Recreating the Pulsilogium of Santorio: Outlines for a Historically-Engaged Endeavour

Between 2015 and 2016 a series of seminars on the history of early modern technology and medicine were held at the Centres for Medical History and Biomedical Modelling and Analysis of the University of Exeter. As a result of that work we laid down the basis for the first historically accurate reconstruction of a seventeenth-century instrument, the pulsilogium of Sanctorius (1561-1636). Previous copies were in fact either simple models for display or lacked any commitment to historical accuracy. This short contribution explores some of the results we obtained from the recreation of this device and experiments we recreated which shed new light on the early application of the pendulum as a scientific instrument. A fuller and much more detailed account of these discoveries will be given in a forthcoming contribution edited by Filip Buyse for a special issue of the Journal of Social and Political Science.