Artisans of the Body in Early Modern Italy

This groundbreaking study explores the role of those involved in various aspects of the care, comfort and appearance of the body in seventeenth and early eighteenth-century Italy, bringing to light the strong cultural affinities and social ties between barber-surgeons and the apparently distant trades of jeweller, tailor, wigmaker and upholsterer. Drawing on contemporary understandings of the body, the author shows that shared concerns about health and well-being permeated the professional cultures of these medical and non-medical occupations. At the same time the detailed analysis of the life-course, career patterns and family experience of 'artisans of the body' offers unprecedented insight into the world of the urban middling sorts. The book will represent essential reading for scholars and students of gender, family and urban history in the early modern age, and will equally appeal to historians of the body and of the medical occupations.

ISBN 0719081513   Pages 296 ISBN13 9780719081514 (What's this?)   Weight (grammes) 346 Publisher Manchester University Press   Published in Manchester Imprint Manchester University Press   Series title Gender in History Format Paperback   Height (mm) 216 Publication date 03 May 2010   Width (mm) 138 DEWEY 306.4610945   Spine width (mm) 15 DEWEY edition DC22   Academic level Tertiary education, Professional / Scholarly

List of plates List of captions List of figures List of tables Acknowledgements List of abbreviations Introduction 1. The view of the body of an ordinary surgeon 2. Health, beauty and hygiene: the broad domain of a barber-surgeon's duties 3. Barber-surgeons and artisans of the body 4. The place in society of artisans of the body 5. Social and kinship ties 6. Age, working relationships and the marketplace 7. Women in the body crafts 8. The weak father 9. Respectable men 10. The good surgeon Conclusion Bibliography Index

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