Poisons, Poisoning and the Drug Trade in Ancient Rome (original) (raw)
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Poisons in the Premodern World
Encyclopedia of the History of Science (Carnegie Mellon University), 2021
This article surveys the history of poisons in premodern China and Europe. It reviews the existing literature on the study of poisons and offers comparative insights into the foundational ideas of poisons in China and Europe as well as their connections to disease, alchemy, politics, and gender. The article is available here: https://lps.library.cmu.edu/ETHOS/article/id/468/
This paper offers an overview of recent historical studies on toxic products. First, we offer an introduction to the literature and the principal academic groups, de scribing the major trends in four different areas of scholarship: history of crime and forensic science, history of food quality and adulteration, history of occupational and public health, and environmental history. Second, we suggest avenues for future re search by highlighting three meeting points: protagonists, spaces and proof. We also discuss some challenges of the historical narratives: the agency of human and nonhuman actors; the integration of material, human and environmental effects; and the combination of the sociocultural analysis of historical cases with the current un derstanding of poisons. While avoiding the unforgivable sins of anachronism or, even worse, of technological determinism, we want to encourage historical narratives with a bearing on current affairs. This is the last point discussed in ...
https://www.sismel.it/pubblicazioni/1871-poison-knowledge-uses-practices
The history of poison in its cultural and social practices is woven of infinite courses and recurrences, of continuity and discontinuity, as well as of multiple moments of rupture and novelty. This is demonstrated by the essays collected here which, starting from historical, exegetical, literary, theatrical, folkloric and poetic texts, from Ancient Rome to the present day, show that in order to understand the infinite textual meanders that have accompanied the history of poison, it is necessary to include the various Mediterranean civilisations, from Greek and Arab sources to the scientific knowledge of the Latin Middle Ages and the Modern Age. ¨ Caterina Mordeglia, Introduction – Luciano Canfora, La strana morte dei consoli del ’43 – Francesco M. Galassi, Analisi paleopatologica della morte del console Pansa – Federica Boero, Il lessico dei veleni in Plauto – Sandro La Barbera, Who Poisoned Rome? Traces of Nicander’s Venoms in Latin Literature – Caterina Mordeglia, Veleni sulla scena (Note a Sen. Med. 670-849 e Herc. O. 256-582) – Sandra Isetta, Figure del veleno tra esegesi biblica e agiografia – Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, Paura del veleno e cerimonialità pontificia. Una storia (quasi) millenaria – Marina Montesano, La strega avvelenatrice – Michel Pastoureau, Le bestiaire médiéval des animaux venimeux – Francesco Santi, Il rumore del veleno – Gabriele Ferrario, Pauca numero et utilibus plurima: Maimonides’ Treatise on Poisons and Its Graeco-Arabic Sources – Franck Collard, Poisons de fiction et savoirs vénénologiques: quelles circulations entre la production savante et la production littéraire? (France, XII et XVe siècle) – Danielle Jacquart, Les multiples facettes des relations entre empoisonnement et peste dans les explications médicales de la fin du Moyen Âge – Bruno Laurioux, La cuisine et le poison à la fin du Moyen Âge – Walter Stephens, Veneficium/Maleficium/Sacramentum: Na tural and Occult Forces in Witches’ Poisons – Lawrence M. Principe, Poisons and Medicines, Ferments and Transmutations – Francesco Brenna, Honey Turning into Poison: Satanic Poetry in Early Modern Literary Theory from Italy to Milton – Nuno Castel-Branco, Friendship Fostered by Poison: The Collaboration of Nicolaus Steno and Francesco Redi – Guido Paduano, Pozioni wagneriane – Marco Ansaldo, Da Hitler a Erdogan, la grande paura dei leader di essere avvelenati – Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, Concluding Remarks
It All Depends on the Dose : Poisons and Medicines in European History
2018
This is the first volume to take a broad historical sweep of the close relation between medicines and poisons in the Western tradition, and their interconnectedness. They are like two ends of a spectrum, for the same natural material can be medicine or poison, depending on the dose, and poisons can be transformed into medicines, while medicines can turn out to be poisons. The book looks at important moments in the history of the relationship between poisons and medicines in European history, from Roman times, with the Greek physician Galen, through the Renaissance and the maverick physician Paracelsus, to the present, when poisons are actively being turned into beneficial medicines.
In a tattered papyrus, recovered from the charred scrolls in the Villa dei Papiri in Herculaneum, is a scorched remnant in eight columns of a Latin poem, Carmen de Bello Actiaco (The Battle of Actium). With some difficulty regarding orthography, since its original unrolling in 1805, scholars gradually have deciphered, edited, and translated this priceless bit of almost contemporary history. 1 The full epic likely focused on the actions and participants in the naval battle at Actium (31 B.C.), in which Octavian emerged victorious over Antony and Cleopatra, and the poet --who remains anonymous, although Rabirius seems favored among classical scholars --details characteristic behaviors of the protagonists; two of the eight surviving columns describe, with bloodthirsty relish, Cleopatra's 'experiments' with methods of murder on living human beings: …and the place assigned, where the crowd of criminals would collect and provide sad spectacles of their 1 P.