Some Current Trends in the Study of Renaissance Medicine
The following brief reflections on the present state of scholarship in Renaissance medicine make no claim to provide a comprehensive overview of the field. Medicine is of broad historical interest because a web of connections link it to the culture as a whole. Variously considered, medicine has a place in the history of science and technology, in social history, and in a wide sweep of cultural and intellectual history ranging from the history of philosophy to the study of popular mentalités. Moreover, although the field of the history of Renaissance medicine is one in which much, including fundamental work, remains to be done, it is also one that is now being vigorously developed in some widely diverse ways. Confronted with this breadth of topics and materials, I am seeking only to isolate a few major directions in current work
The Iconology of Suffering: Providing a Locus of Control for the Victim in Early Modern Italy
Dr. Allison Terry, Advisor The focus of my thesis is on the diseased body in early modern Italy. The population of Europe was decimated by plague epidemics, especially during the fourteenth through seventeenth centuries. Epidemics were considered to be a punishment from God for the sins of a society who failed to follow proscribed religious teachings. This notion was compounded by the lack of scientific knowledge regarding the etiology and appropriate treatment for this disease, as well as for a more modern disease: HIV/AIDS. The plague-afflicted were stigmatized by their diseased body and humiliated through the implementation of extreme public health measures designed, erroneously, to contain and halt the spread of the disease. The victim was ostracized from society and abandoned by family, religious and medical communities. Especially during catastrophic times, people prayed to saints: prayers were said to stave off disease or to affect a miraculous cure. The beholder entered into a visual relationship with the image of the saint and the saint acted as an intercessor. While scholars agree that the sense of sight was privileged over others, I argue that for some plague-afflicted individuals, tactile sensation was more important and efficacious than sight. The plague-afflicted victim was stripped of dignity and control over his body; the corporeal application of a saintly image provided the victim with a locus of control and served as the motivating factor to regain control of his life, to be able to die a good death, and perhaps, to affect a miraculous cure.
The Tsadik and His Soul’s Sparks: From Kabbalah to Hasidism
The present study shows the continuity between the Safedian Kabbalistic view of the relations between the sparks of a certain soul, and the Hasidic theory, that was conceived of as innovated by and characteristic of 18th century Hasidism, as to the responsibility of the Tsadik for the sparks that belongs to his soul. In the two literatures, the rescue of a spark of one's soul is related to the beautiful captive woman that is conceived of as an externalization of an inner dimension of the righteous person, immersed in a shell.