The Poison Trials: Wonder Drugs, Experiment, and the Battle for Authority in Renaissance Science
In 1524, Pope Clement VII gave two condemned criminals to his physician to test a promising new antidote. After each convict ate a marzipan cake poisoned with deadly aconite, one of them received the antidote, and lived—the other died in agony. In sixteenth-century Europe, this and more than a dozen other accounts of poison trials were committed to writing. Alisha Rankin tells their little-known story.

At a time when poison was widely feared, the urgent need for effective cures provoked intense excitement about new drugs. As doctors created, performed, and evaluated poison trials, they devoted careful attention to method, wrote detailed experimental reports, and engaged with the problem of using human subjects for fatal tests. In reconstructing this history, Rankin reveals how the antidote trials generated extensive engagement with “experimental thinking” long before the great experimental boom of the seventeenth century and investigates how competition with lower-class healers spurred on this trend.

The Poison Trials sheds welcome and timely light on the intertwined nature of medical innovations, professional rivalries, and political power.
"1136586869"
The Poison Trials: Wonder Drugs, Experiment, and the Battle for Authority in Renaissance Science
In 1524, Pope Clement VII gave two condemned criminals to his physician to test a promising new antidote. After each convict ate a marzipan cake poisoned with deadly aconite, one of them received the antidote, and lived—the other died in agony. In sixteenth-century Europe, this and more than a dozen other accounts of poison trials were committed to writing. Alisha Rankin tells their little-known story.

At a time when poison was widely feared, the urgent need for effective cures provoked intense excitement about new drugs. As doctors created, performed, and evaluated poison trials, they devoted careful attention to method, wrote detailed experimental reports, and engaged with the problem of using human subjects for fatal tests. In reconstructing this history, Rankin reveals how the antidote trials generated extensive engagement with “experimental thinking” long before the great experimental boom of the seventeenth century and investigates how competition with lower-class healers spurred on this trend.

The Poison Trials sheds welcome and timely light on the intertwined nature of medical innovations, professional rivalries, and political power.
29.99 In Stock
The Poison Trials: Wonder Drugs, Experiment, and the Battle for Authority in Renaissance Science

The Poison Trials: Wonder Drugs, Experiment, and the Battle for Authority in Renaissance Science

by Alisha Rankin
The Poison Trials: Wonder Drugs, Experiment, and the Battle for Authority in Renaissance Science

The Poison Trials: Wonder Drugs, Experiment, and the Battle for Authority in Renaissance Science

by Alisha Rankin

eBook

$29.99  $39.99 Save 25% Current price is $29.99, Original price is $39.99. You Save 25%.

Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
WANT A NOOK?  Explore Now

Related collections and offers

LEND ME® See Details

Overview

In 1524, Pope Clement VII gave two condemned criminals to his physician to test a promising new antidote. After each convict ate a marzipan cake poisoned with deadly aconite, one of them received the antidote, and lived—the other died in agony. In sixteenth-century Europe, this and more than a dozen other accounts of poison trials were committed to writing. Alisha Rankin tells their little-known story.

At a time when poison was widely feared, the urgent need for effective cures provoked intense excitement about new drugs. As doctors created, performed, and evaluated poison trials, they devoted careful attention to method, wrote detailed experimental reports, and engaged with the problem of using human subjects for fatal tests. In reconstructing this history, Rankin reveals how the antidote trials generated extensive engagement with “experimental thinking” long before the great experimental boom of the seventeenth century and investigates how competition with lower-class healers spurred on this trend.

The Poison Trials sheds welcome and timely light on the intertwined nature of medical innovations, professional rivalries, and political power.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780226744995
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Publication date: 01/22/2021
Series: Synthesis
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 337
Sales rank: 726,402
File size: 7 MB

About the Author

Alisha Rankin is associate professor of history at Tufts University. She is coeditor, with Elaine Leong, of Secrets and Knowledge in Medicine and Science, 1500–1800 and author of Panaceia’s Daughters: Noblewomen as Healers in Early Modern Germany, also published by the University of Chicago Press, which won the 2014 Gerald Strauss Prize for Reformation History.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Caravita’s Oil

Part One: Authorities

1. Poison on Trial: Theriac
2. Condemned Bodies: Oleum Clementis

Part Two: Experiments

3. Experimenting with Drugs: Mattioli’s Scorpion Oil
4. To Cure a Thief: Silesian Terra Sigillata

Part Three: Wonder Drugs

5. Powerful and Artful Substances: Bezoar Stone
6. A Universal Cure: The Panacea Amwaldina
Conclusion: Testing and Testimony: Orviétan
  Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews