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Medicine Archive
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Lotions and Potions: Medical Books from the Middle Ages
Posted on February 25, 2013 | No CommentsMedicine existed long before it was a science taught at medieval universities. This lecture takes the audience to the eleventh and twelfth centuries, when the first medical handbooks were translated from Arabic into Latin, the learned language of the West. -
Syphilis, Misogyny, and Witchcraft in 16th-Century Europe
Posted on February 19, 2013 | No CommentsSyphilis, Misogyny, and Witchcraft in 16th-Century Europe Eric B. Ross Current Anthropology, Vol. 36, No. 2 (Apr., 1995), pp. 333-337 Abstract While debate continues over the geographical origin of syphilis... -
How parasites went on Crusade
Posted on February 12, 2013 | No CommentsThe contents of crusader latrines are helping researchers probe the history of parasite infections in humans. -
Islamic Pharmacology and Pharmacy in the Latin West: An Approach to Early Pharmacopoeias
Posted on January 26, 2013 | No CommentsI will mainly deal with three early examples: the Nuovo Receptario from Florence (1499), the Dispensatorium of Nuremberg (1546) and the first Pharmacopoeia Londinensis (1618). -
Syphilis in Renaissance Europe: rapid evolution of an introduced sexually transmitted disease?
Posted on January 22, 2013 | No CommentsWhen syphilis first appeared in Europe in 1495, it was an acute and extremely unpleasant disease. After only a few years it was less severe than it once was, and it changed over the next 50 years into a milder, chronic disease. -
Graciosi: Medieval and Early Modern Attitudes to Disability
Posted on January 13, 2013 | No CommentsJesus' ability to heal involves his willingness to 'take on' the ills of humanity. The source of mental illness is the devil, and Jesus' healing activities include exorcisms. -
The monastic contribution to mediaeval medical care
Posted on January 13, 2013 | No CommentsThe function of hospitals and monasteries was roughly the same. Illness was regarded by most people as a form of divine punishment. The monasteries were founded on private initiative to intercede for the souls of the living and the dead. -
Have eye or ear problems in the Middle Ages? Mother’s milk was often the cure
Posted on January 12, 2013 | No CommentsMedieval medicine is often known for its interesting cures to the various ailments. Plants, animal parts, and even stones were used to treat sicknesses and other health problems. In a recent paper, Rosemary A. Buck of Eastern Illinois University details another cure: women's breast milk. -
Herbs and Drugs in Monastic Gardens
Posted on January 6, 2013 | No CommentsIn those small backyards the monks planted various medical herbs from which drugs were gained and gathered to provide the monastery and the sick of the neighbourhood with medicine. Every monk, in this way, was a doctor and pharmacist as well. -
The Impact of Climate Change on Late Medieval English Culture
Posted on December 28, 2012 | No CommentsThis thesis challenges the extremes of both environmental determinism and the modernist perspective that humanity exists in social and/or cultural isolation from the natural environment. -
Reading Health in the Stars: Politics and Medical Astrology in Renaissance Milan
Posted on December 27, 2012 | No CommentsHorary astrology was skillfully exploited in political circles and suggests that, far from being irrelevant to our understanding of Renaissance Italy, astrology played an important role in shaping its history. -
Suicide in the Middle Ages
Posted on December 17, 2012 | No CommentsAll three types of source need careful interpretation. Suicide is notoriously elusive to records even in modern times, and more so for the Middle Ages. Once due allowances have been made for each genre, however, it is some reassurance that they agree on certain basics, and that these, in turn, agree with estimates from better-recorded centuries... -
Neither ill nor healthy: The intermediate state between health and disease in medieval medicine
Posted on December 16, 2012 | No CommentsParadoxically, however, the notion of an intermediate state between health and disease also has a long history, harking back, at least, to the times of Galen. The question of the existence of such a state and the utility and necessity for physicians to acknowledge it, was particularly hotly debated in the Middle Ages... -
Researchers find more links between the Black Death and Justinian’s plague
Posted on December 10, 2012 | No CommentsResearchers from the University of Tuebingen in Germany are uncovering more evidence that is linking the Black Death with earlier plagues. -
The Black Death And The Future Of Medicine
Posted on December 9, 2012 | No CommentsThis paper will specifically focus on the effects of the Black Death on medicine and medical practice in Europe. Its purpose is to investigate the Black Death’s influence on medicine, especially with regard to learned medicine and surgery. -
The Politics of Madness: Government in the Reigns of Charles VI and Henry VI
Posted on December 9, 2012 | No CommentsThis approach is further hampered by the continually changing nature of modem psychology. Due to alterations in the criteria used for diagnoses, terms and illnesses become obsolete, thus negating our previous theories. -
Juana “The Mad”: Queen of a World Empire
Posted on December 9, 2012 | No CommentsIt was not until the mid-nineteenth century that scholars discovered new material about Juana in the Spanish and Austrian archives that gave another side to the person of the woman who had been con- sidered “la loca.” -
Medieval Cures from The Alphabet of Galen
Posted on December 7, 2012 | No CommentsUse green mint to stop hiccups, radish to relieve aching joints and donkey dung as toothpaste! Some medieval cures from the Alphabet of Galen, the pharmacy handbook of the Middle Ages. -
Blood and the Anglo-Saxons
Posted on December 1, 2012 | No CommentsFrom this leechbook and others, it is clear that the Anglo-Saxons understood ‘blod’ to have a specific medical purpose: to transport the nutritional elements of food to all parts of the body. -
Madness in the Old Norse society: Narratives and ideas
Posted on November 25, 2012 | No CommentsIn the Viking Age (800-1030 a.d.) and the Middle Ages (1030-1500 a.d.) in Northern Europe, the main available information stems from fictional literature - more precisely the sagas, written predominantly in Iceland during the 13th century. -
A Marginal Occupation? The Medieval Laundress and her Work
Posted on November 22, 2012 | No CommentsThe wider study of an ostensibly menial activity that, with certain notable exceptions, offered insecure and poorly paid employment to illiterate women of low status is certainly beset with problems. -
Medicine and Health Care in Later Medieval Europe: Hospitals, Public Health, and Minority Medical Practitioners in English and German Cities, 1250-1450
Posted on November 18, 2012 | No CommentsThis interdisciplinary study, written from the standpoint ofan aspiring physician, seeks to contribute to the humanistic dimension of medicine by helping to integrate it further with its past, illuminating the meaning of health and disease in medieval society while adding depth to current thinking about medicine and public health. This study places various aspects ofhealth and disease within the framework of two major topics, religious beliefs and urban social history. -
Medieval Book History Week Lecture: “Practical Latin and Formal English in the 14th-15th Centuries”
Posted on November 13, 2012 | No CommentsThis lecture is part of Medieval Book History Week. Renown Professor Jeremy Catto spoke about literacy and language in England during the later Middle Ages at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies at the University of Toronto. -
Rhazes: A Pioneer in Clinical Observation
Posted on October 30, 2012 | No CommentsRhazes challenged accepted medical beliefs through his skepticism of certain Galenic practices, his definition of small pox and measles, and his perceptive research through clinical investigation, resulting in substantial improvements in medical beliefs and practice. -
Prescribing Love: Italian Jewish Physicians Writing on Lovesickness in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
Posted on October 29, 2012 | No CommentsThis paper begins with a general survey of early modern European medical literature concerning lovesickness. This is followed by a short introduction to the Jewish physicians who lived and worked in the geographic area currently constituting Italy during the beginning of the early modern period, focusing on three physicians who wrote about lovesickness...