English Almanacs, Astrology and Popular Medicine, 1550-1700
English Almanacs, Astrology and Popular Medicine, 1550-1700

Author: Louise Hill Curth

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 9780719069284

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Early modern almanacs have received relatively little academic attention over the years despite being the first true form of British mass media. While their purpose was to provide annual information about the movements of the stars and the corresponding effects on Earth, most included advice on preventative and remedial medicine for humans and animals. Based on the most extensive research to date into the relationship between the popular press and early modern medical beliefs and practices, this study argues that these cheap, annual booklets played a major role in shaping contemporary medicine in early modern England. The book discusses the various types of medical information and advice in almanacs, preventative and remedial medicine for humans, and the under-explored topic of animal health care.

English almanacs, astrology and popular medicine, 1550–1700
English almanacs, astrology and popular medicine, 1550–1700

Author: Louise Hill-Curth

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2018-09-30

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 1526129868

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Early modern almanacs have received relatively little academic attention over the years, despite being the first true form of British mass media. While their major purpose was to provide annual information about the movements of the stars and the corresponding effects on Earth, most contained a range of other material, including advice on preventative and remedial medicine for humans and animals. Based on the most extensive research to date into the relationship between the popular press, early modern medical beliefs and practices, this study argues that these cheap, annual booklets played a major role in shaping contemporary medical beliefs and practices in early modern England. Beginning with an overview of printed vernacular medical literature, the book examines in depth the genre of almanacs, their authors, target and actual audiences. It discusses the various types of medical information and advice in almanacs, preventative and remedial medicine for humans, as well as ‘non-commercial’ and ‘commercial’ medicines promoted in almanacs, and the under-explored topic of animal health care.

Astrology, Almanacs, and the Early Modern English Calendar
Astrology, Almanacs, and the Early Modern English Calendar

Author: Phebe Jensen

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-11-22

Total Pages: 386

ISBN-13: 1317034953

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Astrology, Almanacs, and the Early Modern English Calendar is a handbook designed to help modern readers unlock the vast cultural, religious, and scientific material contained in early modern calendars and almanacs. It outlines the basic cosmological, astrological, and medical theories that undergirded calendars, traces the medieval evolution of the calendar into its early modern format against the background of the English Reformation, and presents a history of the English almanac in the context of the rise of the printing industry in England. The book includes a primer on deciphering early modern printed almanacs, as well as an illustrated guide to the rich visual and verbal iconography of seasons, months, and days of the week, gathered from material culture, farming manuals, almanacs, and continental prints. As a practical guide to English calendars and the social, mathematical, and scientific practices that inform them, Astrology, Almanacs,and the Early Modern English Calendar is an indispensable tool for historians, cultural critics, and literary scholars working with the primary material of the period, especially those with interests in astrology, popular science, popular print, the book as material artifact, and the history of time-reckoning.

Autobiography in Early Modern England
Autobiography in Early Modern England

Author: Adam Smyth

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2010-08-05

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 0521761727

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Explores life-writing forms - almanacs, financial accounts, commonplace books and parish registers - which emerged during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Imagining Time in the English Chronicle Play
Imagining Time in the English Chronicle Play

Author: Marissa Nicosia

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2024-01-19

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 0198872658

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Imagining Time in the English Chronicle Play: Historical Futures, 1590-1660 argues that dramatic narratives about monarchy and succession codified speculative futures in the early modern English cultural imaginary. This book considers chronicle plays--plays written for the public stage and play pamphlets composed when the playhouses were closed during the civil wars--in order to examine the formal and material ways that playwrights imagined futures in dramatic works that were purportedly about the past. Through close readings of William Shakespeare's 1&2 Henry IV, Richard III, Shakespeare's and John Fletcher's All is True, Samuel Rowley's When You See Me, You Know Me, John Ford's Perkin Warbeck, and the anonymous play pamphlets The Leveller's Levelled, 1 & 2 Craftie Cromwell, Charles I, and Cromwell's Conspiracy, the volume shows that imaginative treatments of history in plays that are usually associated with the past also had purchase on the future. While plays about the nation's past retell history, these plays are not restricted by their subject matter to merely document what happened: Playwrights projected possible futures in their accounts of verifiable historical events.

Jesuit Astrology
Jesuit Astrology

Author: Luís Campos Ribeiro

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2023-06-12

Total Pages: 704

ISBN-13: 9004548971

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Connections between the Society of Jesus and astrology used to appear as unexpected at best. Astrology was never viewed favourably by the Church, especially in early modern times, and since Jesuits were strong defenders of Catholic orthodoxy, most historians assumed that their religious fervour would be matched by an equally strong rejection of astrology. This groundbreaking and compelling study brings to light new Jesuit scientific texts revealing a much more positive, practical, and nuanced attitude. What emerges forcefully is a totally new perspective into early modern Jesuit culture, science, and education, highlighting the element that has been long overlooked: astrology.

Ground-Work
Ground-Work

Author: Hillary Eklund

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2017-03-21

Total Pages: 331

ISBN-13: 0271093536

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How does soil, as an ecological element, shape culture? With the sixteenth-century shift in England from an agrarian economy to a trade economy, what changes do we see in representations of soil as reflected in the language and stories during that time? This collection brings focused scholarly attention to conceptions of soil in the early modern period, both as a symbol and as a feature of the physical world, aiming to correct faulty assumptions that cloud our understanding of early modern ecological thought: that natural resources were then poorly understood and recklessly managed, and that cultural practices developed in an adversarial relationship with natural processes. Moreover, these essays elucidate the links between humans and the lands they inhabit, both then and now.

Magic, Witchcraft, and Ghosts in the Enlightenment
Magic, Witchcraft, and Ghosts in the Enlightenment

Author: Michael R. Lynn

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2022-03-17

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 1000557456

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Magic, Witchcraft, and Ghosts in the Enlightenment argues for the centrality of magical practices and ideas throughout the long eighteenth century. Although the hunt for witches in Europe declined precipitously after 1650, and the intellectual justification for natural magic came under fire by 1700, belief in magic among the general population did not come to a sudden stop. The philosophes continued to take aim at magical practices, alongside religion, as examples of superstitions that an enlightened age needed to put behind them. In addition to a continuity of beliefs and practices, the eighteenth century also saw improvement and innovation in magical ideas, the understanding of ghosts, and attitudes toward witchcraft. The volume takes a broad geographical approach and includes essays focusing on Great Britain (England and Ireland), France, Germany, and Hungary. It also takes a wide approach to the subject and includes essays on astrology, alchemy, witchcraft, cunning folk, ghosts, treasure hunters, and purveyors of magic. With a broad chronological scope that ranges from the end of the seventeenth century to the early nineteenth century, this volume is useful for undergraduates, postgraduates, scholars, and those with a general interest in magic, witchcraft, and spirits in the Enlightenment.

The Guild Book of the Barbers and Surgeons of York (British Library, Egerton MS 2572)
The Guild Book of the Barbers and Surgeons of York (British Library, Egerton MS 2572)

Author: Richard D. Wragg

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 383

ISBN-13: 1914049020

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A new exploration of the secular manuscripts and medieval medical texts associated with the York Guild and its members. Produced in 1486 and subsequently augmented, the Guild Book of the Barbers and Surgeons of York (British Library Egerton MS 2572) is a unique record of the knowledge, ambitions, activities and civic relationships maintained by the Barbers and Surgeons Guild over a period of 300 years. The manuscript's earliest folios contain images, astrological tracts, a plague treatise and a bloodletting poem. To these were added early modern ordinances and oaths, a series of royal portraits, and the names of the Guild's masters and apprentices. It is a rare survival of late medieval medical knowledge placed within a civic context. This new multi-disciplinary examination of the York Guild Book presents a comprehensive edition of its content and a detailed study of the creation and use of this fascinating manuscript. The York Guild Book was not owned by any one person but was intended to be representative of the types of manuscripts the Guild's members might have individually possessed. The Guild's commission elevated their manuscript's functional content into something which could be proudly owned and displayed, as is demonstrated by the stylishly executed pen and ink drawings, two of which are possibly unique. Through a contextualisation of the form and content of the manuscript, the book articulates ideas about material culture and the ceremonial role of secular manuscripts whilst shedding new light on the dissemination and status of medieval medical texts.

The Magical Imagination
The Magical Imagination

Author: Karl Bell

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2012-02-23

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 1107377846

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This innovative history of popular magical mentalities in nineteenth-century England explores the dynamic ways in which the magical imagination helped people to adjust to urban life. Previous studies of modern popular magical practices and supernatural beliefs have largely neglected the urban experience. Karl Bell, however, shows that the magical imagination was a key cultural resource which granted an empowering sense of plebeian agency in the nineteenth-century urban environment. Rather than portraying magical beliefs and practices as a mere enclave of anachronistic 'tradition' and the fantastical as simply an escapist refuge from the real, he reveals magic's adaptive and transformative qualities and the ways in which it helped ordinary people navigate, adapt to and resist aspects of modern urbanization. Drawing on perspectives from cultural anthropology, sociology, folklore and urban studies, this is a major contribution to our understanding of modern popular magic and the lived experience of modernization and urbanization.