David Soares Mesquita

David Mesquita is a PhD candidate at the School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon and a researcher at the Centre for Classical Studies, within the research group EPISTEME: Portuguese Early Modern Science. His doctoral project, “Estêvão Rodrigues de Castro (1559–1637) as a “Liber scriptor neque ex Galeni servis in the controversies of his time,” investigates Castro’s contributions to early modern atomism and medical semiotics, and how his views challenged the Galenic-Aristotelian doctrines. At the Science History Institute, he aims to illuminate the role of Paracelsianism in the works of Rodrigues de Castro by analyzing a series of alchemical authors and how they informed Castro’s views on the theory of matter and meteorology. David’s research has been supported by the Foundation for Science and Technology (Portugal), the Centre for the Study of Medicine and the Body in the Renaissance (CSMBR), and the Medici Archive Project (MAP), among others.