A HISTORY OF MADNESS IN SIXTEENTH-CENTURY GERMANY by H. C. Erik Midelfort ( 9780804733342 )

Item Details

Title:

A HISTORY OF MADNESS IN SIXTEENTH-CENTURY GERMANY

By:

Format:

Hardback

List price:	£60.95
We believe that this item is permanently unavailable, and so we cannot source it.

ISBN 10:

0804733341

ISBN 13:

9780804733342

Publisher:

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Pub. date:

30 June, 1999

Pages:

456

Description:

This work explores how Renaissance Germans understood and experienced madness. It focuses on topics including: the insanity of the world in general; specific disorders; the thinking on madness of theologians, jurists, and physicians; and vernacular ideas that made sufferers seek help.

Synopsis:

This work explores how Renaissance Germans understood and experienced madness. It focuses on the insanity of the world in general but also on specific disorders; examines the thinking on madness of theologians, jurists, and physicians; and analyzes the vernacular ideas that propelled sufferers to seek help in pilgrimage or newly founded hospitals for the helplessly disordered. In the process, the author uses the history of madness as a lens to illuminate the history of the Renaissance, the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, the history of poverty and social welfare, and the history of princely courts, state building, and the civilizing process. Rather than try to fit historical experience into modern psychiatric categories, this book reconstructs the images and metaphors through which Renaissance Germans themselves understood and experienced mental illness and deviance, ranging from such bizarre conditions as St. Vitus s dance and demonic possession to such medical crises as melancholy and mania. By examining the records of shrines and hospitals, where the mad went for relief, we hear the voices of the mad themselves.

Illustrations:

22 half-tones 32 tables 4 maps

Publication:

Imprint:

Stanford University Press

Returns:

Returnable

Some other items by this author:

A HISTORY OF MADNESS IN SIXTEENTH-CENTURY GERMANY (PB)

ENLIGHTENMENT UNDERGROUND (HB)

EXORCISM AND ENLIGHTENMENT (HB)

MAD PRINCES OF RENAISSANCE GERMANY (PB)