Studies of medical learning in medieval England, Wales, Ireland, and Scandinavia have traditionally focused on each geographical region individually, with the North Atlantic perceived as a region largely peripheral to European culture. Such an approach, however, means that knowledge within this part of the world is never considered in the context of more global interactions, where scholars were in fact deeply engaged in wider intellectual currents concerning medicine and healing that stemmed from both continental Europe and the Middle East.

The chapters in this interdisciplinary collection draw together new research from historians, literary scholars, and linguists working on Norse, English, and Celtic material in order to bring fresh insights into the multilingual and cross-cultural nature of medical learning in northern Europe during the Middle Ages, c. 700-1600. They interrogate medical texts and ideas in both Latin and vernacular languages, addressing questions of translation, cultural and scientific inheritance, and exchange, and historical conceptions of health and the human being within nature. In doing so, this volume offers an in-depth study of the reception and transmission of medical knowledge that furthers our understanding both of scholarship in the medieval North Atlantic and across medieval Europe as a whole.

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

Cultural Crossroads and Medical Learning in the Medieval North Atlantic World – Deborah Hayden & Sarah Baccianti

Humoral and Elemental Theory in Early Medieval English Medicine – Conan T. Doyle

Therapeutic Baths in Medieval English Medicine – Elisa Ramazzina

Body, baugr, and Sick-maintenance: The Germanic Context of Early Medieval Norwegian Law on Wounds – Anne-Irene Riisøy

Three ‘Exotic’ Brain Injuries in Medieval Irish Literature – Ranke de Vries

Early Irish Literature and the Embodied Mind – Victoriia Krivoshchekova

Menace or Medicine: What to Do with Nettles? – Erin Connelly & Christina Lee

Medical Knowledge in Two Middle English Manuscripts: Their Use and Users – Laura Poggesi

The Materia Medica of the Gaelic Physician Tadhg Ó Cuinn (1415): At the Interface of Theory and Practice – Brigid Mayes

The Role of Cathedrals in the Reception and Dissemination of Scientific Knowledge in Medieval Scandinavia with a Focus on Medical Works – Christian Etheridge

Celtic-Latin Medical Vocabulary – Joseph J. Flahive

Late Medieval Irish Medicalese and its European Context – Sharon Arbuthnot

An Gilla Glas Ó Casaide and an Irish Version of Symoin Ianuensis’ Clavis sanitationis – Siobhán Barrett

Lexical Pairs in the Old West Norse Medical Manuscript Tradition – Matteo Tarsi

Knowing through Defining: Collections of Scientific Definitions in Gaelic Medical Manuscripts – Eystein Thanisch

Harnessing the Monster: Principles of Similarity and Opposition in the Old English Medical Charms – Caroline Batten

Old Irish Healing Charms and Protective Spells – David Stifter

Premodern Irish Rituals for Conception and Childbirth in their Insular Context – Deborah Hayden

Conformity and Innovation in Premodern Welsh Medical Charms – Katherine Leach

Kveisustrengurinn: An Old Norse Charm – Sarah Baccianti

Manuscript Index

General Index

Source: https://www.brepols.net/products/IS-9782503613338-1