Perfect Medicine

2013 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dagmar Wujastyk
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Ayurvedic Medicine ◽  
Human Consumption ◽  
Indian Medical ◽  
Asian Medicine

This article gives an overview of the earliest uses of mercury in classical South Asian medicine up to the nineteenth century, tracing and discussing important stages in the development of mercury processing. The use of unprocessed mercury might date back to the period when the oldest Indian medical compendia, theCarakasaṃhitāand theSuśrutasaṃhitā, were composed. It is certain that medical compounds containing apparently unprocessed mercury were used by the time the works ascribed to Vāgbhaṭa, theAṣṭāṅgahṛdayasaṃhitāand theAṣṭāṅgasaṃgraha,were written (c. early seventh centuryce). However, with one notable exception, it was only from the thirteenth century onwards that ways of processing mercury were developed or adopted from alchemical sources in ayurvedic medicine. Elaborate procedures were applied for the ‘purifying’ and calcining of mercury and for extracting mercury from cinnabar. Through these procedures, mercury was meant to be perfected, i.e. made safe for human consumption as well as efficacious as a remedy. By the sixteenth century, the use of processed mercury had become standard in ayurvedic medicine for a great number of diseases, and processed mercury was considered extremely potent and completely safe: a perfect medicine.

Kilwa Dynastic Historiography: A Critical Study

1979 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 177-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elias Saad
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Alternative Explanation ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Critical Study ◽  
Arabic Version ◽  
Portuguese Version ◽  
Recent Debate ◽  
Dynastic Politics

One of the unresolved problems in African historiography concerns the Arabic and Portuguese versions of the so-called Kilwa Chronicle. Scholars who have used these sixteenth-century sources have tended to assume that the Portuguese version, which is essentially a list of the kings of Kilwa up to around 1500, is a transcription of the Arabic version known under the title of Kitab al-Sulwa. In the recent debate between Freeman-Grenville and Chittick, this assumption has created serious difficulties because the Portuguese account mentions kings who are omitted in the Kitab. Freeman-Grenville attempted to resolve the difficulty by hypothesizing that the work was defectively abridged in the extant nineteenth-century copy. Relying on the regnal durations in the Portuguese account, he computed the dynastic chronology of Kilwa backwards to the tenth century. Subsequently, Chittick's excavations did not show Kilwa important enough to have been the site of a kingdom prior to the thirteenth century. This became the basis for an alternative explanation which denied the existence of gaps or omissions in the Kitab. Chittick argued instead that the longer list of kings in the Portuguese account may have resulted from dovetailing two sources together and duplicating their information.The present paper calls on genealogical evidence overlooked by both scholars which demonstrates that the divergence between the two sources results from their varying perspectives on the dynastic politics and succession disputes. First, the Portuguese account, though occurring in João de Barros’ Da Asia written about 1552, may represent an impromptu composition given to the Portuguese during their occupation of Kilwa in 1505–12.

scholarly journals Medicinal Mercury in Early Modern Portuguese Records: Recipes and Methods from Eighteenth-Century Medical Guidebooks

2015 ◽  
Vol 69 (4) ◽  
pp. 1017-1042 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy Walker
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Medical Texts ◽  
Trade Routes ◽  
Eastern Hemisphere ◽  
Asian Medicine ◽  
Insight Into

Abstract This chapter will present and explicate rare information regarding circumstances and techniques for the application of medicinal mercury in the Portuguese medical context during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Through the use of Portuguese medical texts (including translated excerpts), the chapter will provide insight into how early modern Portuguese practitioners processed and employed mercury to treat various ailments. Of interest, too, will be that these remedies were developed at several disparate locations throughout the Portuguese imperial world (China, India, Angola, Brazil, and Portugal), and often drew upon, and blended, indigenous medical substances from the region where each remedy originated. Regarding the use of mercury in South Asian medicine, medical scholars have noted that, from the sixteenth century onwards, much of the intra-Asian (and global) mercury trade was conducted through Portuguese merchants and agents. This work asserts that Portuguese merchants and shippers had unique access both to mercury at the commodity’s main sources in Spain and Peru (Almadén and Huancavelica, respectively), but also to established, developed colonial trade routes throughout the eastern hemisphere. Most of the information presented here is excerpted from two little-known eighteenth-century Portuguese primary sources: a Jesuit compilation medical and apothecary guide in manuscript, and a published physician’s treatise regarding fevers and other illnesses encountered during a posting of nearly a decade in Angola.

The Irish courts of law, 1801–1914

1957 ◽  
Vol 10 (40) ◽  
pp. 363-391
Author(s):  
R.B. McDowell
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Common Law ◽  
The Other ◽  
James I ◽  
Charles I ◽  
Law Courts ◽  
Court Of Chancery

At the beginning of the nineteenth century there were six superior courts in Ireland—chancery, the three common law courts (king’s bench, common pleas and exchequer), the admiralty court and the prerogative court (an ecclesiastical court with jurisdiction over testamentary matters).Four of these courts were of medieval origin. The exchequer was probably in existence before the close of the twelfth century, the Irish chancery was founded early in the thirteenth century, the first Irish chancellor being appointed in 1244, and the antecedents of the courts of king’s bench and common pleas are to be found in the thirteenth century. The other two courts were comparatively modern. The court of prerogative and faculties based its rights to exercise jurisdiction on two sixteenth century acts and two seventeenth century patents, one of James I and one of Charles I. And though admiralty jurisdiction had been exercised in Ireland from medieval times, the Irish court of admiralty had been created by statute in 1784. From the court of chancery and the three common law courts there was an appeal to the court of error (known as the court of exchequer chamber) composed of the judges of the three common law courts, and in 1857 it was enacted that the court of exchequer chamber when hearing an appeal should consist of the judges of the two courts from which the appeal did not arise. From the admiralty court and from the prerogative court there was an appeal to delegates in chancery.

The diffusion of maize in the Cantabrian region and its economic and demographic consequences during the Ancient Regime

Rural History ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-40
Author(s):  
Álvaro Aragón-Ruano
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Little Ice Age ◽  
Ice Age ◽  
Human Consumption ◽  
Documentary Sources ◽  
Important Crop ◽  
Regional Markets ◽  
Cantabrian Region ◽  
New Crop

AbstractThe cultivation of maize for human consumption started to spread through the Cantabrian region around the end of the sixteenth century. The adoption of the new crop was encouraged by the advent of the Little Ice Age, and the resulting crisis of subsistence, which forced Cantabrian peasants and farmers to search for alternatives to wheat. The importance of maize increased steadily and by the nineteenth century it had become the most important crop grown in the region. This had a number of economic and demographic consequences. In particular, it allowed peasants to produce a surplus that enabled them to become more involved in local and regional markets, providing an essential profit for otherwise precarious farm economies; and it encouraged such markets to become more integrated and more flexible in character. This article explores these issues by focusing on the case of Gipuzkoa, an area with a large amount of previously unused documentary sources.

The Dendra charioteer

Antiquity ◽  
1980 ◽  
Vol 54 (212) ◽  
pp. 201-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Greenhalgh
Keyword(s):  
Heavy Metal ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Classical Period ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Simple Question ◽  
Verbal Representations ◽  
Over The Top

The heavy metal collar or neck-guard of the Dendra panoply (PL. XXXIIc; Verdelis, 1967; Åström, 1977; also Catling, 1977; Cassola Guida, 1973,52ffr)a ises a simple question which may have important implications for the study of Greek warfare in the Late Bronze Age. Pictorial and verbal representations reveal the neck as a highly vulnerable target in infantry warfare throughout the whole millennium which spans the Late Bronze Age and the classical period. Mycenae’s Shaft Grave warriors of the sixteenth century are frequently shown either aiming sword-thrusts downwards at an enemy’s throat over the top of his body-shield or thrusting upwards at his neck with a lance (e.g. Karo, 1930, Pl. 24, nos, 35, 116, 241; pp. 59, 177, Figs. 14, 87; Lorimer, 1950, 140–4, Figs. 2, 5, 6, 8; Cassola Guida, 1973, pl. I, Figs. 2–5; Furtwangler & Loeschcke, 1886, Pl. E, 30; and even lions get it in the neck: e.g. Evans, 1921–36, IV (2), 575, Fig. 556). The very differently accoutred Mycenaeans of the late thirteenth-century Warrior Vase and Stele march with spears poised for a downward thrust into their enemies’ necks (Furtwangler & Loeschcke, 1886, PI. 43; EA, 1896, P1. I; Lorimer, 1950, Pls. 3.1a; 2.2; Cassola Guida, 1973, Pls. 32,1 and 2; Verdelis, 1967, Beil. 32,2; Astrom, 1977, P1. ‘31,2). And the seventh-century hoplites do exactly the same on the Chigi Vase (CVA, Italy, I, P1. I; ABSA, XLII, 1947, 81, Fig. 2; Snodgrass, 1964, PI. 36).

Islamic Monuments as Christian Trophies

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antonio Urquízar-Herrera
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Medieval Chronicles ◽  
Late Fifteenth ◽  
Historical Accounts ◽  
Rodrigo Jimenez De Rada ◽  
The Way

Chapter 3 approaches the notion of trophy through historical accounts of the Christianization of the Córdoba and Seville Islamic temples in the thirteenth-century and the late-fifteenth-century conquest of Granada. The first two examples on Córdoba and Seville are relevant to explore the way in which medieval chronicles (mainly Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada and his entourage) turned the narrative of the Christianization of mosques into one of the central topics of the restoration myth. The sixteenth-century narratives about the taking of the Alhambra in Granada explain the continuity of this triumphal reading within the humanist model of chorography and urban eulogy (Lucius Marineus Siculus, Luis de Mármol Carvajal, and Francisco Bermúdez de Pedraza).

Hymnody and Liturgy

2019 ◽  
pp. 491-506
Author(s):  
Jonathan Hehn
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
North American ◽  
John Calvin ◽  
Church Of Scotland ◽  
Metrical Psalmody ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Church

This chapter outlines the history of Presbyterian worship practice from the sixteenth century to the present, with a focus on North American Presbyterians. Tracing both their hymnody and their liturgy ultimately to John Calvin, Presbyterian communions have a distinct heritage of worship inherited from the Church of Scotland via seventeenth-century Puritans. Long marked by metrical psalmody and guided by the Westminster Directory, Presbyterian worship underwent substantial changes in the nineteenth century. Evangelical and liturgical movements led Presbyterians away from a Puritan visual aesthetic, into the use of nonscriptural hymnody, and toward a recovery of liturgical books. Mainline North American and Scottish Presbyterians solidified these trends in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; however, conservative North American denominations and some other denominations globally continue to rely heavily on the use of a worship directory and metrical psalmody.

History of Recording Demotic Epigraphy

2020 ◽  
pp. 491-507
Author(s):  
Jan Moje
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
First Century ◽  
Third Century ◽  
Late Period ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Rosetta Stone ◽  
Roman Egypt ◽  
History Of ◽  
Twenty First Century

This chapter gives an overview of the history of recording and publishing epigraphic sources in Demotic language and script from the Late Period to Greco-Roman Egypt (seventh century bce to third century ce), for example, on stelae, offering tables, coffins, or votive gifts. The history of editing such texts and objects spans over two hundred years. Here, the important steps and pioneering publications on Demotic epigraphy are examined. They start from the beginning of the nineteenth century, when Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt found the Rosetta stone, until the twenty-first century.

The Canons of John Mauropous

1947 ◽  
Vol 37 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 70-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joan Hussey
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Short Introduction ◽  
John Chrysostom ◽  
The University ◽  
First Time ◽  
Service Books

John Mauropous, an eleventh-century Metropolitan of Euchaïta, has long been commemorated in the service books of the Orthodox Church. The Synaxarion for the Office of Orthros on 30th January, the day dedicated to the Three Fathers, St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory the Theologian, and St. John Chrysostom, tells how the festival was instituted by Mauropous and describes him as ‘the well-known John, a man of great repute and well-versed in the learning of the Hellenes, as his writings show, and moreover one who has attained to the highest virtue’. In western Europe something was known of him certainly as early as the end of the sixteenth century; his iambic poems were published for the first time by an Englishman in 1610, and his ‘Vita S. Dorothei’ in the Acta Sanctorum in 1695. But it was not until the second half of the nineteenth century that scholars were really able to form some idea of the character and achievement of this Metropolitan of Euchaïta. Particularly important were two publications: Sathas' edition in 1876 of Michael Psellus' oration on John, and Paul de Lagarde's edition in 1882 of some of John's own writings. This last contained not only the works already printed, but a number of hitherto unpublished sermons and letters, together with the constitution of the Faculty of Law in the University of Constantinople, and a short introduction containing part of an etymological poem. But there remained, and still remains, one significant omission: John's canons have been almost consistently neglected.

Genealogy of Colonial Discourse: Hindu Traditions and the Limits of European Representation

2009 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 563-589 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raf Gelders
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Colonial Discourse ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
The Core ◽  
European Culture ◽  
Eastern Cultures ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Core Issues

In the aftermath of Edward Said's Orientalism (1978), European representations of Eastern cultures have returned to preoccupy the Western academy. Much of this work reiterates the point that nineteenth-century Orientalist scholarship was a corpus of knowledge that was implicated in and reinforced colonial state formation in India. The pivotal role of native informants in the production of colonial discourse and its subsequent use in servicing the material adjuncts of the colonial state notwithstanding, there has been some recognition in South Asian scholarship of the moot point that the colonial constructs themselves built upon an existing, precolonial European discourse on India and its indigenous culture. However, there is as yet little scholarly consensus or indeed literature on the core issues of how and when these edifices came to be formed, or the intellectual and cultural axes they drew from. This genealogy of colonial discourse is the subject of this essay. Its principal concerns are the formalization of a conceptual unit in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, called “Hinduism” today, and the larger reality of European culture and religion that shaped the contours of representation.

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