Health and Healing from the Medieval Garden

Front Cover
Peter Dendle, Alain Touwaide
Boydell & Brewer Ltd, 2015 - Health & Fitness - 270 pages
Fresh examinations of the role of medicinal plants in medieval thought and practice and how they contributed to broader ideas concerning the body, religion and identity.

The important and ever-shifting role of medicinal plants in medieval science, art, culture, and thought, both in the Latin Western medical tradition and in Byzantine and medieval Arabic medicine, is the focus of this new collection. Following a general introduction and a background chapter on Late Antique and medieval theories of wellness and therapy, in-depth essays treat such wide-ranging topics as medicine and astrology, charms and magical remedies, herbal glossaries, illuminated medical manuscripts, women's reproductive medicine, dietary cooking, gardens in social and political context, and recreated medieval gardens. They make a significant contribution to our understanding ofthe place of medicinal plants in medieval thought and practice, and thus lead to a greater appreciation of how medieval theories and therapies from diverse places developed in continuously evolving and cross-pollinating strands, and, in turn, how they contributed to broader ideas concerning the body, religion, identity, and the human relationship with the natural world.

Contributors: MARIA AMALIA D'ARONCO, PETER DENDLE, EXPIRACION GARCIA SANCHEZ, PETER MURRAY JONES, GEORGE R. KEISER, DEIRDRE LARKIN, MARIJANE OSBORN, PHILIP G. RUSCHE, TERENCE SCULLY, ALAIN TOUWAIDE, LINDA EHRSAM VOIGTS

 

Contents

Introduction
1
1the legacy of Classical antiquity inByzantium and the West
15
Linking the Vegetable with the Celestial in Late Medieval Texts
29
Herbs Divine Potency and the Scala natura
47
4 A Cooks Therapeutic Use of Garden Herbs
60
A Case Study in the Methodology of Textual Archeobotany
72
Plants and Herbs in AngloSaxon Manuscripts
101
7 The Sources for Plant Names in AngloSaxon England and the Laud Herbal Glossary
128
9 Herbs and the Medieval Surgeon
162
Not Just for Remembrance
180
Species with Multiple Uses
205
The Medieval Garden Recreated
228
Index of Manuscripts
243
General Index
247
Backcover
257
Copyright

Womens Reproductive Medicine in Leechbook III
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