Cantitate/Preț
Produs
Total produse
Vezi coșul
The Poison Trials: Wonder Drugs, Experiment, and the Battle for Authority in Renaissance Science de Alisha Rankin

The Poison Trials: Wonder Drugs, Experiment, and the Battle for Authority in Renaissance Science: Synthesis

Autor Alisha Rankin
en Limba Engleză Paperback – 2021

În volumul The Poison Trials, Alisha Rankin propune o reevaluare a rădăcinilor empirismului medical, demonstrând cum aplicabilitatea practică a testării substanțelor toxice pe subiecți umani a precedat metodologiile științifice formale ale secolului al XVII-lea. Analiza pornește de la un caz documentat din 1524, în care Papa Clement al VII-lea a autorizat testarea unui antidot pe doi condamnați la moarte, oferind o perspectivă rară asupra modului în care etica și experimentul s-au ciocnit în zorii modernității. Considerăm că forța acestui studiu rezidă în capacitatea de a arăta cum frica de otravă a catalizat rigoarea metodologică: medicii Renașterii nu doar căutau remedii, ci elaborau rapoarte detaliate și protocoale de control pentru a-și valida autoritatea în fața rivalilor empiriști.

Structura lucrării, împărțită în trei secțiuni majore — Autorități, Experimente și Medicamente Minune — reflectă o progresie logică de la comentariile asupra tratatelor clasice despre teriacă la testarea unor substanțe exotice precum piatra de bezoar. Această abordare completează perspectiva oferită de Toxicology in the Middle Ages and Renaissance de Philip Wexler, adăugând o analiză socială profundă asupra modului în care ierarhiile medicale au fost modelate de succesul sau eșecul acestor teste publice. Dacă lucrările anterioare ale autoarei, precum Secrets and Knowledge in Medicine and Science, 1500–1800, explorau circulația secretelor medicale, The Poison Trials ancorează aceste cunoștințe în realitatea brutală a execuțiilor asistate medical.

Apreciem în mod deosebit modul în care Alisha Rankin integrează cele 38 de ilustrații și tabelele de epocă pentru a susține argumentul că „gândirea experimentală” nu a apărut într-un vid teoretic, ci a fost rezultatul unor presiuni politice și profesionale imense. Tonul este unul academic precis, dar narațiunea rămâne captivantă prin detaliile cazurilor individuale de testare a uleiurilor și panaceelor.

Citește tot Restrânge

Din seria Synthesis

  • The Transmutations of Chymistry: Wilhelm Homberg and the Académie Royale des Sciences
    Preț: 33230 lei
  • Lady Ranelagh: The Incomparable Life of Robert Boyle's Sister
    Preț: 36203 lei
  • The Secrets of Alchemy
    Preț: 13030 lei
  • The Arts of the Microbial World: Fermentation Science in Twentieth-Century Japan
    Preț: 36274 lei
  • Fifth Business: A Life of the Chemist and Educationist Henry Edward Armstrong
    Preț: 31916 lei
  • Genentech: The Beginnings of Biotech
    Preț: 10525 lei
  • Unrefined: How Capitalism Reinvented Sugar
    Preț: 24848 lei
  • Gems and the New Science: Matter and Value in the Scientific Revolution
    Preț: 32924 lei
  • Crafting Medicine: Artisans, Knowledge, and the Common Man in Hieronymus Brunschwig's Books on Surgery and Distillation
    Preț: 20107 lei
  • 5% Medical Monopoly: Intellectual Property Rights and the Origins of the Modern Pharmaceutical Industry
    Preț: 20620 lei
  • Inventing Chemistry: Herman Boerhaave and the Reform of the Chemical Arts
    Preț: 22055 lei
  • The Experimental Fire: Inventing English Alchemy, 1300–1700
    Preț: 19421 lei
  • Life Atomic: A History of Radioisotopes in Science and Medicine
    Preț: 24660 lei
  • A Rainbow Palate: How Chemical Dyes Changed the West's Relationship with Food
    Preț: 23308 lei
  • 21% The Experimental Self: Humphry Davy and the Making of a Man of Science
    Preț: 17292 lei
  • 24% The TVs of Tomorrow: How RCA’s Flat-Screen Dreams Led to the First LCDs
    Preț: 24295 lei
  • 19% Membranes to Molecular Machines : Active Matter and the Remaking of Life
    Preț: 26678 lei
  • The Life and Science of Harold C. Urey
    Preț: 21656 lei

Preț: 25815 lei

Puncte Express: 387
Paperback 25815 lei
Hardback 65184 lei

Carte disponibilă

Livrare economică 11-25 mai
Livrare express 24-30 aprilie pentru 2890 lei

 Adaugă în coș

Wish list
Gift list
Am citit!
Adaugă în listă

Specificații

ISBN-13: 9780226744858
ISBN-10: 022674485X
Pagini: 312
Ilustrații: 38 halftones, 1 table
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 23 mm
Greutate: 0.45 kg
Ediția:First Edition
Editura: University of Chicago Press
Colecția University of Chicago Press
Seria Synthesis

De ce să citești această carte

Recomandăm această carte istoricilor științei și profesioniștilor din domeniul medical interesați de originile studiilor clinice. Cititorul va înțelege cum rivalitățile politice și profesionale din Renaștere au forțat medicina să devină o disciplină bazată pe dovezi experimentale. Este un studiu esențial despre modul în care corpurile marginalizate au fost folosite pentru a valida „medicamentele minune” ale Europei timpurii.

Despre autor

Alisha Rankin este profesor asociat de istorie la Universitatea Tufts și o cercetătoare recunoscută în domeniul istoriei medicinei timpurii. Expertiza sa se concentrează pe intersecția dintre știință, gen și autoritate în Europa secolelor XV-XVIII. A coordonat volumul Secrets and Knowledge in Medicine and Science, 1500–1800, explorând modul în care inovația medicală a fost adesea învăluită în secret. În The Poison Trials, Rankin își continuă investigația asupra modului în care cunoașterea medicală este produsă și legitimată prin practică și experiment.

Descriere scurtă

In 1524, Pope Clement VII gave two condemned criminals to his physician to test a promising new antidote. After each convict ate a marzipan cake poisoned with deadly aconite, one of them received the antidote, and lived—the other died in agony. In sixteenth-century Europe, this and more than a dozen other accounts of poison trials were committed to writing. Alisha Rankin tells their little-known story.

At a time when poison was widely feared, the urgent need for effective cures provoked intense excitement about new drugs. As doctors created, performed, and evaluated poison trials, they devoted careful attention to method, wrote detailed experimental reports, and engaged with the problem of using human subjects for fatal tests. In reconstructing this history, Rankin reveals how the antidote trials generated extensive engagement with “experimental thinking” long before the great experimental boom of the seventeenth century and investigates how competition with lower-class healers spurred on this trend.

The Poison Trials sheds welcome and timely light on the intertwined nature of medical innovations, professional rivalries, and political power.

Notă biografică

Alisha Rankin is associate professor of history at Tufts University. She is coeditor, with Elaine Leong, of Secrets and Knowledge in Medicine and Science, 1500–1800 and author of Panaceia’s Daughters: Noblewomen as Healers in Early Modern Germany, also published by the University of Chicago Press, which won the 2014 Gerald Strauss Prize for Reformation History.

Cuprins

Introduction: Caravita’s Oil

Part One: Authorities

1. Poison on Trial: Theriac
2. Condemned Bodies: Oleum Clementis

Part Two: Experiments

3. Experimenting with Drugs: Mattioli’s Scorpion Oil
4. To Cure a Thief: Silesian Terra Sigillata

Part Three: Wonder Drugs

5. Powerful and Artful Substances: Bezoar Stone
6. A Universal Cure: The Panacea Amwaldina
Conclusion: Testing and Testimony: Orviétan
 
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Recenzii

"Rankin describes the cruel human experiments in grisly detail in her book. . . . Her anecdotes are riveting. . . . But the book's fascination lies in its exposure of the early attempts at an approach to medicine that we would now call scientific—along with the revelation of how quickly and seemingly instinctively these attempts became enmeshed in a primitive version of what we would now call medical ethics. These tensions, like contagions, have always been with us."

"[Rankin] brings us her half-a-decade's worth of research in the disturbing monograph The Poison Trials. . . . Rankin goes to lengths to not just tell the stories, she also analyses them to reconstruct the journey of moving from coercion to informed consent in clinical trials. With this, Rankin succeeds in uncovering a part of history most readers might be unfamiliar with. . . . I have to give a standing ovation for the work that has gone into the book."

"Poison Trials is a book that deftly and masterfully interweaves archival sources and the contemporary printing press, addressing long-standing que-tions in the history of medicine, and it does so in a style that is both lively and engaging."

"Brilliantly researched, described, analysed and reported. . . . Rankin tells a highly comprehensive tale of a fascinating piece of Renaissance medical history. It is thoroughly researched and presented in exhaustive detail. A true academic work, it has extensive endnotes (unfortunately not footnotes), a voluminous bibliography of both primary and secondary sources, and an excellent index. . . . Despite the academic rigour, Rankin has a light, literary style and her prose is truly a pleasure to read. . . . This volume is a must read for anybody involved in the history of Early Modern and/or Renaissance medicine but also more generally for those working on the history of Early Modern and/or Renaissance science, or simply Early Modern and/or Renaissance history. I would also recommend it, without reservations, for any general readers, who like to read well written accounts of interesting episodes in history."

"Rankin immerses her readers in the early modern world of variegated medical practice, contested medical authority, and competing kinds of evidence. . . . Readers will quickly cherish the vividness that Rankin brings to early modern texts, their authors, and medical debates. Specialists and nonspecialists alike will appreciate Rankin's energetic and conversational prose, as well as the fluidity with which she moves between micro and macro analysis. . . . A significant contribution to our understanding of experience, experiment, and evidence in early modern Europe."

"In this sharp and engaging analysis of these fascinating yet widely overlooked experiments, Alisha Rankin persuasively demonstrates that the poison trials shed much light on the shifting definitions of medical ethics and the relationship between the marketplace and scientific authority in the Renaissance." 

“The Poison Trials is a painstakingly researched and shrewd analysis that links a burgeoning experimental tradition to larger shifts in the scientific and political culture of early modern Europe."

"Alisha Rankin’s new book The Poison Trials is a rich new contribution to the subject of sixteenth-century experimentalism... knotting together experimentation with another subject that has grown in importance in the latter period: poisons."

"This entertaining and insightful study is warmly recommended to anyone interested in the early modern period and the history of medicine and science."

"Rankin’s book offers an important new perspective on the development of experimental methods in early modern medicine as well as an entertaining and immersive read."

“This is an exciting and original book that examines the role of poison trials in early modern medicine and science and brings up important issues about the role of experiential knowledge, the ethical and legal implications of medical testing, the role of courtly patronage in the shaping of scientific practice, and the culture of exotica in sixteenth-century Europe. Rich and dense, it deals with important issues, provides strong and unexpected arguments, and presents a fascinating narrative that will captivate readers.”

"The Poison Trials is a deeply researched and brilliantly constructed history of early modern tests of antidotes against poison. But, far more than that, it is also a cultural history of poison in the early modern era that targets experimental tests, raising the ingenious argument that the poison trials provided a kind of medical model for experiments in a time when experimental science was emerging. Rankin tells the story of the battle of physicians against empirics in a fiercely competitive marketplace, with physicians asserting their power and priority against the ragged street-corner ‘doctors’ who hawked their antidotes and panaceas, and of wary rulers fearful of being poisoned by enemies. This is rich cultural history and Rankin is an excellent guide through the thickets of the archival and printed sources detailing these sometimes bizarre events. The Poison Trials makes a major contribution to the history of early modern science and culture, and casts light on ethical concerns that still haunt us."

"Alisha Rankin’s book, The Poison Trials, asks how this period of cases across Europe—especially concentrated in Renaissance Italy and the Holy Roman Empire—came to be and explores nuances in the relationship between these trials, empiricism, and anxieties about authority. It is a story of 'medical innovations, professional rivalries, and political power' (6)—a fascinating window into early modern Europe with questions and themes that will resonate for modernists interested in the histories of medicine and ethics."