The healing arts : health, disease and society in Europe, 1500-1800 / edited by Peter Elmer.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Elmer, Peter.

Edward Potts Cheyney Memorial Fund.

Series:

Medicine and society in Europe, 1500-1930

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Social medicine--Europe--History.

Social medicine.

Medical policy--Europe--History.

Medical policy.

Medicine--Europe--History.

Medicine.

History.

Europe.

Physical Description:

xxiv, 408 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 25 cm.

Place of Publication:

Manchester : Manchester University Press, 2004.

Summary:

The period from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment constitutes a vital phase in the history of European medicine. Elements of continuity with the classical and medieval past are evident in the persistence of a view of the body and of illness based on the doctrine of the four humours. At the same time, new theories of the body emerged to challenge established ideas. In recent years, scholars have explored this terrain with increasingly fascinating results, often providing new insights into the way in which early modern Europeans understood concepts relating to the body, health and disease. As a consequence, historians are increasingly aware of the way in which every aspect of medical care in early modern Europe was shaped by the social, religious, political and cultural concerns of the age. In this volume of original essays, established scholars in the social history of medicine explore these ideas, and provide a readily accessible overview of current thinking on a wide range of medical themes and topics. Chapters include detailed discussion of theories of the body, changing perceptions of disease, the measures used to combat epidemics, colonial and military medicine, and the relationship between patients and practitioners. The book will appeal to students, teachers, health workers and general readers who wish to develop a critical awareness of medicine in the past.

Contents:

1 Medicine in western Europe in 1500 / Sachiko Kusukawa 1

1.2 Rome and Europe in 1500 1

1.3 The organization of medical practice 3

1.4 The medical knowledge of the ancient Greeks 4

1.5 The making of the learned doctor in medieval Europe 12

1.6 Christianity and healing 18

1.7 The old and the new 20

2 The sick and their healers / Silvia De Renzi 27

2.2 Medical care: its economy and control 28

2.3 The maintenance of health 32

2.4 Women as healers 34

2.5 Leonardo Fioravanti: a sixteenth-century itinerant healer 38

2.6 Barber-surgeons, surgeons and apothecaries 43

2.7 The skills and career of a physician: Girolamo Cardano 47

3 The medical renaissance of the sixteenth century: Vesalius, medical humanism and bloodletting / Sachiko Kusukawa 58

3.2 The Renaissance and medical humanism 59

3.3 Bloodletting 61

3.4 Humanism, bloodletting and a new medical controversy 66

3.5 Andreas Vesalius 68

3.6 The Fabrica 74

3.7 Vesalius' legacy 79

4 Medicine and religion in sixteenth-century Europe / Ole Peter Grell 84

4.2 Medicine and religion in the later Middle Ages 85

4.3 Medicine and the Reformation 86

4.4 The Reformation, the Counter-Reformation and attitudes to popular and sacred healing 91

4.5 Paracelsus and Paracelsianism 93

4.6 Religion and epidemics 99

4.7 Health care 100

5 Chemical medicine and the challenge to Galenism: the legacy of Paracelsus, 1560-1700 / Peter Elmer 108

5.2 The Paracelsian revolution, 1560-1640 109

5.3 The new challenge of Helmontianism, 1650-1700 121

6 Policies of health: diseases, poverty and hospitals / Silvia De Renzi 136

6.2 Diseases and society 137

6.3 Hospitals 150

6.4 Public health in the eighteenth century: the Habsburg territories and the German lands 160

7 Old and new models of the body / Silvia De Renzi 166

7.2 Harvey and the circulation of the blood 168

7.3 The mechanical body 173

7.4 Glands everywhere: the body according to Malpighi 176

7.5 The body expressed in numbers 181

7.6 The power of patients 184

7.7 The sensible body 187

8 Women and medicine / Silvia De Renzi 196

8.2 A different body? 197

8.3 Questions of generation 205

8.4 Childbirth: from female ceremony to male medical practice 215

9 The care and cure of mental illness / Peter Elmer 228

9.2 Richard Napier and his patients: a case study 230

9.3 Caring for the mad in eighteenth-century Europe: a 'psychiatric dark age'? 245

10 War, medicine and the military revolution / Ole Peter Grell 257

10.2 Changes to warfare in the early modern period 258

10.3 New wounds and old diseases 260

10.4 Surgical treatment of gunshot wounds 263

10.5 Wounds to the head and the disappearance of the helmet 265

10.6 Treatment of burns 266

10.7 Amputations 267

10.8 Foot rot and shell shock 275

10.9 Scurvy 276

10.10 Hygiene 278

10.11 Military hospitals 280

11 Environment, health and population / Mark Jenner 284

11.2 Airs, waters, places 285

11.3 Analysing places, analysing populations 295

11.4 Changing populations? The case of inoculation 301

11.5 Changing places? Hygiene and improvement 305

12 Medicine and health in the age of European colonialism / Andrew Wear 315

12.2 The biological effects of European colonialism 316

12.3 Climate, place and health 318

12.4 Perceptions of health and new environments in the early English settlements of North America 321

12.5 Systems of medical care in the Spanish and English colonies 327

12.6 Remedies and medical contact between the old and new worlds 329

12.7 The exchange of medical knowledge 331

12.8 Medicine and slavery 334

13 Organization, training and the medical marketplace in the eighteenth century / Laurence William Brockliss 344

13.2 The organization of licensed medical practice 346

13.3 The distribution of licensed medical practitioners: the case of France 352

13.4 Medical training 356

13.5 The medical marketplace 371.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Edward Potts Cheyney Memorial Fund.

ISBN:

0719067340

OCLC:

52876899