Description
Book SynopsisThis work explores how Renaissance Germans understood and experienced madness. It focuses on topics including: the insanity of the world in general; specific disorders; the thinking on madness of theologians, jurists, and physicians; and vernacular ideas that made sufferers seek help.
Trade Review"Middlefort's latest book will not disappoint the many scholars in varied disciplines who have eagerly awaited it. This is mature, sensitive scholarship . . . [that] succeeds brilliantly in exploring the social and intellectual dilemmas posed by early modern insanity. . . It belongs in every academic library."—
History: Reviews of New Books"This is the best book I have ever read on the border between cultural and social history in early modern Europe."—Thomas A. Brady, Jr., University of California, Berkeley
"The best book yet on madness in history. Erik Midelfort's study of madness in sixteenth-century Germany is an outstanding contribution to the medical, social and cultural history of the insane. Its impressively researched discussions of madness, melancholy, demonic possession, witchcraft, folly and the asylum give a more convincing and reliable picture of these subjects than we have ever had, for any European nation. Although aimed at a scholarly audience, the book is so well-written and so full of fascinating topics and colorful tales that it should appeal to general readers as well as to professional historians."—Michael MacDonald, University of Michigan
"In this long awaited book, Midelfort explores how sixteenth-century Germans understood madness and mental disorders during the age of the Renaissance and the religious reformations. Operating from the assumption that one cannot understand madness without understanding the social contexts in which it is defined, diagnosed, and treated, the author examines madness in seven chapters, each a model of th integration of intellectual and social history. . . . This important work should be in every university library."—
ChoiceTable of ContentsTables and maps; Illustrations; Abbreviations; Introduction; 1. Historical problems: Sin, St. Vitus, and the Devil; 2. Two reformers and a world gone mad: Luther and Paracelsus; 3. Academic 'psychiatry' and the rise of Galenic observation; 4. Witchcraft and the melancholy interpretation of the insanity defence; 5. Court fools and their folly: image and social reality; 6. Pilgrims in search of their reason; 7. Madness as helplessness: two hospitals in the age of reformations; Epilogue; Bibliography; Index.
