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9780801886133 Add to Cart Academic Inspection Copy

Leprosy in Premodern Medicine:

A Malady of the Whole Body
  • ISBN-13: 9780801886133
  • Publisher: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS
    Imprint: JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS
  • By Luke Demaitre
  • Price: AUD $115.00
  • Stock: 0 in stock
  • Availability: This book is temporarily out of stock, order will be despatched as soon as fresh stock is received.
  • Local release date: 13/09/2007
  • Format: Hardback 344 pages Weight: 0g
  • Categories: History [HB]
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While premodern poets and preachers viewed leprosy as a "disease of the soul," physicians in the period understood it to be a "cancer of the whole body." In this innovative study, medical historian Luke Demaitre explores medical and social perspectives on leprosy at a time when judicious diagnosis could spare healthy people from social ostracization and help the afflicted get a license to beg.Extending his inquiry from the first century to late in the eighteenth century, Demaitre draws on translations of academic treatises and archival records to illuminate the professional standing, knowledge, and conduct of the practitioners who struggled to move popular perceptions of leprosy beyond loathing and pity. He finds that, while not immune to social and cultural perceptions of the leprous as degenerate, and while influenced by their own fears of contagion, premodern physicians moderated society's reactions to leprosy and were dedicated to the well-being of their patients.

IntroductionAcknowledgments1. The Sources: Texts and Contexts2. Iudicium leprosorum: Medical Judgment3. The Many Labels of Leprosy4. Definitions and Explanations5. ""Une maladie contagieuse et héréditaire""6. Causes, Categories, and Correlations7. Diagnosis: Signs and Symptoms8. Prognosis, Prevention, and TreatmentConclusionNotesIndex

""Demaitre provides a well-written, scholarly, and accessible book that affords a holistic view of leprosy in premodern medicine as seen in historical documents... This book will be an important resource particularly for medical historians and paleopathologists but will be of interest to the medical profession.""

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