Science Archive
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Can medieval drugs help modern patients?
Posted on December 14, 2013 | No CommentsWere medieval drugs effective at helping patients? Can modern pharmaceuticals make use of their knowledge? -
Depicting the Medieval Alchemical Cosmos: George Ripley’s Wheel of Inferior Astronomy
Posted on December 10, 2013 | No CommentsAlchemical writing often develops the idea of a physical or analogical correspondence between heaven and earth: a relationship most fre- quently and conveniently expressed by the use of the seven planetary symbols (Sol, Luna, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) to denote the seven metals (usually gold, silver, quicksilver, copper, iron, tin and lead respectively). -
![Healthscaping a Medieval City: Lucca’s Curia viarum and the Future of Public Health History G. Geltner (Department of History, University of Amsterdam) Urban History: 40, 3 (2013) Abstract In early fourteenth-century Lucca, […]](http://www.medievalists.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/watch-2-115x90.jpg "Healthscaping a Medieval City: Lucca’s Curia viarum and the Future of Public Health History")
Healthscaping a Medieval City: Lucca’s Curia viarum and the Future of Public Health History
Posted on November 24, 2013 | No CommentsHealthscaping a Medieval City: Lucca’s Curia viarum and the Future of Public Health History G. Geltner (Department of History, University of Amsterdam) Urban History: 40, 3 (2013) Abstract In early fourteenth-century Lucca, […] -
Ironing Out the Myth of the Flat Earth
Posted on November 21, 2013 | No CommentsIt seems there’s one fact about the Middle Ages that always seems to astound people: medieval people did not actually think the world was flat. -
Galileo, the Impact of the Telescope, and the Birth of Modern Astronomy
Posted on October 19, 2013 | No CommentsGalileo would have dearly loved to explain to his examiners how his observations made belief in the Copernican system more intellectually respectable even though he had no irrefutable proof of the Earth’s motion, but this was an opportunity he never got. -
From Rome to the antipodes: the medieval form of the world
Posted on October 9, 2013 | No CommentsHere we discuss how some medieval scholars in the Western Europe viewed the form of the world and the problem of the Antipodes -
Into the frontier: medieval land reclamation and the creation of new societies. Comparing Holland and the Po Valley, 800-1500
Posted on September 29, 2013 | No CommentsIn the paper it is shown that medieval land reclamation led to the emergence of two very divergent societies, characterised by a number of different configurations; (a) power and property structure, (b) modes of exploitation, (c) economic portfolios, and (d) commodity markets. -
Political Science in Late Medieval Europe: The Aristotelian Paradigm and How It Shaped the Study of Politics in the West
Posted on September 26, 2013 | No CommentsWhile scholars have provided many interesting insights into the role of Aristotle in shaping later political theory, I argue that they are inadequate to explain the rapid “Aristotelianization” of political thought in the later Middle Ages. -
Islamic Astronomy in Medieval China
Posted on September 15, 2013 | No CommentsIn 1271, Kublai Khan founded the Bureau of Islamic Astronomy in Peking, which operated alongside the long-established Chinese Astronomical Bureau. -
The Medieval Metal Industry Was the Cradle of Modern Large-Scale Atmospheric Lead Pollution in Northern Europe
Posted on September 4, 2013 | No CommentsThis study indicates that the contemporary atmospheric pollution climate in northern Europe was established in Medieval time, rather than in the Industrial period. Atmospheric lead pollution deposition did not, when seen in a historical perspective, increase as much as usually assumed with the Industrial Revolution (1800 A.D.). -
The Engineering Beauty of the Trebuchet
Posted on August 28, 2013 | No CommentsTrebuchets were used to break through castle walls from about 850-1350 C.E. Dead livestock or giant rocks were the usual ammunition, but sometimes prisoners of war or especially annoying people were added to the flying debris. -
The Night the Moon exploded and other Lunar tales from the Middle Ages
Posted on July 21, 2013 | No CommentsPeople in the Middle Ages asked what was the moon made of? How far away was it? Could it make my child vindictive? Here is what they found out. -
Blood beliefs in early modern Europe
Posted on June 29, 2013 | No CommentsThis thesis focuses on the significance of blood and the perception of the body in both learned and popular culture in order to investigate problems of identity and social exclusion in early modern Europe. -
The Nature of West European Science in the Late Middle Ages (1200-1500)
Posted on June 16, 2013 | No CommentsI will argue that what medieval scholars did with natural philosophy and the role they assigned to it in intellectual life was ultimately more important than what they did with the technical sciences. -
The Calamitous Fourteenth Century in England: All Doom and Gloom?
Posted on May 28, 2013 | No CommentsThis was a fantastic paper given at the Crown and Country in Late medieval England session at KZOO. There were only two papers but both were interesting and enjoyable. This paper delved into the history of science in late medieval England and examined why the fourteenth century, a time that is usually synonymous with doom and gloom, plague and uprising, wasn't all that bad upon closer observation. -
Signs and Senses: Diagnosis and Prognosis in Early Medieval Pulse and Urine Texts
Posted on April 28, 2013 | No Commentsin which they were made. These early medieval anthologies are quite different from Scholastic anthologies such as the Artkella, which were compiled as curriculum texts for the new, formalized medical instruction of the nascent universities. -
Horticulture and Health in the Middle Ages: Images from the Tacuinum Sanitatis
Posted on April 14, 2013 | No CommentsThe relationships between plants and health have been and continue to be of great concern for humankind considering both diet and medicinal uses. -
Visualization in Medieval Alchemy
Posted on April 14, 2013 | No CommentsTherefore, rather than attempting to establish an exhaustive inventory of visual forms in medieval alchemy or a premature synthesis, the purpose of this article is to sketch major trends in visualization and to exemplify them by their earliest appearance so far known. -
The vegetarian component of a late medieval diet
Posted on March 10, 2013 | No CommentsTrondheim was the seat of an archbishop and the centre of the see of Nidaros from 1152/53 until 1537 when the reformation reached Norway and the last Norwegian archbishop, Olav Engelbrektsson, fled the country. This marked a turning point in the town’s history. The arch- bishop’s residence, Erkebispegården, which was established around AD 1170 between the cathedral and the river Nidelva. -
A glimpse into the early origins of medieval anatomy through the oldest conserved human dissection (Western Europe, 13th c. A.D.)
Posted on March 6, 2013 | No CommentsLittle is known about medieval anatomical preparations, as only theoretical treatises signed by surgeons and physicians have survived. In 2003, a mummified human torso was sold by a medical antiquities art dealer from Paris, and is now conserved in a Canadian private collection; its recent multidisciplinary analysis was the occasion of a whole description of such an anatomical preparation, and to improve our knowledge about early occidental autopsy/dissection techniques and body preservation -
Myths and mandrakes
Posted on March 4, 2013 | No CommentsOthers, however, began to wonder whether the possession of roots might not bring them success in other areas as well—wealth, popularity, or the power to control their own and other people's destinies, and took to wearing them as good luck charms. -
The Scientific World of the Crown of Aragon under James I
Posted on March 3, 2013 | No CommentsThis article seeks to provide a general overview of the cultural landscape during the reign of James I, with a particular focus on science. -
“Morus per se?”: Pain and its Treatment in Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-century Europe
Posted on March 3, 2013 | No CommentsYet of the many medical conditions that face human beings, pain is one of the most valuable to study from a sociocultural perspective. Pain can be methodologically difficult to study. At once reactions to pain are universal and yet the experience is fundamentally solitary and isolating. -
The teaching of astronomy in medieval universities, principally at Paris in the fourteenth century
Posted on February 10, 2013 | No CommentsObviously, however, learned men of antiquity and the Middle Ages showed the greatest interest in such genuinely astronomical activities as the observation of the skies, of the heavenly bodies and of their movements, positions, orbits, and anomalies. -
The Rise of Alchemy in Fourteenth-Century England
Posted on February 6, 2013 | No CommentsHowever the alchemical source of the early fourteenth century also explicitly maintained that knowledge of the secret of secrets involved an understanding of the hidden forces within the earth, and this in turn would bring earthly power. The most obvious manifestation of this interest in alchemical secrets lay in the belief that controlled experimentation with mercury and sulphur could effect transmutation of base metals into gold.
