CALVIN T. RYAN LIBRARY
Please note that a number of these resources contain both primary and secondary sources. For example, some include an image or text, then information added by modern authors to add information relevant to the source. The image/text would be a primary source, while the author's information would be a secondary source. If in doubt, review "What is a Primary Source?" on the main Primary Sources page, ask me, or ask Dr. Vail.
Sources are generally included in only one category, so make sure to skim all categories if you're not finding something.
Medieval Medicine by Medical knowledge and practice changed profoundly during the medieval period. In this collection of over 100 primary sources, many translated for the first time, Faith Wallis reveals the dynamic world of medicine in the Middle Ages that has been largely unavailable to students and scholars. The reader includes 21 illustrations and a glossary of medical terms.
On the Natural Faculties by If the work of Hippocrates is taken as representing the foundation upon which the edifice of historical Greek medicine was reared, then the work of Galen, who lived some six hundred years later, may be looked upon as the summit of the same edifice. He was born in Pergamum 129 CE, and both there and in other academic centres of the Aegean pursued his medical studies before being appointed physician to the Pergamene gladiators in 157. Becoming dissatisfied with this type of practice he emigrated to Rome, where he soon won acknowledgement as the foremost medical authority of his time and where, with one brief interruption, he remained until his death in 199. Galen's merit is to have crystallised or brought to a focus all the best work of the Greek medical schools which had preceded his own time. It is essentially in the form of Galenism that Greek medicine was transmitted to after ages.
The Trotula by The Trotula was the most influential compendium of women's medicine in medieval Europe. Scholarly debate has long focused on the traditional attribution of the work to the mysterious Trotula, said to have been the first female professor of medicine in eleventh- or twelfth-century Salerno, just south of Naples, then the leading center of medical learning in Europe. Yet as Monica H. Green reveals in her introduction to the first English translation ever based upon a medieval form of the text, the Trotula is not a single treatise but an ensemble of three independent works, each by a different author. To varying degrees, these three works reflect the synthesis of indigenous practices of southern Italians with the new theories, practices, and medicinal substances coming out of the Arabic world. Green here presents a complete English translation of the so-called standardized Trotula ensemble, a composite form of the texts that was produced in the midthirteenth century and circulated widely in learned circles. The work is now accessible to a broad audience of readers interested in medieval history, women's studies, and premodern systems of medical thought and practice.
Women's Secrets by Women's Secrets provides the first modern translation of the notorious treatise De secretis mulierum, popular throughout the late middle ages and into modern times. The Secrets deals with human reproduction and was written to instruct celibate medieval monks on the facts of life and some of the ways of the universe. However, the book had a much more far-reaching influence. Lemay shows how its message that women were evil, lascivious creatures built on the misogyny of the work's Aristotelian sources and laid the groundwork for serious persecution of women. Both the content of the treatise and the reputation of its author (erroneously believed to be Albertus Magnus) inspired a few medieval scholars to compose lengthy commentaries on the text, substantial selections from which are included, providing further evidence of how medieval men interpreted science and viewed the female body.
The Black Death by From 1348 to 1350 Europe was devastated by an epidemic that left between a third and one half of the population dead. This source book traces, through contemporary writings, the calamitous impact of the Black Death in Europe, with a particular emphasis on its spread across England from 1348 to1349.Rosemary Horrox surveys contemporary attempts to explain the plague. The almost universal belief that it was an expression of divine anger at the sins of humankind did not preclude attempts to explain in scientific and medical terms; or to look for human scapegoats. The final third of the bookcharts the social and psychological impact of the plague, and its effects in the late-medieval economy. The sources illustrate the fear that spread with the disease and the diverse ways that such terror influenced social behaviour.An invaluable textbook for undergraduate and graduate students of medieval European and English history.