, Brepols, 2025 Hardback, Pages: 508, Size:156 x 234 mm, Illustrations:1 b/w, 9 col., 11 tables b/w., Language: English. ISBN 9782503613338.
Summary Studies of medical learning in medieval England, Wales, Ireland, and Scandinavia have traditionally focused on each geographical region individually, with the North Atlantic perceived as a region largely peripheral to European culture. Such an approach, however, means that knowledge within this part of the world is never considered in the context of more global interactions, where scholars were in fact deeply engaged in wider intellectual currents concerning medicine and healing that stemmed from both continental Europe and the Middle East. The chapters in this interdisciplinary collection draw together new research from historians, literary scholars, and linguists working on Norse, English, and Celtic material in order to bring fresh insights into the multilingual and cross-cultural nature of medical learning in northern Europe during the Middle Ages, c. 700-1600. They interrogate medical texts and ideas in both Latin and vernacular languages, addressing questions of translation, cultural and scientific inheritance, and exchange, and historical conceptions of health and the human being within nature. In doing so, this volume offers an in-depth study of the reception and transmission of medical knowledge that furthers our understanding both of scholarship in the medieval North Atlantic and across medieval Europe as a whole. TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Abbreviations Cultural Crossroads and Medical Learning in the Medieval North Atlantic World Deborah Hayden and Sarah Baccianti Part I. Materia Medica and Medical Knowledge Humoral and Elemental Theory in Early Medieval English Medicine Conan T. Doyle Therapeutic Baths in Medieval English Medicine Elisa Ramazzina Body, baugr, and Sick-maintenance: The Germanic Context of Early Medieval Norwegian Law on Wounds Anne-Irene Riisøy Three 'Exotic' Brain Injuries in Medieval Irish Literature Ranke de Vries Early Irish Literature and the Embodied Mind Victoriia Krivoshchekova Menace or Medicine: What to Do with Nettles? Erin Connelly and Christina Lee Medical Knowledge in Two Middle English Manuscripts: Their Use and Users Laura Poggesi The Materia medica of the Gaelic Physician Tadhg Ó Cuinn (1415): At the Interface of Theory and Practice Brigid Mayes The Role of Cathedrals in the Reception and Dissemination of Scientific Knowledge in Medieval Scandinavia with a Focus on Medical Works Christian Etheridge Part II. Language And Lexicography Celtic-Latin Medical Vocabulary Joseph J. Flahive Late Medieval Irish Medicalese and its European Context Sharon Arbuthnot An Gilla Glas Ó Casaide and an Irish Version of Symoin Ianuensis' Clavis sanitationis Siobhán Barrett Lexical Pairs in the Old West Norse Medical Manuscript Tradition Matteo Tarsi Knowing through Defining: Collections of Scientific Definitions in Gaelic Medical Manuscripts Eystein Thanisch Part III. Charms and Rituals Harnessing the Monster: Principles of Similarity and Opposition in the Old English Medical Charms Caroline Batten Old Irish Healing Charms and Protective Spells David Stifter Premodern Irish Rituals for Conception and Childbirth in their Insular Context Deborah Hayden Conformity and Innovation in Premodern Welsh Medical Charms Katherine Leach Kveisustrengurinn: An Old Norse Charm Sarah Baccianti Manuscript Index General Index