The plague cure
Subtitle: physicians, clerics and the reform of healing in Germany, 1473--1650
By: by Erik Anton Heinrichs
Published: 2009
Language: eng
Number of pages: 361
Description: This dissertation explores changing notions of healing in late medieval and early modern Germany against the background of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations and the rise of print culture. Focusing on the natural and spiritual measures proposed by physicians and clerics to treat the plague, it argues that the cultural ferment of the period promoted a new confidence in innovation and new approaches to both naturalistic and spiritual healing. I have approached this problem through printed vernacular plague literature, which I have surveyed from its origin in 1473, the year of Heinrich Steinhöwel's first printed monograph, to 1650, when plague began to disappear from Central Europe. While physicians' recommendations make up the single largest group of printed sources, I also consider single-leaf broadsides, clerics' sermons, and plague mandates issued by political authorities. I have supplemented these works with archival materials from Leipzig and Bavaria relating to healing practices and the activities of plague physicians during the period in question.

My argument has three elements. Most broadly, I show that reforming efforts within religion and medicine were intertwined in the struggle against plague in early modern Germany. The affinity among the two kinds of reforms reflected the very close connection between the spiritual and natural measures used to counter plague throughout the late medieval and early modern periods. More specifically, I demonstrate that the sixteenth century saw the unfolding of a Protestant reform of healing that redefined spiritual plague responses within an evangelical context and buttressed religious justifications for using natural medicine. At the same time, the eschatological anxieties and enthusiasms of the Reformation era itself affected the remedies proposed by physicians, inspiring the use of new medicines and leading some to collaborate with clerics in reforming "spiritual medicine" as well. Finally, I argue that print played a fundamental role in this transformation, by encouraging printers and authors, both medical and clerical, to reach out to a broad audience, including the "common man." The resulting popularization and commercialization of medicine fostered innovative therapies and novel treatments.
Notes: "May 2009."

Thesis (Ph.D., Dept. of History)-Harvard University, 2009.

Includes bibliographical references.