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Building upon sustained scholarly and popular interest in both alchemy and medicine, this volume explores the ways in which physicians practiced alchemy and alchemists produced medicaments from ancient times to the enlightenment.
List of contents
Introduction
[Jennifer M. Rampling and Peter M. Jones]
Part I: Transmission
1. Medicine in Graeco-Egyptian Alchemical Collections
[Matteo Martelli]
2. Jābirian Alchemy and Medicine
[Sébastien Moureau]
3. The Concept of Elixir in Western Medieval Alchemy
[Michela Pereira]
4. Alchemy and Medicine in the Ottoman Court
[Tuna Artun]
Part II: Theories of Alchemical Healing
5. Radical Moisture in Late Medieval Alchemy
[Chiara Crisciani]
6. The Idea of the Physician in Medieval and Early Modern Alchemy
[Jennifer M. Rampling]
7. Paracelsus
[Didier Kahn translated by Jennifer M. Rampling]
8. From Interpretation to Integration: J. B. Van Helmont and his Medico-Alchemical Hippocratism
[Georgiana D. Hedesan]
Part III: Alchemy and Medical Practice
9. Alchemical Remedies in Late Medieval England
[Peter M. Jones]
10. The Simple Alchemy of Renaissance Apothecaries
[Valentina Pugliano]
11. Medical Performance and the Alchemy of Plants in the Ventures of Leonard Thurnheisser
[Bruce T. Moran]
12. Chymistry for Ladies? Women and Medical Distillation in Early Modern Europe
[Alisha Rankin]
Part IV: The Status of Chemical Medicine
13. Reconciling Galenic and Chemical Medicine
[Hiro Hirai]
14. Chemical Medicine in Early Journals
[Margaret D. Garber]
15. Extracting the Exotic: Global Chymical Medicine in the Seventeenth Century
[Hjalmar Fors]
16. The Chymist and the Physician: Rivalry and Conflict at the Académie Royale des Sciences
[Lawrence M. Principe]
About the author
Jennifer Rampling is Assistant Professor of History at Princeton University. Her research focuses on the history of medieval and early modern alchemy. She is Editor of
Ambix, Her books include,
The Making of English Alchemy, for Synthesis (University of Chicago Press), and writing
Alchemy: A Very Short Introduction for Oxford University Press.
Peter M. Jones is Fellow and Librarian at King's College, Cambridge, where he teaches the history of medieval medicine. He is also a Principal Investigator on the Generation to Reproduction project. His books include,
Medieval Medicine in Illuminated Manuscripts (British Library) and
De Arte Phisicali et de Cirurgia by John Arderne; from a new digital version of the Stockholm roll (Stockholm: Hagströmer Biblioteket).
Summary
Building upon sustained scholarly and popular interest in both alchemy and pre-modern medicine, this volume reveals how physicians practiced alchemy and alchemists produced medicaments. It shows how, besides sharing knowledge, physicians and alchemists engaged in fierce polemics, adapted one another’s techniques, and united against common foes. Whether appropriating medical knowledge or defining themselves in opposition to it, alchemical practitioners engaged continually with the practice, theory, and language of medicine.
Adopting a longue durée approach to explore these connections, the sixteen essays in this collection each address a key topic in the history of alchemy and medicine, written by a subject specialist – in many cases, the leading authority on that topic. While European traditions provide the core of the volume, contributors also discuss Greco-Roman Egypt, medieval Islam, the Ottoman Empire, and the East Indies; accommodating Greek, Arabic, Latin, and vernacular traditions. Examination of these themes and contexts furthers our understanding of issues central to the history of science and medicine: the relationship between court and city, print and manuscript, and theoretical and practical knowledge; the circulation of "secrets" literature; the role of chemical medicine in courts and universities; and the material and economic context of alchemy.
