medical mimesis: healing signs of a cosmopolitan "quack"

Complication of an Odontogenic Infection to an Orbital Abscess: The Role of a Medical Fraudster (“Quack”)

Introduction: Complication of an odontogenic infection to an orbital abscess is not a common presentation. The progression from a simple toothache to a condition that may lead to loss of vision is sudden and severe.   Case Report: We report a rare case in which a patient developed facial cellulitis that progressed to orbital abscess after unsterile dental manipulation by a medical fraudster (“q...

Cunning-folk in the medical market-place during the nineteenth century.

Over the last twenty years a considerable amount of valuable research has uncovered the activities of a variety of unorthodox medical practitioners in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Quack doctors, spiritual healers, medical botanists, and bone-setters have all been subjected to detailed analysis.1 In contrast, the practitioners of folk-magical healing have been largely overlooked.2 Th...

Mimesis and monumentalism in native Andean cities

The premodern city was frequently organized as a self-reflexive representation of universal order; the perceived design of the cosmos was inscribed in the ideal order of society, and from this ideal flowed moral authority and social stability (Townsend 1979; Wheatley 1971; Wright 1977). Certain pre-Hispanic Andean capitals, such as Inca Cusco, Chan Chan, the capital of the Kingdom of Chimor, an...

The quack doctor of Serpukhov.

Mimesis as a phenomenon of semiotic communication

The concept of mimesis is not very often used in the contemporary semiotic dialogue. This article introduces several views on this concept, and on the basis of these, mimesis is comprehended as a phenomenon of communication. By highlighting different semantic dimensions of the concept, mimesis is seen as being composed of phases of communication and as such, it is connected with imitation, repr...