Sciences & Technology
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Cultivating the Earth, Nurturing the Body and Soul: Daily Life in Early Medieval England
Essays in Honour of Debby Banham
How did food impact social relationships in early medieval England? What cultivation practices were followed to produce the best possible food supplies? What was the cultural significance of bread? How was the human body nourished? When sickness inevitably occurred where did one go and who was consulted for healing? And how was spiritual health also protected? The essays gathered together in this exciting volume draw on a range of different disciplines from early medieval economic and social history to experimental archaeology and medieval medicine to offer a unique overview into day-to-day life in England nearly two millennia ago.Taking as their starting point the broad research interests of the volume’s honorand Dr Debby Banham contributors here offer new insights into the reproduction and ritual use of vernacular charms examine the collation and translation of medieval medicine elucidate monastic economies and production and uncover the circumstances behind the production and transmission of medical manuscripts in early medieval England. Presenting new insights into agricultural practices and animal husbandry monastic sign language and materia medica plant knowledge and medical practices the chapters within this volume not only offer a fitting tribute to Banham’s own groundbreaking work but also shed new light on what it meant to nurture both body and soul in early medieval England.
Medicine in the Medieval North Atlantic World
Vernacular Texts and Traditions
Studies of medical learning in medieval England Wales Ireland and Scandinavia have traditionally focused on each geographical region individually with the North Atlantic perceived as a region largely peripheral to European culture. Such an approach however means that knowledge within this part of the world is never considered in the context of more global interactions where scholars were in fact deeply engaged in wider intellectual currents concerning medicine and healing that stemmed from both continental Europe and the Middle East.
The chapters in this interdisciplinary collection draw together new research from historians literary scholars and linguists working on Norse English and Celtic material in order to bring fresh insights into the multilingual and cross-cultural nature of medical learning in northern Europe during the Middle Ages c. 700–1600. They interrogate medical texts and ideas in both Latin and vernacular languages addressing questions of translation cultural and scientific inheritance and exchange and historical conceptions of health and the human being within nature. In doing so this volume offers an in-depth study of the reception and transmission of medical knowledge that furthers our understanding both of scholarship in the medieval North Atlantic and across medieval Europe as a whole.
Filosofia e medicina in Italia fra medioevo e prima età moderna
Il volume raccoglie alcune delle relazioni presentate durante il 4° Colloquio Internazionale della Societas Artistarum. Svoltosi presso l’Università degli studi di Milano il 7-9 novembre 2019 esso si proponeva di approfondire da prospettive diverse come si sia configurato nell’Italia medievale e rinascimentale il rapporto fra medicina e filosofia. Alcuni contributi si soffermano sul contesto storico-istituzionale dell’insegnamento e della pratica della medicina sull’uso di dottrine etiche e di strumenti logici e retorici da parte dei medici. Altri contributi avvalendosi anche di documenti e testi inediti analizzano invece temi interdisciplinari come le teorie della generazione e la natura delle acque fluviali oppure mettono a fuoco il pensiero e l’opera di medici-filosofi come Bartolomeo da Salerno Taddeo Alderotti Antonio da Parma e Ludovico Boccadiferro.
De la Lune à la Terre
Les débats sur le premier livre des Météorologiques d’Aristote au Moyen Âge latin (la tradition parisienne, XIIIe-XVe siècles)
La météorologie ancienne et médiévale se distingue de son équivalent contemporain par un domaine d’études autrement plus vaste s’étendant bien au-delà des phénomènes atmosphériques. Le premier livre des Météorologiques d’Aristote aborde en effet des sujets aussi divers que l’action de la sphère céleste sur la région terrestre les liens entre mouvement lumière et production de chaleur les rapports quantitatifs entre les quatre éléments la formation des comètes et de la Voie lactée l’origine et le mouvement des fleuves les variations périodiques dans la répartition entre mers et terres sèches. Fondée sur l’analyse d’une grande quantité de textes inédits et prenant la forme d’un voyage de la Lune à la Terre la présente étude explore les débats que ces sujets ont suscités chez les maîtres scolastiques qui de la fin du XIIe au milieu du XVe siècle se sont confrontés au texte aristotélicien dans le cadre de leur enseignement à la Faculté des arts.
Debating Inoculation in Eighteenth-Century Europe
Smallpox (known as "variole" or "petite vérole" in French) spread relentlessly across Europe during the eighteenth century gaining an unprecedented and deadly momentum. While there was no cure for this highly infectious and often fatal disease those that recovered from it were immune to future infections. This phenomenon was the origin of a practice of inoculation whereby infectious material was introduced into the body to induce immunity. In Europe this practice was initially experimented with in England and it was subsequently adopted across the continent during the eighteenth century. Inoculation was however not without controversy—not least because the practice originated outside of Europe—and it became the subject of intense debate. This debate this volume argues extended beyond medical circles to include intellectuals and the broader public—a phenomenon driven by a growing periodical press. As books scientific treatises and plays crossed regional and national boundaries debates on inoculation must this volume shows be examined within a European transnational perspective thereby considering how ideas were shaped by adaptation translations and citation. Doing so this volume not only sheds new light on the history inoculation as a practice but also illustrates how cultural history can enrich history of medicine
Smallpox Inoculation in Eighteenth-Century Scandinavia. From Pioneering Work Towards Public Consensus *
‘Through Diplomatic Channels’. Science, Diplomacy, and Greece’s Efforts for Election to the IAEA Board of Governors, 1957–1961 *
This paper examines Greek efforts to secure a position on the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) during its early years. Fuelled by pride in his country’s advancements in nuclear matters and bolstered by what he saw to be a positive alliance to the United States Admiral Athanasios Spanidis president of the Greek Atomic Energy Commission attended the first General Conference of the IAEA in 1957 with high hopes. However Spanidis and Greece soon discovered that the diplomatic game in this novel international setting was much more challenging than anticipated. Greek ambitions suffered a double setback: not only did the US fail to support Greece’s candidacy for the IAEA board instead it backed Turkey’s application for this prestigious role — at a time of heightened tensions between Greece and Turkey regarding the unresolved Cyprus issue. This paper argues that Greece had quickly to adapt to the power plays of diplomacy within the multilateral framework of the IAEA. Learning from the bitter experience with the US in 1957 Greece strategically sought to forge relationships with other influential countries within the Western Bloc. This chapter shows how by carefully navigating the intricacies of the multilateral diplomatic dynamics at work within the IAEA Greece secured a position on its Board of Governors in 1961. The analysis also underlines how the internal dynamics of the IAEA were powerfully shaped by the wider geopolitical developments of the 1950s–1960s Cold War.
Needle Diplomacy. Acupuncture and Scientific Exchange in Cold War China and the United States
In the early 1970s while China was emerging from the height of the Cultural Revolution a surprising technology helped pave the way for the future rapprochement between China and the United States: the acupuncture needle. As an ostensibly apolitical practice acupuncture came to serve as a scientific lubricant that eased the Cold War tensions between the two countries providing an entryway into Sino-American people-to-people exchanges and future intellectual collaboration. At the same time acupuncture represented an alternative imagining of a new world order one in which scientific knowledge could just as easily flow from East to West as it did the reverse. By showcasing China’s ability to break new ground in the realm of medicine and surgery acupuncture became a form of soft power that highlighted the innovative capacity of Chinese communism and the revolutionary potential of Mao Zedong Thought. Through the captivating achievements of new needling technologies the Chinese government was able to not just extol the effectiveness of Maoism on a global scale but to also — albeit briefly — direct the terms of its diplomatic engagements with the capitalist West.