Women in Secrets: Medical Inventions between Household, Guilds and Small Scale-Economy

Chapters Index: 1. From the Margins to Ubiquity? The Connective Tissue of Early Modern Medicine; 2. The Context: Secrets by “particular persons” or particolari; 3. Women between Artisans of Secrets and the Apothecary Guild; 4. Angela Sala: A Written Licence to Cure; 5. Marietta Colochi salaried physician; 6. Inventor Giulia Tartara and her daughter Orsetta; 7. Maria Vezzali and her grandchildren, handlers of a chemical secret; 8. Caterina Pasetti and Elisabetta Bonetti, between distillers and apothecaries; 9. Caterina Pontano and a formula worth 200 gold ducats; 10. Caterina Melchiori, Francesca Mascotela and two Anna Marias: provincial aristocrats and female apothecaries; 11. Margaret Paston and her Venetian ‘foundry’ or ‘laboratory’: at the intersection between two worlds; 12. Lucietta Visomio, Elisabetta Amorosi Manini and the Legnaghi sisters: the evolution of secrets; 13. Conclusions