Medicine And Medical Ethics In Medieval And Early Modern Spain

This volume presents expanded versions of papers read at a bi-national symposium convened in Jerusalem in December 1992. Organised within the framework of meetings held world-wide in remembrance of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, this conference focused on aspects of the profession and ethics of medicine. The major topics explored at the symposium were the relationships among physicians of different denominations and between them and the authorities; the image and status of the converso physician; questions of medical licensing and compensation; attitudes regarding suffering, pain and the care of infants; and the influence of medieval Jewish and Moslem religious law concepts underlying the care and treatment of patients. Other papers relate to the early modern period and to current problems of medical ethics, illustrating the impact of historical approaches on the development of the discipline of medical ethics today.

Early modern Spain was a global empire in which a startling variety of medical cultures came into contact, and occasionally conflict, with one another. Spanish soldiers, ambassadors, missionaries, sailors, and emigrants of all sorts carried with them to the farthest reaches of the monarchy their own ideas about sickness and health. These ideas were, in turn, influenced by local cultures. This volume tells the story of encounters among medical cultures in the early modern Spanish empire. The twelve chapters draw upon a wide variety of sources, ranging from drama, poetry, and sermons to broadsheets, travel accounts, chronicles, and Inquisitorial documents; and it surveys a tremendous regional scope, from Mexico, to the Canary Islands, the Iberian Peninsula, Italy, and Germany. Together, these essays propose a new interpretation of the circulation, reception, appropriation, and elaboration of ideas and practices related to sickness and health, sex, monstrosity, and death, in a historical moment marked by continuous cross-pollination among institutions and populations with a decided stake in the functioning and control of the human body. Ultimately, the volume discloses how medical cultures provided demographic, analytical, and even geographic tools that constituted a particular kind of map of knowledge and practice, upon which were plotted: the local utilities of pharmacological discoveries; cures for social unrest or decline; spaces for political and institutional struggle; and evolving understandings of monstrousness and normativity. Medical Cultures of the Early Modern Spanish Empire puts the history of early modern Spanish medicine on a new footing in the English-speaking world.

Consent is used in many different social and legal contexts with the pervasive understanding that it is, and has always been, about autonomy – but has it? Beginning with an overview of consent’s role in law today, this book investigates the doctrine’s inseparable association with personal autonomy and its effect in producing both idealised and demonised forms of personhood and agency. This prompts a search for alternative understandings of consent. Through an exploration of sexual offences in Antiquity, medical practice in the Middle Ages, and the regulation of bodily harm on the present-day sports field, this book demonstrates that, in contrast to its common sense story of autonomy, consent more often operates as an act of submission than as a form of personal freedom or agency. The book explores the implications of this counter-narrative for the law’s contemporary uses of consent, arguing that the kind of freedom consent is meant to enact might be foreclosed by the very frame in which we think about autonomy itself. This book will be of interest to scholars of many aspects of law, history, and feminism as well as students of criminal law, bioethics, and political theory.

In Antisemitic Conspiracy Theories in the Early Modern Iberian World: Narratives of Fear and Hatred, François Soyer offers the first detailed historical analysis of antisemitic conspiracy theories in Spain, Portugal and their overseas colonies between 1450 and 1750.

Bridging the gap between histories of medicine and political/institutional histories of the early modern crown, this book explores the relationship between one of the most highly bureaucratic regimes in early modern Europe, Spain, and crown interest in and regulation of medical practices. Complementing recent histories that have emphasized the interdependent nature of governance between the crown and municipalities in sixteenth-century Spain, this study argues that medical policies were the result of negotiation and cooperation among the crown, the towns, and medical practitioners. During the reign of Philip II (1556-1598), the crown provided unique opportunities for advancements in the medical field among practitioners and support for the creation and dissemination of innovative medical techniques. In addition, crown support for and regulation of medicine served as an important bureaucratic tool in the crown's effort to expand and solidify its authority over the distinct kingdoms and territories under Castilian authority and the municipalities within the kingdom of Castile itself. The crown was not the only agent of change in the medical world, however. Medical policies and their successful implementation required consensus and cooperation among competing political authorities. Bringing to life a cast of characters from early modern Spain, from the female empiric who practiced bonesetting and surgery to the university-trained, Latin physician whose medical textbook standardized medical education in the universities, the book will broaden the scope of medical history to include not only the development of medical theory and innovative practice, but also address the complex tensions between various authorities which influenced the development and nature of medical practice and perceptions of 'public health' in early modern Europe. Juxtaposing the history of medicine with the history of early modern state-building brings a unique perspective to this challenging book that reassesses the relationship between the monarch and intellectual milieu of medicine in Spain. It further challenges the dominance of studies of medical regulation from France and England and illuminates a diverse and innovative world of Spanish medical practice that has been neglected in standard histories of early modern medicine.

Plague and Public Health in Early Modern Seville offers a reassessment of the impact of plague in the early modern era, presenting sixteenth-century Seville as a case study of how municipal officials and residents worked together to create a public health response that protected both individual and communal interests. Similar studies of plague during this period either dramatize the tragic consequences of the epidemic or concentrate on the tough "modern" public health interventions, such as quarantine, surveillance and isolation, and the laxness or strictness of their enforcement. Arguing for a redefinition of "public health" in the early modern era, this study chronicles a more restrained, humane, and balanced response to outbreaks in 1582 and 1599-1600 Seville, showing that city officials aimed to protect the population but also maintain trade and commerce in order to prevent economic disruption. Based on extensive primary sources held in the municipal archive of Seville, the work argues that a careful reading of the records shows a critical difference between how plague regulations were written and how they were enforced, a difference that reflects an unacknowledged process of negotiation aimed at preserving balance within the community. The book makes important contributions to the study of early modern city governance and to the historiography of epidemics more broadly. Kristy Wilson Bowers received her PhD from Indiana University and teaches in the History Department at Northern Illinois University.

This encyclopedia provides 300 interdisciplinary, cross-referenced entries that document the effect of the plague on Western society across the four centuries of the second plague pandemic, balancing medical history and technical matters with historical, cultural, social, and political factors. Encyclopedia of the Black Death is the first A–Z encyclopedia to cover the second plague pandemic, balancing medical history and technical matters with historical, cultural, social, and political factors and effects in Europe and the Islamic world from 1347–1770. It also bookends the period with entries on Biblical plagues and the Plague of Justinian, as well as modern-era material regarding related topics, such as the work of Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur, the Third Plague Pandemic of the mid-1800s, and plague in the United States. Unlike previous encyclopedic works about this subject that deal broadly with infectious disease and its social or historical contexts, including the author's own, this interdisciplinary work synthesizes much of the research on the plague and related medical history published in the last decade in accessible, compellingly written entries. Controversial subject areas such as whether "plague" was bubonic plague and the geographic source of plague are treated in a balanced and unbiased manner.

Medicine and the Law in the Middle Ages offers fresh insight into the intersection between these two distinct disciplines. A dozen authors address this intersection within three themes: medical matters in law and administration of law, professionalization and regulation of medicine, and medicine and law in hagiography. The articles include subjects such as medical expertise at law on assault, pregnancy, rape, homicide, and mental health; legal regulation of medicine; roles physicians and surgeons played in the process of professionalization; canon law regulations governing physical health and ecclesiastical leaders; and connections between saints’ judgments and the bodies of the penitent. Drawing on primary sources from England, France, Frisia, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, and Spain, the volume offers a truly international perspective. Contributors are Sara M. Butler, Joanna Carraway Vitiello, Jean Dangler, Carmel Ferragud, Fiona Harris-Stoertz, Maire Johnson, Hiram Kümper, Iona McCleery, Han Nijdam, Kira Robison, Donna Trembinski, Wendy J. Turner, and Katherine D. Watson.