The Germ of an Idea [electronic resource] : Contagionism, Religion, and Society in Britain, 1660-1730 /
DeLacy, Margaret.author.
Germ of an Idea shows how a belief in contagion began to spread among a group of medical reformers who had been forced by nationality and religious nonconformity to follow alternative pathways to medical education and professional status in early eighteenth century Britain. It explains how contagionism shaped their ideas about the nature and behavior of diseases such as smallpox, plague, syphilis, and consumption and how it interacted with the belief that diseases were not imbalances, but specific entities.
Description based upon print version of record.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Introduction: medical theory in early modern Europe -- Restoration medicine and the dissenters -- Populist writing on diseases in the late seventeenth century -- The search for middle ground: disease theory as natural history -- Animalcules and animals -- English contagionism and Hans Sloane's circle -- An English treatise on living contagion: Benjamin Marten's new theory of consumptions, 1720 -- Smallpox inoculation and the Royal Society, 1700-1723 -- Contagion and plague in the eighteenth century.
Germ of an Idea shows how a belief in contagion began to spread among a group of medical reformers who had been forced by nationality and religious nonconformity to follow alternative pathways to medical education and professional status in early eighteenth century Britain. It explains how contagionism shaped their ideas about the nature and behavior of diseases such as smallpox, plague, syphilis, and consumption and how it interacted with the belief that diseases were not imbalances, but specific entities.
Great Britain-History.
History.
Medicine-History.
History of Britain and Ireland.
History of Science.
History of Medicine.