This book presents for the first time an up-to-date and easy-to-read translation of a medical reference work that was used in Western Europe from the fifth century well into the Renaissance. Listing 185 medicinal plants, the uses for each, and remedies that were compounded using them, the translation will fascinate medievalist, medical historians and the layman alike.
Collins shows how the principal herbal traditions of Classical descent were replaced by a new observation of nature that itself paved the way for the magnificent paintings of later French and Italian herbals.
Herbs and Healers from the Ancient Mediterranean through the Medieval West brings together eleven papers by leading scholars in ancient and medieval medicine and pharmacy. Fittingly, the volume honors Professor John M. Riddle, one of today's most respected medieval historians, whose career has been devoted to decoding the complexities of early medicine and pharmacy. "Herbs" in the title generally connotes drugs in ancient and medieval times; the essays here discuss interesting aspects of the challenges scholars face as they translate and interpret texts in several older languages. Some of the healers in the volume are named, such as Philotas of Amphissa, Gariopontus, and Constantine the African; many are anonymous and known only from their treatises on drugs and/or medicine. The volume's scope demonstrates the breadth of current research being undertaken in the field, examining both practical medical arts and medical theory from the ancient world into early modern times. It also includes a paper about a cutting-edge Internet-based system for ongoing academic collaboration. The essays in this volume reveal insightful research approaches and highlight new discoveries that will be of interest to the international academic community of classicists, medievalists, and early-modernists because of the scarcity of publications objectively evaluating long-lived traditions that have their origin in the world of the ancient Mediterranean.
More than 140 color illustrations accompany this one-year visit with a fictional twelfth-century monk, following him on his rounds as Shrewsbury's apothecary and healer, and teach readers about hundreds of herbs and their remedial powers.
Jerry Stannard assembled a legendary collection of materials on the history of botany from Homer to Linnaeus, and his mastery of the field was acknowledged as incomparable. However, his work was sadly cut short by his death, and so did not result in the ultimate synthesis he envisioned; this volume, and its companion, Pristina Medicamenta, bring together his important output in articles and studies.
This book is the first study to consider the extraordinary manuscript now known as the Carrara Herbal (British Library, Egerton 2020) within the complex network of medical, artistic and intellectual traditions from which it emerged. The manuscript contains an illustrated, vernacular copy of the thirteenth-century pharmacopeia by Ibn Sarābī, an Arabic-speaking Christian physician working in al-Andalus known in the West as Serapion the Younger. By 1290, Serapion’s treatise was available in Latin translation and circulated widely in medical schools across the Italian peninsula. Commissioned in the late fourteenth century by the prince of Padua, Francesco II ‘il Novello’ da Carrara (r. 1390–1405), the Carrara Herbal attests to the growing presence of Arabic medicine both inside and outside of the University. Its contents speak to the Carrara family’s historic role as patrons and protectors of the Studium, yet its form – a luxury book in Paduan dialect adorned with family heraldry and stylistically diverse representations of plants – locates it in court culture. In particular, the manuscript’s form connects Serapion’s treatise to patterns of book collection and rhetorics of self-making encouraged by humanists and practiced by Francesco’s ancestors. Beginning with Petrarch (1304–74) and continuing with Pier Paolo Vergerio (ca. 1369–1444), humanists held privileged positions in the Carrara court, and humanist culture vied with the University’s successes for leading roles in Carrara self-promotion. With the other illustrated books in the prince’s collection, the Herbal negotiated these traditional arenas of family patronage and brought them into confluence, promoting Francesco as an ideal ‘physician prince’ capable of ensuring the moral and physical health of Padua. Considered in this way, the Carrara Herbal is the product of an intersection between the Pan-Mediterranean transmission of medical knowledge and the rise of humanism in the Italian courts, an intersection typically attributed to the later Renaissance.
Fresh examinations of the role of medicinal plants in medieval thought and practice and how they contributed to broader ideas concerning the body, religion and identity. The important and ever-shifting role of medicinal plants in medieval science, art, culture, and thought, both in the Latin Western medical tradition and in Byzantine and medieval Arabic medicine, is the focus of this new collection. Following a general introduction and a background chapter on Late Antique and medieval theories of wellness and therapy, in-depth essays treat such wide-ranging topics as medicine and astrology, charms and magical remedies, herbal glossaries, illuminated medical manuscripts, women's reproductive medicine, dietary cooking, gardens in social and political context, and recreated medieval gardens. They make a significant contribution to our understanding ofthe place of medicinal plants in medieval thought and practice, and thus lead to a greater appreciation of how medieval theories and therapies from diverse places developed in continuously evolving and cross-pollinating strands, and, in turn, how they contributed to broader ideas concerning the body, religion, identity, and the human relationship with the natural world. Contributors: MARIA AMALIA D'ARONCO, PETER DENDLE, EXPIRACION GARCIA SANCHEZ, PETER MURRAY JONES, GEORGE R. KEISER, DEIRDRE LARKIN, MARIJANE OSBORN, PHILIP G. RUSCHE, TERENCE SCULLY, ALAIN TOUWAIDE, LINDA EHRSAM VOIGTS
This beautiful and original book, fully illustrated from some of the rarest sources, is an account by two leading authorities of the creation and decoration of Europe's most charming herbals. The illustrations, many in splendid color, are taken from manuscripts and books chronicling human curiosity about the medicinal properties of plants, and making an unconscious record, through the strange (sometimes ludicrous) customs and procedures they describe, of life in past times.
1210 and a black force is sweeping England. For a vengeful King John has seized control of the Church, leaving corpses to lie in unconsecrated ground, babies unbaptized in their cradles and the people terrified of dying in sin. And in the village of Gastmere, the consequences grow darker still when Elena, a servant girl, is dragged into a conspiracy to absolve the sins of the lord of the manor. As the terrors that soon begin to plague Elena's sleep grow darker, in desperation she visits the cunning woman, who has been waiting for just such an opportunity to fulfil an ancient curse conjured at the gallows. Elena, haunted by this curse and threatened with death for a crime she didn't commit, flees the village ... only to find her nightmare has barely begun. For treachery lurks in every shadow as King John's brutal reign makes enemies of brothers, murderers of virgins and sinners of us all.
