This book explores the importance of bodily fluids to the development of medical knowledge in the eighteenth century. While the historiography has focused on the role of anatomy, this study shows that the chemical analyses of bodily fluids in the Dutch Republic radically altered perceptions of the body, propelling forwards a new system of medicine. It examines the new research methods and scientific instruments available at the turn of the eighteenth century that allowed for these developments, taken forward by Herman Boerhaave and his students. Each chapter focuses on a different bodily fluid – saliva, blood, urine, milk, sweat, semen – to investigate how doctors gained new insights into physiological processes through chemical experimentation on these bodily fluids. The book reveals how physicians moved from a humoral theory of medicine to new chemical and mechanical models for understanding the body in the early modern period. In doing so, it uncovers the lives and works of an important group of scientists which grew to become a European-wide community of physicians and chemists.
Author(s): Ruben E. Verwaal
Series: Palgrave Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Medicine
Edition: 1st ed. 2020
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: 310
Acknowledgements
Contents
List of Figures
Chapter 1: Introduction
Histories of Physiology and Chemistry
The Boerhaave School
Sources and Structure
Chapter 2: Savouring Alchemy
A Salivary Theory of Digestion
Heat and Acid
The Chemical Analysis of Saliva
Chapter 3: The Nature of Blood
Lifeblood
Blood Chemistry
Haematology
Chemistry Contested
Chapter 4: Piss Prophets and Urine Matters
Chymical Uroscopy
Urine Chemistry
Urinalysis
Chapter 5: Crying Over Spilt Milk
The Merits of Milk
Promoting Lactation
Moralising Mothers
Chapter 6: Sweat It Out
Balancing Ingestion and Excretion
Perspiration and the Nerves
Transpiring Juices, Distilling Spirits
Sweating It Out
Chapter 7: Semen in Flux
Gonorrhoea
A ‘Rational Pathology’
Classifying Symptoms
Morbid Anatomy
Disseminating the New Pathology
Chapter 8: Conclusion
Bibliography
Manuscripts and Objects
Amsterdam, University Library
Bordeaux, University Library of Arts, University Michel de Montaigne
Copenhagen, Royal Library
Groningen, University Library
Haarlem, Noord-Hollands Archief
Leeuwarden, Tresoar
Leiden, Rijksmuseum Boerhaave
Leiden, Museum de Lakenhal
Leiden, University Library
London, British Library
London, Royal College of Surgeons of England
London, Science Museum
London, Wellcome Library
Lyon, Inter-University Library, Diderot
Middelburg, Zeeland Library
Montpellier, Inter-University Library, Section Medicine
Oxford, Bodleian Library
St Petersburg, S.M. Kirov Military Medical Academy
The Hague, Royal Library
Uppsala, University Library
Vienna, ONB
Yale, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Primary Sources
Secondary Sources
Index
