The book of madness and cures
By: Regina O'Melveny
Publisher: John Murray
Published: 2012
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 320
ISBN-13: 9781848547056; 9781848547063; 9781848547070; 9781848547087
Subjects: Europe History 16th century Fiction; Fiction; History
Description: Gabriella Mondini is a rarity in 16th century Venice, she's a woman who practices medicine. Her father, a renowned physician, has provided her entree to this all-male profession, and inspired in her a shared mission to understand the secrets of the human body. Then her father disappears and Gabriella faces a crisis: without her father's patronage, she is no longer permitted to treat her patients. So she sets out across Europe to find her father. Following clues from his occasional enigmatic letters, Gabriella crosses Switzerland, Germany and France, entering strange and forbidding cities. She travels to Scotland, the Netherlands, and finally to Morocco. In each new land, she uncovers details of her father's unexplained flight, and opens new mysteries of her own. Not just the mysteries of ailments and treatments, but the ultimate mysteries of mortality, love, and the timeless human spirit. Filled with medical lore and sensuous, vivid details of Renaissance life, The Book of Madness and Cures is an intoxicating, unforgetable debut.
Table of contents: title: Map: Gabriella's journey; title: God's work or the devil's machinations; title: Salt and sweet, tears and milk; title: Dr. Cardano's house; title: A tether; title: One must be kind to beasts; title: Before the sea of black woods; title: The widow Gudrun; title: Fires that never burn; title: Dr. Rainer Fuchs, professor of botany; title: Where the root is in the house, the devil can do no harm; title: Manifestations of solar madness; title: Lost governance of the whole; title: What was lost was returned; title: The patient owns the remedy; title: The vanishing bend in the path; title: To make way for the new; title: Sorrow be banished; title: The sap that slows the world; title: The mountains are full of wonderful creatures; title: Like cures like; title: A border between continents; title: My father's keeper; title: We are housed by the past; title: The basin of the dead; title: A secret accord; title: Make his entrance wide; title: Stitching sky to mountain; title: Braiding the tides.