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

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.

2018 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 1272-1297
Author(s):  
Lauren Beck

AbstractHijuelasfurnish scholars with more than account balances and bills paid: ledgers such as the ones that detailed the expenses of Seville’s sixteenth-century Alcázar also yield important insight into the facility’s work environment. These hardly studied ledgers describe the workers’ backgrounds, including their wages and any special accommodations they required, as well as the transaction of material goods, which in this period included slaves. The following examination ofhijuelasuncovers the racial and labor realities of a royal property. These documents also challenge established scholarly observations about working life in early modern Seville in important ways.


Author(s):  
Jonathan Duquette

This book is the first in-depth study of the Śaiva oeuvre of the celebrated polymath Appaya Dīkṣita (1520–1593). It documents the rise to prominence and scholarly reception of Śivādvaita Vedānta, a Sanskrit-language school of philosophical theology which Appaya single-handedly established, thus securing his reputation as a legendary advocate of Śaiva religion in early modern India. Based to a large extent on hitherto unstudied primary sources in Sanskrit, this study offers new insights on Appaya’s early polemical works and main source of Śivādvaita exegesis, Śrīkaṇṭha’s Brahmamīmāṃsābhāṣya; it identifies Appaya’s key intellectual influences and opponents in his reconstruction of Śrīkaṇṭha’s theology; and it highlights some of the key arguments and strategies he used to make his ambitious project a success. Centred on his magnum opus of Śivādvaita Vedānta, the Śivārkamaṇidīpikā, this book demonstrates that Appaya’s Śaiva oeuvre was mainly directed against Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta, the dominant Vaiṣṇava school of philosophical theology in his time and place. A far-reaching study of the challenges of Indian theism, this book opens up new possibilities for our understanding of religious debates and polemics in early modern India as seen through the lenses of one of its most important intellectuals.


2020 ◽  
pp. 213-216
Author(s):  
J. V. Fesko

The conclusion summarizes the study. The doctrine stands in continuity with patristic versions and does not arise de novo in the sixteenth century. Roman Catholics were also some of the first sixteenth-century theologians to teach an Adamic covenant. The doctrine is a construct based on a good and necessary consequence. This means that the doctrine has a broad scriptural foundation. There are also different variants of the doctrine and even confessional formulations allow for a diversity of opinion. These points stand in contrast to the claims of critics who rarely engage a close reading of primary sources. Moreover, with the development of biblicism, critics have approached the question with a different hermeneutic methodology than early modern Reformed theologians. Lastly, one of the most important themes in the covenant of works is love, something that most critics of the doctrine fail to factor.


2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
pp. 1269-1325
Author(s):  
Ethan Matt Kavaler

Early modern ornament might profitably be considered as a set of systems, each with its own rules. It signaled wealth and status. It offered pleasure and prompted curiosity. It cut across the apparent divide between the vernacular and the classicizing. It was relational, understood in the context of a given subject but not necessarily subservient to it. The notion of ornament as essentially supplemental and the prejudice against ornamental excess are both children of the late eighteenth century. Both ideas depend on a post-Enlightenment conviction of the work of art as an autonomous, aesthetically self-sufficient object, an idea not fully formed in the early modern era.


In the early modern period, Catholic communities in Protestant jurisdictions were impelled to establish colleges for the education and formation of students in more hospitable Catholic territories. The Irish, English and Scots Colleges founded in France, Flanders, the Iberian peninsula, Rome and elsewhere are the best known, but the phenomenon extended to Dutch and Scandinavian foundations in southern Flanders and the German lands. Similarly colleges were established in Rome for various national communities, among whom the Maronites are a striking example. The first colleges were founded in the mid-sixteenth century and tens of thousands of students passed through them until their closure in late eighteenth century. Only a handful survived the disruption of the French Revolutionary wars to re-emerge in the nineteenth century. Historians have long argued that these exile colleges played a prominent role in maintaining Catholic structures by supplying educated clergy equipped to deal with the challenges of their domestic churches. This has ensured that the Irish, English and Scots colleges in particular have a rich historiography laid out in the pages of Archivium Hibernicum, the Records of the Scots Colleges or the volumes published under the aegis of the Catholic Record Society in England. Until recently, however, their histories were considered in isolating confessional and national frameworks, with surprisingly little attempt to examine commonalities or connections. Recent research has begun to open up the topic by investigating the social, economic, cultural and material histories of the colleges. Meanwhile renewed interest in the history of early modern migration has encouraged historians to place the colleges within the vibrant migrant communities of Irish, English, Scots and others on the continent. The Introduction begins with a survey of the colleges. It assesses their historiographies, paying particular attention to the research of the last three decades. The introduction argues that an obvious next step is to examine the colleges in transnational and comparative perspectives. Finally, it introduces the volume's essays on Irish, English, Scots, Dutch, German and Maronite colleges, which provide up-to-date research by leading historians in the field and point to the possibilities for future research on this exciting topic.


Vivarium ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 51 (1-4) ◽  
pp. 464-481 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephan Meier-Oeser

Abstract The paper focuses on some aspects of the early modern aftermath of supposition theory within the framework of the protestant logical tradition. Due to the growing influence of Humanism, supposition theory from the third decade of the sixteenth century was the object of general neglect and contempt. While in the late sixteenth-century a number of standard textbooks of post-Tridentine scholastic logic reintegrated this doctrine, although in a bowdlerized version, it remained for a century out of the scope of Protestant logic. The situation changed when the Strasburg Lutheran theologian J.C. Dannhauer, who in 1630 developed and propagated the program of a new discipline which he called ‘general hermeneutics’ (hermeneutica generalis), accentuating the importance of supposition theory as an indispensable device for the purpose of textual interpretation. Due to Dannhauer’s influence on later developments of hermeneutics, which in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries was regarded as a logical discipline, supposition theory is still present in several logical treatises of the eighteenth century. The explication of the underlying views on the notion of supposition and its logico-semantic function may give at least some clues as to how to answer the question of what supposition theory was all about.


2006 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-91
Author(s):  
Heather Hyde Minor

In the early modern period, families of popes had an extraordinary ability to shape Rome's architectural and urban fabric. The most important architectural project of any papal family in the papal capital was their palace. In 1753, when Cardinal Neri Corsini contentedly surveyed his palace, the satisfaction he felt would have been familiar to papal relatives for more than 250 years. But unlike generations of papal nephews before him, Neri could take added pride in the fact that he had done it all on his own, relying on his wit rather than the papal coffers. The Palazzo Corsini, like the Palazzo Albani and the Palazzo Braschi, was a rarity in eighteenth-century Rome. Through a combination of the traditional practice of careful study of primary sources with cultural history, broadly conceived, this article illuminates the set of political exigencies and social circumstances that led to the extinction of this architectural form, which had shaped the Eternal City for centuries.


1998 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierre Claude Reynard

From the sixteenth century to the end of the eighteenth century, the papermakers of Ambert (Auvergne, France) remained the leading producers of quality printing paper in Europe. During the second half of the eighteenth century, they expanded greatly their production in response to a dynamic market. This success was achieved not through the adoption of new methods or the expansion of enterprises but through subcontracting practices. This article explores the conditions that fostered such strategies. It confirms the multiplicity of options available to early modern manufacturers but suggests that the socioeconomic characteristics of each community of producers conditioned their choices.


2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 111-132
Author(s):  
Lindsay J. Starkey

In 2 Timothy 2:17, Paul compared the effects of false teachings on the Church to a disease. Rejecting previous translations that identified this disease as cancer, Jean Calvin (1509–64) insisted that it must be gangrene in his 1548 commentary on this epistle, citing and discussing medical texts to justify his translation. This article places his commentary in the context of these medical texts. The causes, courses, and treatments his contemporaries associated with gangrene provide insight into Calvin’s idea of the people likely to spread false teachings and of how they should be treated: because, for him, the experience of gangrene reflected the real effects of false teachings on the Church. This manuscript argues that consulting other areas of sixteenth-century knowledge, such as medicine, was a part of Calvin’s exegetical practice. It also suggests that modern scholars need to take these other areas of knowledge into account when analyzing sixteenth-century biblical commentaries. Dans 2 Timothée 2:17, Paul compara les effets des faux enseignements sur l’Église à une maladie. Ayant rejeté les traductions précédentes qui identifiaient cette maladie comme cancer, Jean Calvin (1509–1564), dans son commentaire de cette épître en 1548, soutint qu’il devait s’agir de la gangrène et il justifia cette traduction en citant et discutant des sources médicales. Cet article situe ce commentaire dans le contexte de ces textes médicaux. Les causes, les symptômes et les traitements associés à la gangrène, portent un discours sur ceux qui, selon Calvin, propageraient les faux enseignements, ainsi que sur la façon dont on doit les traiter. Pour Calvin, en effet, la réalité de de la gangrène reflète, dans l’expérience, les effets des faux enseignements sur l’Église. Cette étude examine de la pratique exégétique de Calvin, qui consulte d’autres domaines de la connaissance, comme la médecine, pour lire les textes. Aussi il propose que les savants modernes doivent prendre en compte ces autres domaines pour analyser les commentaires bibliques du XVIe siècle.


2019 ◽  
Vol 95 (5) ◽  
pp. 1055-1073 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry J. Ryan

Abstract This article details the evolution of maritime security from the perspective of its impact on the historical architecture of sea space. It argues that, as the fundamental unit of governance, zoning provides keen insight into the mechanics of maritime security. The article observes that Britain's Hovering Acts in the late eighteenth century represent the earliest example of modern zonation at sea and that they exhibit a shift from early modern territorial claims based on imperium and dominium. The article explores the way these hovering zones shaped the rationale underlying contemporary maritime security. It finds that maritime security has effectively relegated national security to a minor spatial belt of state power, while elevating non-traditional understandings of security to the level of global existential threat. The future of maritime security is under construction. Increasingly segmented by interconnecting, overlapping, multi-functional zones that seek to regulate all free movement and usage of the sea, security developments are reorganizing the maritime sphere. Nonetheless, the article argues, despite the novelty of this development, a historical military logic persists in new formations of security-oriented practices of maritime governance.


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