Conception and Gestation in Early Modern Europe

Amy Eisen Cislo

Paracelsus (c. 1493-1541) is the most famous physician of the sixteenth century. He has been called the father of modern chemistry and is legendary for his treatment of syphilis. He left behind a significant body of work that includes ruminations about alchemy, health, healing, mineralogy, theology and nature. The republication of his writings during the twentieth century divided his work into medical and chemical tracts, and religious tracts. Cislo argues that to understand Paracelsus, modern scholars need to avoid dividing his oeuvre into modern categories of science and theology. By focusing on themes of conception and gestation, she explores how Paracelsus's theological and medical interests overlapped, intertwined and converged.

Cislo argues that Paracelsus developed an understanding of the body as composed of two distinct sexes, revolutionizing early modern conceptions of the female body as an inversion of or flawed approximation of the male body. He compared human bodies to what he considered divinely created bodies, namely those of Christ, Mary, Adam and Eve. Paracelsus related human birth to these biblical figures and his thoughts about holy bodies led him to delineate his understanding of the nature of human bodies and the spiritual quality of human life, namely the process of embodiment.

The Body, Gender and Culture

Series Editors: Lynn Botelho and Elizabeth Hurren

Just as one's life experience is 'written on the body; so too does society write its collective norms and aspirations on its conception of the physical body. 'The body; then as now, is a constructed artefact upon which society, law, religion, economics and medicine work to produce an understanding of the physical body that reveals as much about the role and nature of gender and culture as it does about the physical object itself. By recognizing this aspect of the human form, this series moves beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries to capture the paradigm-shifting work being done at the crossroads between gender and cultural history. This exciting new series showcases the wide variety of work being done on the body, gender and culture from across a wide geographical area, encompassing both European and non-European centres, and drawing upon a long chronological span, from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries.

General

ISBN		9781851969951
Fiction/Non-Fiction		Non-Fiction
Publisher		Pickering & Chatto Ltd
Pages		166
List Price		$99.00
Author		Cislo, Amy Eisen
Publication Date		06/30/2010
Release Status		In Print
Format		Hardcover
Language		English
Measurements		Height: 9.25 Inches (US) Width: 6.25 Inches (US) Thickness: 0.75 Inches (US) Unit Weight: 0.9 Pounds (US)
Series		The Body, Gender and Culture