ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Tabulating Medical Knowledge: Paper Technologies and Inoculation Experiments in Targioni Tozzetti's Journals (1756)

• In Event: Seeing Health: Representing Medical Knowledge in Early Modern period

English Abstract

Historiography has emphasized the eighteenth century as an era of convergence between medicine, science, and state power in combating smallpox through inoculation. This paper examines how medical knowledge was visually structured and transmitted through the clinical "journals" compiled by Giovanni Targioni Tozzetti during variolization experiments conducted in 1756 at Florence's Ospedale di Santa Maria Nuova. Commissioned by the Lorraine Regency, Targioni Tozzetti (1712-83) inoculated six children (ages 4-7) and documented their clinical progress in daily tabular form. These tables represent a crucial shift in how medical observation was recorded and made legible: organizing data by date, patient, symptoms, diet, and environmental conditions, Targioni Tozzetti created a visual apparatus that transformed individual bodies into comparable cases and anecdotal observations into systematic evidence. This paper argues that the tabular format was not merely a neutral recording device but an epistemic technology that made inoculation "visible" as a safe, replicable procedure worthy of state endorsement. By analyzing the visual and material organization of these journals, I demonstrate how early modern physicians deployed representational strategies—tables, grids, standardized categories—to establish medical authority and facilitate the translation of experimental knowledge into public health policy.

Author

• Gianluca Magro