title: Balancing acts: Picturing perspiration in the long eighteenth century.
abstract: This essay examines the historical fortunes of an image that throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries became a landmark of the medical doctrine and practice of static medicine advanced by the physician Santorio Santorio (1561-1636). The image depicted a man sitting on a large Roman steelyard, which allowed the weighing of bodily discharges and gave guidance on the intake of food. Well into the eighteenth century, the image of the weight-watching man accompanied Santorio's work on the art of static medicine and, most likely, contributed to its success. It appeared in a variety of medical works and navigated across competing medical theories and different medical genres, while remaining largely unscathed. This essay explores the success and the historical agency of this image. Focusing on the history of its copies and variants, it investigates how the image came to symbolize the attempt to transform dietetics into an experimental practice, and accordingly preserve its pivotal significance in the medical world.
authors.affiliation: Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, Victoria College, University of Toronto, 91 Charles Street West, Toronto, ON, Canada M5S 1K7. lucia.dacome@utoronto.edu
authors.forename: Lucia
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Dacome
mesh_terms: D001835:Body Weight; D004032:Diet / Q000266:history*; D004046:Dietetics / Q000266:history*; D002149:Energy Intake; D004741:Engraving and Engravings / Q000266:history*; D049669:History, 16th Century; D049670:History, 17th Century; D049671:History, 18th Century; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008512:Medicine in the Arts; D013542:Sweat; D013546:Sweating