The tremendous changes in the role and significance of religion during Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation affected all of society. Yet, there have been few attempts to view medicine and the ideas underpinning it within the context of the period and see what changes it underwent.

The problem of the poor grew in the early modern period as populations rose dramatically and created many extra pressures on the state. In Northern Europe, cities were going through a period of rapid growth and central and local administrations saw considerable expansion. This volume provides an outline of the developments in health care and poor relief in the economically important regions of Northern Europe in this period when urban poverty became a generally recognized problem for both magistracies and governments. With contributions from international scholars in the field, including...

The role of religion was of paramount importance in the change of attitudes and approaches to health care and charity which took place in the centuries following the Council of Trent. This book examines the effects of counter-reformation on health care and poor relief in Southern Catholic Europe in the period between 1540 and 1700. As well as an introduction discussing issues of the nature of the Catholic or counter-reformation and the welfare provisions of the period, this text sets the period in its social, economic, religious and ideological context.

A series of essays on the development of medicine in the century of the Enlightenment, illustrating the decline in the role of religion in medical thinking, and the increased use of reason.

Using the prism of DUrer's woodcut, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Andrew Cunningham and Ole Grell offer a new and exciting interpretation of European history in the period 1490 to 1648. DUrer's image came to characterize the outlook of most early modern Europeans, who saw repeated episodes of war, epidemics and famine as indicating the imminent end of the world. Lavishly illustrated with fascinating contemporary images, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse brings together religious, social, military and medical history, giving readers a unique insight into the early modern world. Andrew...

Laboratory medicine developed in the nineteenth century, principally in Germany, France, Britain, and the United States of America. While a number of scholars have studied various aspects of laboratory medicine in the nineteenth century, no attempts have hitherto been made to synthesise such work and to present a view of the whole subject. This book brings together leading researchers on the history of laboratory medicine in Europe and America. Each brings their special expertise to bear on the general subject of the nature and genesis of laboratory medicine. Together, they provide a much...

This book presents a series of essays which focus on the role of Romantic philosophy and ideology in the sciences.