Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine


Book Description

Western Europe supported a highly developed and diverse medical community in the late medieval and early Renaissance periods. In her absorbing history of this complex era in medicine, Siraisi explores the inner workings of the medical community and illustrates the connections of medicine to both natural philosophy and technical skills.




Health and Medicine in Early Medieval Southern Italy


Book Description

Medical historians are already familiar with medieval southern Italy through research into its famed medical school at Salerno. This volume takes a broader view of healthcare, seeking to illuminate the experience of sickness, attitudes towards the ill and infirm and the provision of care up to the twelfth century. Combining information from hagiography and chronicles with less well-known charters and archaeology, it deals with the provision of food, the environment, women's health, individual and collective disease and varieties of cure. A final chapter assesses the interaction between intellectual and practical medicine, as well as re-examining the early life of the medical school at Salerno. The book's importance lies in its wide-ranging approach and detailed analysis, which will appeal to historians of medicine and medieval culture alike.




Healthcare in Early Medieval Northern Italy


Book Description

After the fall of the last Western Roman Emperor in 476 AD, Northern Italy played a crucial role - both geographically and culturally - in connecting East to West and North to South. Nowhere is this revealed more clearly than in the knowledge and practice of medicine. In sixth-century Ravenna, Greek medical texts were translated into Latin, and medical practitioners such as Anthimus, famous for his work on diet, also travelled from East to West. Despite Northern Italy's location as a confluence of cultures and values, modern scholarship has thus far ignored the extensive range of medical practices in existence throughout this region. This book aims to rectify this absence. It will draw upon both archaeological and written sources to argue for redefinitions of health and illness in relation to the Northern-Italian Middle Ages. This volume does not only put forward new classifications of illness and understandings of diet, but it also demonstrates the centrality of medicine to everyday life in Northern Italy. Using charter evidence and literary sources, the author expands our understanding of the literacy levels and social circles of the elite medical practitioners, the medici, and their lesser counterparts. This work marks a significant intervention into the field of medical studies in the early to high Middle Ages.




Medieval Medicine


Book Description

Medical knowledge and practice changed profoundly during the medieval period. In this collection of over 100 primary sources, many translated for the first time, Faith Wallis reveals the dynamic world of medicine in the Middle Ages that has been largely unavailable to students and scholars. The reader includes 21 illustrations and a glossary of medical terms.




Medicine in the Middle Ages


Book Description

Learn about how medicine was practiced long ago.




Medieval Herbal Remedies


Book Description

This book presents for the first time an up-to-date and easy-to-read translation of a medical reference work that was used in Western Europe from the fifth century well into the Renaissance. Listing 185 medicinal plants, the uses for each, and remedies that were compounded using them, the translation will fascinate medievalist, medical historians and the layman alike.




Arabian Drugs in Medieval Mediterranean Medicine


Book Description

Explores the impact of drugs introduced by the Arabs on medieval Mediterranean medicineFor more than one thousand years Arab medicine held sway in the ancient world, from the shores of Spain in the West to China, India and Sri Lanka (Ceylon) in the East. This book explores the impact of Greek (as well as Indian and Persian) medical heritage on the evolution of Arab medicine and pharmacology, investigating it from the perspective of materia medica a reliable indication of the contribution of this medical legacy.Focusing on the main substances introduced and traded by the Arabs in the medieval Mediterranean including Ambergris, camphor, musk, myrobalan, nutmeg, sandalwood and turmeric the authors show how they enriched the existing inventory of drugs influenced by Galenic-Arab pharmacology. Further, they look at how these substances merged with the development and distribution of new technologies and industries that evolved in the Middle Ages such as textiles, paper, dyeing and tanning, and with the new trends, demands and fashions regarding spices, perfumes, ornaments (gemstones) and foodstuffs some of which can be found in our modern-day food basket.Key FeaturesAssesses the assimilation of theoretical and practical Greek, Indian and Persian medicine into Arabic medical cultureReconstructs and presents a list of medicinal substances distributed by the Arabs as a result of their conquestsTells the stories of 33 new Arabic drugs within the context of their natural historyDescribes the contribution of the Arabs to the daily medieval cultural material (medicine, cosmetics, perfumery, dyeing of materials, industrial products and precious stones)Includes 35 colour illustrations




Medieval Medicine


Book Description

This unique examination of medieval medicine as detailed in physician's manuals of the period reveals a more sophisticated approach to the medical arts than expected for the time. Far from the primitive and barbaric practices the Middle Ages may conjure up in our minds, doctors during that time combined knowledge, tradition, innovation, and intuition to create a humane, holistic approach to understanding and treating every known disease. In fact, a singularly authoritative medical source of the period, Lily of Medicine, continued to provide crucial study for students and practitioners of medicine almost four centuries after its completion in 1305. This unprecedented book investigates the extensive capabilities of physicians who relied on practice, observation, and imagination before the supremacy of mechanistic views and technological aids. Medieval Medicine: The Art of Healing, from Head to Toe is a comprehensive look at diseases as they were described, classified, explained, assessed, and treated by doctors of the age. The author methodically compares a dozen encyclopedic manuals in which both the fundamental understanding of healthy functions and the specific response to diseases were summarized, viewing the information through a medieval perspective rather than based upon modern criteria.




Visualizing Medieval Medicine and Natural History, 1200–1550


Book Description

Images in medieval and early modern treatises on medicine, pharmacy, and natural history often confound our expectations about the functions of medical and scientific illustrations. They do not look very much like the things they purport to portray; and their actual usefulness in everyday medical practice or teaching is not obvious. By looking at works as diverse as herbals, jewellery, surgery manuals, lay health guides, cinquecento paintings, manuscripts of Pliny's Natural History, and Leonardo's notebooks, Visualizing Medieval Medicine and Natural History, 1200-1550 addresses fundamental questions about the interplay of art and science from the thirteenth to the mid-sixteenth century: What counts as a medical illustration in the Middle Ages? What are the purposes and audiences of the illustrations in medieval medical, pharmaceutical, and natural history texts? How are images used to clarify, expand, authenticate, and replace these texts? How do images of natural objects, observed phenomena, and theoretical concepts amplify texts and convey complex cultural attitudes? What features lead us to regard some of these images as typically 'medieval' while other exactly contemporary images strike us as 'Renaissance' or 'early modern' in character? Art historians, medical historians, historians of science, and specialists in manuscripts and early printed books will welcome this wide-ranging, interdisciplinary examination of the role of visualization in early scientific inquiry.




Medicine, Society, and Faith in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds


Book Description

In Medicine, Society, and Faith in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds Darrel Amundsen explores the disputed boundaries of medicine and Christianity by focusing on the principle of the sanctity of human life, including the duty to treat or attempt to sustain the life of the ill. As he examines his themes and moves from text to context, Amundsen clarifies a number of Christian principles in relation to bioethical issues that are hotly debated today. In his examination of the moral stance of the earliest syphilographers, for example, he finds insights into the ethical issues surrounding the treatment of AIDS, which he believes has its closest historical antecedent not in plague but in syphilis. He also shows that the belief that all healing comes from God, whether directly, through prayer, or through the use of medicine -- a sentiment commonly held by contemporary Christians -- cannot be accurately attributed to any extant source from the patristic period. Indeed, all the Church Fathers were convinced that healing sometimes came from evil sources: Satan and his demons were able to heal, for example, and Asclepius was a demon "to be taken very seriously indeed."