Date of Award
5-2017
Document Type
Thesis
Primary Advisor
Ronald Morgan
Secondary Advisor
David Kneip
Committee Reader
Randy Harris
Abstract
This paper will challenge the current historic methodology used by historians when examining Early Modern European corpse medicine. The history has been interpreted with a structuralist methodology within a framework of cannibalism, which has created anachronism. This paper will argue that Early Modern European corpse medicine needs to be viewed within the framework of natural medicine that began with medieval alchemy and astrology. The very brief history of alchemy and astrology will be explored in this paper, which will be compared with the pharmacopeias of Early Modern Europe and the philosophical tracts of prominent medicinal cannibal physicians Paracelsus and Jean Baptiste van Helmont. The paper will show how corpse medicine of Paracelsus, van Helmont, and others, was the logical fulfillment of the natural tradition of alchemy and astrology created in the Medieval Era.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Lubbers, Adam, ""It Is No Miracle": A Methodological Discussion Of Medieval Natural Medicine And Early Modern European Corpse Medicine" (2017). Honors College. 21.
https://digitalcommons.acu.edu/honors/21