Overview

Cultural Perceptions of Health, Illness and Medicine in Medieval and Early Modern Europe explores the rich cultural history of bodily experience through diverse case studies spanning from Italy to Sweden and from England to the Levant. How did medieval and early modern Europeans experience and understand sickness and health? How did they interact with health professionals and authorities, and which cultural and social networks shaped their understanding of wellness and illness? Drawing from extensive primary sources, this book examines how people of the past navigated their bodies' vulnerabilities both at home and abroad. It reveals how they consulted and challenged medical and civic authorities while seeking both physical and spiritual healing through religious practice. Covering a broad temporal span from the fourteenth to the nineteenth century, this collection of essays reimagines the role of material bodies and their social and emotional significance in medieval and early modern cultural history. The work offers fresh insights into the intersection of medicine, culture, and society across five centuries of European experience.

Full Product Details

Author:   Anni Hella ,  Anu Korhonen
Publisher:   Pallas Publications
Imprint:   Pallas Publications
Weight:   0.620kg
ISBN:  

9789048559206

ISBN 10:   9048559200
Pages:   240
Publication Date:   03 April 2026
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Not yet available  
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Table of Contents

Introduction: Perceptions, practices, and experiences of health in late medieval and early modern Europe Anu Korhonen and Anni Hella Chapter 1: Sacramentals, relics, healing and superstition in the late Middle Ages Reima Välimäki Chapter 2: A healing ointment of two saint-candidates: Medicine or religious relic? Marika Räsänen Chapter 3: Strong feelings, weak medicine: Two noble deaths in sixteenth-century Rome Thomas V. Cohen Chapter 4: Midwives in the neighbourhood in Rome circa 1600: History from fragments Elizabeth S. Cohen Chapter 5: Making medicine measurable: Debating mathematical medicine in Britain at the turn of the eighteenth century Heikki Mikkeli Chapter 6: From demonic possession to contagious afflictions: The medico-theological worldview and practice of an eighteenth-century Swedish physician Jonas Liliequist Chapter 7: Inscribing the town on women’s bodies: Disorderly behaviour in Aberdeen, 1747–1800 Deborah Simonton Chapter 8: ‘Put someone else in my place, since I am ill’: Health issues at the Council of Ferrara–Florence (1438–39) Anni Hella Chapter 9: ‘Corrupted stomackes’: Ailing British bodies in the Levant, c. 1600 Eva Johanna Holmberg Chapter 10: Alice Thornton’s torments: Experiencing pain in seventeenth-century England Anu Korhonen Chapter 11: ‘Wm: is but poorly’: Fortitude, family and faith in the face of illness Elaine Chalus Contributors Index

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Author Information

Anni Hella is a postdoctoral researcher at the department of Cultural History, University of Turku, Finland. Her primary research interests include medieval and Byzantine history, cultural and religious relations between East and West, and the cultural history of books. Anu Korhonen is a senior lecturer in European Area and Cultural Studies at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Her research interests include gender and the body, humor and laughter, and popular culture in early modern England and Europe. She has also published on cultural and historical theory.

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