Title
Paracelsus' Invisible Diseases and the Cosmic Reformation
Document Type
Chapter
Publication Date
2014
Abstract
This volume continues the critical exploration of fundamental issues in the medieval and early modern world, here concerning mental health, spirituality, melancholy, mystical visions, medicine, and well-being. The contributors, who originally had presented their research at a symposium at The University of Arizona in May 2013, explore a wide range of approaches and materials pertinent to these issues, taking us from the early Middle Ages to the eighteenth century, capping the volume with some reflections on the relevance of religion today. Lapidary sciences matter here as much as medical-psychological research, combined with literary and art-historical approaches. The premodern understanding of mental health is not taken as a miraculous panacea for modern problems, but the contributors suggest that medieval and early modern writers, scientists, and artists commanded a considerable amount of arcane, sometimes curious and speculative, knowledge that promises to be of value and relevance even for us today, once again. Modern palliative medicine finds, for instance, intriguing parallels in medieval word magic, and the mystical perspectives encapsulated highly productive alternative perceptions of the macrocosm and microcosm that promise to be insightful and important also for the post-modern world.
Recommended Citation
Weeks, Andrew, "Paracelsus' Invisible Diseases and the Cosmic Reformation" (2014). Faculty Publications-Languages, Literatures, and Cultures. 86.
https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/fpllc/86
Comments
This chapter was originally published as “Paracelsus’ Invisible Diseases and the Cosmic Reformation,” Arizona Medieval Studies Conference Proceedings, Mental Health, Spirituality, and Religion in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age, ed. Albrecht Classen, in Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture 15 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014. (17 pages), pp. 507-523.