Download or read book Plagues poisons and potions written by William G. Naphy and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-02 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Poisons of the Past written by Mary Allerton Kilbourne Matossian and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1989-01-01 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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
Download or read book It All Depends on the Dose written by Ole Peter Grell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-05-11 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Plague and Public Health in Early Modern Seville written by Kristy Wilson Bowers and published by University Rochester Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plague and Public Health in Early Modern Seville offers a reassessment of the impact of plague in the early modern era, presenting sixteenth-century Seville as a case study of how municipal officials and residents worked together to create a public health response that protected both individual and communal interests. Similar studies of plague during this period either dramatize the tragic consequences of the epidemic or concentrate on the tough "modern" public health interventions, such as quarantine, surveillance and isolation, and the laxness or strictness of their enforcement. Arguing for a redefinition of "public health" in the early modern era, this study chronicles a more restrained, humane, and balanced response to outbreaks in 1582 and 1599-1600 Seville, showing that city officials aimed to protect the population but also maintain trade and commerce in order to prevent economic disruption. Based on extensive primary sources held in the municipal archive of Seville, the work argues that a careful reading of the records shows a critical difference between how plague regulations were written and how they were enforced, a difference that reflects an unacknowledged process of negotiation aimed at preserving balance within the community. The book makes important contributions to the study of early modern city governance and to the historiography of epidemics more broadly. Kristy Wilson Bowers received her PhD from Indiana University and teaches in the History Department at Northern Illinois University.
Download or read book Plague in the Early Modern World written by Dean Phillip Bell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-01-08 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plague in the Early Modern World presents a broad range of primary source materials from Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, China, India, and North America that explore the nature and impact of plague and disease in the early modern world. During the early modern period frequent and recurring outbreaks of plague and other epidemics around the world helped to define local identities and they simultaneously forged and subverted social structures, recalibrated demographic patterns, dictated political agendas, and drew upon and tested religious and scientific worldviews. By gathering texts from diverse and often obscure publications and from areas of the globe not commonly studied, Plague in the Early Modern World provides new information and a unique platform for exploring early modern world history from local and global perspectives and examining how early modern people understood and responded to plague at times of distress and normalcy. Including source materials such as memoirs and autobiographies, letters, histories, and literature, as well as demographic statistics, legislation, medical treatises and popular remedies, religious writings, material culture, and the visual arts, the volume will be of great use to students and general readers interested in early modern history and the history of disease.
Download or read book Aspects of Violence in Renaissance Europe written by Jonathan Davies and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-08 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Interest in the history of violence has increased dramatically over the last ten years and recent studies have demonstrated the productive potential for further inquiry in this field. The early modern period is particularly ripe for further investigation because of the pervasiveness of violence. Certain countries may have witnessed a drop in the number of recorded homicides during this period, yet homicide is not the only marker of a violent society. This volume presents a range of contributions that look at various aspects of violence from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries, from student violence and misbehaviour in fifteenth-century Oxford and Paris to the depiction of war wounds in the English civil wars. The book is divided into three sections, each clustering chapters around the topics of interpersonal and ritual violence, war, and justice and the law. Informed by the disciplines of anthropology, criminology, the history of art, literary studies, and sociology, as well as history, the contributors examine all forms of violence including manslaughter, assault, rape, riots, war and justice. Previous studies have tended to emphasise long-term trends in violent behaviour but one must always be attentive to the specificity of violence and these essays reveal what it meant in particular places and at particular times.
Download or read book A Taste for Poison written by Neil Bradbury, Ph.D. and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2022-02-01 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A fascinating tale of poisons and poisonous deeds which both educates and entertains.” --Kathy Reichs A brilliant blend of science and crime, A TASTE FOR POISON reveals how eleven notorious poisons affect the body--through the murders in which they were used. As any reader of murder mysteries can tell you, poison is one of the most enduring—and popular—weapons of choice for a scheming murderer. It can be slipped into a drink, smeared onto the tip of an arrow or the handle of a door, even filtered through the air we breathe. But how exactly do these poisons work to break our bodies down, and what can we learn from the damage they inflict? In a fascinating blend of popular science, medical history, and true crime, Dr. Neil Bradbury explores this most morbidly captivating method of murder from a cellular level. Alongside real-life accounts of murderers and their crimes—some notorious, some forgotten, some still unsolved—are the equally compelling stories of the poisons involved: eleven molecules of death that work their way through the human body and, paradoxically, illuminate the way in which our bodies function. Drawn from historical records and current news headlines, A Taste for Poison weaves together the tales of spurned lovers, shady scientists, medical professionals and political assassins to show how the precise systems of the body can be impaired to lethal effect through the use of poison. From the deadly origins of the gin & tonic cocktail to the arsenic-laced wallpaper in Napoleon’s bedroom, A Taste for Poison leads readers on a riveting tour of the intricate, complex systems that keep us alive—or don’t.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of the Black Death written by Joseph P. Byrne and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2012-01-16 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This encyclopedia provides 300 interdisciplinary, cross-referenced entries that document the effect of the plague on Western society across the four centuries of the second plague pandemic, balancing medical history and technical matters with historical, cultural, social, and political factors. Encyclopedia of the Black Death is the first A–Z encyclopedia to cover the second plague pandemic, balancing medical history and technical matters with historical, cultural, social, and political factors and effects in Europe and the Islamic world from 1347–1770. It also bookends the period with entries on Biblical plagues and the Plague of Justinian, as well as modern-era material regarding related topics, such as the work of Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur, the Third Plague Pandemic of the mid-1800s, and plague in the United States. Unlike previous encyclopedic works about this subject that deal broadly with infectious disease and its social or historical contexts, including the author's own, this interdisciplinary work synthesizes much of the research on the plague and related medical history published in the last decade in accessible, compellingly written entries. Controversial subject areas such as whether "plague" was bubonic plague and the geographic source of plague are treated in a balanced and unbiased manner.
Download or read book Plagues upon the Earth written by Kyle Harper and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 704 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sweeping germ’s-eye view of history from human origins to global pandemics Plagues upon the Earth is a monumental history of humans and their germs. Weaving together a grand narrative of global history with insights from cutting-edge genetics, Kyle Harper explains why humanity’s uniquely dangerous disease pool is rooted deep in our evolutionary past, and why its growth is accelerated by technological progress. He shows that the story of disease is entangled with the history of slavery, colonialism, and capitalism, and reveals the enduring effects of historical plagues in patterns of wealth, health, power, and inequality. He also tells the story of humanity’s escape from infectious disease—a triumph that makes life as we know it possible, yet destabilizes the environment and fosters new diseases. Panoramic in scope, Plagues upon the Earth traces the role of disease in the transition to farming, the spread of cities, the advance of transportation, and the stupendous increase in human population. Harper offers a new interpretation of humanity’s path to control over infectious disease—one where rising evolutionary threats constantly push back against human progress, and where the devastating effects of modernization contribute to the great divergence between societies. The book reminds us that human health is globally interdependent—and inseparable from the well-being of the planet itself. Putting the COVID-19 pandemic in perspective, Plagues upon the Earth tells the story of how we got here as a species, and it may help us decide where we want to go.
Download or read book Plague a Very Short Introduction written by Paul Slack and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Plague: A Very Short Introduction explores the historical and social impact of plague from the earliest times. Throughout history, plague has been the cause of many major catastrophes, from the Black Death of 1348 to devastating epidemics in China and India in the late 1800s. Today, Corona-virus serves as a powerful reminder that we have not escaped the global impact of epidemic diseases. This VSI demonstrates the influence of plague on modern notions of government and public health, examining how plague has been interpreted in different times and place. It includes evidence from ancient DNA on the nature of plague and the latest research on plague in the Middle East"--
Download or read book Fleeing Plague written by Martin Luther and published by Augsburg Fortress Publishers. This book was released on 2023-02-14 with total page 79 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With sixteenth century Germany experiencing the ravages of the Bubonic Plague, Martin Luther was asked to comment on whether Christians could flee home and labors on account of the plague. Anna Marie Johnson introduces and comments on Luther's 1527 treatise "Whether One May Flee the Deadly Plague," still surprisingly relevant with the pandemic.
Download or read book Epidemics written by Samuel Kline Cohn (Jr.) and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 656 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By investigating thousands of descriptions of epidemics reaching back before the fifth-century-BCE Plague of Athens to the distrust and violence that erupted with Ebola in 2014, Epidemics challenges a dominant hypothesis in the study of epidemics, that invariably across time and space, epidemics provoked hatred, blaming of the "other", and victimizing bearers of epidemic diseases, particularly when diseases were mysterious, without known cures or preventive measures, as with AIDS during the last two decades of the twentieth century. However, scholars and public intellectuals, especially post-AIDS, have missed a fundamental aspect of the history of epidemics. Instead of sparking hatred and blame, this study traces epidemics' socio-psychological consequences across time and discovers a radically different picture: that epidemic diseases have more often unified societies across class, race, ethnicity, and religion, spurring self-sacrifice and compassion.
Download or read book Geographies of Plague Pandemics written by Mark Welford and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-04-09 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Geographies of Plague Pandemics synthesizes our current understanding of the spatial and temporal dynamics of plague, Yersinia pestis. The environmental, political, economic, and social impacts of the plague from Ancient Greece to the modern day are examined. Chapters explore the identity of plague DNA, its human mortality, and the source of ancient and modern plagues. This book also discusses the role plague has played in shifting power from Mediterranean Europe to north-western Europe during the 500 years that plague has raged across the continent. The book demonstrates how recent colonial structures influenced the spread and mortality of plague while changing colonial histories. In addition, this book provides critical insight into how plague has shaped modern medicine, public health, and disease monitoring, and what role, if any, it might play as a terror weapon. The scope and breadth of Geographies of Plague Pandemics offers geographers, historians, biologists, and public health educators the opportunity to explore the deep connections among disease and human existence.
Download or read book Plague and Its Consequences Oxford Bibliographies Online Research Guide written by Oxford University Press and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2010-06-01 with total page 31 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This ebook is a selective guide designed to help scholars and students of Islamic studies find reliable sources of information by directing them to the best available scholarly materials in whatever form or format they appear from books, chapters, and journal articles to online archives, electronic data sets, and blogs. Written by a leading international authority on the subject, the ebook provides bibliographic information supported by direct recommendations about which sources to consult and editorial commentary to make it clear how the cited sources are interrelated related. This ebook is a static version of an article from Oxford Bibliographies Online: Renaissance and Reformation, a dynamic, continuously updated, online resource designed to provide authoritative guidance through scholarship and other materials relevant to the study of European history and culture between the 14th and 17th centuries. Oxford Bibliographies Online covers most subject disciplines within the social science and humanities, for more information visit www.oxfordbibliographies.com.
Download or read book Plague A Very Short Introduction written by Paul Slack and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2012-03-22 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout history plague has been the cause of many major catastrophes. It was responsible for the Black Death of 1348 and the Great Plague of London in 1665, and for devastating epidemics much earlier and much later, in the Mediterranean in the sixth century, and in China and India between the 1890s and 1920s. Today, it has become a metaphor for other epidemic disasters which appear to threaten us, but plague itself has never been eradicated. In this Very Short Introduction, Paul Slack explores the historical impact of plague over the centuries, looking at the ways in which it has been interpreted, and the powerful images it has left behind in art and literature. Examining what plague meant for those who suffered from it, and how governments began to fight against it, he demonstrates the impact plague has had on modern notions of public health and how it has shaped our history. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Download or read book Plague Hospitals written by Jane L. Stevens Crawshaw and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-22 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Developed throughout early modern Europe, lazaretti, or plague hospitals, took on a central role in early modern responses to epidemic disease, in particular the prevention and treatment of plague. The lazaretti served as isolation hospitals, quarantine centres, convalescent homes, cemeteries, and depots for the disinfection or destruction of infected goods. The first permanent example of this institution was established in Venice in 1423 and between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries tens of thousands of patients passed through the doors. Founded on lagoon islands, the lazaretti tell us about the relationship between the city and its natural environment. The plague hospitals also illustrate the way in which medical structures in Venice intersected with those of piety and poor relief and provided a model for public health which was influential across Europe. This is the first detailed study of how these plague hospitals functioned, where they were situated, who worked there, what it was like to stay there, and how many people survived. Comparisons are made between the Venetian lazaretti and similar institutions in Padua, Verona and other Italian and European cities. Centred on the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, during which time there were both serious plague outbreaks in Europe and periods of relative calm, the book explores what the lazaretti can tell us about early modern medicine and society and makes a significant contribution to both Venetian history and our understanding of public health in early modern Europe, engaging with ideas of infection and isolation, charity and cure, dirt, disease and death.
Download or read book The Poison Trials written by Alisha Rankin and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2021-01-22 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1524, Pope Clement VII gave two condemned criminals to his physician to test a promising new antidote. After each convict ate a marzipan cake poisoned with deadly aconite, one of them received the antidote, and lived—the other died in agony. In sixteenth-century Europe, this and more than a dozen other accounts of poison trials were committed to writing. Alisha Rankin tells their little-known story. At a time when poison was widely feared, the urgent need for effective cures provoked intense excitement about new drugs. As doctors created, performed, and evaluated poison trials, they devoted careful attention to method, wrote detailed experimental reports, and engaged with the problem of using human subjects for fatal tests. In reconstructing this history, Rankin reveals how the antidote trials generated extensive engagement with “experimental thinking” long before the great experimental boom of the seventeenth century and investigates how competition with lower-class healers spurred on this trend. The Poison Trials sheds welcome and timely light on the intertwined nature of medical innovations, professional rivalries, and political power.
