It All Depends on the Dose: Poisons and Medicines in European History

ISBN-13: 9781032401911 / Angielski / Miękka / 2022 / 258 str.

Grell, Ole Peter

Opis

This is the first volume to take a broad historical sweep of the close relation between medicines and poisons in the Western tradition, and their interconnectedness. They are like two ends of a spectrum, for the same natural material can be medicine or poison, depending on the dose, and poisons can be transformed into medicines, while medicines can turn out to be poisons. The book looks at important moments in the history of the relationship between poisons and medicines in European history, from Roman times, with the Greek physician Galen, through the Renaissance and the maverick physician Paracelsus, to the present, when poisons are actively being turned into beneficial medicines.

This is the first volume to take a broad historical sweep of the close relation of medicines and poisons in the Western tradition, and their interconnectedness. They are like two ends of a spectrum, for the same natural material can be medicine or poison, depending on the dose, and poisons can be transformed into medicines, while medicines can t

Spis treści

Introduction: Deadly Medicine  Andrew Cunningham  1. Poisons in the Historic Medicine Cabinet  Toine Pieters  2. "First Behead Your Viper": Acquiring Knowledge in Galen's Poison Stories  Helen King  3. Mining for Poison in a Devout Heart: Dissective Practices and Poisoning in Late Medieval Europe  Montserrat Cabré and Fernando Salmón  4. Pestis Manufacta: Plague, Poisons, and Fear in Mid Fourteenth-Century Europe  Jon Arrizabalaga  5. Alchemy, Potency, Imagination: Paracelsus's Theories of Poison  Georgiana D. Hedesan  6. Martin Luther on the Poison of Sexual Abstinence and the Poison of the Pox: From Galen to Paracelsus  Ole Peter Grell  7. Poisoning as Politics: The Italian Renaissance Courts  Alessandro Pastore  8. Gender, Poison, and Antidotes in Early Modern Europe  Alisha Rankin  9. Mateu Orfila (1787-1853) and Nineteenth-Century Toxicology  José Ramón Bertomeu-Sánchez  10. Mercury: "One of the Most Valuable Drugs We Have" (1937)  Andrew Cunningham  11. Collateral Benefits: Ergot, Botulism, Salmonella and Their Therapeutic Applications Since 1800  Anne Hardy  12. Does It All Depend on the Dose? Understanding Beneficial and Adverse Drug Effects Since 1864: Clinical and Experimental Attitudes to the Law of Mass Action and Concentration–Effect Curves   Jeffrey K. Aronson and Robin E. Ferner

O autorze

Ole Peter Grell is Professor in Early Modern History at The Open University, U.K.

Andrew Cunningham was formerly Senior Research Fellow at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, U.K.

Jon Arrizabalaga is Research Professor in History of Science at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Institución Milà i Fontanals, Barcelona, Spain.