Book ID: CBB403467337

The Poison Trials: Wonder Drugs, Experiment, and the Battle for Authority in Renaissance Science (2021)

unapi

In 1524, Pope Clement VII gave two condemned criminals to his physician to test a promising new antidote. After each convict ate a marzipan cake poisoned with deadly aconite, one of them received the antidote, and lived—the other died in agony. In sixteenth-century Europe, this and more than a dozen other accounts of poison trials were committed to writing. Alisha Rankin tells their little-known story. At a time when poison was widely feared, the urgent need for effective cures provoked intense excitement about new drugs. As doctors created, performed, and evaluated poison trials, they devoted careful attention to method, wrote detailed experimental reports, and engaged with the problem of using human subjects for fatal tests. In reconstructing this history, Rankin reveals how the antidote trials generated extensive engagement with “experimental thinking” long before the great experimental boom of the seventeenth century and investigates how competition with lower-class healers spurred on this trend.The Poison Trials sheds welcome and timely light on the intertwined nature of medical innovations, professional rivalries, and political power.

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Reviewed By

Review Sabrina Minuzzi (2022) Review of "The Poison Trials: Wonder Drugs, Experiment, and the Battle for Authority in Renaissance Science". Early Science and Medicine: A Journal for the Study of Science, Technology and Medicine in the Pre-modern Period (pp. 119-122). unapi

Review Anita Guerrini (2023) Review of "The Poison Trials: Wonder Drugs, Experiment, and the Battle for Authority in Renaissance Science". Journal of the History of Biology (pp. 207-209). unapi

Review Frederick W. Gibbs (2021) Review of "The Poison Trials: Wonder Drugs, Experiment, and the Battle for Authority in Renaissance Science". Bulletin of the History of Medicine (pp. 416-418). unapi

Review Molly Taylor-Poleskey (2022) Review of "The Poison Trials: Wonder Drugs, Experiment, and the Battle for Authority in Renaissance Science". Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 435-436). unapi

Review Hannah Murphy (2022) Review of "The Poison Trials: Wonder Drugs, Experiment, and the Battle for Authority in Renaissance Science". Ambix: Journal of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry (pp. 191-193). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB403467337/

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Authors & Contributors
Y. Srinivasa Rao
Sindhu Thomas
David Garrioch
Černá, Jana
Mutalik, Gururaj
Tillu, Girish
Concepts
Materia medica
Poisoning
Medicine
Pharmacy
Antidotes
Discovery in medicine
Time Periods
Renaissance
19th century
16th century
Medieval
Early modern
Ancient
Places
Europe
Greece
Americas
United States
Spain
Germany
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