Europe's Laboratory
Book • 2025
Matthew P. Romaniello's Europe's Laboratory examines how Enlightenment-era physicians and naturalists traveling the Russian Empire classified people and bodies through climate-focused, humoral medical frameworks.
The book traces medical case notes, travel narratives, and Academy networks to show how observations from Russia contributed to broader European understandings of diseases like scurvy and smallpox.
Romaniello situates Russian medical practice within international knowledge exchanges—especially links to Leiden-trained physicians—and highlights programs such as Catherine the Great's variolation campaign.
Through biographies and close readings, the work argues that Russia functioned as an experimental ‘laboratory’ that both informed and was shaped by imperial politics and scientific circulation.
The book bridges environmental history, history of medicine, and imperial studies to recover Russia's role in eighteenth-century global medical knowledge.
The book traces medical case notes, travel narratives, and Academy networks to show how observations from Russia contributed to broader European understandings of diseases like scurvy and smallpox.
Romaniello situates Russian medical practice within international knowledge exchanges—especially links to Leiden-trained physicians—and highlights programs such as Catherine the Great's variolation campaign.
Through biographies and close readings, the work argues that Russia functioned as an experimental ‘laboratory’ that both informed and was shaped by imperial politics and scientific circulation.
The book bridges environmental history, history of medicine, and imperial studies to recover Russia's role in eighteenth-century global medical knowledge.
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Matthew P. Romaniello, "Europe's Laboratory: Climate and Health in Eighteenth-Century Russia" (Cornell UP, 2025)
