The Battle of Medical Books: Publishing Strategies and the Medical Market in the Dutch Republic (1650–1750)

Abstract

This chapter explores the spatial and temporal aspects of medical publishing strategies in the Dutch Republic in the period 1650–1759. Taking the relation between publication strategies, location and medical knowledge as a starting point, it studies the interaction between cheap, locally oriented print and more durable, widely circulating books, between established and itinerant practitioners and between the local and regional trade in medical publications. The chapter shows how practitioners and publishers, using ephemeral material such as newspaper advertisements and promotional material, created new geographical, commercial and social spaces, for example the ways in which public spaces such as bookshops, squares and coffee houses connected patients, doctors and booksellers on the one hand, and therapies, medicines and medical publications on the other. It also shows how printed material with more durability or broader geographical diffusion was employed to solidify professional reputations.