Medicine Before Science
Medicine Before Science

Author: Roger Kenneth French

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2003-02-20

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 9780521007610

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This book offers an introduction to the history of university-trained physicians from the middle ages to the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. These were the elite, in reputation and rewards, and they were successful. Yet we can form little idea of their clinical effectiveness, and to modern eyes their theory and practice often seems bizarre. But the historical evidence is that they were judged on other criteria, and the argument of this book is that these physicians helped to construct the expectations of society--and met them accordingly.

Imagining Contagion in Early Modern Europe
Imagining Contagion in Early Modern Europe

Author: Claire L. Carlin

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2005-10-14

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 0230522610

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The ideological underpinnings of early modern theories of contagion are dissected in this volume by an integrated team of literary scholars, cultural historians, historians of medicine and art historians. Even today, the spread of disease inspires moralizing discourse and the ostracism of groups thought responsible for contagion; the fear of illness and the desire to make sense of it are demonstrated in the current preoccupation with HIV, SARS, 'mad cow' disease, West Nile virus and avian flu, to cite but a few contemporary examples. Imagining Contagion in Early Modern Europe explores the nature of understanding when humanity is faced with threats to its well-being, if not to its very survival.