Banned Books Week Lecture: Censoring Medicine in the Age of Galileo

The Roman Index of Prohibited Books (1559) banned not only the works of Reformation theologians like Luther and Melanchthon; it also made it illegal for physicians in Italy to read many medical books written and published in Northern Europe. While some of these books were burned, many others were selectively censored and licensed to learned readers. This talk, given by Harvard history of science professor Hannah Marcus, reveals how physicians in Italy read prohibited medical books and maintained their medical libraries in the years following the Reformation.