THE DOCTRINE OF SIGNATURES

The process of locating and evaluating folkloristic data sources is presented here as a prelude to the analysis of the detailed magical references abstracted from those sources. The sources include multiple folklore collections gathered in Britain and New England. These sources provide at times a repetition of information from the historic sources, like the rationale of the Doctrine of Signatures, and in other instances references to beliefs, objects, and practices not noted in any historic documents including ideas about magical plants and some supernatural beings. These examples provide an additional layer of information into who was using magic during this period, why they used it, and how it manifested, specifically the use of gender related magic as a crisis response to a host of perceived dangers.

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The Doctrine of Signatures: A Defense of Theory in Medicine

JAMA ◽

10.1001/jama.1991.03470100114044 ◽

1991 ◽

Vol 266 (10) ◽

pp. 1422

Author(s):

E. R. Priest

Keyword(s):

Doctrine Of Signatures

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"Paradoxes, Absurdities, and Madness": Conflict over Alchemy, Magic and Medicine in the Works of Andreas Libavius and Heinrich Khunrath

Early Science and Medicine ◽

10.1163/157338207x242465 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 13 (1) ◽

pp. 53-81 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Peter Forshaw

Keyword(s):

Sixteenth Century ◽

Academic Status ◽

Medical Academy ◽

Doctrine Of Signatures

AbstractBoth Andreas Libavius and Heinrich Khunrath graduated from Basel Medical Academy in 1588, though the theses they defended reveal antithetical approaches to medicine, despite their shared interests in iatrochemistry and transmutational alchemy. Libavius argued in favour of Galenic allopathy while Khunrath promoted the contrasting homeopathic approach of Paracelsus and the utility of the occult doctrine of Signatures for medical purposes. This article considers these differences in the two graduates' theses, both as intimations of their subsequent divergent notions of the boundaries of alchemy and its relations with medicine and magic, and also as evidence of the surprisingly unstable academic status of Paracelsian philosophy in Basel, its main publishing centre, at the end of the sixteenth century.

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