Witch-hunting, magic and the new philosophy. An introduction to the debates of the scientific revolution 1450–1750

Both of these books deal with folk medicine but whereas American folk medicine is a collection of 1973 conference papers edited by Professor Hand, Magical medicine is a collection of his own selected essays covering essentially the last decade. The basic tenet of both is that the idea of "medicine" is differentially interpreted and defined according to social, historical, religious, and cultural context. Whereas the former gives individual case histories to describe the variety of folk medicinal practices, the latter tends to be thematic and explores the general ideas and theories which may explain this variety. American folk medicine gives us a wide range of case histories, from the role of a mole's heart in curing epilepsy, through illness as a result of a spiritual imbalance to the explanation of birthmarks on newly born children as a result of a mother's misbehaviour during pregnancy. This rich variety of ethnographic essays documents individual beliefs and practices, social context and world view, sorcery and shamanism from Pennsylvania to Mexico, and traces the European ancestry of many folk practices and superstitions. Magical medicine concentrates on what the author calls the magical elements of folklore that have been incorporated into curing ritual both in the New and Old worlds. The ideas of the magical transference of disease and of disease as divine retribution or as the result of animal intrusion into the body are all dealt with at length, as is the magical symbolism involved in passing one's body through a tree's bowed trunk in order to cure hernia or whooping-cough. The antiquity of such practices in Europe and their possible transference to the Americas during the sixteenth century is also explored, as is the possibility that there may be a common substrate of folk medicine held by all the world's peoples which stretches back into the palaeolithic past. Folk medicine, it seems, is predicated upon mythic explanations which are themselves the rationalization of the irrational. This process of rationalization is at the heart of man's uniqueness, and thus folk medicine is seen as an integral part of his physiological and cultural development. Written under the inspiration of Herbert Marcuse, this provocative book provides a breezy and sometimes snide introduction to the history of the scientific revolution, with the larger goal of placing the origins of modern science in their socially and sexually repressive context. In basic argument it is similar to Carolyn Merchant's, …