It all depends on the dose : : poisons and medicines in european history / / edited by Ole Peter Grell, Andrew Cunningham and Jon Arrizabalaga.

• Superior document: The history of medicine in context
• TeilnehmendeR: Arrizabalaga, Jon,; Cunningham, Andrew,; Grell, Ole Peter,
• Place / Publishing House: Boca Raton, FL : : Routledge, an imprint of Taylor and Francis,, 2018.
• Year of Publication: 2018
• Language: English
• Series: History of medicine in context.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (259 pages).

This is the first volume to take a broad historical sweep of the close relation between medicines and poisons in the Western tradition, and their interconnectedness. They are like two ends of a spectrum, for the same natural material can be medicine or poison, depending on the dose, and poisons can be transformed into medicines, while medicines can turn out to be poisons. The book looks at important moments in the history of the relationship between poisons and medicines in European history, from Roman times, with the Greek physician Galen, through the Renaissance and the maverick physician Paracelsus, to the present, when poisons are actively being turned into beneficial medicines.

Table of Contents

chapter Introduction: Deadly medicine ANDREW CUNNINGHAM -- chapter 1 Poisons in the historic medicine cabinet TOINE PIETERS -- chapter 2 “First Behead Your Viper”: Acquiring knowledge in Galen’s poison stories / HELEN KING -- chapter 3 Mining for poison in a devout heart: Dissective practices and poisoning in late medieval Europe MONTSERRAT CABRÉ AND FERNANDO SALMÓN -- chapter 4 Pestis Manufacta: Plague, poisons and fear in mid-fourteenth-century Europe / JON ARRIZABALAGA -- chapter 5 Alchemy, potency, imagination: Paracelsus’s theories of poison GEORGIANA D. HEDESAN -- chapter 6 Martin Luther on the poison of sexual abstinence and the poison of the pox: From Galen to Paracelsus OLE PETER GRELL -- chapter 7 Poisoning as politics: The Italian Renaissance courts ALESSANDRO PASTORE -- chapter 8 Gender, poison, and antidotes in early modern Europe ALISH ARANKIN -- chapter 9 Mateu Orfila (1787–1853) and nineteenth-century toxicology JOSÉ RAMÓN BERTOMEU-SÁNCHEZ -- chapter 10 Mercury: “One of the Most Valuable Drugs We Have” (1937) ANDREW CUNNINGHAM -- chapter 11 Collateral benefits: Ergot, botulism, Salmonella and their therapeutic applications since 1800 ANNE HARDY -- chapter 12 It does all depend on the dose. Understanding beneficial and adverse drug effects since 1864: Clinical and experimental attitudes to the Law of Mass Action and concentration– effect curves JEFFREY K. ARONSON AND ROBIN E. FERNER.