"Rooted in the Earth, Rooted in the Sky" is a detailed study of the medicine of Hildegard of Bingen, a medieval mystic, theologian and composer, who also wrote a practical medical text. Although there has been an explosion of interest in Hildegard's music, theology, illuminations and medicine in the last two decades, this is the first book to use her remarkable text to revise not only our conception of Hildegard but also of premodern medicine itself. It does so by contextualizing her work with primary and secondary historical sources, unedited manuscripts, anthropological and archeological evidence and linguistic analyses. Its surprising conclusion is that the premodern body was more like a plant than a machine or a computer program, and the physician more like a gardener than a mechanic or a computer programmer.

The story of poison is the story of power... For centuries, royal families have feared the gut-roiling, vomit-inducing agony of a little something added to their food or wine by an enemy. To avoid poison, they depended on tasters, unicorn horns and antidotes tested on condemned prisoners. Servants licked the royal family's spoons, tried on their underpants and tested their chamber pots. Ironically, royals terrified of poison were unknowingly poisoning themselves daily with their cosmetics, medications and filthy living conditions. Women wore makeup made with lead. Men rubbed feces on their bald spots. Physicians prescribed mercury enemas, arsenic skin cream, drinks of lead filings and potions of human fat and skull, fresh from the executioner. Gazing at gorgeous portraits of centuries past, we don't see what lies beneath the royal robes and the stench of unwashed bodies; the lice feasting on private parts; and worms nesting in the intestines. The Royal Art of Poison is a hugely entertaining work of popular history that traces the use of poison as a political - and cosmetic - tool in the royal courts of Western Europe from the Middle Ages to the Kremlin today.

Product Note:
3 Volume Set

Welcome to Bryson City, a small town tucked away in a fold of North Carolina's Smoky Mountains. The scenery is breathtaking, the home cooking can't be beat, the Maroon Devils football team is the pride of the town, and you won't find better steelhead fishing anywhere. But the best part is the people you're about to meet in the pages of Bryson City Seasons. In this joyous sequel to his bestselling Bryson City Tales, Dr. Walt Larimore whisks you along on a journey through the seasons of a Bryson City year. On the way, you'll encounter crusty mountain men, warmhearted townspeople, peppery medical personalities, and the hallmarks of a simpler, more wholesome way of life. Culled from the author's experiences as a young doctor settling into rural medical practice, these captivating stories are a celebration of this richly textured miracle called life. "The whole book is delightful. My only criticism: there wasn't enough of it!" Margaret Brand, MD, co-laborer with Dr. Paul Brand in leprosy work in India

This set reproduces seminal writings by three exceptional nineteenth-century women. Georgina Weldon, Louisa Lowe and Susan Willis Fletcher were certified as insane by the Victorian medical establishment and were threatened with incarceration for their eccentric and transgressive behaviour. All three were remarkably resourceful and very successfully manipulated the sensationalist press to expose the 'lunacy laws' to the late-Victorian public. In doing this, they contributed to the emerging feminist critique of medicine and science. Each volume is devoted to the work of one of these exceptional women.
New introductions by the editors and the late Roy Porter provide context and discussion of the pieces included, pointing to the themes and issues that they raise. With an extensive index, this collection provides an invaluable resource for those studying the role of feminism in the history of medicine and the power of the medical profession in the Victorian era.

Medicine is concerned with the most intimate aspects of private life. Yet it is also a focus for diverse forms of public organization and action. In this volume, an international team of scholars use the techniques of medical history to analyse the changing boundaries and constitution of the public sphere from early modernity to the present day.
In a series of detailed historical case studies, contributors examine the role of various public institutions - both formal and informal, voluntary and statutory - in organizing and coordinating collective action on medical matters. In so doing, they challenge the determinism and fatalism of Habermas's overarching and functionalist account of the rise and fall of the public sphere.
Of essential interest to historians and sociologists of medicine, this book will also be of value to historians of modern Britain, historical sociologists, and those engaged in studying the work of Jürgen Habermas.

Related link: The Society for the Social History of Medicine
eBook available with sample pages: 0203520173

During the twentieth century, medicine has been radically transformed and powerfully transformative. In 1900, western medicine was important to philanthropy and public health, but it was marginal to the state, the industrial economy and the welfare of most individuals. It is now central to these aspects of life. Our prospects seem increasingly dependent on the progress of bio-medical sciences and genetic technologies which promise to reshape future generations.
The editors of Medicine in the Twentieth Century have commissioned over forty authoritative essays, written by historical specialists but intended for general audiences. Some concentrate on the political economy of medicine and health as it changed from period to period and varied between countries, others focus on understandings of the body, and a third set of essays explores transformations in some of the theatres of medicine and the changing experiences of different categories of practitioners and patients.

Research into 'colonial' or 'imperial' medicine has made considerable progress in recent years, whilst the study of what is usually referred to as 'indigenous' or 'folk' medicine in colonized societies has received much less attention. This book redresses the balance by bringing together current critical research into medical pluralism during the last two centuries. It includes a rich selection of historical, anthropological and sociological case-studies that cover many different parts of the globe, ranging from New Zealand to Africa, China, South Asia, Europe and the USA.

Related link: The Society for the Social History of Medicine
eBook available with sample pages: 0203467108

Ideas about the transmission of disease have long formed the core of modern biology and medicine. Heredity and Infection examines their development over the last century. Two scientific revolutions - the bacteriological revolution of the 1890s and the genetic revolution at the start of the twentieth century - acted as the catalysts of major change in our understanding of the causes of illness. As well as being great scientific achievements, these were social and political watersheds that reconfigured the medical and administrative means of intervention. By establishing a clear distinction between transmission by infection and genetic transmission, this shift was instrumental in separating hygiene from eugenism.
The authors argue that the popular perception of such a sharp divide stabilized only after 1945 when the use of antibiotics to end epidemics became commonplace. For health professionals the separation has never become an absolute one, and the book examines the various blends of heredity and infection that have preoccupied biology, medicine and the social sciences. Heredity and Infection recontructs the changing epidemiology of such historically important pathologies as tuberculosis , cancer and AIDS. In doing so, it demonstrates the role of experimental models, medical practices and cultural images in the making of contemporary biochemical knowledge.

• Provides a historical context for the developments in health over several decades prior to the study • Shows how oral history methods have increasingly been used in medical history research and explores the benefits of this approach • Covers many of the themes of the oral history which enabled and encouraged patients to comment on what was important to them in their encounter with health care • Follows the increasing acceptance of women in medicine, demonstrating how women doctors were viewed by patients within the practice compared to changes in the wider society • Presents a ‘history from below’, using voices that are not normally heard in the medical discourse illustrating the importance of the doctor-patient interface

Contents:
Introduction
Contagion, Modernity and Postmodernity, Alison Bashford and Claire Hooker
Contagion and Cultural Histories of the Modern World
1. The Meaning of Contagion: Reproduction, Medicine and Metaphore, Margaret Pelling
2. Foreign Bodies: Vaccination, Contagion and Colonialism in the Nineteenth Century, Alison Bashford
3. Moral Contagion and the Will: The Crisis of Masculinity in Fin-de-Siécle France, Christopher Forth
4. Excremental Colonialism: Public Health and the Poetics of Pollution, Warwick Anderson
5. Leprosy and the Management of Race, Sexuality and Nation in Tropical Australia, Alison Bashford and Maria Nugent
6. Sanitary Failure and Risk: Pasteurisation, Immunisation and the Logics of Prevention, Claire Hooker
Contaminating Capacities in Postmodernity
7. Vulnerable Bodies and Ontological Contamination, Margrit Shildrick
8. A Pig's Tale: Porcine Viruses and Species Boundaries, Marsha Rosengarten
9. Taking the HIV Test: Self-Surveillance and the Making of Heterosexuality, Lisa Adkins
10. The Promiscuous Placenta: Crossing Over, Jane-Maree Maher
11. Carrier - Becoming Symborg, Melinda Rackham

Providing access to historical sources on the development of the sociology of medicine, this set includes documents and articles from the mid-nineteenth century through to the early twentieth. The period was one of transition - from a belief in the religious and natural causes of disease, to first a social then a scientific explanation.
The set also charts the historical development of the sociology of health: the concept of health, its extension to workers, women and children, and its consolidation as a key social feature of nineteenth century capitalist societies.

It was not long ago that phrenology was commonly dismissed with amused contempt. However, recent scholarship now views it as one of the most significant, if curious, social and intellectual manifestations of the nineteenth century. It is seen as having impinged on virtually every aspect of life, thought and belief and is regarded as having contributed instrumentally to developments in anthropology, criminology, medicine, psychiatry and education. Many eminent figures of the period are also now appreciated as having seriously occupied themselves with phrenology, from sociologists Comte and Spencer to novelists such as Eliot and Balzac. This set of eight volumes draws together a wealth of material crucial to the intellectual debate over phrenology, both as a branch of mental physiology and as a contribution to the history of philosophy. The articles selected represent the variety of different views throughout the nineteenth century, both pro and anti-phrenology.

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Discusses the significance of oral history to the history of the development of health and welfare provisions. By focusing on individual experiences, as revealed through oral history approaches, the human dimensions of the history of medicine is explored. Oral history reveals the personal stories of innovation, policy shifts, training and treatment over a 60-year period of development, characterized by both continuity and change. This book includes discussion on: the end of the workhouse; professional education and training of midwives; HIV and AIDS; birth control; the role of the community pharmacist; pioneers of geriatric medicine; oral history; and the history of learning disability.

This is a complete translation of the medieval Chinese dietary Yin-Shan cheng-yao (1330) with full notes and supporting text, along with a monograph-sized introduction. The Chinese original is the first dietary manual of its kind in Chinese history, and is of particular interest on account of substantial Mongolian, Turkic, and general Islamic influences. The translation makes an important work for the Chinese herbal tradition generally available makes an important work of the chinese herbal tradition generally available, placed in its historical and cultural context, and also makes a significant contribution to the study of traditional East Asian foodways in a broader context. The translation is the first of its kind, and will substantially alter previously held views on Chinese interactions with non-Chinese cultures, including China's conquerors and their Turkic allies.

The origin and early years of any rapidly changing scientific discipline runs the risk of being forgotten unless a record of its past is preserved. In this, the first book-length history of clinical chemistry, those involved or interested in the field will read about who and what went before them and how the profession came to its present state of clinical importance. The narrative reconstructs the origins of clinical chemistry in the seventeenth century and traces its often obscure path of development in the shadow of organic chemistry, physiology and biochemistry until it assumes its own identity at the beginning of the twentieth century. The chronological development of the story reveals the varied roots from which modern clinical chemistry arose.

This volume is a major contribution to the field of disability history in the ancient world. Contributions from leading international scholars examine deformity and disability from a variety of historical, sociological and theoretical perspectives, as represented in various media. The volume is not confined to a narrow view of 'antiquity' but includes a large number of pieces on ancient western Asia that provide a broad and comparative view of the topic and enable scholars to see this important topic in the round. Disability in Antiquity is the first multidisciplinary volume to truly map out and explore the topic of disability in the ancient world and create new avenues of thought and research.

This volume describes important medical discoveries, from the introduction of the first antibiotic to the present, where serendipity, intuition, coincidence, or laboratory accident played an important role in bringing a discovery to light. Although chance is the principal determinant, the book emphasizes other factors, such as economic and political exigencies and being in the right place at the right time.

This book recounts the journey of English midwives over six centuries and their battle for survival as a discrete profession, caring safely for childbearing women. With a particular focus on sixteenth and twentieth century midwifery practice, it includes new research which provides evidence of the identity, social status, lives, families and practice of contemporary midwives, and argues that the excellent care given by ecclesiastically licensed midwives in Tudor England was not bettered until the twentieth century. Relying on a wide variety of archived and personally collected material, this history illuminates the lives, words, professional experiences and outcomes of midwives. It explores the place of women in society, the development of midwifery education and regulation, the seventeenth century arrival of the accoucheurs and the continuing drive by obstetricians to medicalise birth. A fascinating and compelling read, it highlights the politics and challenges that have shaped midwifery practice today and encourages readers to be confident in midwifery-led care and giving women choices in childbirth. It is an important read for all those interested in childbirth.

The seven medical manuscripts from Mawangdui tomb three unearthed in 1973 represent the richest cache of ancient medical manuscripts ever found in China. These manuscripts which comprise this book reveal for the first time the breadth of medical knowledge in third and early second century B.C. China. Included are discussions of physiological theories and pathology, recipe manuals for the treatment of ailments and for the practice of macrobiotic hygiene, sexual treatises, and illustrations of hygienic exercises.

Series Information:
The History of Civilization

This volume brings together for the first time a collection of essays, based on original research, which focus on the history of nutrition science in Britain. Each chapter considers a different episode in the development and application of nutritional knowledge during the twentieth century. The topics covered include: the chewing cult of Horace Fletcher, dietetic education, the popularization of milk, the Dunn Nutritional Laboratory, and wartime involvement in policy making.
The selection of essays in Nutrition in Britain provide valuable new insights into the social processes involved in the production and application of scientific knowledge of nutrition. This book will be fascinating reading to historians of science or medicine, as well as to medical sociologists, nutritionists, home economists, health educators, food activists and anyone with a professional or general interest in food and nutrition.