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Divided Legacy (Vols. I-IV) is a history of Western medical philosophy from the time of Hippocrates to the twentieth century, treating it as a unified system of thought rather than a series of fortuitous discoveries. Dr. Coulter interprets the development of medical ideas as the product of a conflict between two opposed systems of thought, Empiricism and Rationalism. This second volume of Divided Legacy analyzes the dispute in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries over the criterion of reliability of medical thought and practice.
This volume emphasizes the diversity and fruitfulness of early modern mechanism as a program, as a concept, as a model. Mechanistic study of the living body but also of the mind and mental processes are examined in careful historical focus, dealing with figures ranging from the first-rank (Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza, Cudworth, Gassendi, Locke, Leibniz, Kant) to less well-known individuals (Scaliger, Martini) or prominent natural philosophers who have been neglected in recent years (Willis, Steno, etc.). The volume moves from early modern medicine and physiology to late Enlightenment and even early 19th-century psychology, always maintaining a conceptual focus. It is a contribution to a newly active field in the history and philosophy of early modern life science. It is of interest to scholars studying the history of medicine and the development of mechanistic theories.
In Episodes in the Life of the Early Modern Learned Book, Ian Maclean investigates intellectual life through the prism of the history of publishing, academic institutions, journals, and the German book fairs whose evolution is mapped over the long seventeenth century. After a study of the activities of Italian book merchants up to 1621, the passage into print, both locally and internationally, of English and Italian medicine and ‘new’ science comes under scrutiny. The fate of humanist publishing is next illustrated in the figure of the Dutch merchant Andreas Frisius (1630–1675). The work ends with an analysis of the two monuments of the last phase of legal humanism: the Thesauruses of Otto (1725–44) and Gerard Meerman (1751–80).
Amidst prevailing debates that construe rationality and emotionality as polar opposites, this book explores the manner in which emotions shape not only prevailing conceptions of rationality, but also culture in general terms, making room for us to speak of an 'emotional culture' specific to late-modern societies. Presenting case studies involving cultural artefacts, narratives found in fictional and non-fictional literature and television programs, speech patterns and self-talk, fashion, and social networking practices, The Emotions and Cultural Analysis sheds light on the relationship between emotion and culture and the ways in which emotion can be harnessed for the purposes of cultural analysis. An interdisciplinary volume containing the latest research from sociology, philosophy, literary studies, linguistics, and communication, this book will be of interest to those working on the sociology and philosophy of emotion, cultural studies, and cultural theory.
An account of European knowledge of the natural world, c.1500-1700.
This edited volume explores the intersection of medicine and philosophy throughout history, calling attention to the role of quantification in understanding the medical body. Retracing current trends and debates to examine the quantification of the body throughout the early modern, modern and early contemporary age, the authors contextualise important issues of both medical and philosophical significance, with chapters focusing on the quantification of temperaments and fluids, complexions, functions of the living body, embryology, and the impact of quantified reasoning on the concepts of health and illness. With insights spanning from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth century, this boo...
Experimental pharmacology is often portrayed as a creation of the nineteenth century, the age of the sciences in medicine. This book demonstrates that the basic methodology of the field, including chemical analysis, in vitro testing, animal experimentation and human research, was already developed in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Putting remedies on trial was stimulated by the challenge to Galenism through new chemical, mechanical and vitalist concepts of disease, by the import of exotic drugs and the flourishing trade with secret medicines. The book describes the main issues of eighteenth-century pharmacology and therapeutics and provides detailed case studies of three key areas: lithontriptics (remedies against urinary stones), opium, and Peruvian bark (quinine). It shows how pharmacological knowledge and therapeutic change were promoted in medical centres of the time, such as Edinburgh, London, Paris, Halle and Göttingen. Yet it also reveals how by publication of medical case histories many otherwise little-known practitioners contributed to this scientific enterprise as well.
In 1705-1706, during the War of the Spanish Succession and two years after a devastating earthquake, an ’epidemic’ of mysterious sudden deaths terrorized Rome. In early modern society, a sudden death was perceived as a mala mors because it threatened the victim’s salvation by hindering repentance and last confession. Special masses were celebrated to implore God’s clemency and Pope Clement XI ordered his personal physician, Giovanni Maria Lancisi, to perform a series of dissections in the university anatomical theatre in order to discover the 'true causes' of the deadly events. It was the first investigation of this kind ever to take place for a condition which was not contagious. Th...