Good Advice and Little Medicine: The Professional Authority of Early Modern English Physicians

1994 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold J. Cook
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Medical Profession ◽  
Line Strength ◽  
The Body ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Medical Practitioners ◽  
Professional Authority ◽  
Henry Iv ◽  
Good Advice

Henry:Then you perceive the body of our kingdom, How foul it is;What rank diseases grow, and with what danger, near the heart of it.Warwick:It is but body, yet distempered, Which to his formerStrength may be restored with good advise and little medicine.[Shakespeare,Henry IV]Shakespeare's words remind us that in the learned traditions of Renaissance Europe, good advice remained more important than potent medicines for restoring both physical and political states to their previous strengths. As the lord advised the king, so a physician advised his patient, or lawyer his client, or minister his flock: preventing troubles was worth far more than cure, and the best remedy even when matters went wrong was good advice on how to return to a state of harmony. Still, plenty of quacks in politics and medicine, law and church, advocated strong measures, not helping people to live in accordance with their world but attempting to alter the conditions under which they lived. Bad advice and powerful remedies seemed to be everywhere, trampling good council and temperate behavior. The connections between learning and authority that lay behind claims to authority in general are especially well illuminated by the ways in which the physicians argued for possessing, maintaining, and extending their professional privileges.Among all the number and variety of medical practitioners in early modern England, one small group self-consciously considered itself to be professional: the physicians. As one of the three learned professions surviving from the Middle Ages, the “medical profession” has been a crucial test case for various definitions of what a profession is or was.

scholarly journals “Were not that a botchy core?”: the Function of Disease in 2 Henry IV, King Lear, Troilus and Cressida, and Twelfth Night

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Catherine Joule
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
The State ◽  
The Body ◽  
King Lear ◽  
Twelfth Night ◽  
Troilus And Cressida ◽  
The Social ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Henry Iv ◽  
Disease Metaphors

<p>The social currency of disease has developed and changed dramatically over the centuries, and this thesis focuses on how Shakespeare used the currency of early modern disease in his plays. Shakespeare’s use of disease and disease metaphors is discussed within the context of four plays: Henry IV Part Two, Twelfth Night, King Lear, and Troilus and Cressida. The first chapter (of three) finds that the purpose of disease within the body politic metaphors is, inevitably, complication. In order to counter and resolve the disease of the state, advisors become physicians, extending the potential of the analogy further until it permeates the social structure of the plays and our perception of the characters. Disease is employed to imply division, instability, and disorder within the imagined body of the state.  The second chapter shows how the idea of infection is used to highlight interpersonal concerns within the plays. The chapter uses references to early modern sources and beliefs about the four humours to illustrate how Shakespeare connects social disorder, disease, morality, and status. The discussion focuses on Galen’s “nonnaturals” which were believed to affect humoral balance, highlighting the significance of early modern conceptions of diet, exercise, miasma, sleep, and stress which serve to create a pervading sense of disease in the social worlds of the plays.  The personal and often horrifying experiences of mental disease we are presented with in King Lear and Twelfth Night are the focus of the third and final chapter. The display of suffering is found to primarily serve to emphasise the commonality of man. In both plays (though at different levels of seriousness) insanity causes a loss of social status for the sufferer and, through this loss of status, their humanity is stressed. The dramatic potential of madness allows the theatre of the courtroom to be parodied to draw questions about injustice into the plays, though without offering any definitive conclusions to them. The literary nature of madness within these plays, furthermore, allows for the clear presentation of issues of class and justice. Generally Shakespeare abandons absolute realism in favour of using disease and disease metaphors as a disrupting influence on social and political order so as to emphasise a wide range of themes and ideas.</p>

Contra medicos: Physicians Facing the Inquisition in Sixteenth-Century Venice

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 72-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandra Celati
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Medical Profession ◽  
The Body ◽  
Disciplinary Action ◽  
Medical Activity ◽  
Problematic Relationship ◽  
Counter Reformation ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
And Control

Abstract Since the Middle Ages, ecclesiastical authorities considered medical activity worthy of their attention and control. During the Counter-Reformation, they toughened their disciplinary action, aware of the peculiarity of an ars that mixed together the cure of the body with the cure of the soul. Moreover, the authorities became increasingly suspicious of practitioners who were highly involved in the Reformation movement, and who distanced themselves from Catholicism in the epistemological premises of their work. By examining original sources from the Venetian Inquisition archive, this paper discusses the factors that put the Roman Church and the medical profession in op­­position to each other in the sixteenth century, and describes the professional solidarity put forward by physicians. It also examines the problematic relationship between doctors and the Inquisition, dealing with the former as effective agents of heretical propaganda.

Mapping Plus Ultra: Cartography, Space, and Hispanic Modernity

2002 ◽  
Vol 79 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ricardo Padróón
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Test Case ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Hispanic Culture ◽  
History Of Cartography ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
History Of

THE HISTORY OF CARTOGRAPHY in the early modern period has been tied in particular ways to the emergence of both imperialism and modernity. At the center of this argument lie the gridded scale maps that Europeans learned to make in the wake of their rediscovery of Ptolemy's Geography. These new maps supported the emergence of abstract space as a centerpiece of a new spatiality - a spatiality that in turn supported, in both theory and practice, the reterritorialization of the extra-European world for European ends. My paper interrogates this argument by examining Spanish attempts to map the Americas during the years 1492 to 1580. It identifies a cartographic culture steeped in late medieval figures of space, one that suggests continuity rather than rupture between the Middle Ages and the origins of European imperialism. Many Spanish mapmakers were engaged with some of the most sophisticated problems posed by the new, Ptolemaic cartography.These specialists, however, represented only a small minority of Spanish mapmakers. Although the abstract spatiality that informed their practice proved to be the emerging cultural trend, this spatiality was not hegemonic in early modern Spanish culture as a whole. Both philological and cartographic evidence drawn from outside the circle of specialists suggests that an alternative spatiality was also at play, one that was rooted in the itineraries of travel rather than the planar extensions of geometry.This linear spatiality had its roots in late medieval travel narrative and so-called way-finding maps. It is this spatiality that is most common in Spanish attempts to figure the wider world. This argument should not be understood as an essay in Hispanic particularity. Spain functions as a test-case here, and no claim is made that its linear spatiality is unique to Hispanic culture. What may be unique to Spain is the persistence of this spatiality beyond the year 1580, when the cartographic revolution took root much more deeply in northern than in southern Europe. Nonetheless, its near-ubiquity in the first ninety years of Spanish Americana suggests that the association we have made among abstract spatiality, modernity, and imperialism has been misplaced. Although it may be genuine, it must be understood as an attempt to rationalize empire after the fact, not as a cultural prop of an original imperial impulse.

scholarly journals “Were not that a botchy core?”: the Function of Disease in 2 Henry IV, King Lear, Troilus and Cressida, and Twelfth Night

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Catherine Joule
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
The State ◽  
The Body ◽  
King Lear ◽  
Twelfth Night ◽  
Troilus And Cressida ◽  
The Social ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Henry Iv ◽  
Disease Metaphors

<p>The social currency of disease has developed and changed dramatically over the centuries, and this thesis focuses on how Shakespeare used the currency of early modern disease in his plays. Shakespeare’s use of disease and disease metaphors is discussed within the context of four plays: Henry IV Part Two, Twelfth Night, King Lear, and Troilus and Cressida. The first chapter (of three) finds that the purpose of disease within the body politic metaphors is, inevitably, complication. In order to counter and resolve the disease of the state, advisors become physicians, extending the potential of the analogy further until it permeates the social structure of the plays and our perception of the characters. Disease is employed to imply division, instability, and disorder within the imagined body of the state.  The second chapter shows how the idea of infection is used to highlight interpersonal concerns within the plays. The chapter uses references to early modern sources and beliefs about the four humours to illustrate how Shakespeare connects social disorder, disease, morality, and status. The discussion focuses on Galen’s “nonnaturals” which were believed to affect humoral balance, highlighting the significance of early modern conceptions of diet, exercise, miasma, sleep, and stress which serve to create a pervading sense of disease in the social worlds of the plays.  The personal and often horrifying experiences of mental disease we are presented with in King Lear and Twelfth Night are the focus of the third and final chapter. The display of suffering is found to primarily serve to emphasise the commonality of man. In both plays (though at different levels of seriousness) insanity causes a loss of social status for the sufferer and, through this loss of status, their humanity is stressed. The dramatic potential of madness allows the theatre of the courtroom to be parodied to draw questions about injustice into the plays, though without offering any definitive conclusions to them. The literary nature of madness within these plays, furthermore, allows for the clear presentation of issues of class and justice. Generally Shakespeare abandons absolute realism in favour of using disease and disease metaphors as a disrupting influence on social and political order so as to emphasise a wide range of themes and ideas.</p>

European Theories and Local Therapies: Mordexi and Galenism in the East Indies, 1500-1700

2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 121-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heidi Hausse
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
The Body ◽  
Rhetorical Strategies ◽  
Conceptual Frameworks ◽  
Medical Practitioners ◽  
East Indies ◽  
Local Disease

Abstract This article examines written accounts of the disease mordexi roughly between 1500 and 1700 to explore the conceptual frameworks and rhetorical strategies used by early modern authors to understand and present a local disease encountered in the East Indies to European readers. Europeans understood mordexi within a framework of Galenic medicine that both normalized the tropical affliction and distinguished it from other diseases. The cause and prevention of the disease were likewise explained through the effects of local flora and climate on the body. Native treatments for mordexi, however, did not fit so easily within Hippocratic-Galenic notions of restoring humoral balance and even challenged the superiority of European medical practitioners. The article concludes that the rhetorical strategies used by European authors to convey the efficacy of native healing practices point to the limitations of a Galenic framework and how writers worked around these conceptual limits.

scholarly journals There’s More to Colour than Meets the Eye; Medieval and Early Modern Colour Perception

CLARA ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Spike Bucklow
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The Body ◽  
Colour Perception ◽  
Limited Access ◽  
The Middle Ages

This paper will review some ways in which colours could have been perceived in the Middle Ages in Western Europe. Central to the paper is an assertion that, historically, colour was perceived as an embodied phenomenon. Whilst colour was in itself immaterial, it was produced as the result of interactions between light and material and was received into the body as a vehicle that carried properties associated with the (earthly) material with which (heavenly) light had interacted. The question of colour is approached from the practical engagements of those who interacted with coloured artefacts – like craftspeople and consumers – and assumes a limited access to contemporary theories of colour.

From Craft to Institution: Accounting in Italy from the Middle ages to the Early Modern Period

2012 ◽  
pp. 135-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
O. Volkova
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Social Institution ◽  
Business Environment ◽  
Technical Standards ◽  
Medieval Italy ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Professional Field

The article describes the evolution of accounting from the simple registration technique to economic and social institution in medieval Italy. We used methods of institutional analysis and historical research. It is shown that the institutionalization of accounting had been completed by the XIV century, when it became a system of codified technical standards, scholar discipline and a professional field. We examine the interrelations of this process with business environment, political, social, economic and cultural factors of Italy by the XII—XVI centuries. Stages of institutionalization are outlined.

Allegra Iafrate, The Long Life of Magical Objects: A Study in the Solomonic Tradition. The Magic in History Series. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019, xi, 235 pp., 19 b/w images, 2 tables.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 252-254
Author(s):  
Albrecht Classen
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Modern World ◽  
State University ◽  
Eastern Culture ◽  
Historical Objects ◽  
History Of ◽  
Religious Objects ◽  
The Middle Ages

Throughout times, magic and magicians have exerted a tremendous influence, and this even in our (post)modern world (see now the contributions to Magic and Magicians in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Time, ed. Albrecht Classen, 2017; here not mentioned). Allegra Iafrate here presents a fourth monograph dedicated to magical objects, primarily those associated with the biblical King Solomon, especially the ring, the bottle which holds a demon, knots, and the flying carpet. She is especially interested in the reception history of those symbolic objects, both in antiquity and in the Middle Ages, both in western and in eastern culture, that is, above all, in the Arabic world, and also pursues the afterlife of those objects in the early modern age. Iafrate pursues not only the actual history of King Solomon and those religious objects associated with him, but the metaphorical objects as they made their presence felt throughout time, and this especially in literary texts and in art-historical objects.

Witches, Female Weather Makers, and Poisoners in the Carolingian Empire

Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 201-211
Author(s):  
Christoph Galle
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
General Situation ◽  
Carolingian Empire ◽  
Role Of Women ◽  
Witch Hunt

<?page nr="201"?>Abstract The question about the role of women within medieval societies associatively makes one think of witches who allegedly were up to mischief by using poison or all kinds of magic to inflict maliciously harm on other people. But this impression results too much from an uncritical reception of such propagandistic conceptions that arose from the later medieval and early modern witch-hunt ideology. This cliché of medieval witches neither does justice to the general situation nor can it be transferred to the entire Middle Ages, as a representative view into the Carolingian empire of the eighth and ninth centuries shows.

Dziedinošās darbības un to veicēji folkloras un valodas liecībās

2020 ◽  
pp. 372-389
Author(s):  
Ieva Ančevska
Keyword(s):  
General Term ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
The Body ◽  
Folk Healing ◽  
Medical Practitioners ◽  
Medical Terms ◽  
Healing Tradition

This article summarizes the various healing-related activities used in the Latvian healing tradition. To explain these activities and describe their performers and specialization, folklore sources and linguistic materials were used. The aim of this article is to demonstrate the diversity of folk healing activities and their names, while also clarifying their nature and use as much as possible. The linguistic and etymological analysis was used to investigate the healing activities and the names of their performers, but folklore examples were used for clarifying the meanings. By studying the healing tradition, the names of medical practitioners were collected from various sources, adding up to over 60 labels. When compiling the report, the representatives of the healing activities were divided into conditional groups according to the type of their main medical activities. Thus, the following groups of healing activities were formed: healing activities using the body, actions with spoken word and blowing, ritual and magic activities, defense techniques and liberating rituals. In addition to the medicinal practitioners who were active in healing, there were also counselors who sought out the causes of diseases through various means and searched for their best remedies. The survey in the article shows that the healing tradition uses diverse and specialized medical terms. However, as the examples show, most of them have used a combination of different practices. The name of the healer in question usually described the skills that were particularly developed and had been used most frequently. During tradition bans, names of healers became more general, and tabooed names were used instead. The general term “healer” has only been naturalized into society after the restoration of national independence.

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