Jewel House, 57–96.

  20. 20.

    M.A. van Andel, ‘Kwakzalvers-reclames in vroeger eeuwen’, NTVG, (1912), 299.

  21. 21.

    Van Andel, ‘Kwakzalvers-reclames’, 298.

  22. 22.

    See D. Kranen, Advertenties van kwakzalvers en meesters in de Oprechte Haerlemse Courant uit de periode 1656–1733 (Ede, 2008).

  23. 23.

    Which means 25 eurocents in 2015.

  24. 24.

    D.H. Couvée, ‘The administration of the “Oprechte Haarlemsche Courant” 1738–1742’, Gazette, 4 (1958), 94–110; H. van Goinga, Alom te bekomen. Veranderingen in de boekdistributie in de Republiek 1720–1800 (Amsterdam, 1999), 35–42, 287–291.

  25. 25.

    Kranen, Advertenties van kwakzalvers, 29.

  26. 26.

    Kranen, Advertenties van kwakzalvers, 190.

  27. 27.

    Kranen, Advertenties van kwakzalvers, 108, 112, 116, 138, 153.

  28. 28.

    G.A. Lindeboom, Dutch Medical Biography. A Biographical Dictionary of Dutch Physicians and Surgeons 1475–1975 (Amsterdam, 1984), 730.

  29. 29.

    Van Andel, ‘Kwakzalvers-reclames’, 300.

  30. 30.

    Kranen, Advertenties van kwakzalvers, 149.

  31. 31.

    Kranen, Advertenties van kwakzalvers, 130.

  32. 32.

    J.R. Jansma, Louis de Bils en de anatomie van zijn tijd (Hoogeveen, 1919).

  33. 33.

    Kranen, Advertenties van kwakzalvers, 33. Stephanus Blankaart, Verhandelinge van het podagra en vliegende jicht [‘Treatise on gout’] (Amsterdam, Jan ten Hoorn, 1684). (UL Amsterdam, 646 G 17).

  34. 34.

    Van Goinga and Salman, ‘Expansie en begrenzing’, 186.

  35. 35.

    Hendrik van Deventer, Manuale operatien, I. deel. zijnde een nieuw ligt voor vroed-meesters en vroed-vrouwen [‘Manual Operations. Part 1. A new light for midwives’] (‘‘s-Gravenhage: Gedrukt met Privilegie by en van den Auteur’, 1701 [The Hague, Printed with patent by and for the author, 1701]). (UL Amsterdam, O 61–6190).

  36. 36.

    Lindeboom, Dutch Medical Biography, 434–435.

  37. 37.

    This is the result of bibliographical analysis based on the Short Title Catalogue Netherlands (<URL: http://www.stcn.nl> [11 February 2016]). Two non-members of the local booksellers’ guild were active as publishers: J. Swart (Amsterdam) and Jacques Fabre (Groningen). Kranen, Advertenties van kwakzalvers, 138–140, 142–143.

  38. 38.

    Kranen, Advertenties van kwakzalvers, 179.

  39. 39.

    Kranen, Advertenties van kwakzalvers, 153, 156.

  40. 40.

    Kranen, Advertenties van kwakzalvers, 169–170.

  41. 41.

    Geschiedenis van Amsterdam. Dl II.2: Zelfbewuste stadstaat 1650–1813, ed. W. Frijhoff and M. Prak, (Amsterdam, 2005), 47.

  42. 42.

    E. Lane Furdell, Publishing and Medicine in Early Modern England (Rochester, 2002), 124–125.

  43. 43.

    Cook, Matters of Exchange, 66–67, 294. Cornelis Bontekoe, Tractaat van het excellenste kruyd thee [‘Treatise on the excellent herbal tea’] (Den Haag, P. Hagen, 1678), xciii. (UL Amsterdam, 663 D 9).

  44. 44.

    Kranen, Advertenties van kwakzalvers, 156–157.

  45. 45.

    J. Monnikhoff, Ontleed- heel- en werktuig-kundige zamenstelling ter ontdekking van de […] geneesingen der scheursels, of breuken [‘Anatomical, surgical and instrumental work to discover how to cure ruptures and fractures’] (Amsterdam, D. onder de Linden, 1750). (UL Amsterdam, O 61–4743).

  46. 46.

    OHC 24-04-1717, 16-07-1717, 09-08-1718. Kranen, Advertenties van kwakzalvers, 143, 145.

  47. 47.

    In 1733 Johan III also advertised cures against venereal diseases, which his father had not. Kranen, Advertenties van kwakzalvers, 61–67.

  48. 48.

    Van Duren also advertised in the Amsterdam Newspaper of 1721 (13 May) for his medical baths. E. Groenenboom-Draai, De Rotterdamsche Hermes (1720–1721) van Jacob Campo Weyerman. Cultuurhistorische verkenningen in een achttiende-eeuwse periodiek (Rotterdam, 1994), 369–371.

  49. 49.

    Johan van Duren, De Ontdekking der Bedriegerijen vande gemeene Pis-Besienders [‘The discovery of the deceit of the low-down quack’] (Amsterdam, Timotheus ten Hoorn, 1688) (ex. UL Amsterdam, 652 E 32). Van Duren also published some religious works.

  50. 50.

    There seems to have been mutual appreciation and admiration, because Stephen Blankaart in turn dedicated some works to Van Duren (I). See for example De nieuwe nederlantsche apothekers winckel […] [‘The new Dutch apothecary’] (Amsterdam, Jan Claesz. ten Hoorn, 1678) (ex. John Rylands Library, Manchester, Medical 304).

  51. 51.

    I. Leemans, Het woord is aan de onderkant. Radicale ideeën in Nederlandse pornografische romans 1670–1700 (Nijmegen, 2002), 278–281.

  52. 52.

    Kopye van zekere ampele Acte […] Rakende de Wetenschap van de oprechte Anatomije des Menselijken Lichaams [‘A copy of an act on the true anatomical science of the human body’] (Rotterdam, Johannes Næranus, 1659). (UL Amsterdam, 638 F 11:10).

  53. 53.

    Jansma, Louis de Bils en de anatomie van zijn tijd, 7–36; Kranen, Advertenties van kwakzalvers, 51–52.

  54. 54.

    Brief van Louijs de Bils…aan Th. Bartholijn, professor tot Koppenhagen [‘Letter of Louis de Bils to Th. Bartholijn, professor at Copenhagen’] (Rotterdam, Joannes Næranus, 1661). (UL Leiden, 1835 F 30: 14).

  55. 55.

    Kranen, Advertenties van kwakzalvers, 82. The title is Anatomia reformata ofte Hervormde ontledinge des menschelijcken lichaems [‘Anatomia reformata or the reformed dissection of the human body’]. The work was translated by D. Stafford and published by Adriaen Vlack in The Hague in 1658.

  56. 56.

    He died in 1669. The secret of his embalming method was revealed in a notarial act. Jansma, Louis de Bils en de anatomie van zijn tijd, 64–67, 87–88.

  57. 57.

    Jansma, Louis de Bils en de anatomie van zijn tijd, 93–95.

  58. 58.

    OHC 18-01-1685.

  59. 59.

    E.g. OHC 10-03-1685.

  60. 60.

    Their critique was repeated in the Amsterdam Newspaper of 24 July 1685. Kranen, Advertenties van kwakzalvers, 54–58.

  61. 61.

    G. d’ Almerigo, Manifest van de baron d’Almerigo, vinder en eenigste besitter van de groote konst des algemeinen genesinge der siektens door sympathie: tegens eeniger bedriegeren wanbedryf [‘Manifest of the baron d’Almerigo, discoverer and only owner of the great art of sympathy to cure diseases, against treacherous imposters’] (S.n) [ascribed to Jan van Eynhoven], (S.l.), 1699) (UL Utrecht, Knuttel 14457). Kranen, Advertenties van kwakzalvers, 56–58.

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  1. University of Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Jeroen Salman

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  1. Institute for the Study of the Book, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Erlangen, Germany

    Daniel Bellingradt

  2. Carleton University , Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

    Paul Nelles

  3. University of Utrecht , Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Jeroen Salman

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Salman, J. (2017). The Battle of Medical Books: Publishing Strategies and the Medical Market in the Dutch Republic (1650–1750). In: Bellingradt, D., Nelles, P., Salman, J. (eds) Books in Motion in Early Modern Europe. New Directions in Book History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-53366-7_8

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