Between the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries, Japanese scholars and commercial authors wrote extensively about lamps, lanterns, and candles. The forms of intellectual curiosity for lights presented in this chapter reveal original paths in Tokugawa Japan’s history of investigations and discoveries. On the one hand, they point at homegrown innovations that remove Japan from the orbit of Western knowledge; on the other, they illuminate connections with important global trends. The history of the early modern curiosity for illumination points at revolutions in knowledge that encompass the small and the large, the local and the global, and scramble the timeline of Japan’s enlightened modernity.

This chapter explores how early modern understandings of deafness were shaped by the interaction of new anatomical knowledge with older medical theories. Advances in the study of the ear helped to establish deafness as a primarily physical condition rather than a marker of impaired intellect. The speechlessness of deaf people was seen as the consequence of deafness, rather than a cognitive disability. Humoural medicine influenced the interpretation of these discoveries, and suggested that all forms of deafness existed along a single continuum. This fluidity may have softened the legal implications traditionally attached to prelingual deafness. At the same time, because age-related deafness was the most common form of deafness, this was the lens through which most people imagined prelingual deafness. The chapter argues that this combination of medical theory and social experience profoundly influenced how deafness was conceptualised in early modern England.

Chapter 2 considers how the diagnosis of frenzy – in its standard definition, an inflammation of the brain or meninges – both shaped and was shaped by anatomical knowledge. Reading the work of the anatomist Thomas Willis (1621–1675) alongside his various sixteenth- and seventeenth-century interlocutors, it situates his anatomical work within a longer tradition of brain–mind cartography. The chapter argues that Willis’s determination to map the functions of the brain onto its structures was driven, in part, by his clinical experiences of frenzy. His explicit hope was that his anatomy would be the foundation stone on which a new, clinically useful ‘Pathologie of the Brain and nervous stock, might be built’. But not all of his hopes for the project were medical in nature, or even this-worldly. Willis also sought to shore up two vital truths, both of which frenzy seemed to undermine: first, that there was a categorical difference between the human soul and that of all other living beings, and second, that the human soul alone would survive the death of the body.

Rib fractures are the most common fracture by number in the abused child. While posterior rib fractures bear the highest specificity for child abuse, rib fractures are rare in infants and young children from accidental trauma. In the absence of overt underlying bone disease or reliably witnessed trauma, any rib fracture in an infant or young child is worrisome and indicates the need for further evaluation.

Normal rib anatomy is presented. Rib fractures may occur at any location in the rib from rib head proximally to costochondral junction distally. Abusive rib fractures may be acute or, more commonly, in the healing state at presentation. Rib fractures are commonly accompanied by other abusive injuries. Lower rib fractures are not infrequently seen when there is abusive visceral trauma.

Cardiopulmonary resuscitation in infants may cause rib fractures; however, such fractures are characteristically buckle fractures of the anterior or anterolateral upper and middle ribs and show no evidence of healing at presentation.

This chapter examines the ways in which classical influences intersected in Italian Renaissance culture with modernizing impulses in an era of rapid social and material change. The early sixteenth century in Italy brought a series of devastating wars and a loss of political independence at the same time that Italian culture was absorbing significant novelties, such as the introduction of printing in Europe and the geographical ‘discoveries’ of the period, especially that of the transatlantic New World. The chapter foregrounds the sense of novelty and progress that was a marked feature of the later Renaissance in Italy, balancing humanism’s reverence for classical antiquity. This dialectic is examined through detailed case studies of the histories of geography and cartography, of the theory and practice of anatomy, of art-historical writing and conceptions of artistic progress, and of the social and cultural impact of print.

Sanctity intersected with medicine during the early modern period because the remains of aspiring saints could offer evidence of divine favor. By studying examples of extreme asceticism, bodily incorruption, and other anatomical wonders, this chapter reveals how medical expertise became a crucial part of Catholic canonization efforts.

Long assumed to have no real function, we now understand the importance of the prefrontal cortex for a wide range of cognitive functions, including decision-making. Some of the earliest understanding of the role of the prefrontal cortex came from the famous case study of Phineas Gage. Through a mining accident, Gage’s prefrontal cortex was extensively damaged. He showed no observable impairments in motor, sensory or memory skills. He however did show marked differences in personality and planning. Over the following decades, research built upon understanding of the role of the prefrontal cortex. Today, the prefrontal cortex as a region is recognised across many species and is considered the most evolutionarily advanced in humans. The current consensus is that prefrontal cortex is an integration area, integrating information from all over the brain.

Chapter 2, Stereotyped Knowledge, examines irregular practitioners’ global trade in cheap manuals on venereal disease, sexual debility, and fertility problems. While previous scholarship has largely focused on these manuals’ lurid depictions of weakened male bodies, this chapter emphasizes their origins in respected publications: often calling themselves “consulting surgeons,” a term from hospital practice, irregular practitioners combined verbatim sections from textbooks and treatises aimed at medics with snippets from works in other genres to construct their own “popular treatises.” Some of these productions were issued in several different languages and circulated around the globe. At home and abroad, they offered readers an affordable means of acquiring modern information about sex reproduction, derived from the science of anatomy, and their authors a means of cultivating trust in their expertise and advertising more expensive products and services. Examining other medical practitioners’ responses, this chapter argues that these manuals and their makers were seen as both an economic and existential threat to regular medicine.

Respiratory regulation comprises respiratory rhythmogenesis, formation of the respiratory motor pattern, control of blood oxygen and carbon dioxide, increase of minute ventilation during physical activity, adaptation of respiration to the sleep-wake cycle, coordination of breathing with swallowing, cough, sneezing, choking and voluntary activity such as speech or singing. Other factors such as growth and maturation, emotion, pregnancy, injury, disease, body temperature, pain and aging lead to changes in respiration. The presence of a respiratory rhythm generator in the brainstem is now known to be a common feature of all vertebrates. Knowledge about respiratory regulation is mainly derived from animal models, but respiratory regulation in humans is subject to an increasing number of physiological, electrophysiological, neuroradiographic, histopathological and genetic studies. This chapter provides an overview of respiratory regulation, focused on neuroanatomical, neurophysiological and clinical apsects.

Comprehensive knowledge of the anatomy and physiology of the respiratory system is crucial in respiratory medicine. A profound understanding of physiology allows the practitioner to deduce pathological processes and initiate therapeutic steps based on rational decisions. The choice of a suitable ventilation mode or setting typically stems from an understanding of the pathophysiological processes. Understanding the respiratory chain at the cellular level, ventilation and perfusion, as well as the delicate interplay of macroscopic and microscopic mechanisms, supports the development of precise and individualized ventilation strategies. Knowledge of mucociliary clearance and the various lung volumes is also crucial to ensure optimal management of tracheobronchial secretions, oxygen supply and CO2 elimination.

This is a standard question, but one which contains a lot of anatomical detail. It may be useful to practise drawing a simple explanatory diagram. The oral may be linked to intracranial aneurysms and their management, and it may also include physiological aspects of cerebral perfusion, the problem of cerebral vasospasm following subarachnoid haemorrhage or briefly the subject of intracranial pressure (ICP).

Protestant attacks against papal corruption of the cult of saints and falsification of miracles led the Post-Tridentine Church to reform the processes of saint-making through an intensified collaboration with medical science. The alignment of faith and science at the nexus of the human body culminated in the eighteenth century under Benedict XIV Lambertini (r. 1740–58). Benedict published a monumental treatise, still influential today, that codified canonization proceedings on the basis of modern medical expertise, and he was a preeminent patron of scientific and medical institutions and practitioners for the advancement of medical knowledge and public health. The imperatives of the Counter-Reformation, canon law, experimental science and medicine, and the burgeoning Enlightenment coalesced, albeit uneasily, in his vision of a reformed Church, for which natural and saintly bodies became primary emblems in defense of the authority of the Catholic Church in a world increasingly resistant to it.