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Gentilcore (David). Healers and Healing in Early Modern Italy
No full textMuchembled Robert. Gentilcore (David). Healers and Healing in Early Modern Italy. In: Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire, tome 79, fasc. 4, 2001. Histoire medievale, moderne et contemporaine - Middeleeuwse. moderne en hedendaagse geschiedenis. pp. 1461-1463
Medical Charlatanism in Early Modern Italy
No full textFrom the mid-sixteenth century onwards, the Italian Protomedicato tribunals, Colleges of Physicians, or Health Offices (jurisdiction varied from state to state) required charlatans to submit their wares for inspection and, upon approval, pay a licence fee in order to set up a stage from which to perform and sell them. The licensing of charlatans became an administrative routine. As far as the medical magistracies were concerned, charlatans had a defineable identity, constituting a specific trade or occupation. This book studies the way charlatans were represented, by contemporaries and by historians, how they saw themselves and, most importantly, it reconstructs the place of charlatans in early modern Italy. It explores the goods and services charlatans provided, their dealings with the public and their marketing strategies. It does so from a range of perspectives: social, cultural, economic, political, geographical, biographical and, of course, medical. Charlatans are not just some curiosity on the fringes of medicine: they offered health care to an extraordinarily wide sector of the population. Moreover, from their origins in Renaissance Italy, the Italian ciarlatano was the prototype for itinerant medical practitioners throughout Europe. This book offers a different look at charlatans. It is the first to take seriously the licences issued to charlatans in the Italian states, compiling them into a 'charlatans database' of over 1,300 charlatans active throughout Italy over the course of some three centuries. In addition, it makes use of other types of archival documents, such as trial records and wills, to give the charlatans a human face, as well as a wide range of artistic and printed sources, not forgetting the output of the charlatans themselves, in the form of handbills and pamphlets
Italiani mangiapatate. Fortuna e sfortuna della patata nel Belpaese
No full textArrivata dal Nuovo Mondo nel Cinquecento, la patata è stata probabilmente l’alimento che più ha contribuito a far uscire l’Europa dalla fame. Eppure in Italia si diffuse solo nell’Ottocento, soprattutto come coltivazione di montagna. La patata modificò il regime alimentare degli italiani, contribuendo a emancipare le campagne dalla sottoalimentazione, migliorando il tenore di vita. E ciò avvenne sotto la spinta congiunta delle carestie e dell’opera educativa di alcuni spiriti illuminati, che vinsero il sospetto o il disprezzo per quell’esotico alimento. Attraverso memorie di viaggiatori, ricettari, trattati e letteratura scientifica il libro narra una vicenda ancora largamente sconosciuta nella quale si specchiano oltre due secoli di storia sociale, economica, culturale del nostro paese
Introduction
Get PDFIf the 1980s may have been the high point of food additives—with Coca-Cola able to double the sales of ‘Tab’ in test markets by fortifying the fizzy diet drink with calcium —one of the more recent food trends has been not of additions but subtraction. We have all seen it on our supermarket shelves. A whole range of foods, from soy milk to sausages, are advertised as ‘additive-free’. This conveys a positive and healthy image to a public interested in health and wellbeing but anxious and suspicious about the nature of food additives. The expression has taken the place of abused terms like ‘natural’ or ‘all-natural’ on product packaging. It also makes it easier to rationalize the consumption of less healthy foods, which are at least perceived to be free from added artificial ingredients. Why not have another sausage; after all, it has ‘no synthetic preservatives’ and ‘no artificial flavours’? Additives we are understood not to like or approve of are thus removed (even whilst being simultaneously replaced with others)
Accomodarsi alla capacità del popolo : stategie, metodi e impatto delle missioni nel regno di Napoli, 1600-1800
Full text linkDavid Gentilcore, «Accomodarsi alla capacità del popolo» : strategie, metodi e impatto dette missioni net Regno di Napoli, 1600-1800, p. 689-722.
Per oltre due secoli le missioni popolari costituirono un aspetto cruciale della vita religiosa, soprattutto in zone periferiche dell'Europa, dove numerosi ordini religiosi e congregazioni missionarie cercavano di tessere una rete di evangelizzazione e di istruzione catechistica. Lo studio tratta principalmente della Terra d'Otranto, provincia del Regno di Napoli (attuale Puglia meridionale), offrendo un'analisi comparativa dell'attività missionaria, sottolineando il lavoro importante ma allo stesso tempo controverso della Compagnia di Gesù. Si comincia con una discussione delle varie strategie missionarie, a cui fa seguito una messa a confronto delle tecniche e dei metodi adottati dai vari gruppi missionari per mettere in pratica le loro strategie, e si conclude con un'analisi dell'impatto che le missioni ebbero sulle popolazioni locali.Gentilcore David. Accomodarsi alla capacità del popolo : stategie, metodi e impatto delle missioni nel regno di Napoli, 1600-1800. In: Mélanges de l'École française de Rome. Italie et Méditerranée, tome 109, n°2. 1997. pp. 689-722
From ‘Vilest Beverage’ to ‘Universal Medicine’: Drinking Water in Printed Regimens and Health Guides, 1450–1750
No full textHistorians tend to assume that in pre-modern Europe people avoided the water, as too unsafe, risky and generally unhealthy to drink. This assumption is clearly flawed: early modern Europeans knew, through experience, which waters were 'best' and to take certain precautions when it came to the consumption of water. Town councils enacted legislation to ensure water quality as well as more pro-active measures to keep water sources clean. Extensive and expensive water works in many larger towns and the presence of water-carriers suggests a demand for drinking water. And yet the history of both water control measures and drinking practices before the onslaught of Asian cholera and the bacteriological revolution in the nineteenth century have yet to be written. As a contribution towards filling this gap, this study seeks to understand the radically changing nature of medical advice on water consumption between 1450 and 1750, and what it can tell us about the place of water in early modern society. To do this, we consider printed dietary regimens and guides to good health and long life, a successful, varied and changing genre. They offer privileged access to the circulation of knowledge regarding water, in the context of the everyday regulation of food and drink in the maintenance of health. We explain why water went from being considered 'the vilest of beverages' in the mid-fifteenth century, the consumption of which, though necessary, had to be carefully regulated, to a 'universal medicine' three hundred years later, able to prevent and cure disease. In the process, wine gave way to water as the preferred healthy drink-at least, for medical authors. We relate the medical advice to the different local conditions (such as river water quality), practices (use of cisterns, boiling or filtering) and fashions (cold-drinking) discussed in the medical literature. If water's very banality means that it is often invisible in the written evidence, the regimens provide ample evidence of the importance of drinking water and of changing attitudes and practices over the course of the early modern period
Healers and Healing in Early Modern Italy
No full textRather than present a conventional medical history, the book focuses on the medical pluralism present in this Catholic society. By adopting the point of view of the sick people themselves, religious and popular ideas about disease and its causation and cure can be considered alongside learned ones. The emphasis is on the interaction and, indeed, competition between these three overlapping spheres. The training, preparation and practice of all healers is discussed against a backdrop of ongoing attempts by the medical and ecclesiastical elites to limit their activities within bounds considered acceptable. Gentilcore carefully pieces together medical and demonological treatises, canonisation processes, trials for magic and simulated sanctity, books of 'secrets', hospital records, guild statutes, and the documents of the kingdom's medical magistracy, the Protomedicato. As a result, Healers and healing in early modern Italy is able to chart rich new territory in the social and cultural history of early modern Europe
Malattie, guaritori, istituzioni
No full textIl mio contributo intende offrire una sintesi delle ricerche più recenti e innovative nel campo della storia della medicina e della sanità, prendendo in esame in particolar modo le malattie e la diversità delle risposte ad esse nelle società europee e mediterranee, dal Cinquecento fino all’Ottocento.
Partendo da una breve occhiata alle condizioni materiali in cui gli abitanti vivevano e alle malattie di cui soffrivano, la maggior parte del saggio sarà dedicata alle tre categorie terapeutiche allora in funzione, e cioè la medicina dotta, popolare ed ecclesiastica, e alle differenti idee e teorie a esse associate, per spiegare le malattie stesse e le loro cause. La medicina e la guarigione verranno prese in considerazione nei loro diversi contesti socioculturali, e ci si soffermerà in particolare sulle attività della vasta gamma di guaritori che operavano nel campo medico, prestando attenzione anche al punto di vista del malato-paziente, e ai tentativi delle istituzioni dell’epoca di instaurare un regime di controlli.
Seguirà una breve bibliografia ragionata sui vari approcci storiografici adottati dagli studiosi.
Titoli
1. Le condizioni materiali e le malattie
2. La gerarchia medica e le sue istituzioni
3. La medicina sacra tra regioni protestanti, cattoliche, musulmane
4. La medicina popolar
The "Levitico", or how to feed a hundred Jesuits
Full text linkThis article examines the structure and content of what Jacques Revel called a new modèle alimentaire. It does so by reconstructing and analysing the dietary habits of the Roman Province of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits, during the seventeenth century. This is made possible by a cluster of archival and printed documents here assembled and studied together for the first time: the financial accounts of the Collegio Romano, the Jesuits’ flagship educational institution, which give annual expenditures on different categories of food; the regulations of the Collegio regarding diet and the maintenance of health; the Levitico, which provided a day-by-day, month-by-month meal plan for the Roman Province, including recipe outlines and portion sizes; and the manuscript recipe collection of Francesco Gaudentio, lay Jesuit at the Collegio’s infirmary. These are integrated with other secondary research into the practices of Jesuits elsewhere in Italy, as well as those of other religious orders during the Counter-Reformation. The Jesuits initiated a new dietary style, in terms of both meal structure and content, that is recognisably “Italian” (at least at this privileged level). It corresponded to contemporary medical notions of how best to nourish the body and maintain its health, with the aim of allowing the Jesuits and those in their care to lead the kind of active, religious life the Society so encouraged
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