The Poison Trials: Wonder Drugs, Experiment, and the Battle for Authority in Renaissance Science

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Alisha Rankin

The Poison Trials

Wonder Drugs, Experiment, and the Battle for Authority in Renaissance Science

Alisha Rankin

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English

Chicago University Press
01 January 2021

History; Mathematics & Sciences

Series: Synthesis

In 1524, Pope Clement VII gave two condemned criminals to his physician to test a promising new antidote. After each convict ate a marzipan cake poisoned with deadly aconite, one of them received the antidote, and lived—the other died in agony. In sixteenth-century Europe, this and more than a dozen other accounts of poison trials were committed to writing. Alisha Rankin tells their little-known story.

At a time when poison was widely feared, the urgent need for effective cures provoked intense excitement about new drugs. As doctors created, performed, and evaluated poison trials, they devoted careful attention to method, wrote detailed experimental reports, and engaged with the problem of using human subjects for fatal tests. In reconstructing this history, Rankin reveals how the antidote trials generated extensive engagement with “experimental thinking” long before the great experimental boom of the seventeenth century and investigates how competition with lower-class healers spurred on this trend.

The Poison Trials sheds welcome and timely light on the intertwined nature of medical innovations, professional rivalries, and political power.

By: Alisha Rankin
Imprint: Chicago University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 23mm
Weight: 454g
ISBN: 9780226744858
ISBN 10: 022674485X
Series: Synthesis
Pages: 312
Publication Date: 01 January 2021
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Introduction: Caravita’s Oil Part One: Authorities 1. Poison on Trial: Theriac 2. Condemned Bodies: Oleum Clementis Part Two: Experiments 3. Experimenting with Drugs: Mattioli’s Scorpion Oil 4. To Cure a Thief: Silesian Terra Sigillata Part Three: Wonder Drugs 5. Powerful and Artful Substances: Bezoar Stone 6. A Universal Cure: The Panacea Amwaldina Conclusion: Testing and Testimony: Orviétan Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index

Alisha Rankin is associate professor of history at Tufts University. She is coeditor, with Elaine Leong, of Secrets and Knowledge in Medicine and Science, 1500-1800 and author of Panaceia's Daughters: Noblewomen as Healers in Early Modern Germany, also published by the University of Chicago Press, which won the 2014 Gerald Strauss Prize for Reformation History.

Reviews for The Poison Trials: Wonder Drugs, Experiment, and the Battle for Authority in Renaissance Science

This is an exciting and original book that examines the role of poison trials in early modern medicine and science and brings up important issues about the role of experiential knowledge, the ethical and legal implications of medical testing, the role of courtly patronage in the shaping of scientific practice, and the culture of exotica in sixteenth-century Europe. Rich and dense, it deals with important issues, provides strong and unexpected arguments, and presents a fascinating narrative that will captivate readers. --Daniel Margocsy, author of Commercial Visions: Science, Trade, and Visual Culture in the Dutch Golden Age