The article analyzes a 1790 manuscript copy of Materia medica misionera, a book written in 1710 by a Jesuit, Pedro Montenegro. Alongside knowledge of a magical or religious nature, and exotic ingredients for the recipes, this work also contains the unmistakable presence of Hippocratic and Galenic conceptions and a growing empiricism, characteristic of the scientific transformations seen in the ...

too. For example, much of the background material on issues like legislation will be thoroughly known to social historians of eighteenth-century medicine. The chapter on Earl Ferrers' and Nicholson's trials is principally narrative and does little to advance our understanding of the development of the insanity defence in the eighteenth century. At one level it is curiously old-fashioned, even i...

Eighteenth century in England was an age equal to the age of Augustus Caesar, when the Roman society had reached the peak of its glory. The name Augustan Age was chosen by writers who saw in Pope, Addison, Swift, Johnson and Burke the modern parallels to Horace, Virgil and Cicero, and all that brilliant company who made Roman literature famous in the day of Augustus. Past ages of England were l...

This examination of academic works produced by eighteenth-century natural philosophers discusses some recurring ideas about the Chain of Being. To this end, the article analyzes the relations between natural philosophy and theology during the period. It also re-evaluates some elements of the Chain of Being through an exploration of authors who addressed the topic in their writings. Lastly, it i...

Ergotism, the disease caused by consuming Claviceps purpurea, a highly poisonous, grain-infecting fungus, occurred at various places scattered throughout Norway during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. By focusing on these cases we chart the changing interpretations of the peculiar disease, frequently understood within a religious context or considered as a supernatural (e.g. ghostly) ex...