Plagues, Poisons, and Potions

Plagues, Poisons, and Potions PDF Author: William G. Naphy
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719046414
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
With the 16th and 17th Century outbreaks of the Plague, came the arrests and executions of many hospital workers who were accused of conspiring to spread the disease. "Plagues, Poisons and Potions" contains a detailed study of this fascinating phenomenon associated with the Plague. It examines the courts and the part played by torture, as well as considering the socio-economic conditions of the workers, highlighting an early modern form of 'class warfare'.

Plagues, Poisons, and Potions

Plagues, Poisons, and Potions PDF Author: William G. Naphy
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 9780719046414
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Get Book Here

Book Description
With the 16th and 17th Century outbreaks of the Plague, came the arrests and executions of many hospital workers who were accused of conspiring to spread the disease. "Plagues, Poisons and Potions" contains a detailed study of this fascinating phenomenon associated with the Plague. It examines the courts and the part played by torture, as well as considering the socio-economic conditions of the workers, highlighting an early modern form of 'class warfare'.

Plagues, poisons and potions

Plagues, poisons and potions PDF Author: William G. Naphy
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1526158604
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
Plagues, poisons and potions highlights one of the most fascinating aspects of the history of early modern plague. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries outbreaks of plague in and around the ancient Duchy of Savoy led to the arrests of many people who were accused of conspiring to spread the disease. Those implicated in the conspiracies were usually poor female migrants working in the plague hospitals under the direction of educated professional male barber-surgeons. These 'conspirators' were subsequently tried for spreading plague among leading and wealthy people from urban areas so that they could rob them while the afflicted homeowners were confined to their beds. In order to understand how this phenomenon developed and was regarded at the time, this study examines the courts, the judiciary and the part played by torture in the trials, which frequently concluded with the spectacular and gruesome execution of the suspects. The author goes on to consider the socio-economic conditions of the workers and in doing so highlights an early modern form of 'class warfare'. However, what makes this phenomenon especially interesting is that in an age dominated by superstition, religious strife and witch-hunts, the conspiracies were always given a moe rational explanation and motivation – profit. Both teachers and students of early modern history will be fascinated by this enlightening study into the fears of European society, the spread of the disease and the judicial procedures of the time.

Poisons of the Past

Poisons of the Past PDF Author: Mary Allerton Kilbourne Matossian
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300051216
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 210

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Book Description
Did food poisoning cause the Black Plague, the Salem witch-hunts, and other significant events in human history? In this pathbreaking book, historian Mary Kilbourne Matossian argues that epidemics, sporadic outbursts of bizarre behavior, and low fertility and high death rates from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries may have been caused by food poisoning from microfungi in bread, the staple food in Europe and America during this period. "A bold book with a stimulating thesis. Matossian's claims for the role of food poisoning will need to be incorporated into any satisfactory account of past demographic trends."--John Walter, Nature "Matossian's work is innovative and original, modest and reasoned, and opens a door on our general human past that historians have not only ignored, but often did not even know existed."--William Richardson, Environmental History Review "This work demonstrates an impressive variety of cross-national sources. Its broad sweep also reveals the importance of the history of agriculture and food and strengthens the view that the shift from the consumption of mold-poisoned rye bread to the potato significantly contributed to an improvement in the mental and physical health of Europeans and Americans."--Naomi Rogers, Journal of American History "This work is a true botanical-historical tour de force."--Rudolf Schmid, Journal of the International Association of Plant Taxonomy "Intriguing and lucid."--William K. Beatty, Journal of the American Medical Association

It All Depends on the Dose

It All Depends on the Dose PDF Author: Ole Peter Grell
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315521075
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 391

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Book Description
This is the first volume to take a broad historical sweep of the close relation between medicines and poisons in the Western tradition, and their interconnectedness. They are like two ends of a spectrum, for the same natural material can be medicine or poison, depending on the dose, and poisons can be transformed into medicines, while medicines can turn out to be poisons. The book looks at important moments in the history of the relationship between poisons and medicines in European history, from Roman times, with the Greek physician Galen, through the Renaissance and the maverick physician Paracelsus, to the present, when poisons are actively being turned into beneficial medicines.

Midwifery and Medicine in Early Modern France

Midwifery and Medicine in Early Modern France PDF Author: Wendy Perkins
Publisher: University of Exeter Press
ISBN: 9780859894715
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
An account of the work, writings and career of Louise Bourgeois, who had a flourishing midwifery practice at the French royal court at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Bourgeois was notable as a successful and articulate woman practitioner and author. Perkins, who is an expert on French literature, has integrated into her account recent work of social historians on medicine: on the medical market place, on patient-doctor relations, especially between women and medical practitioners, and on the social construction of the body.

Murder in Renaissance Italy

Murder in Renaissance Italy PDF Author: Trevor Dean
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107136644
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
This invaluable collection explores the many faces of murder, and its cultural presences, across the Italian peninsula between 1350 and 1650. These shape the content in different ways: the faces of homicide range from the ordinary to the sensational, from the professional to the accidental, from the domestic to the public; while the cultural presence of homicide is revealed through new studies of sculpture, paintings, and popular literature. Dealing with a range of murders, and informed by the latest criminological research on homicide, it brings together new research by an international team of specialists on a broad range of themes: different kinds of killers (by gender, occupation, and situation); different kinds of victim (by ethnicity, gender, and status); and different kinds of evidence (legal, judicial, literary, and pictorial). It will be an indispensable resource for students of Renaissance Italy, late medieval/early modern crime and violence, and homicide studies.

Renaissance Truth and the Latin Language Turn

Renaissance Truth and the Latin Language Turn PDF Author: Ann Moss
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780199249879
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
This study provides an entirely new look at an era of radical change in the history of West European thought, the period between 1480 and 1540, mainly in France and Germany. The book's main thesis is that the Latin language turn was not only concurrent with other aspects of change, but was a fundamental instrument in reconfiguring horizons of thought, reformulating paradigms of argument, and rearticulating the relationship between fiction and truth.

Poison

Poison PDF Author: Ben Hubbard
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1802796959
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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Book Description
"As every amateur toxicologist knows, the difference between a poison and medicine is often simply the dose." There is no weapon as insidious, as seductive or as mysterious as poison. In this terrifying account of history's silent assassin, discover the gripping tales of users, abusers and victims of these mysterious substances, from Cleopatra and Catherine de' Medici to contemporary secret service agents and terrorists. Documenting royal scandal, political upheaval and personal tragedies, Poison details a gruesome thread that runs often undetected through human history.

The Poisonwood Bible

The Poisonwood Bible PDF Author: Barbara Kingsolver
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061804819
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 578

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Book Description
New York Times Bestseller • Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize • An Oprah's Book Club Selection “Powerful . . . [Kingsolver] has with infinitely steady hands worked the prickly threads of religion, politics, race, sin and redemption into a thing of terrible beauty.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review The Poisonwood Bible, now celebrating its 25th anniversary, established Barbara Kingsolver as one of the most thoughtful and daring of modern writers. Taking its place alongside the classic works of postcolonial literature, it is a suspenseful epic of one family's tragic undoing and remarkable reconstruction over the course of three decades in Africa. The story is told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce, evangelical Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. They carry with them everything they believe they will need from home, but soon find that all of it—from garden seeds to Scripture—is calamitously transformed on African soil. The novel is set against one of the most dramatic political chronicles of the twentieth century: the Congo's fight for independence from Belgium, the murder of its first elected prime minister, the CIA coup to install his replacement, and the insidious progress of a world economic order that robs the fledgling African nation of its autonomy. Against this backdrop, Orleanna Price reconstructs the story of her evangelist husband's part in the Western assault on Africa, a tale indelibly darkened by her own losses and unanswerable questions about her own culpability. Also narrating the story, by turns, are her four daughters—the teenaged Rachel; adolescent twins Leah and Adah; and Ruth May, a prescient five-year-old. These sharply observant girls, who arrive in the Congo with racial preconceptions forged in 1950s Georgia, will be marked in surprisingly different ways by their father's intractable mission, and by Africa itself. Ultimately each must strike her own separate path to salvation. Their passionately intertwined stories become a compelling exploration of moral risk and personal responsibility.

History of the Plague in London

History of the Plague in London PDF Author: Daniel Defoe
Publisher: LA CASE Books
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
The History of the Plague in London is a historical novel offering an account of the dismal events caused by the Great Plague, which mercilessly struck the city of London in 1665. First published in 1722, the novel illustrates the social disorder triggered by the outbreak, while focusing on human suffering and the mere devastation occupying London at the time. Defoe opens his book with the introduction of his fictional character H.F., a middle-class man who decides to wait out the destruction of the plague instead of fleeing to safety, and is presented only by his initials throughout the novel. Consequently, the narrator records many distressing stories as experienced by London residents, including craze affected people wandering the streets aimlessly, locals trying to escape the disease infected city, and healthy families forced to confine themselves behind closed doors. Apart from these second-hand accounts, the narrator also provides a thorough explanation on how quarantine was managed and kept under control. In addition, he seeks to debunk all squalid rumors which have produced a false interpretation of the bubonic plague. However, not everything is bleak in the account, as the novel offers some affirmative evidence that humanity is still capable of charity, kindness and mercy even in the midst of chaos and confusion. Although regarded as a work of fiction, the author engrosses with his insertion of statistics, government reports and charts which further validate the novel as a precise portrayal the Great Plague.