Skin and Disease in Early Modern Medicine:: Jan Jessen's De cute, et cutaneis affectibus (1601)

This article examines skin and disease in early modern medicine through the writings of the little-known Bohemian physician Jan Jessen (1566–1621). In 1601, Jessen published De cute, et cutaneis affectibus, a set of twenty-one theses dedicated to the question of whether skin disease existed. In considering Jessen and his relationship to a broader world of writing, this article makes three arguments. First, it suggests that, contrary to existing historiography, the question of skin disease was a common sixteenth-century concern. Second, it posits a professional channel for this concern, which arose from surgery and disease, rather than from anatomy and physiology. Finally, rather than positioning Jessen at the forefront of discovery, I suggest his text functions as a representative case study. It allows us to see material change in medicine within a stable Galenic framework.