Medicine and the Italian Universities


Book Description

This volume of collected essays deals with medicine in the university world of thirteenth to sixteenth century Italy, discussing both the internal academic milieu of teaching and learning and its relation to the surrounding culture of medieval and Renaissance Italian cities.




Medicine and the Italian Universities, 1250-1600


Book Description

This volume collects essays published in the last 20 years. They deal with medicine in the university world of thirteenth to sixteenth century Italy, discussing both the internal academic milieu of teaching and learning and its relation to the lively urban social, economic, and cultural context in which medieval and Renaissance Italian university medicine grew up. Topics covered include the complex interaction of continuity and change in the transition from scholastic to humanistic medicine; humanist presentations of medical lives; the activities of physicians who moved among the worlds of academic learning, princely courts, and city life; the teaching of practical medicine; the relations of medical and surgical learning and practice; and the influence on medical writing of a variety of elements in the broader surrounding intellectual culture.




Medicine and Humanism in Late Medieval Italy


Book Description

"The Carrara Herbal is an exceptional illustrated book of materia medica (therapeutic substances drawn from plants, animals and minerals). It is exceptional in both its illustrations and its content, making it of interest to historians of art and medicine alike. The Herbal contains a translation into Paduan dialect of a Latin version of the mid-thirteenth-century Arabic pharmacopeia, Kitab al-Adwiya al-mufrada (The Book of Simple Medicines), written by Ibn Sarabi, a Christian physician working in al-Andalus and known in the Latin West as Serapion the Younger."--Introduction.




Introduction to Medieval Europe 300–1500


Book Description

Introduction to Medieval Europe 300–1500 provides a comprehensive survey of this complex and varied formative period of European history, covering themes as diverse as barbarian migrations, the impact of Christianisation, the formation of nations and states, the emergence of an expansionist commercial economy, the growth of cities, the Crusades, the effects of plague, and the intellectual and cultural life of the Middle Ages. The book explores the driving forces behind the formation of medieval society and the directions in which it developed and changed. In doing this, the authors cover a wide geographic expanse, including Western interactions with the Byzantine Empire and the Islamic World. This third edition contains a wealth of new features that help to bring this fascinating era to life, including: In the book: A number of new maps and images to further understanding of the period Clear signposting and extended discussions of key topics such as feudalism and gender Expanded geographic coverage into Eastern Europe and the Middle East On the companion website: An updated, comparative and interactive timeline, highlighting surprising synchronicities in medieval history, and annotated links to useful websites A list of movies, television series and novels related to the Middle Ages, accompanied by introductions and commentaries Assignable discussion questions and the maps, plates, figures and tables from the book available to download and use in the classroom Clear and stimulating, the third edition of Introduction to Medieval Europe is the ideal companion to studying Europe in the Middle Ages at undergraduate level.




Henry Daniel and the Rise of Middle English Medical Writing


Book Description

Henry Daniel, fourteenth-century medical writer, Dominican friar, and contemporary of Chaucer, is one of the most neglected figures to whom we can attribute a substantial body of extant works in Middle English. His Liber Uricrisiarum, the earliest known medical text in Middle English, synthesizes authoritative traditions into a new diagnostic encyclopedia characterized by its stylistic verve and intellectual scope. Drawing on expertise from a range of scholars, this volume examines Daniel’s capacious works and demonstrates their significance to many scholarly conversations, including the history of late medieval medicine. It explains the background for Daniel’s uroscopic and herbal work, describes all known versions of the Liber Uricrisiarum and traces revisions over time, analyses Daniel’s representations of his own medical practice, and demonstrates his influence on later medical and literary writers. Both a companion to the recently published reading edition of the Liber Uricrisiarum and a work of original scholarship in its own right, this collection promotes a wider understanding of Daniel’s texts and prompts new discoveries about their importance.




Beyond Cadfael


Book Description

Medievalism and medieval medicine are vibrant subfields of medieval studies, enjoying sustained scholarly attention and popularity among undergraduates. Popular perceptions of medieval medicine, however, remain understudied. This book aims to fill that lacuna by providing a multifaceted study of medical medievalism, defined as modern representations of medieval medicine intended for popular audiences. The volume takes as its starting point the fictional medieval detective Brother Cadfael, whose observations on bodies, herbs, and death have shaped many popular conceptions of medieval medicine in the Anglophone world. The ten contributing authors move beyond Cadfael by exploring global medical medievalisms in a range of genres and cultural contexts. Beyond Cadfael is organized into three sections, the first of which engages with how disease, injury, and the sick are imagined in fictitious medieval worlds. The second, on doctors at work, looks at medieval medical practice in novels, films and television, and public commemorative practice. These essays examine how practitioners are represented and imagined in medieval and pseudo-medieval worlds. The third section discusses medicine designed for and practiced by women in the Middle Ages and today, with a focus on East Asian medical traditions. These essays are guided by the recognition that medieval medical practices are often in dialogue with contemporary medical practices that fall outside the norms of Western biomedicine.




Venice and the Radical Reformation


Book Description

The Republic of Venice was the only Catholic territory in which an Anabaptist community formed in the 16th century. The history of Venetian Anabaptism, hitherto little known in Reformation Studies, is the focus of this book. Using a large quantity of archival material and rare printed sources Riccarda Suitner reconstructs the lives of the Republic's Anabaptists and the inquisitorial repression they suffered, and analyses the doctrinal specificities of the Radical Reformation in this area. This story represents a fundamental stage in the relations between German, central-European and Italian culture in the early modern period. Events in Venice are presented within a broader comparative framework, paying particular attention to the German states, Switzerland, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Transylvania, Moravia, Tyrol, and the Kingdom of Naples. It will emerge that its Venetian history cannot be ignored if we are to gain a true understanding of the European Reformation.




Encyclopedia of Pestilence, Pandemics, and Plagues [2 volumes]


Book Description

Editor Joseph P. Byrne, together with an advisory board of specialists and over 100 scholars, research scientists, and medical practitioners from 13 countries, has produced a uniquely interdisciplinary treatment of the ways in which diseases pestilence, and plagues have affected human life. From the Athenian flu pandemic to the Black Death to AIDS, this extensive two-volume set offers a sociocultural, historical, and medical look at infectious diseases and their place in human history from Neolithic times to the present. Nearly 300 entries cover individual diseases (such as HIV/AIDS, malaria, Ebola, and SARS); major epidemics (such as the Black Death, 16th-century syphilis, cholera in the nineteenth century, and the Spanish Flu of 1918-19); environmental factors (such as ecology, travel, poverty, wealth, slavery, and war); and historical and cultural effects of disease (such as the relationship of Romanticism to Tuberculosis, the closing of London theaters during plague epidemics, and the effect of venereal disease on social reform). Primary source sidebars, over 70 illustrations, a glossary, and an extensive print and nonprint bibliography round out the work.




Plants in 16th and 17th Century


Book Description

In the pre-modern times, while medicine was still relying on classical authorities on herbal remedies, a new engagement with the plant world emerged. This volume follows intertwined strands in the study of plants, examining newly introduced species that captured physicians' curiosity, expanded their therapeutic arsenal, and challenged their long-held medical theories. The development of herbaria, the creation of botanical gardens, and the inspection of plants contributed to a new understanding of the vegetal world. Increased attention to plants led to account for their therapeutic virtues, to test and produce new drugs, to recognize the physical properties of plants, and to develop a new plant science and medicine.




The World of Plants in Renaissance Tuscany


Book Description

In the sixteenth century medicinal plants, which until then had been the monopoly of apothecaries, became a major topic of investigation in the medical faculties of Italian universities, where they were observed, transplanted, and grown by learned physicians both in the wild and in the newly founded botanical gardens. Tuscany was one of the main European centres in this new field of inquiry, thanks largely to the Medici Grand Dukes, who patronised and sustained research and teaching, whilst also taking a significant personal interest in plants and medicine. This is the first major reconstruction of this new world of plants in sixteenth-century Tuscany. Focusing primarily on the medical use of plants, this book also shows how plants, while maintaining their importance in therapy, began to be considered and studied for themselves, and how this new understanding prepared the groundwork for the science of botany. More broadly this study explores how the New World's flora impacted on existing botanical knowledge and how this led to the first attempts at taxonomy.