ABSTRACT
What contributions did women make to early modern medicine and the life sciences? How did they make these contributions? These are the questions addressed in this chapter. The case studies are of the two sixteenth-century natural philosophers Camilla Greghetta Erculiani and Olivia Sabuco de Nantes (y) Barrera. Both where highly original and transformed themselves into natural philosophers through their writing. Erculiani discusses topics ranging from human nature, the relationship between soul and body, creation of matter and life, astrology, and the origins of the rainbow, and gives a natural-material interpretation of the Biblical flood. Sabuco developed a highly unorthodox physiological view, concluding that a fluid in the nerves, not the blood, nourished the body. The chapter concludes with a recommendation that the historian looks beyond published books and manuscripts to consider the material culture of the early modern period as we seek to unravel the role of women in early modern philosophy.
