Cunningham, Andrew

PERSONAL:

Male.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, Free School Ln., Cambridge CB2 3RH, England.

CAREER:

Historian, educator and writer. Cambridge University, Cambridge, England, acting director of the Cambridge Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, then senior research fellow in the history of medicine in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science.

WRITINGS:

NONFICTION

(Editor, with Nicholas Jardine) Romanticism and the Sciences, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1990.

(Editor, with Roger French) The Medical Enlightenment of the Eighteenth Century, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1990.

(Editor, with Perry Williams) The Laboratory Revolution in Medicine, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1992.

(Editor) Francis Glisson, From Anatomia Hepatis (The Anatomy of the Liver), 1654, Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine (Cambridge, England), 1993.

(Editor, with Ole Peter Grell) Medicine and the Reformation, Routledge (New York, NY), 1993.

(With Harmke Kamminga) The Science and Culture of Nutrition, Rodopi (Atlanta, GA), 1995.

(Editor, with Ole Peter Grell) Religio Medici: Medicine and Religion in Seventeenth-Century England, Ashgate (Brookfield, VT), 1996.

(With Roger French) Before Science: The Invention of the Friars' Natural Philosophy, Ashgate (Brookfield, VT), 1996.

The Anatomical Renaissance: The Resurrection of the Anatomical Projects of the Ancients, Ashgate (Brookfield, VT), 1997.

(Editor, with Bridie Andrews) Western Medicine as Contested Knowledge, Manchester University Press (New York, NY), 1997.

(Editor, with Ole Peter Grell) Health Care and Poor Relief in Protestant Europe, 1500-1700, Routledge (New York, NY), 1997.

(Editor and contributor, with Roger French, Jon Arrizabalaga, and Luis Garcia-Ballester) Medicine from the Black Death to the French Disease, Ashgate (Aldershot, England), 1998.

(Editor, with Ole Peter Grell and Jon Arrizabalaga) Health Care and Poor Relief in Counter-Reformation Europe, Routledge (New York, NY), 1999.

(With Ole Peter Grell) The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Religion, War, Famine, and Death in Reformation Europe, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 2000.

(With Robert Jütte) Health Care and Poor Relief in Eighteenth-and Nineteenth-Century Northern Europe, edited by Ole Peter Grell, Ashgate (Burlington, VT), 2002.

(Editor, with Ole Peter Grell and Bernd Roeck) Health Care and Poor Relief in Eighteenth-and Nineteenth-Century Southern Europe, Ashgate (Burlington, VT), 2005.

(Editor, Ole Peter Grell) Medicine and Religion in Enlightenment Europe, Ashgate (Burlington, VT), 2007.

Contributor to journals and to anthologies, including Practical Medicine from Salerno to the Black Death, Sigma Xi, Scientific Research Society, 1995.

SIDELIGHTS:

Andrew Cunningham is an historian who has authored and edited, either alone or in collaboration with others, a wide range of history and philosophy of science books. In his 1997 book The Anatomical Renaissance: The Resurrection of the Anatomical Projects of the Ancients, Cunningham discusses the practice of natural philosophy, which was a precursor to science and scientific philosophy. Referring to the book as "intriguing" in a review in the Canadian Journal of History, Jan C.C. Rupp went on to write that the author "presents a … history of projects of inquiry: what approaches different people at different times took to investigating anatomy, and why." Writing in the Renaissance Quarterly, Katharine Park noted: "There are a number of useful elements in this book: Cunningham supplies lucid synopses of the anatomical works he discusses and rightly emphasizes the religious resonances of the Renaissance anatomical project."

In Before Science: The Invention of the Friars' Natural Philosophy, Cunningham and coauthor Roger French look at the difference the between early-thirteenth-century natural philosophies of the Dominicans and Franciscans. The authors explore the Dominicans' use of Aristotle's views of nature to support the existence of God and nature as being good. In the case of the Franciscans, Cunningham and French present their case that the Franciscans' philosophy and study was more mystical in nature, yet their studies of the nature of reality and mathematics, like the Dominicans', were primarily conducted as a defense of Roman Catholicism and not for the sake of science itself. "From this, it is concluded that it is anachronistic to talk of a medieval conflict between science and religion," noted Alan B. Cobban in the English Historical Review. Cobban went on to call Before Science "stimulating."

Cunningham has also served as coeditor of several volumes focusing on early historical writings concerning Western medicine, including Medicine from the Black Death to the French Disease. In this volume, Cunningham—along with coeditors and contributors Roger French, Jon Arrizabalaga, and Luis Garcia-Ballester—explores medical history within the fifteenth century. The editors include discussions of early medical texts that focused on some the most pressing medical problems of the day. Peregrine Horden, writing in the English Historical Review, called the volume "of high scholarship and interest."

Cunningham has collaborated with Ole Peter Grell on a number of books, including serving as coeditor with Grell of Religio Medici: Medicine and Religion in Seventeenth-Century England. This volume focuses on Sir Thomas Browne's treatise Religio Medici, which was, at the time, the most noted work by a physician concerning the intersection of science and the Christian faith. "The contributions are of uniformly high standard," wrote Journal of Ecclesiastical History contributor Roy Porter. Lisa Smith noted in the English Historical Review that "overall, the book provides a welcome enlargement to our understanding of the cultural intricacies of medicine."

Cunningham also collaborated with Grell to write The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Religion, War, Famine, and Death in Reformation Europe. In the book, the authors discuss how sixteenth-and seventeenth-century Europeans used the widely known image of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse by Albrecht Durer as way to explain in an intelligent and cogent manner the many disasters that they faced in what seemed to be an increasingly unstable world. A Publishers Weekly contributor noted that the authors present "an enlightening and valuable contribution to the study of the role of eschatology [a branch of theology concerned with death and judgment] in the early modern world that will hold much interest for students of that period." Writing in Church History, Susan C. Karant-Nunn commented: "This interdisciplinary book yields many hours of diversion. Its flaws are few."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Anthropologist, September, 1999, Stacy Pigg, review of Western Medicine as Contested Knowledge, pp. 670-671.

American Scientist, September, 1991, Caroline Hannaway, review of The Medical Enlightenment of the Eighteenth Century, p. 473; September- October, 1995, John Scarborough, review of Practical Medicine from Salerno to the Black Death, p. 490.

BJHS: British Journal for the History of Science, March, 1998, Emma Spary, review of The Science and Culture of Nutrition, pp. 97-98; June, 1999, Charlotte Methuen, review of Before Science: The Invention of the Friars' Natural Philosophy, pp. 242-243.

Booklist, January 1, 2001, Steven Schroeder, review of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Religion, War, Famine, and Death in Reformation Europe, p. 906.

British Medical Journal, April 24, 1993, J.T. Hughes, review of The Laboratory Revolution in Medicine, p. 1138.

Canadian Journal of History, April, 2000, Jan C.C. Rupp, review of The Anatomical Renaissance: The Resurrection of the Anatomical Projects of the Ancients, p. 121.

Choice, June, 1993, G. Eknoyan, review of The Laboratory Revolution in Medicine, p. 1662.

Church History, June, 2002, Susan C. Karant-Nunn, review of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, p. 411.

Economic History Review, May, 1998, Anne Hardy, review of Western Medicine as Contested Knowledge, p. 433.

English Historical Review, April, 1994, Peter Elmer, review of The Medical Enlightenment of the Eighteenth Century, p. 460, and Peter Alter, review of Romanticism and the Sciences, p. 478; April, 1998, Alan B. Cobban, review of Before Science, pp. 416-417; February, 1999, Peregrine Horden, review of The Anatomical Renaissance, p. 168, and Lisa Smith, review of Religio Medici: Medicine and Religion in Seventeenth-Century England, p. 190; September, 2000, Peregrine Horden, review of Medicine from the Black Death to the French Disease, p. 952; November, 2001, R.B. Outhwaite, review of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, p. 1262.

History: Journal of the Historical Association, January, 1999, Laurence Brockliss, review of Medicine and the Reformation, pp. 153-154.

International History Review, June, 1999, Norman Etherington, review of Western Medicine as Contested Knowledge, pp. 521-523.

Isis, September, 1994, Bruce T. Moran, review of Medicine and the Reformation, pp. 510-511; June, 1996, Don Bates, review of From Anatomia Hepatis (The Anatomy of the Liver), 1654, pp. 357-358.

Journal of Ecclesiastical History, April, 1998, Roy Porter, review of Religio Medici, p. 371; July, 2002, Diarmaid MacCulloch, review of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, p. 604.

Journal of English and Germanic Philology, October, 1991, Hans Eichner, review of Romanticism and the Sciences, pp. 612-614.

Journal of Historical Geography, January, 1999, Steven King, review of Health Care and Poor Relief in Protestant Europe, 1500-1700, pp. 113-115.

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, spring, 1995, Keith Wailoo, review of The Laboratory Revolution in Medicine, pp. 658-659.

Journal of the History of Philosophy, October, 1998, Irven M. Resnick, review of Before Science, pp. 623-625.

Library Journal, March 15, 2001, James A. Overbeck, review of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, p. 88.

London Review of Books, November 8, 1990, Michael Neve, review of Romanticism and the Sciences, pp. 22-23.

New York Review, May 23, 2002, Eamon Duffy, review of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, pp. 40, 42-43.

Publishers Weekly, February 12, 2001, review of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, p. 196.

Quarterly Review of Biology, December, 1993, Mark A. Bisby, review of The Medical Enlightenment of the Eighteenth Century, p. 566.

Renaissance Quarterly, summer, 1999, Katharine Park, review of The Anatomical Renaissance, p. 533.

Review of English Studies, November, 1992, Rosemary Ashton, review of Romanticism and the Sciences, pp. 571-572.

Sixteenth Century Journal, fall, 1994, William T. Walker, review of Medicine and the Reformation, p. 769; spring, 1998, Anita Guerrini, review of The Anatomical Renaissance, pp. 269-271, and Albert J. Koinm, review of Religio Medici, pp. 275-278; summer, 2001, Thomas Max Safley, review of Health Care and Poor Relief in Counter-Reformation Europe, pp. 571-573.

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, June, 1998, Margaret J. Osler, review of Before Science, pp. 305-311; June, 2001, Peter Dear, "Religion, Science, and Natural Philosophy: Thoughts on Cunningham's Thesis," pp. 377-386, and Andrew Cunningham, "A Reply to Peter Dear's ‘Religion, Science, and Natural Philosophy: Thoughts on Cunningham's Thesis,’" p. 387; June, 2001, Peter Dear, "Reply to Andrew Cunningham," pp. 393-395.

Theological Studies, March, 2002, William V. Hudon, review of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, p. 174.

ONLINE

BBC Web site,http://www.bbc.co.uk/ (March 28, 2007), brief profile of author.

Institute of Historical Research Web site,http://www.ihrinfo.ac.uk/ (September 13, 2004), Justin Champion, review of Religio Medici.