Science and Medicine in the Scottish Enlightenment


Book Description

Writing to Dugald Stewart in June 1789, Thomas Jefferson enthused that as far as science was concerned, no place in the world can pretend to a competition with Edinburgh. Yet, despite similar encomiums down the years, the role of the natural sciences and medicine in the Scottish Enlightenment is still neither generally appreciated nor fully understood. This collection of ten essays by scholars in the field provides a comprehensive overview of the place of scientific and medical enquiry in Scotland during the period 1690-1815. Each chapter presents new research in order to reflect upon previous interpretations and to suggest fresh perspectives on the relationship between science and medicine and culture and society in 18th-century Scotland. Collectively, the essays illustrate both the centrality of natural and medical knowledge in enlightened culture and the wider implications of Scotland's story for an understanding of science and medicine in the modern world.




Scottish Medicine and Literary Culture, 1726-1832


Book Description

Scottish Medicine and Literary Culture, 1726–1832 examines the ramifications of Scottish medicine for literary culture within Scotland, throughout Britain, and across the transatlantic world. The contributors take an informed historicist approach in examining the cultural, geographical, political, and other circumstances enabling the dissemination of distinctively Scottish medico-literary discourses. In tracing the international influence of Scottish medical ideas upon literary practice they ask critical questions concerning medical ethics, the limits of sympathy and the role of belles lettres in professional self-fashioning, and the development of medico-literary genres such as the medical short story, physician autobiography and medical biography. Some consider the role of medical ideas and culture in the careers, creative practice and reception of such canonical writers as Mark Akenside, Robert Burns, Robert Fergusson, Sir Walter Scott and William Wordsworth. By providing an important range of current scholarship, these essays represent an expansion and greater penetration of critical vision. Megan J. Coyer is a Wellcome Trust Research Fellow in Medical Humanities within the School of Critical Studies at the University of Glasgow. David E. Shuttleton is Reader in Literature and Medical Culture within the School of Critical Studies at the University of Glasgow.




History of Scottish Architecture


Book Description

At last - here is a single volume authoritative history of Scottish architecture. This compact yet comprehensive account combines factual description of the vast and fertile range of visual forms and key architects in each period with a wide-ranging analysis of their social, ideological and historical context. As Scotland has often been closely involved with new trends in western architecture, this book highlights the interaction of Scottish developments with broader European and international movements. From the beginnings of the Renaissance in the 15th century right up to the 1990s ,this much-needed survey covers the entire post-medieval story in one volume.




The Healers


Book Description

A medical history of Scotland, including practices, innovations, politics, diseases and pandemics, from medieval times to the twentieth century. Scotland offers almost unique opportunities for medical historians. For a conventional history, there is a rich stock of famous doctors and their discoveries. There are also the contributions of four ancient universities and three equally old colleges of physicians and surgeons. For historians of public health there is the famous struggle against the problems of the industrial revolution and the lives and works of the great sanitary reformers in Glasgow and Edinburgh. For the social historian there are equal opportunities in the diversity of the health care in the Highlands and Lowlands, the rich traditions of Scottish folk medicine and the interactions of Scottish and English medical practice. Much else can be learnt in relating Scotland's great innovative periods to her cultural and political state at the time. In this book, author David Hamilton explores new sources and evaluates the rich history of medicinal practices in Scotland. Thus, for historians both of medicine and of Scotland, this study is necessary to more fully understand the country's history.




Scottish Herbs and Fairy Lore


Book Description

Many of the herbal and magical practices of the Scots are echoed in traditional Norwegian folk medicine and magic. This is a valuable resource book not only for the serious folklorist, but also for a wider audience interested in a deeper look at rural Scottish practices. Ms. Hopman has done an amazing amount of research, and her Scottish herbalism section is far more detailed than I've seen elsewhere. A "must have" for the northern European folklorist's library. Jane T. Sibley, Ph.D., author of "The Hammer of the Smith" and "The Divine Thunderbolt: Missile of the Gods." Through her books, Ellen Evert Hopman lifts the veil between worlds of the present and the past. She guides the reader on a fascinating journey to our ancient Celtic history, simultaneously restoring lost knowledge and entertaining the reader. Be prepared to be educated and delighted. Wendy Farley, Clan McKleod The first things is WOW! Ellen Hopman has given us a volume that belongs in Harry Potter's library. This wonderful collection of enchantments, faery lore and herbal potions, is presented by a practicing herbalist and (I suspect) magician. It is a useful manual of magic, an unusual tourist guide to Scotland, certainly a delightful read, and at the very least, a comprehensive and thoroughly footnoted collection of folk lore for humorless librarians and scholars. Matthew Wood MS (Scottish School of Herbal Medicine) Registered Herbalist (American Herbalists Guild) Every now and again, a book emerges from the waves of occult and magical authorship that delves into the deep and ancestral waters of old magic! This book is one of those rare occasions. From the lore of herbs to the blessing of stones; from avioding the elf-blast to healing through Faerie blessing - Ellen guides the reader through ancient groves of oral lore to discover a power and spirit that connects the reader to the oldest of magics, the earth and her elements. I am confident that the Scottish Ancestral Wise Ones, are renewed through this book and the old ways live once again! Orion Foxwood, Traditional Witch Elder, Conjurer in Southern Root-Doctoring and Faery Seer (www.orionfoxwood.com), author of "The Faery Teachings" (R.J. Stewart Books) and "The Tree of Enchantment" (Weiser Books).







Medicine, Law and Public Policy in Scotland


Book Description

Focusing on Scotland, this collection draws together the three main strands of Anne Crowther's academic research - welfare, medicine and legal history - and reflects the range of her historical scholarship. Based on original research, the essays in this book examine important developments in key Scottish institutions, question enduring myths about the nature of Scottish legal and medical practice, and explore the intersections between medicine, the law and public policy.




Cultures of Improvement in Scottish Romanticism, 1707-1840


Book Description

The first applied research volume in Scottish Romanticism, this collection foregrounds the concept of progress as 'improvement' as a constitutive theme of Scottish writing during the long eighteenth century. It explores improvement as the animating principle behind Scotland’s post-1707 project of modernization, a narrative both shaped and reflected in the literary sphere. It represents a vital moment in Romantic studies, as a 'four-nations' interrogation of the British context reaches maturity. Equally, the volume contributes to a central concern in the study of Scottish culture, amplifying a critical synthesis of Romanticism and Enlightenment. Chapter 9 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.




Essays on David Hume, Medical Men and the Scottish Enlightenment


Book Description

The Scottish Enlightenment was a period of intellectual and scientific progress, in a country previously considered to be marginal to the European intellectual scene. Yet the enlightenment was not about politeness or civic humanism, but something more basic - the making of an improved society which could compete in every way in a rapidly changing world. David Hume, writing in 1752, commented that 'industry, knowledge and humanity are linked together by an indissoluble chain'. Collectively this volume of essays embraces many of the topics which Hume included under 'industry, knowledge and humanity': from the European Enlightenment and the Scots relation to it, to Scottish social history and its relation to religion, science and medicine. Overarching themes of what it meant to be enlightened in the eighteenth century are considered alongside more specific studies of notable figures of the period, such as Archibald Campbell, 3rd Duke of Argyll, and David Hume, and the training and number of Scottish medical students. Together, the volume provides an opportunity to step back and reconsider the Scottish Enlightenment in its broader context and to consider what new directions this field of study might take.




Medicine-by-Post


Book Description

Medicine-by-Post is an interdisciplinary study that will engage readers both in the history of medicine and the eighteenth-century novel. The correspondence from the large private practices of James Jurin, George Cheyne, and William Cullen opens a unique window on the doctor–patient relationship in England and Scotland from this period. The letters, many previously unpublished, reveal a changing rhetoric that mirrors contemporary shifts in medical theory and the patient’s self-image. Medicine-by-Post uncovers the strategies of self-representation by both healers and patients, and reinterprets the meaning of illness and the medical encounter in eighteenth-century literature in the light of true-life experience. The tension between the patient’s personal needs and the doctor’s professional will presents a ready metaphor for the novelist, depicting the social expectations placed upon the individual as well as a measure of one’s moral character in the context of illness. The correspondence also demonstrates the subtle changes in rhetoric regarding ‘sensibility’, reflecting evolving medical speculation. It also describes the differing perspectives of the female body between doctors and novelists and the women patients themselves. Yet much of this correspondence shows an unexpected blend of metaphor with a realistic and utilitarian approach to therapeutic advice and the patient’s own compliance. In these letters we discover some genuinely sympathetic doctors.