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Author: William Scott Shelley
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781628943139
Category : Diseases and history
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
George Starkey, a major contributor to the development of science and medicine, was the only physician in London who possessed a cure for the Great Plague in 1665.This book reviews the history of chemistry, alchemy and medical science in Europe, the tensions between the rational thinkers and the Church on the eve of the Enlightenment, and the achievements of men like Starkey, Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton.Shelley reviews the development of chemistry and medicine during the Scientific Revolution, with a special focus on the contributions and influence of the American Philosopher George Starkey, concluding with the dramatic account of the events leading up to Starkey's own death by the Plague.Starkey, who often wrote under the pseudonym Eirenaeus Philalethes, was a major contributor to the development of the medical sciences. The book also explores his enormous influence over his friend Robert Boyle and, later, on Isaac Newton.Among Starkey's accomplishments was his reputation for being the only physician in London who possessed a cure for the Great Plague in 1665, though the details of his remedy are lost.Further, examining the historical record and the medical evidence, the author presents a new theory for the cause of that dreaded epidemic. Records detailing where and how fast the disease spread, and among what populations, point to poisonous fungal infections of rye. This is the first book to present such a theory based on the primary-source medical evidence. Shelley demonstrates that all of the primary source evidence contradicts the bubonic plague theory, and he shows that all of the epidemiological evidence is consistent with poisoning by Fusarium and ergot infections of rye, a cereal that was once a staple of the poor in Europe. The argument is a medical one, based on the writings of physicians from this period, including Thomas Sydenham, considered the greatest epidemiologist of his time.Forewords by Dr. Dan Merkur and Dr. Mary Matossian help to set the work in context.
Author: William Scott Shelley
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781628943139
Category : Diseases and history
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Get Book
Book Description
George Starkey, a major contributor to the development of science and medicine, was the only physician in London who possessed a cure for the Great Plague in 1665.This book reviews the history of chemistry, alchemy and medical science in Europe, the tensions between the rational thinkers and the Church on the eve of the Enlightenment, and the achievements of men like Starkey, Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton.Shelley reviews the development of chemistry and medicine during the Scientific Revolution, with a special focus on the contributions and influence of the American Philosopher George Starkey, concluding with the dramatic account of the events leading up to Starkey's own death by the Plague.Starkey, who often wrote under the pseudonym Eirenaeus Philalethes, was a major contributor to the development of the medical sciences. The book also explores his enormous influence over his friend Robert Boyle and, later, on Isaac Newton.Among Starkey's accomplishments was his reputation for being the only physician in London who possessed a cure for the Great Plague in 1665, though the details of his remedy are lost.Further, examining the historical record and the medical evidence, the author presents a new theory for the cause of that dreaded epidemic. Records detailing where and how fast the disease spread, and among what populations, point to poisonous fungal infections of rye. This is the first book to present such a theory based on the primary-source medical evidence. Shelley demonstrates that all of the primary source evidence contradicts the bubonic plague theory, and he shows that all of the epidemiological evidence is consistent with poisoning by Fusarium and ergot infections of rye, a cereal that was once a staple of the poor in Europe. The argument is a medical one, based on the writings of physicians from this period, including Thomas Sydenham, considered the greatest epidemiologist of his time.Forewords by Dr. Dan Merkur and Dr. Mary Matossian help to set the work in context.
Author: William Scott Shelley
Publisher: Algora Publishing
ISBN: 1628943149
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 220
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Book Description
Author: William Scott Shelley
Publisher: Algora Publishing
ISBN: 162894353X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 200
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Book Description
This is the first work to trace the origins of religion to the "Agricultural Revolution." It does so by identifying the enigmatic psychoactive drugs employed by the Indo-European religion. Through the ancient Vedic literature, the archaeological record, and through chemistry, this work identifies the ingredients and the method of preparation employed to produce the Soma of the Rig-Veda, Haoma, and the Kykeon. A contribution to both the history of science and the history of religion, Soma shows that the dawn of civilization was the product of the cultivation of cereals which enabled early man to exchange a nomadic life of hunting and gathering for a sedentary one, giving rise to settlements that would eventually become city-states and nations. The work reveals that this civilizing revolution was not only the origins of science, but also the origins of religion. The author presents literary evidence from the Vedas, Brahmanas, and Vedic ritual texts to identify the source of the ritual sacrament called Soma (or Madhu, "Mead"), and he describes the chemical processes that rendered it non-toxic. In addition, he shows that the ancient literature of the Greeks and the chemistry indicate a similar method was employed to produce the hallucinogenic kykeon of the Greek Eleusinian Mysteries, the center of Greek civilization. The work also explores the ethnographic relationship between the Indo-European priesthood (that included the priests of ancient Greece) and the Indo-Aryan priesthood, a branch of the Indo-Europeans that included the Soma-drinking Vedic priests of India. The identification of Soma is a solution to one of the greatest mysteries in the history of religion. The chemistry is consistent with the chemistry of the Greek kykeon, another important and unsolved question in the history of religion, which like Soma, has appeared to many as unsolvable. Finally, through the Greek and Roman classics the work demonstrates the relationship between the Indo-Aryans and Indo-Europeans as well as the similarities of traditions among the priesthoods extending throughout the great civilizations of the ancient world. The book also contains scientific evidence for the production of the 'Philosopher's Stone' briefly addressed in Shelley?s earlier book, Science, Alchemy and the Great Plague of London.
Author: Alessandra Foscati
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
ISBN: 9048533317
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 266
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Book Description
After the discovery of the ergotism epidemics (poisoning caused by ingesting the fungal toxin of rye) and its etiology, eighteenth-century physicians interpreted medieval chronicles in their medical texts in order to recognize the occurrences of ergotic diseases through retrospective diagnosis. They assumed that St. Anthony's fire and ignis sacer ("sacred fire") recorded in medieval texts represented the same disease, ergotism. This interpretative method, lacking a textual basis in the sources, has been incorrectly followed by historians till now. This book examines this historical prejudice through textual analysis, comparing diverse medieval and early modern sources. A striking semantic complexity emerges that changes the concept of St. Anthony's fire and modifies our understanding of diseases in general. This research illuminates aspects of the history of medicine, society, and hospitals.
Author: Various Authors
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136191712
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 3312
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Book Description
Reissuing seminal works originally published between 1916 and 1995, Routledge Library Editions: Alchemy (7 volume set) offers a selection of scholarship covering various facets of alchemical traditions. Some texts examine alchemy itself while some offer insight into the motives for alchemical research and others outlay portraits of people such as Giordano Bruno and John Dee.
Author: Helen Thompson
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812248724
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 368
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Book Description
Fictional Matter argues that chemical definitions of particulate matter shaped eighteenth-century British science and literature. In this lucid, revisionary analysis of corpuscular science, Helen Thompson advances a new account of how the experimental production of empirical knowledge defined the emergent realist novel.
Author: William R. Newman
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691174873
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 559
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Book Description
A book that finally demystifies Newton’s experiments in alchemy When Isaac Newton’s alchemical papers surfaced at a Sotheby’s auction in 1936, the quantity and seeming incoherence of the manuscripts were shocking. No longer the exemplar of Enlightenment rationality, the legendary physicist suddenly became “the last of the magicians.” Newton the Alchemist unlocks the secrets of Newton’s alchemical quest, providing a radically new understanding of the uncommon genius who probed nature at its deepest levels in pursuit of empirical knowledge. In this evocative and superbly written book, William Newman blends in-depth analysis of newly available texts with laboratory replications of Newton’s actual experiments in alchemy. He does not justify Newton’s alchemical research as part of a religious search for God in the physical world, nor does he argue that Newton studied alchemy to learn about gravitational attraction. Newman traces the evolution of Newton’s alchemical ideas and practices over a span of more than three decades, showing how they proved fruitful in diverse scientific fields. A precise experimenter in the realm of “chymistry,” Newton put the riddles of alchemy to the test in his lab. He also used ideas drawn from the alchemical texts to great effect in his optical experimentation. In his hands, alchemy was a tool for attaining the material benefits associated with the philosopher’s stone and an instrument for acquiring scientific knowledge of the most sophisticated kind. Newton the Alchemist provides rare insights into a man who was neither Enlightenment rationalist nor irrational magus, but rather an alchemist who sought through experiment and empiricism to alter nature at its very heart.
Author: Stephen Porter
Publisher: Amberley Publishing
ISBN: 1848680872
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 194
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Book Description
Offers a narrative history of the Great Plague which struck England in 1665-66. This title is illustrated with over 80 contemporary images.
Author: Robert Hill (SC.D.)
Publisher: CUP Archive
ISBN: 9780521073790
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 278
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Book Description
This assembly of lectures should appeal to anyone with an interest in the history of science and the nature of living things. Seven of the eight lectures are by eminent biochemists and describe the development of their own subject 'from the inside; the eighth is a more general one.
Author: Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Paracelsus
Publisher: Philaletheians UK
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 53
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Book Description
Materialism is moral and spiritual blindness. Shall we let the blind lead the blind? Before Alchemy existed as a Science, its quintessence alone acted in Nature’s correlations. The virtuous man can produce external, perceptible, phenomenal results by invoking Kriyashakti, his own inherent power of creative thought, and become a co-worker with Nature in her higher departments. Like the lightning conductor that directs the electric fluid, the force of Kriyashakti conducts the quintessence of life and gives it direction; led haphazardly, it can kill; directed by the potency of human will and magnetic force, it can create according to a predetermined plan. Poor alchemy! Star of the morning, daughter of the dawn, how fallen from thine high estate! That which once was, still is and forever shall be, even to the end of time. Words change and their meaning becomes quickly disfigured. But eternal ideas remain, and shall not pass away. The ass’ skin is congenial to the tastes of today’s philosophicules and materialistic alchemists, who sacrifice the living soul for the dead form, than revering Princess-Nature in all her nakedness. With so many would-be alchemists around, even Hermes himself would lose his way. Only High Initiates are able to unravel the jargon of Hermetic philosophers and divulge their secrets pertaining to all seven realms of nature. To the practical alchemist, whose object is the production of wealth by the special rules of his art, studying their metaphysical basis was a secondary consideration; while the Sage, who had ascended to the plane of metaphysical contemplation, would reject the material objectives of these studies as unworthy of any further consideration. The origin of alchemy is lost in the remotest antiquity of the Far East. The Chaldeans were only the heirs, first to antediluvian and later to the alchemy of the Egyptians. The Wisdom of the East no longer exists in the West; it died with the three Magi. Hermes never was the name of a man, but a generic title, just as the term Neo-Platonist was used in former times, and Theosophist is being used in the present. Even in the time of Plato, Hermes was already identified with the Thoth of the Egyptians. Thoth-Hermes is simply the personification of the Voice of the sacerdotal caste of Egypt, the Voice of the Great Hierophants. Alchemy is as old as tradition itself. The Golden Fleece was a treatise written on animal skin, explaining how gold could be made by alchemical means. There still remain underground a large number of such alchemical works, written on papyrus and buried with mummies, ten millennia old. The whole secret lies in the ability to recognise in such works what appears to be only a fairy tale, as in the golden fleece and the “romances” of the earlier Pharaohs. Explicit instructions do not come from the sanctuaries of Egypt. Most are fractionally correct interpretations of the allegorical stories of the alchemical green, blue, and yellow dragons, and the rose tigers of the Chinese. Alchemy was imported to Europe from China, transformed into Hermetic writings which were then fabricated by the old Greeks and the Arabs, and refabricated in the Middle Ages — now jumbled up and distorted beyond recognition. The two objects of the Chinese system and the Hermetic Sciences, in making gold and prolonging life, are identical. But the Eastern Adept-Initiates, despising gold and having a profound indifference for life, care very little about such selfish pursuits which, in most cases, are acts black art. The third object of alchemy, i.e., transmutation, has been wholly neglected by Christian adepts who, being satisfied with their belief in the immortality of the soul, they never properly understood the meaning of this object. The transmutation of the real alchemist is the occult process by which his debased nature and brute energy are conquered; and thus, ennobled by his highest intellectual faculties, his soul is infused into the spiritual dynamics of the Divine Will. Woe to those who seek to obtain magical powers for selfish ends and money-making under the cloak of alchemy. Alchemy is a noble philosophy, purely metaphysical. The transmutation of base metals into gold was merely an allegory for freeing man of his ancestral evils and infirmities, by redeeming the flesh below and regenerating the soul above. It is incorrect to think that there exists any special “powder of projection,” or “philosopher’s stone,” or “elixir of life.” The latter lurks in every flower, in every stone and mineral throughout the globe: it is the ultimate essence of everything on its way to higher and higher evolution. And as there is no good or evil, so there is neither “elixir of life” nor “elixir of death,” nor poison as such, but all this is contained in one and the same Universal Essence, this or the other effect, or result, depending on the degree of its differentiations and various correlations. The light side of that Essence produces life, health, bliss, divine peace, and so forth; the dark side brings death, disease, sorrow, and strife. This is demonstrated by knowing the nature of the most deadly poisons; of some of them, even a large quantity will produce no ill effect, whereas a grain of the same poison will kill with the rapidity of lightning; yet, exactly the same grain, when altered by a certain combination, will heal. Seek not the secrets of nature in nature. Know your self, first and foremost. The treasure of treasures lies in the innermost chamber of your heart, where the sunlight of truth shines with unfading glory. How can those who are fools in nature, hope to profit from alchemical works — the timeless testimonies to creative powers of Nature? Let the seeker of Truth be wary of things that are readily understood, especially mystical names and secret operations, for Truth lies hid in obscurity. Pearls of Truth cannot be given to the profane; less so today than when the Apostles were advised not to cast pearls before swine. The chemist imitates nature, the alchemist surpasses nature herself. Chemistry decomposes and recombines material substances, it purifies simple substances of foreign elements, but leaves the primitive elements unchanged. Alchemy changes the character of things, and raises them up into higher states of existence. As all the powers of the universe are potentially contained in us, our body and its organs are the representatives of the powers of nature and a constellation of the same powers that formed the stars in the sky. The physician who knows nothing of alchemy can only be a servant of nature, but the alchemist is her lord.
