Dante has been honored for centuries as il Sommo Poeta (the Supreme Poet). But was he also il Sommo Dottore (the Supreme Doctor)? Although there is no firm evidence that Dante ever formally attended university, this gap in his education did not prevent him from having a deep understanding of complex medical concepts for his time. He even included thousands of anatomical, physiological, and medical references in his literary works including his masterpiece, The Divine Comedy. It is clear that he possessed an extraordinary knowledge and understanding of how the human body and the human psyche worked. Let physiologist and medical historian, Dr. Jeremy Wasser, be your guide, not through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, but through Dante’s medical literary legacy. Learn how patients and physicians of his day understood what Hippocrates called “the Nature of the Body” and how medicine was practiced at the transition point between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

Jeremy Wasser, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Physiology at Texas A&M University. Dr. Wasser serves as the program leader for study abroad programs in Germany, focused on the history of medicine, providing future doctors and biomedical science researchers with a foundation in physiology and the medical humanities. Along with his scientific publications he has written and lectured on the culture of disease, the history of public health and health policy, the history of human experimentation, and the role of physiological education in contemplative
practices. Additionally, Wasser’s training in opera and theatre inform the unique personas that he creates for lectures in the history of medicine and performances related to science and storytelling.