Skip to main content

Medicine and Economics in Early Modern Thought

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences

Related Topics

Galenism, Political economy, Medical education

Introduction

The early modern period saw the births of many scientific disciplines that continue to exert their influence on matters of nature and society up to the present day. One of modernity’s most important social scientific endeavors, that of economics, was among the branches of science that began to take shape in the seventeenth century. Although Adam Smith is often credited as the founding father of “political economy,” the discipline’s roots date back at least 150 years from Smith’s highly influential treatises on the subject that were published in the second half of the eighteenth century. A great many early pioneers of systematic thinking about economic matters both in England and on the continent shared a background of being educated in medicine, and the two fields (that of the health and sustenance of the human body on the one hand and the integrity and maintenance of social institutions on the other) happily...

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Clément A (2003) The influence of medicine on political economy in the seventeenth century. Hist Econ Rev 38:1–22

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Crane M (2010) Analogy, metaphor, and the new science: cognitive science and early modern epistemology. In: Zunshine L (ed) Introduction to cognitive cultural studies. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, pp 101–114

    Google Scholar 

  • Davenant C (1967 [1771]) The political and commercial works of Charles Davenant. Gregg Press, Farnborough

    Google Scholar 

  • Finkelstein A (2000) Harmony and the balance – an intellectual history of seventeenth-century English economic thought. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Gaukroger S (2006) The emergence of a scientific culture. Science and the shaping of modernity 1210–1685. Oxford University Press, New York

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Harvey W (1847 [1628]) The works of William Harvey M. D. The Sydenham Society, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Mandeville B (1924 [1714]) The fable of the Bees. Oxford University Press, Oxford

    Google Scholar 

  • Porter R (1997) The greatest benefit to mankind: a medical history of humanity. W. W. Norton, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Rusnock A (2002) Vital accounts – quantifying health and population in eighteenth-century England and France. Cambridge University Press, New York

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Wennerlind C (2014) Money: Hartlibian political economy and the new culture of credit. In: Stern P, Wennerlind C (eds) Mercantilism reimagined. Political economy in early modern Britain and its empire. Oxford University Press, New York, pp 74–93

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Akos Sivado .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Section Editor information

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this entry

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this entry

Sivado, A. (2020). Medicine and Economics in Early Modern Thought. In: Jalobeanu, D., Wolfe, C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20791-9_437-1

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20791-9_437-1

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-20791-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-20791-9

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Religion and PhilosophyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Humanities

Publish with us

Policies and ethics