Webinars

Let Me Tell You About the Birds and the Bees

LEONARDO DA VINCI AND THE NATURAL WORLD

Presented by Dr. Jeremy Wasser with Additional Commentary by Dr. Rocky Ruggiero

Leonardo’s drawings of birds and his exploration into the mystery of bird flight are well documented in what is now known as the Codex on the Flight of Birds. In it, da Vinci speculates on the nature of bird flight and suggests devices and methods to test his concepts on how birds achieve their mastery of the air. He also writes of birds and bird flight in the Codex Atlanticus.

Leonardo da Vinci illustrated many other domestic and wild animals: horses—as noted by Vasari—but also dogs, cats, bears and a multitude of insects. His simple sketch of a dragonfly in flight accurately depicted the alternation of the flapping of the fore and hind wings. Thanks to the use of high-speed cameras, we now know that this wing beat pattern is accurate. However, it is not visible to the ordinary human eye.

Come along on a nature walk, with Leonardo da Vinci and physiologist and medical historian, Dr. Jeremy Wasser. We will explore da Vinci’s relationship and understanding of the natural world and how it influenced his representations of mammals, birds, insects, and other creatures. See what Leonardo saw when he observed animals as only he could. Share in the magic and the mystery of da Vinci’s natural world.

Call the Midwife

Women healers from the middle ages to the renaissance

Presented by Dr. Jeremy Wasser with Additional Commentary by Dr. Rocky Ruggiero

Women are conspicuous by their absence from the annals of medical history. The principal reason for this lies in the patriarchal nature of Western societies from Antiquity into the modern era. Women were, for the most part, strictly forbidden from the formal study of medicine (or any other university discipline). With the possible exception of women healers like Trotula and the other so-called “ladies of Salerno”, we have very few records of women as professors of medicine or as recognized masters of the healing arts from the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

In spite of this millennia-long bias, women have played important roles as healers throughout human history. Working as midwives, herbalists, pharmacists, and practitioners of “folk medicine,” women healers have quite possibly examined and treated more patients than their male counterparts.

Join Dr. Jeremy Wasser as we redress this gender imbalance in medical history. This course will explore the ways in which women healers were trained, the specific medical specialties in which they worked, and the ways in which they interacted with their patients, especially female patients. We will also take a look at the response of the male medical community to the presence of women healers in their midst, a response that led, for example, to the formalization of midwifery training and the advent of the “male midwife” beginning in the 16th century.

The Notorious HVB

The Mystical and Medical World of Hildegard von Bingen

Presented by Dr. Jeremy Wasser with Additional Commentary by Dr. Rocky Ruggiero

On September 16 in the year 1098, Mechthild of Merxheim was delivered of her 10th child. As was the custom, the little girl was given to the Church at the age of eight as an “oblate”, destined to become a nun and  live a life of service to God. Thus began the saga of one of the most famous and fascinating women in Church history, Hildegard von Bingen. 

Hildegard was one of a number of medieval women visionaries and mystics, women who received visions they believed came directly from God. Her recounting of them left us with three extraordinary, illuminated manuscripts known as the Scivias (The Way), the Liber Vitae Meritorum (the Book of Life’s Merits), and the Liber Divinorum Operum (the Book of Divine Works). She was a natural historian, a biologist, botanist, geologist, and also a healer. Hildegard wrote two books on physiology and medicine, the Causae et Curae and the Physica, leaving us with profound insights into the medieval understanding of the human body and medicine.

Hildegard’s work soon began to appear outside of Germany and by the year she died, a contemporaneous copy of the Liber Divinorum Operum arrived in Lucca and is now in the Biblioteca Statale. Scholars have suggested that the frescoes on the Camposanto Monumentale in Pisa (painted in 1391) share features with the illuminations of Hildegard’s visionary works as do some of the motifs on the baptismal font in the Basilica di San Frediano in Lucca. It has even been suggested that Hubert and Jan van Ecyk were deeply influenced by her Scivias in their painting of the Ghent Altarpiece.

The Chymical Wedding

Alchemy and Art, Medicine and Magic in the Middle Ages and Renaissance

LIVE HISTORY COURSE with Dr. Jeremy Wasser

Alchemy was about much more than the search for the “Philosopher’s Stone” and the secret of transmuting base metals into gold. Alchemists were chemists before there was the modern science of chemistry. Before those medical disciplines had been formalized, alchemists were pharmacologists and toxicologists. They were healers and physicians of both the body and the soul. The alchemical masters viewed the body holistically. They were on a quest to understand the nature of the body and the influences of the natural world (the macrocosm) in the lives of human beings (the microcosm).

The course will start by tracing the origins of alchemical thinking and review the science and philosophy of ancient practitioners (some of whom we know by legend only). Course content will explore how later alchemical masters, such as Paracelsus, contributed to the evolution of alchemy into a holistic model of the nature of the human body. Physicians at this time were trained in the astrological connections to anatomy and medicine. However, this new holistic approach allowed alchemy to contribute to a novel logical framework for both diagnosis and therapy.

Lectures will examine how alchemical practitioners conceived of disease and how they attempted to use alchemy to “transmute” patients back to health. We will trace the roots of modern chemistry and medicine back to their alchemical origins. A selective review of the relevant alchemical literature will be referenced, along with analyses of the many Medieval and Renaissance artworks illustrating alchemical principles.

Individual lecture descriptions →

The Medical History of the Medici

Wealth, Power, Disease and Death

Presented by Dr. Jeremy Wasser with Additional Commentary by Dr. Rocky Ruggiero

From 1397 to 1743, the Medici family was the most powerful family in Florence and one of the most influential in Europe. They produced bankers, politicians, rulers of Florence and Rome (four popes) and Pan-European aristocrats. Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici started things off by founding the Medici Bank. The Grand Ducal line ended with the death of Anna Maria Luisa de’ Medici. Along with nobility and wealth, family members suffered a wide variety of acute and chronic disorders. Throughout this 350-year period, the Medici schemed, ruled, lived, got sick and died. Join physiologist and medical historian, Dr. Jeremy Wasser, for an overview of the diseases that plagued the Medici throughout their time at the center European power.

Dottore Dante

Dante as Physician and Medicine in the Early Renaissance

Presented by Dr. Jeremy Wasser with Additional Commentary by Dr. Rocky Ruggiero

Dante has been honored for centuries as il Sommo Poeta (the Supreme Poet). But was he also il Sommo Dottore (the Supreme Doctor)? Although there is no firm evidence that Dante ever formally attended university, this gap in his education did not prevent him from having a deep understanding of complex medical concepts for his time. He even included thousands of anatomical, physiological, and medical references in his literary works including his masterpiece, The Divine Comedy. It is clear that he possessed an extraordinary knowledge and understanding of how the human body and the human psyche worked. Let physiologist and medical historian, Dr. Jeremy Wasser, be your guide, not through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, but through Dante’s medical literary legacy. Learn how patients and physicians of his day understood what Hippocrates called “the Nature of the Body” and how medicine was practiced at the transition point between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

"Only What We Love: Understanding Materials as Shared Narrative"

Jane Brucker & Dr. Jeremy Wasser

Hosted by Trier University of Applied Sciences

How can a desire for sustainable living manifest in an ethical art practice without being driven by store bought materials or limited to natural materials such as rocks and sticks? Can material choices contribute to the creation of individual or shared narratives that satisfy our human need for continuity and placemaking on a disturbingly fast-changing planet? Artist Jane Brucker’s material choices are a response to this poetic and ecological challenge. In this presentation, Brucker and her partner/collaborator, biologist and historian of medicine Dr. Jeremy Wasser, marry science and aesthetics to discuss an approach to materials that embrace an ethic of care as a critical social aspect of sustainability. They take as inspiration a quote from the great Senegalese forestry engineer Baba Dioum he notes,

“In the end we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught.”

Monster in Science

“I am not an animal! I am a man!”

Presented by Dr. Jeremy Wasser

Dr. Jeremy Wasser’s talk will help attendees understand how monsters and other horrors activate our biological fear response. These responses are often the root of our own reactions to monsters and what we call “monstrous” that have in turn, fueled misunderstanding, prejudice and some of the most horrific acts throughout history.

The film, The Elephant Man (1980) directed by David Lynch, will serve as the jumping off point for this discussion. Live online presentation via Zoom (registration is required to receive the Zoom meeting link).

About the Monster Lecture Series:

Sometimes translated as "when reason sleeps" and sometimes "when reason dreams," our title is a reference to Francisco de Goya's Capricho no. 43 that brings to light the ungraspable ambiguity of Goya's reference to what produces a monster.

The last year has put to the test our ability to articulate the goals of science, freedom of speech, and society, and in so doing has brought to the surface several "monsters" that lurk therein. The themes that emerged include the growing demonizating of the other vs. the pressing need for social cooperation; the right to voice and the right to cancel that voice out; the objectivity of science in a world consisting of multiplicity of values and points of view that make up the Frankenstein-like social whole. With this in mind, we have decided to approach these four frameworks- science, language, arts & culture, and society- with the hope of shining light on these issues and fostering interdisciplinary dialogue.

This event is sponsored by the Academy of Catholic Thought & Imagination (ACTI), Marymount Institute, William H. Hannon Library, School of Film and Television (SFTV) and the College of Communications & Fine Arts (CFA).

Deaths (and Diseases) of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects

A Medical Casebook Featuring Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael, Caravaggio and Others

Presented by Dr. Jeremy Wasser with Additional Commentary by Dr. Rocky Ruggiero

What do we really know about the diseases that afflicted Michelangelo or Leonardo? What was the actual cause of Caravaggio’s death? Did Raphael really die from too much sex? Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) in his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects gave us the first and not entirely accurate picture of how many of the great and not-so-great artists of the Italian Renaissance lived their lives—but only a bit about their deaths. What light can our modern understanding of medicine shed on these recondite topics? Join physiologist and medical historian, Dr. Jeremy Wasser, for a fascinating trip through the medical records of some of the artistic giants of the Italian Renaissance and Baroque, as he builds a bridge from the medical understanding of Vasari’s time to that of today.

Leonardo da Vinci

Cardiovascular Physiologist and the First Biomedical Engineer

Join physiologist and medical historian, Dr. Jeremy Wasser, PhD, for an introduction to the Leonardo you may not be familiar with. Leonardo da Vinci: Cardiovascular Physiologist and the First Biomedical Engineer will present the ways Leonardo’s ideas on how the body actually works were centuries ahead of his time. You will learn how Leonardo’s keen observations have been re-discovered and confirmed thanks to modern experimental methods and medical imaging techniques such as MRI.

Black Death vs. Covid-19

Between the 6th and 19th centuries Europe suffered three major pandemics of the bubonic plague. From 1346 to 1350 alone, the Black Death claimed approximately 20 million lives and altered the political, medical and cultural nature of the affected societies. What can the history of medicine and the history of art teach us about how we, as human beings, respond to public health crises? Join physiologist and medical historian, Dr. Jeremy Wasser Ph.D., as he compares the pandemics of the past and present; Black Death vs. COVID-19!

The Nature of the Body

Medicine in the Renaissance as Told Through Science, Art, Literature, and Music

Past course: Presented by Dr. Jeremy Wasser

What was it like to be a patient during the Renaissance? Or a doctor? What did it mean to be sick at that time, medically or emotionally? How did society view and address those stricken by disease or injury? And how does the art, music, and literature of the Renaissance help us to learn about sickness and healing during this time?

Medical care at the time was heavily influenced by the medieval Church’s religious and spiritual approach to healing. However, with the Renaissance, new empirical and scientific developments around questions of medicine challenged healers and patients to negotiate these conflicting concepts.

This course will provide a selective but detailed review of what was known and believed about how the human body worked in health and disease between the 14th and 17th centuries in Europe. We will also explore how changes in our understanding of the human body from the earlier medieval concepts paved the way for the blossoming of truly modern medicine in the 18th century’s Age of Enlightenment. Join Dr. Jeremy Wasser in learning about the “nature of the body” through representations of health, disease, disfigurement, and death found in the art, music and literature of the Renaissance.