Healing, Performance and Ceremony in the Writings of Three Early Modern Physicians: Hippolytus Guarinonius and the Brothers Felix and Thomas Platter

Exploring the interfaces between healing and performance in early modern Europe, this study focuses on three physicians, the Swiss Platter brothers and their Austrian colleague Guarinonius. Providing the first English language assessment of their substantial theatrical writings, the volume contextualizes these within an overview of the three physicians' medical practice, careers and publications, and of the role of performance in the early modern healthcare economy. Substantial translations of key passages from these physicians' writings, are considered in the light of a wide selection of early modern images and texts relating to healers and performers, many previously disregarded in this context. This allows the volume to locate these theatrical writings in their rightful place in the mainstream of medical and theatre history, thus broadening our knowledge of the interface between healing and performance.