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MALTATODAY 5 November 2023

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maltatoday | SUNDAY • 5 NOVEMBER 2023 4 CULTURE Situating Giuseppe Demarco in 18th-century medicine and Neo-Latin literature' GIUSEPPE Demarco (1718- 1789) is one of Malta's most vo- luminous writers, and an out- standing medical figure of the 18th century. In spite of this, his works have largely gone un- studied and his place in Maltese intellectual history neglected. This paper aims to place some of Demarco's oeuvre within the major contemporary trends in European scientific thought and literary trends. In the first part of this paper, we outline the main contemporary inf lu- ences on Demarco's physiol- ogy, namely the iatro-mech- anism of F. Hoffmann and H. Boerhaave, as well as the vi- talism of F. de Sauvages. We also suggest, therefore, that Demarco played a pivotal role in Maltese intellectual histo- ry, introducing contemporary medical ideas into the island. In the second part, we exam- ine yet another aspect of De- marco's published and unpub- lished writings: translations of medical works from vernacular languages (English and French) into Neo-Latin. Jurgen R. Gatt is a medical doctor and classics scholar working as an Assistant Lec- turer at G. F. Abela Junior Col- lege and at the Department of Classics and Archaeology at the University of Malta. He com- pleted his PhD at UCL in 2020 and has published primarily on ancient Greek rhetoric, Greek medicine, and the epistemolo- gy of testimony. Currently he is completing his first monograph The Anatomy of Testimony in the Age of the Sophists (Liverpool Univer- sity Press, 2024) and is about to publish an edited volume A Companion to Demarco's De Cocholata (1760), for which he was awarded a fund by the Na- tional Book Council of Malta (2022). Skye Vassallo is a graduate from the University of Mal- ta, having completed her B.A. (Honours) in Classics with Phi- losophy in 2023. Her disserta- tion focused on cataloguing and examining the works of 18th-century Maltese physician Joseph Demarco, with a special interest in his use of Latin. She presented her findings at the Junior College AIMC Confer- ence in September 2023. To- gether with a colleague, she teaches a Degree+ course in Ancient Greek Mythology. She plans to further her studies in Classics in the next years. This series is being brought to you in collabortion with the Department of Philoso- phy, University of Malta. All lectures will be held at the Na- tional Library of Malta, Valletta and start at 18:30hrs. Free en- trance. No booking required. For more info email events.li- brary@gov.mt Knowledge in the Making:

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