scholarly journals Wine and Myrrh as Medicaments or a Commentary on Some Aspects of Ancient and Byzantine Mediterranean Society

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 615-655
Author(s):  
Zofia Rzeźnicka ◽  
Maciej Kokoszko

The present study has resulted from a close reading of prescriptions for therapeutic wines inserted in book V of De materia medica by Pedanius Dioscorides, the eminent expert in materia medica of the 1st century A.D. The authors emphasise the role of wine varieties and selected flavourings (and especially of myrrh) in order to determine the social status of those to whom the formulas were addressed. This perspective gives the researchers ample opportunity for elaborating not only on the significance of wine in medical procedures but also for underscoring the importance of a number of aromatics in pharmacopoeia of antiquity and Byzantium. The analysis of seven selected formulas turns out to provide a fairly in-depth insight into Mediterranean society over a prolonged period of time, and leads the authors to draw the following conclusions. First, they suggest that medical doctors were social-inequality-conscious and that Dioscorides and his followers felt the obligation to treat both the poor and the rich. Second, they prove physicians’ expertise in materia medica, exemplifying how they were capable of adjusting market value of components used in their prescriptions to financial capacities of the patients. Third, the researchers circumstantiate the place of medical knowledge in ancient, and later on in Byzantine society. Last but not least, they demonstrate that medical treatises are an important source of knowledge, and therefore should be more often made use of by historians dealing with economic and social history of antiquity and Byzantium.

2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 267-285
Author(s):  
Aleksandra Bartoszko

This article offers a counter narrative to the current ethnographic studies on treatment with buprenorphine, in which notions of promised and experienced normality dominate. In some countries, introduction of buprenorphine led to a perceived “normalisation” of opioid substitution treatment, and this new modality was well received. However, in Norway the response has been almost the opposite: patients have reacted with feelings of disenfranchisement, failure, and mistrust. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Norway, this article offers comparative insight into local experiences and subjectivities in the context of the globalisation of buprenorphine. By outlining the ethnographic description of the pharmaceutical atmosphere of forced transfers to buprenorphine-naloxone, I show that the social history of the medication is as significant as its pharmacological qualities for various treatment effects. An analysis of the reactions to this treatment modality highlights the reciprocal shaping of lived experiences and institutional forces surrounding pharmaceutical use in general and opioids in particular.


Author(s):  
Gershon David Hundert

This chapter investigates the conditions in Jewish society in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in the middle decades of the eighteenth century. The place of hasidism in the religious history of the eighteenth century ought to be reconsidered not only in light of the questions about the schismatic groups in the Orthodox Church raised by Ysander, but also in light of the general revivalist currents in western Europe. The social historian cannot explain hasidism, which belongs to the context of the development of the east European religious mentality in the eighteenth century. Social history does, however, point to some significant questions that ought to be explored further. One of these is the role of youth and generational conflict in the beginnings of the movement, and not only in its beginnings. A realistic recovery of the situation of the Polish-Lithuanian Jewry in the eighteenth century shows that neither the economic nor the security conditions were such as to warrant their use as causal or explanatory factors in the rise and reception of hasidism.


Land ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christy Constantakopoulou

This paper explores the place of ancient Greek hunting within the Greek landscape and environment, with particular reference to the eschatia, the marginal, uncultivated (or marginally cultivated) land. It is part of a bigger project on the social history of hunting in archaic and classical Greece, where emphasis is placed on the economic and dietary contribution of hunting for Greek communities. Hunting has attracted scholarly attention, mostly as a result of the role that hunting narratives play in Greek mythology, and the importance of hunting scenes in Greek art. Rather than talking about the role of hunting in rites of passage, I would like to explore the relationships of different social classes to hunting (which is understood here to include all forms of capturing animals on land, including trapping and snaring). The ‘un-central’ landscape of the eschatia appears to be an important locus for hunting practices, and therefore, a productive landscape. Hunting in the eschatia was opportunistic, required minimum effort in terms of crossing distances, allowed access to game that could be profitable in the market, and made the transport of game easier to manage.


2011 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 583-612 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul George Munro ◽  
Maria de Lourdes Melo Zurita

2015 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 53
Author(s):  
Damien Carraz

RESUMO: As ordens militares, como senhores eclesiásticos, exerceram a justiça temporal sobre populações das quais elas estavam encarregadas. A historiografia, se ele se interessou pelos conflitos de jurisdição que opuseram os poderes soberanos às comendadorias, subestimou, salvo exceções, as atividades judiciárias destas últimas. Os ricos arquivos das ordens do Hospital e do Templo, no Midi Francês, fornecem belas séries de atas da prática judiciária – clamores, inquéritos criminais, processos verbais de condenações... O caso dos dois senhorios templários de Lansac e de Montfrin e as comparações oferecidas pela importante jurisdição hospitalária de Manosque, recentemente e notavelmente estudada, autorizam uma contribuição sobre o papel dos irmãos guerreiros na difusão dos usos jurídicos e no controle social. O pessoal empregado no serviço destas pequenas justiças senhoriais, os procedimentos utilizados pela justiça criminal, a repressão da delinquência ordinária que assolava estes castra da Baixa Provença e, enfim, os limites opostos ao poder coercitivo do Templo pela organização das comunidades e pelo reforço do Estado foram sucessivamente evocados. O funcionamento, os ideais almejados, assim como a ação repressiva, pouco evidenciam a especificidade desta justiça da Igreja que não recusava o exercício do merum imperium e a aplicação das penas aflitivas. Centradas sobre o século XIII, período de transição na história do procedimento, estas primeiras observações desejariam ser prosseguidas para os dois séculos seguintes: a originalidade da justiça do Hospital, com a instauração de uma ordem moral, mais do que cívica, apareceria mais, tanto que seria necessário avaliar a resistência destes senhorios às reconquistas jurisdicionais do Estado principesco. ABSTRACT:The military orders, as ecclesiastical gentlemen, exercised the temporal justice over populations which they were in charge of. The historiography, if he got interested about the jurisdiction conflicts that have opposed the sovereign powers to the commanderies, underestimated, with some few exceptions, the judicial activities of these last ones. The rich archives from the orders of the hospital and the temple, at the French Midi, provide beautiful series of the judicial practices - clamors, criminal investigations, verbal processes of condemnations... The case of the two templary landlords of Lansac and of Montfrin and the comparisons offered by the important hospitaller jurisdiction of Manosque, recently and notably studied, authorize an contribution over the role of the warrior brothers on the difusion on the juridical uses and on the social control. The people who ar e employed on the service of those small stately justices, the procedures used by the criminal justice, the repression of the ordinary delinquency that plagued those castra of the Low Provence and, ultimately, the limits opposed to the coercive power of the temple for the organization of the communities and for the reinforcement of the state were successively evoked. The operation, the desired ideals, just like the repressive action, do not show at all the specificity of the church's justice which wouldn't refuse the exercise of merum imperium and the application of the afflictive feathers. Centered over the 13th century, period of transaction on the history of procedure, these first observations would desire to be pursued for the two following centuries: the originality of the hospital's justice, with the establishment of a moral order, more than civic, would appear so much more that it would be necessary to evaluate the resistance of tho se landlords to the court re-conquests of the princely State.


1992 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mattison Mines

One of the unresolved issues of Indian anthorpology is how to characterize and weigh the social importance of individuality and achievement in Indian social history. Of course, the individual as ‘empirical agent’ exists in India as everywhere (Dumont 1970a:9), yet because Hindu culture stresses collective identities over those of the individual, individual achievement, which is a measure of individuality, has been overlooked and sometimes outrightly rejected as a cause of history and social order (Dumont 1970a:107; 1970b; cf. Silverberg 1968). In consequence, the motivations underlying achievement that might explain historic action have also been ignored. This undervaluing of individuality and achievement has given rise to a long debate among South Asianists about the role of the individual in Indian society (e.g., Marriott 1968, 1969; Tambiah 1972:835; Beteille 1986, 1987), a debate that raises questions in wider arenas about the nature of society and culture in relation to individuals (e.g. Brown 1988; Mines 1988).


1989 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. A. Jaffe

The role of evangelical religion in the social history of the English working class has been an area of both bewildering theories and un-founded generalizations. The problem, of course, was given a degree of notoriety by Elie Halévy who, according to the received interpretation, claimed that the revolutionary fervor characteristic of the Continental working class in the first half of the nineteenth century was drained from its British counterpart because of the latter's acceptance of Evangelicalism, namely, Methodism.It was revived most notably by E. P. Thompson, who accepted the counterrevolutionary effect of Methodism but claimed that the evangelical message was really an agent of capitalist domination acting to subordinate the industrial working class to the dominion of factory time and work discipline. Furthermore, Thompson argued, the English working class only accepted Methodism reluctantly and in the aftermath of actual political defeats that marked their social and economic subordination to capital. This view has gained a wide acceptance among many of the most prominent labor historians, including E. J. Hobsbawm and George Rudé who believe that Evangelicalism was the working-class's “chiliasm of despair” that “offered the one-time labour militant … compensation for temporal defeats.”There could hardly be a starker contrast between the interpretation of these labor historians and the views of those who have examined the social and political history of religion in early industrial Britain. Among the most important of these, W. R. Ward has claimed that Methodism was popular among the laboring classes of the early nineteenth century precisely because it complemented political radicalism.


2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-59
Author(s):  
Dirk HR Spennemann

Purpose This paper aims to describe the nature and significance of Sorel’s cooking appliance and to examine the promotion and marketing options used by Sorel to make it an appliance that was “widely used in private residences and by small eating houses.” It will highlight the role of the individual and will demonstrate that marketing and promotion strategies that are modulated by the social ambitions of the manufacturer. Design/methodology/approach The basis of this research is extensive quantitative and qualitative analysis of primary sources, mainly the advertisements placed by Sorel, supported by information in contemporary newspapers and journals. Findings Stanislas Sorel’s invention of an early form of thermostat allowed him to develop a stove that could cook a four-course family dinner largely unsupervised, an invention which was poised to revolutionise the lives of many households. Sorel was primarily an inventor striving for acceptance in the scientific world, with limited skills in the commercialisation of his inventions. His promotion and marketing efforts reflect both the social realities of the time and his own ambitions. Originality/value There has been very little research into the way small French inventors and manufacturers approached the marketing of their products. The paper provides a unique insight into the promotion techniques of a mid-nineteenth-century French inventor-cum-entrepreneur and highlights the role of the individual and how actions are constrained by ambition and opportunity. The paper provides an example of how research into how specific individuals can inform the larger history of marketing.


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