The Casebooks Project

Abstract

This essay reviews The Casebooks Project, an ambitious attempt to digitize 80,000 astrological medical records from early modern England. The Casebooks Project exemplifies the possibilities of using digital technologies to understand early modern cultural and intellectual history, and offers us insight into the process of creating such a project. However, it remains unclear who the project’s audience is, whether to see it purely as a ‘dataset’ or as a textual-based digital edition, and how public-facing the project wants to be. This review seeks to use the digital edition and Dr. Lauren Kassell’s ongoing scholarly and public reflections on the project to highlight the project’s successes and suggest further possibilities it may inspire.

Keywords

• 16th century
• 17th century
• astronomy
• casebook
• critical edition
• digitization
• diplomatic transcription
• early modern
• english
• history of ideas
• history of medicine
• history of science
• intellectual history
• manuscript
• materiality