IMC 2021: Sessions
Session 216: Climates of Fear, I: Illness, Impairment, and Healing
Monday 5 July 2021, 14.15-15.45
| Organisers: | Joanne Edge, Department of History & Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge Jude Seal, Independent Scholar, York |
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| Moderator/Chair: | Jude Seal, Independent Scholar, York |
| Paper 216-a | 'Deliver this horse from evil': Veterinary Rituals, Epizootic Disease, and Late Medieval Horse Medicine (Language: English) Index terms: Medicine, Science |
| Paper 216-b | The Interplay of Beliefs, Emotions, and Impaired Bodies in 14th-Century Canonisation Inquests (Language: English) Index terms: Hagiography, Medicine |
| Paper 216-c | 'Fire and fever inside her': Hebrew Magical-Medicinal Recipes from 13th-Century Northern France (Language: English) Index terms: Hebrew and Jewish Studies, Medicine |
| Abstract | In the popular imagination the Middle Ages was a time where fear of the supernatural characterised the entire era. There have been many inaccurate descriptions of the Middle Ages as part of the fictional 'Dark Ages' where science and learning stagnated, medicine was a combination of herbalism, religion, and superstition, and women were arbitrarily executed by burning. However, medicine and science were not forgotten, nor was there widespread suppression of scientific learning. But advances that were made took place in a climate of fear. Religion, science, medicine, and magic were not distinct entities as they are in the modern day. |