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Loading... Rooted in the Earth, Rooted in the Sky: Hildegard of Bingen and Premodern Medicineby Victoria Sweet
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Rooted in the Earth, Rooted in the Sky is a detailed study of the medicine of Hildegard of Bingen, a medieval mystic, theologian and composer, who also wrote a practical medical text. Although there has been an explosion of interest in Hildegard's music, theology, illuminations and medicine in the last two decades, this is the first book to use her remarkable text to revise not only our conception of Hildegard but also of premodern medicine itself. It does so by contextualizing her work with primary and secondary historical sources, unedited manuscripts, anthropological and archeological evidence and linguistic analyses. Its surprising conclusion is that the premodern body was more like a plant than a machine or a computer program, and the physician more like a gardener than a mechanic or a computer programmer. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)610.9Technology Medicine and health Medicine History, geographic treatment, biographyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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She begins the book/thesis by noting that western medicine virtually wiped out the culture of traditional medicine at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. Yet in Asia and India, there are still practitioners of traditional medicine of those cultures practicing alongside modern medicine. She uses Hildegard of Bingen as an anthropological study of traditional western medicine citing surviving manuscripts on medicine by Hildegard and evidence that she practiced medicine in the monastery infirmary.
The result is that it's not really narrative story telling, but interesting nonetheless. Especially if you are curious about western folk medicine. ( )