Sweet, Victoria (Author)
For more than two thousand years, the West embraced an understanding of the body remarkably similar to that of China and India. Known as humoral theory, it explained the body with the concepts of the four elements---earth, water, air, fire---the four qualities---hot, cold, wet, dry---and the four humors---blood, bile, phlegm, and melancholia. Health and disease, life and death, heredity and environment were understood to affect the body through these concepts. Then, in less than a century, the West decisively rejected this model. Today it is taught only as preface to modernity---a philosophical system that survived because of its authority, explanatory power, and a Western fascination with the number four. But how did this system work for a medical practitioner? This dissertation analyzes the premodern understanding of the body in the oldest complete text of practical medicine attached to a well-documented person, the twelfth-century Causes and Cures of Hildegard of Bingen. Chapter One examines Hildegard's life, using primary and secondary sources, including biography, autobiography, archaeological findings, artistic data, and a remarkable 1000 word glossary of her own invention. Chapter Two places the text within twelfth century medical practice. Chapters Three, Four, and Five analyze Causes and Cures' use of the elements, qualities, and humors, as well as Hildegard's concept of greenness. It places her explicit and implicit versions of these against a background of medicine, theology, and horticulture. It reaches three conclusions. First, the system of elements, qualities, humors was integrated into the thinking of the medical practitioner, a deeply-felt part of how the body was understood. thought of as---the elements of gardening, the qualities of weather, and the humors of plant saps and bodily fluids. Thirdly, the concepts were linked by the movement of sun over earth, daily and yearly. It was this movement that explained the coming- into-being and passing-away of the elements and seasons, the orderly changes of the qualities of weather, and the cyclical fluctuations of saps and humors.
...MoreDescription Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 64 (2004): 3821. UMI order no. 3109869.
Article
Sweet, Victoria;
(1999)
Hildegard of Bingen and the Greening of Medieval Medicine
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Vollmann, Benedikt Konrad;
(2003)
Auf dem Weg zur authentischen Hildegard. Bemerkungen zu den nur in der Florentiner Physica: Handschrift überlieferten Texten
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Riha, Ortrun;
(2011)
“Weil der Maulwurf sich manchmal zeigt” Argumentationsstrukturen in Hildegards von Bingen “Causae et curae”
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Chapter
Green, Monica;
(2001)
En Busca de una “Auténtica” Medicina de Mujeres: Los Extraños Destinos de Trota de Salerno e Hildegarda de Bingen
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Book
Sweet, Victoria;
(2006)
Rooted in the Earth, Rooted in the Sky: Hildegard of Bingen and Premodern Medicine
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Riethe, Peter;
(2006)
Scabies und die Bedeutung der “Suriones” in den Handschriften Hildegards von Bingen
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Maria Terezinha Estevam;
(2020)
Um estudo sobre o Physica, de Hildegarda de Bingen: as virtudes curativas de algumas plantas
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Chapter
Moulinier, Laurence;
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La terre vue par Hildegarde de Bingen (1098--1179)
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Article
Santos Paz, José Carlos;
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Nouvelles données sur la tradition du Liber subtilitatum d'Hildegarde de Bingen
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Thesis
Kraft, Kent T.;
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The eye sees more than the heart knows: The visionary cosmology of Hildegard of Bingen
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Book
Schipperges, Heinrich;
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Hildegard of Bingen: Healing and the nature of the cosmos. Translated from German by John A. Broadwin
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Ruminations on Hildegard of Bingen (1098--1179) and Autism
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Adamson, Melitta Weiss;
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Der deutsche Anhang zu Hildegard von Bingens “Liber simplicis medicinae” in Codex 6952 der Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris (fol. 232v-238v)
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Book
Bingen, Hildegard von;
(1988- 1989)
Le livre des subtilités des créatures divines: Physique. [Tome 1]: Les plantes, les éléments, les pierres, les métaux. Précédé de “Au jardin d'Hildegard” par Mettra, Claude. [Tome 2]: Les arbres, les poissons, les oiseaux, les animaux, les reptiles. Précédé de “Imaginez, imagines” par Mettra, Claude. Traduit du latin par Monat, Pierre
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Book
Bingen, Hildegard von;
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Das Buch von den Fischen. Nach den Quellen übersetzt und erläutert von Riethe, Peter
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Article
Pagés Larraya, Fernando;
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La concepción adámica de la melancolía en Hildegarda de Bingen
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Riethe, Peter;
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Referenzbeziehungen zwischen Mensch und Tier bei Hildegard von Bingen: Ausgewählte Kapitel aus dem “Buch von den Tieren,” dem Liber VII -- De animalibus -- im Liber simplicis medicinae
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Book
Müller, Irmgard;
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Die pflanzlichen Heilmittel bei Hildegard von Bingen
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Book
Bingen, Hildegard von;
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Das Buch von den Vögeln. Nach den Quellen übersetzt und erlauterte von Riethe, Peter
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Article
Allen, Prudence;
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Hildegard of Bingen's philosophy of sex identity
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