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Secrets played a central role in transformations in medical and
scientific knowledge in early modern Europe. As a new fascination
with novelty began to take hold from the late fifteenth century,
Europeans thirsted for previously unknown details about the natural
world: new plants, animals, and other objects from nature, new
recipes for medical and alchemical procedures, new knowledge about
the human body, and new facts about the way nature worked. These
'secrets' became popular items of commerce and trade, as the quest
for new and exclusive bits of information met the vibrant early
modern marketplace. Whether disclosed widely in print or kept more
circumspect in manuscripts, secrets helped drive an expanding
interest in acquiring knowledge throughout early modern Europe.
Bringing together international scholars, this volume provides a
pan-European and interdisciplinary overview on the topic. Each
essay offers significant new interpretations of the role played by
secrets in their area of specialization. Chapters address key
themes in early modern history and the history of medicine, science
and technology including: the possession, circulation and exchange
of secret knowledge across Europe; alchemical secrets and
laboratory processes; patronage and the upper-class market for
secrets; medical secrets and the emerging market for proprietary
medicines; secrets and cosmetics; secrets and the body and finally
gender and secrets.
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.
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.
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