This article discusses presuppositions and approaches for a study on representations of the body in early modern Portugal. It focuses on medicine, but it also deals with other scholarly domains such as philosophy and literature. It addresses two related questions: the more general question of the links between representations of the body, ideas and historical processes in their cultural context; and the more particular problem of the way these representations express concepts and modes of thought in the medical milieu. This proposal is based on the premise that an enquiry into images used by thinkers illuminates the shaded spectrum of intellectual influences among them.
representation of the body; medicine; culture; Portugal; early modern period