ALEXANDRA SHEPARD
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780199299348
- eISBN:
- 9780191716614
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199299348.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Early Modern History
This chapter focuses on medical representations of manhood that were founded upon a broader range of distinctions between men. Guides to health informed by humoral theory, like the sources discussed ...
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This chapter focuses on medical representations of manhood that were founded upon a broader range of distinctions between men. Guides to health informed by humoral theory, like the sources discussed in Chapter 1, also excluded younger and older men from the bodily equilibrium ideally expected of manhood. In addition, tracts on health subtly mapped temperamental deviations from the norm onto contours of social status. Emphasising just how difficult it was for a man to achieve the moderation expected of manhood, such works tended to elide the temperate ideal with concepts of civility and virtue, and thus appropriated it as a form of gentility for elites.Less
This chapter focuses on medical representations of manhood that were founded upon a broader range of distinctions between men. Guides to health informed by humoral theory, like the sources discussed in Chapter 1, also excluded younger and older men from the bodily equilibrium ideally expected of manhood. In addition, tracts on health subtly mapped temperamental deviations from the norm onto contours of social status. Emphasising just how difficult it was for a man to achieve the moderation expected of manhood, such works tended to elide the temperate ideal with concepts of civility and virtue, and thus appropriated it as a form of gentility for elites.
Carol Laderman
- Published in print:
- 1991
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520069169
- eISBN:
- 9780520913707
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520069169.003.0002
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Asian Cultural Anthropology
This chapter relates the Malay humoral system—the cornerstone of both medical and cosmological theory—to medieval Islamic humoralism and to the beliefs of aborigines who live in the Malayan rain ...
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This chapter relates the Malay humoral system—the cornerstone of both medical and cosmological theory—to medieval Islamic humoralism and to the beliefs of aborigines who live in the Malayan rain forest. By the fourteenth century, when Greek–Arabic medical theories reached Malaya along with Islam, its inhabitants had had more than a thousand years of exposure to similar traditional Hindu Ayurvedic theories, tempered by contact with Chinese medicine. Over the following centuries, Islamic humoral theory has been shaped by and integrated into Malay thought. Elaborated humoral ideas of contemporary Malays extend from such mundane matters as food and illness to the workings of the universe and the nature of its inhabitants, both seen and unseen.Less
This chapter relates the Malay humoral system—the cornerstone of both medical and cosmological theory—to medieval Islamic humoralism and to the beliefs of aborigines who live in the Malayan rain forest. By the fourteenth century, when Greek–Arabic medical theories reached Malaya along with Islam, its inhabitants had had more than a thousand years of exposure to similar traditional Hindu Ayurvedic theories, tempered by contact with Chinese medicine. Over the following centuries, Islamic humoral theory has been shaped by and integrated into Malay thought. Elaborated humoral ideas of contemporary Malays extend from such mundane matters as food and illness to the workings of the universe and the nature of its inhabitants, both seen and unseen.
Charles Leslie and Allan Young
- Published in print:
- 1992
- Published Online:
- May 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520073173
- eISBN:
- 9780520910935
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520073173.003.0013
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Medical Anthropology
This chapter explores Islamic humoralism on the Malay Peninsula. Although Islam was successfully implanted in Malaya, and Islamic concepts are used by Malays to interpret and reinterpret empirical ...
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This chapter explores Islamic humoralism on the Malay Peninsula. Although Islam was successfully implanted in Malaya, and Islamic concepts are used by Malays to interpret and reinterpret empirical realities, the pre-Islamic aboriginal view of the workings of the cosmos, and the positive valence of coolness in the universe and its human microcosm, still fundamental to Malay thought, have radically altered the received theories of Islamic humoralism. Malaya proved a remarkably receptive soil for Islamic religion and medical theories. Their humoral theory provided Islamicized Malays with a new grammar with which to organize ideas about humanity and the universe. Medieval Greek-Arabic humoral theories concerning foods, medicines, and diseases whose etiology stems from the natural world appear in simplified but otherwise virtually unchanged form in contemporary rural Malaysia.Less
This chapter explores Islamic humoralism on the Malay Peninsula. Although Islam was successfully implanted in Malaya, and Islamic concepts are used by Malays to interpret and reinterpret empirical realities, the pre-Islamic aboriginal view of the workings of the cosmos, and the positive valence of coolness in the universe and its human microcosm, still fundamental to Malay thought, have radically altered the received theories of Islamic humoralism. Malaya proved a remarkably receptive soil for Islamic religion and medical theories. Their humoral theory provided Islamicized Malays with a new grammar with which to organize ideas about humanity and the universe. Medieval Greek-Arabic humoral theories concerning foods, medicines, and diseases whose etiology stems from the natural world appear in simplified but otherwise virtually unchanged form in contemporary rural Malaysia.
Michael W. Dols and Diana E. Immisch
- Published in print:
- 1992
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198202219
- eISBN:
- 9780191675218
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198202219.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, World Medieval History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
This chapter aims to describe and to explain the development of the medical notion of insanity in Greek medicine, primarily the 2nd-century writings of Galen. Before the Islamic era, Hippocratic ...
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This chapter aims to describe and to explain the development of the medical notion of insanity in Greek medicine, primarily the 2nd-century writings of Galen. Before the Islamic era, Hippocratic medicine had been considerably augmented by the works of Galen in the 2nd century ad. Although the Hippocratic corpus was always highly esteemed in the Middle Ages, it was overshadowed by Galen because of the extent and nature of his writings. When Galen came to explain psychic disorders, he relied on humoral theory which stated that mental disturbances resulted mainly from humoral imbalances in the brain that damaged its functioning. Medical treatment aimed at re-establishing the balance of the bodily humours, primarily on the principle of contraries, or at removing or moderating the effect of physical causes, especially by evacuations and drugs.Less
This chapter aims to describe and to explain the development of the medical notion of insanity in Greek medicine, primarily the 2nd-century writings of Galen. Before the Islamic era, Hippocratic medicine had been considerably augmented by the works of Galen in the 2nd century ad. Although the Hippocratic corpus was always highly esteemed in the Middle Ages, it was overshadowed by Galen because of the extent and nature of his writings. When Galen came to explain psychic disorders, he relied on humoral theory which stated that mental disturbances resulted mainly from humoral imbalances in the brain that damaged its functioning. Medical treatment aimed at re-establishing the balance of the bodily humours, primarily on the principle of contraries, or at removing or moderating the effect of physical causes, especially by evacuations and drugs.
Nancy Krieger
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195383874
- eISBN:
- 9780199893607
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195383874.003.0002
- Subject:
- Public Health and Epidemiology, Public Health, Epidemiology
Curiosity about the causes and occurrence of disease is not unique to epidemiologists. After all, who wouldn’t be interested in knowing about how to live a healthy life?—or to predict and ward off ...
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Curiosity about the causes and occurrence of disease is not unique to epidemiologists. After all, who wouldn’t be interested in knowing about how to live a healthy life?—or to predict and ward off sickness, injury and death? As the historical record makes clear, people long have tried to account for disease occurrence: both individual cases and population patterns—and have done so steeped in the ideas of their times. Hence, as prelude to analyzing more familiar post-Renaissance epidemiologic theories, Chapter 2 considers four examples spanning from the ancient classical texts of Greek Hippocratic humoral theory and Chinese medicine to the current oral traditions of the Kallawaya in the Andes and the Ogori in Nigeria. Together, these examples reveal how diverse peoples in ancient and contemporary traditional societies have sought to explain their society's patterns of health and disease, as influenced by both their societal and ecologic context.Less
Curiosity about the causes and occurrence of disease is not unique to epidemiologists. After all, who wouldn’t be interested in knowing about how to live a healthy life?—or to predict and ward off sickness, injury and death? As the historical record makes clear, people long have tried to account for disease occurrence: both individual cases and population patterns—and have done so steeped in the ideas of their times. Hence, as prelude to analyzing more familiar post-Renaissance epidemiologic theories, Chapter 2 considers four examples spanning from the ancient classical texts of Greek Hippocratic humoral theory and Chinese medicine to the current oral traditions of the Kallawaya in the Andes and the Ogori in Nigeria. Together, these examples reveal how diverse peoples in ancient and contemporary traditional societies have sought to explain their society's patterns of health and disease, as influenced by both their societal and ecologic context.
Benjamin Kahan
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226607818
- eISBN:
- 9780226608006
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226608006.003.0003
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gender Studies
This chapter argues that in spite of the dominance of the dynamic, humoral theory of the body for thousands of years scholars still have little understanding of what role humoralism plays in the ...
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This chapter argues that in spite of the dominance of the dynamic, humoral theory of the body for thousands of years scholars still have little understanding of what role humoralism plays in the invention of the homo/hetero binary. To this end, this chapter reads across a range of sexological writing encompassing Richard Burton’s climate-based Sotadic Zone, Havelock Ellis’s observation of a “special proclivity” for homosexuality in the “hotter regions of the globe,” and Victor Segalen’s claim that there is “not much Arctic Eroticism” to explore climate as the aspect of the permeable, humoral body with the longest afterlife. It argues that an examination of what Iwan Bloch calls “Anthropologia Sexualis” will highlight the meanings of the shift from the humoral body to a germ theory of the body for the construction of sexuality. Reading Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice (1912) as a text that roots homosexuality in the competing epidemiological regimes of anthropologia sexualis’s humoralism and scientia sexualis’s germ theory, this chapter reads Mann’s novella as providing a key switch point for understanding the divestment of sexuality in humoralism. Moreover, this chapter suggests that Mann's text provides rich models for theorizing sexuality as simultaneously climatic and microbial.Less
This chapter argues that in spite of the dominance of the dynamic, humoral theory of the body for thousands of years scholars still have little understanding of what role humoralism plays in the invention of the homo/hetero binary. To this end, this chapter reads across a range of sexological writing encompassing Richard Burton’s climate-based Sotadic Zone, Havelock Ellis’s observation of a “special proclivity” for homosexuality in the “hotter regions of the globe,” and Victor Segalen’s claim that there is “not much Arctic Eroticism” to explore climate as the aspect of the permeable, humoral body with the longest afterlife. It argues that an examination of what Iwan Bloch calls “Anthropologia Sexualis” will highlight the meanings of the shift from the humoral body to a germ theory of the body for the construction of sexuality. Reading Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice (1912) as a text that roots homosexuality in the competing epidemiological regimes of anthropologia sexualis’s humoralism and scientia sexualis’s germ theory, this chapter reads Mann’s novella as providing a key switch point for understanding the divestment of sexuality in humoralism. Moreover, this chapter suggests that Mann's text provides rich models for theorizing sexuality as simultaneously climatic and microbial.
Sandra Cavallo and Tessa Storey
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199678136
- eISBN:
- 9780191757686
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199678136.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Social History
The books reconstructs in great detail the efforts made by men and women in late Renaissance Italy to stay healthy and prolong their lives. Drawing on a wide variety of sources—ranging from cheap ...
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The books reconstructs in great detail the efforts made by men and women in late Renaissance Italy to stay healthy and prolong their lives. Drawing on a wide variety of sources—ranging from cheap healthy living guides in the vernacular to personal letters, conduct literature, household inventories, and surviving images and objects—it demonstrates that a sophisticated culture of prevention developed in sixteenth-century Italian cities. Based on humoral theory it sought to regulate the factors influencing health. It centred particularly around the home and increasingly informed domestic routines such as sleep patterns, food and drink consumption, forms of exercise, hygiene, control of emotions, and monitoring the air quality to which the body was exposed. Concerns about healthy living also had a substantial impact on the design of homes and the dissemination of a range of household objects. The study thus reveals the forgotten role of medical concerns in shaping everyday life and domestic material culture. But medicine was not the sole factor responsible for these changes. The surge of interest in preventive medicine received new impetus from the development of the print industry. Moreover, it was fuelled by classical notions of well-being reproposed by humanist culture and by the new interest in geography and climates. Broader social and religious trends also played a key role. The most significant element was represented by the nexus between attention to one’s health and spiritual and moral worth promoted both by new ideas of what constituted nobility and by the Counter-Reformation.Less
The books reconstructs in great detail the efforts made by men and women in late Renaissance Italy to stay healthy and prolong their lives. Drawing on a wide variety of sources—ranging from cheap healthy living guides in the vernacular to personal letters, conduct literature, household inventories, and surviving images and objects—it demonstrates that a sophisticated culture of prevention developed in sixteenth-century Italian cities. Based on humoral theory it sought to regulate the factors influencing health. It centred particularly around the home and increasingly informed domestic routines such as sleep patterns, food and drink consumption, forms of exercise, hygiene, control of emotions, and monitoring the air quality to which the body was exposed. Concerns about healthy living also had a substantial impact on the design of homes and the dissemination of a range of household objects. The study thus reveals the forgotten role of medical concerns in shaping everyday life and domestic material culture. But medicine was not the sole factor responsible for these changes. The surge of interest in preventive medicine received new impetus from the development of the print industry. Moreover, it was fuelled by classical notions of well-being reproposed by humanist culture and by the new interest in geography and climates. Broader social and religious trends also played a key role. The most significant element was represented by the nexus between attention to one’s health and spiritual and moral worth promoted both by new ideas of what constituted nobility and by the Counter-Reformation.
Stanley Finger
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195181821
- eISBN:
- 9780199865277
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195181821.003.0018
- Subject:
- Neuroscience, History of Neuroscience
This book has shown how little was known about the brain during the time of the unidentified but observant physician from Egypt's Third Dynasty, when Galen began his experimentalism in Rome, when ...
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This book has shown how little was known about the brain during the time of the unidentified but observant physician from Egypt's Third Dynasty, when Galen began his experimentalism in Rome, when Paul Broca was examining a patient's brain in Paris, or even when Otto Loewi came forth with evidence for chemical transmission in Graz. The purpose of this book was to look at a selection of the minds who had a major impact on the brain sciences, even if what each had to say was not entirely correct when judged through contemporary eyes—for example, Graeco-Roman humoral theory, René Descartes's pineal physiology, or Franz Joseph Gall's system of bumps. The idea was to show how these chosen individuals reasoned and to examine what each did to achieve great fame.Less
This book has shown how little was known about the brain during the time of the unidentified but observant physician from Egypt's Third Dynasty, when Galen began his experimentalism in Rome, when Paul Broca was examining a patient's brain in Paris, or even when Otto Loewi came forth with evidence for chemical transmission in Graz. The purpose of this book was to look at a selection of the minds who had a major impact on the brain sciences, even if what each had to say was not entirely correct when judged through contemporary eyes—for example, Graeco-Roman humoral theory, René Descartes's pineal physiology, or Franz Joseph Gall's system of bumps. The idea was to show how these chosen individuals reasoned and to examine what each did to achieve great fame.
Joan Fitzpatrick
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780719081132
- eISBN:
- 9781526128324
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719081132.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Early modern dietaries are prose texts recommending the best way to maintain physical and psychological well-being. This modern spelling edition is the first to make available to a modern audience ...
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Early modern dietaries are prose texts recommending the best way to maintain physical and psychological well-being. This modern spelling edition is the first to make available to a modern audience three of the most important dietaries from the sixteenth century. The dietaries contained in this volume are Thomas Elyot's Castle of Health, Andrew Boorde's Compendious Regiment, and William Bullein's Government of Health, all popular and influential works that were typical of the genre. These works are here introduced, contextualized and, most importantly, edited for the first time, thus making them more readily available to scholars and students of Renaissance culture. Dietaries illuminate attitudes to food and diet in the period as well as ideas about how lifestyle impacts upon physical and psychological health, for example how much and what type of exercise one should take and how to sleep (for how long and in what position). Introductory material explores the dietary genre, its relationship to humanism, humoral theory, and the wide range of authorities with which the dietary authories engaged. The volume also provides an introduction to each of the works, including a biography of the author and a discussion of what is distinct about their book as well as an examination of the bibliographical and publication history of their dietary. In addition, the reader will benefit from comprehensive explanatory notes and appendices that provide prefaces to earlier editions, a glossary of words commonly used, and a list of authorities and works cited or alluded to in the dietaries.Less
Early modern dietaries are prose texts recommending the best way to maintain physical and psychological well-being. This modern spelling edition is the first to make available to a modern audience three of the most important dietaries from the sixteenth century. The dietaries contained in this volume are Thomas Elyot's Castle of Health, Andrew Boorde's Compendious Regiment, and William Bullein's Government of Health, all popular and influential works that were typical of the genre. These works are here introduced, contextualized and, most importantly, edited for the first time, thus making them more readily available to scholars and students of Renaissance culture. Dietaries illuminate attitudes to food and diet in the period as well as ideas about how lifestyle impacts upon physical and psychological health, for example how much and what type of exercise one should take and how to sleep (for how long and in what position). Introductory material explores the dietary genre, its relationship to humanism, humoral theory, and the wide range of authorities with which the dietary authories engaged. The volume also provides an introduction to each of the works, including a biography of the author and a discussion of what is distinct about their book as well as an examination of the bibliographical and publication history of their dietary. In addition, the reader will benefit from comprehensive explanatory notes and appendices that provide prefaces to earlier editions, a glossary of words commonly used, and a list of authorities and works cited or alluded to in the dietaries.
Rachel Adcock, Sara Read, and Anna Ziomek
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780719090233
- eISBN:
- 9781781707166
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719090233.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
This chapter comprises an introduction to the autobiographical meditations and prayers written by Lady Elizabeth Delaval (1649-1717), selected reading, and extracts from these manuscript writings. ...
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This chapter comprises an introduction to the autobiographical meditations and prayers written by Lady Elizabeth Delaval (1649-1717), selected reading, and extracts from these manuscript writings. Written between 1663 and 1672, her meditations explored the relationship between her inconsistent religious obedience and her physical condition. Delaval was a Royalist and as such a staunch Anglican, but remained convinced she was led from a pious path by those around her, including her Presbyterian lady's maid and companion. She wrote about her toothache (and experiencing the unpleasant sensation of tooth worms); her cure at the hands of an itinerant woman healer whom she thought was providentially supplied by God; her experience of being tempted by the Devil to eat too much fruit and other ‘dainties’ which led to illnesses which she ascribed to a humoral imbalance; and also reflected on large-scale epidemics including outbreaks of plague in the 1660s.Less
This chapter comprises an introduction to the autobiographical meditations and prayers written by Lady Elizabeth Delaval (1649-1717), selected reading, and extracts from these manuscript writings. Written between 1663 and 1672, her meditations explored the relationship between her inconsistent religious obedience and her physical condition. Delaval was a Royalist and as such a staunch Anglican, but remained convinced she was led from a pious path by those around her, including her Presbyterian lady's maid and companion. She wrote about her toothache (and experiencing the unpleasant sensation of tooth worms); her cure at the hands of an itinerant woman healer whom she thought was providentially supplied by God; her experience of being tempted by the Devil to eat too much fruit and other ‘dainties’ which led to illnesses which she ascribed to a humoral imbalance; and also reflected on large-scale epidemics including outbreaks of plague in the 1660s.
