Daniel Sennert’s Dissertations and the Furthering of Knowledge in Seventeenth-Century Medicine

Abstract

This chapter references Daniel Sennert’s dissertations to examine the development of new medical knowledge. It also covers new ways of assimilating and transmitting information in early modern Europe. Dissertations have only recently become a subject for investigation and are now treated as documents that help reveal learning practices in universities. The chapter explains how early modern medical science thrived on the lively exchange of information and materials among centres of European universities and academies. Overlooked developments in the organization and spread of medical knowledge of the early modern period is connected to the influence of university teaching and research on the (new) forms of knowledge. Dissertations are an important link in the chain of knowledge beyond the academy, and students’ undetermined part in the transmission of information.