This is a past event
‘Alice Thornton’s Medical World’
A major theme in Alice Thornton's (1626-1707) four Books is health and illness, and her lifespan is a particularly interesting time in the history of medicine. New theories, such as Paracelsianism, challenged the dominant model of humoral Galenism. However, most people still viewed illness as a disruption to an individual’s unique balance of humours – with nature as mediator between God and man. Thornton is no exception: in her Books, God is always the remote cause of illness and its cure, acting via nature: the non-naturals, states, and humours. This paper will take a cultural-historical approach to Thornton’s medical world and places it in this wider context by examining four interrelated aspects: the cause of illness, disease categories, treatment, and practitioners. It will also introduce the audience to the new online edition of Thornton’s Books.
Jo Edge is a cultural historian and currently Research Fellow on Alice Thornton’s Books in the department of History, Classics and Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh. She completed her undergraduate and postgraduate degrees at the University of London before her first postdoctoral post as Assistant Editor on the early modern Casebooks Project, University of Cambridge (2014–18). Between 2018–21 she worked at the University of Manchester, first as Latin Manuscripts Cataloguer at the John Rylands Library; and then Lecturer in Medieval History. Her first book, Onomantic Divination in Late Medieval Britain: Questioning Life, Predicting Death, was published by Boydell and Brewer in 2024.
- Hosted by
- Centre for Early Modern Studies
- Venue
- Taylor A36 and Online
- Contact
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Contact Professor Karin Friedrich for the online link: k.friedrich@abdn.ac.uk