Cover; Half Title; Title Page; Copyright Page; Contents; Figures; Tables; Contributors; Acknowledgements; Introduction: Deadly medicine; 1 Poisons in the historic medicine cabinet; 2 "First Behead Your Viper": Acquiring knowledge in Galen's poison stories; 3 Mining for poison in a devout heart: Dissective practices and poisoning in late medieval Europe; 4 Pestis Manufacta: Plague, poisons and fear in mid-fourteenth-century Europe; 5 Alchemy, potency, imagination: Paracelsus's theories of poison
6 Martin Luther on the poison of sexual abstinence and the poison of the pox: From Galen to Paracelsus7 Poisoning as politics: The Italian Renaissance courts; 8 Gender, poison, and antidotes in early modern Europe; 9 Mateu Orfila (1787-1853) and nineteenth-century toxicology; 10 Mercury: "One of the Most Valuable Drugs We Have" (1937); 11 Collateral benefits : Ergot, botulism, Salmonella and their therapeutic applications since 1800
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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.
Ingram Content Group
9781315521077
It all depends on the dose.
9781138697614
Drugs-- Dose-response relationship.
Drugs-- Toxicology-- Europe-- History.
Poisons-- Europe-- History.
Drug-Related Side Effects and Adverse Reactions-- history.