Description
Book SynopsisThis book presents a uniquely broad and pioneering history of premodern toxicology by exploring how late medieval and early modern (c. 12001600) physicians discussed the relationship between poison, medicine, and disease. Drawing from a wide range of medical and natural philosophical textswith an emphasis on treatises that focused on poison, pharmacotherapeutics, plague, and the nature of diseasethis study brings to light premodern physicians'' debates about the potential existence, nature, and properties of a category of substance theoretically harmful to the human body in even the smallest amount. Focusing on the category of poison (venenum) rather than on specific drugs reframes and remixes the standard histories of toxicology, pharmacology, and etiology, as well as shows how these aspects of medicine (although not yet formalized as independent disciplines) interacted with and shaped one another. Physicians argued, for instance, about what properties might distinguish pois
Table of Contents
Contents;
Acknowledgements;
Introduction;
1. Classical Authorities and Traditions
The ambiguity of pharmaka and venena.
Prevention, symptoms, and remedies.
Medical pharmacotherapy and theories of poison.
Compilation, synthesis, and specific form.
Conclusion
2. Poison and Venom in the Latin West before 1300
Poisons and venoms in translation.
Encyclopedic poisons.
Qualities, quantities, and forms.
Regulating poisonous drugs.
Conclusion.
3. Towards a New Toxicology
Food, medicine, and poison.
A new kind of poison text.
New "problems" of poison.
Patronage, poison, and medical learning.
Conclusion.
4. Plague, Poison, and Metaphor
Putrefied and poisoned air.
Plague as poison in the body.
Spreadable and contagious poison.
Conclusion.
5. Poisonous Properties, Bodies, and Forms
Occult definitions and forms.
Poisonous properties.
Poisonous bodies.
Poisoning, sorcery, and the evil eye.
Sympathetic forms.
Conclusion.
6. Poison, Putrefaction, and Ontology of Disease
Poisons, contagions, and the French Disease.
Poison as cause of disease.
Separating poison and medicine with Paracelsus.
Ontologies of poisons, forms, seeds, and disease.
Conclusion.
7. Reframing Toxicology
Reconciling the language of medicine and poison.
New approaches to venenum.
Poisons, venoms, and corruptions in the body.
Conclusion
Epilogue
Bibliography
