AmbixPub Date : 2024-08-01Epub Date: 2024-07-18DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2024.2375432
Antonio Clericuzio
{"title":"The Emergence of Chemical Medicine in Early Modern Naples (1600-1660).","authors":"Antonio Clericuzio","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2024.2375432","DOIUrl":"10.1080/00026980.2024.2375432","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Despite the increasing interest in Italian medicine, comparatively little attention has been paid to the establishment of iatrochemistry. Though this process spread throughout the Peninsula, Naples witnessed an impressive growth of chemical research and the outbreak of a conflict between the medical establishment and the chemical physicians. The purpose of this article is to explore the emergence of chemical medicine in Naples in the period that precedes the founding (1663) of the <i>Accademia degli Investiganti</i>. In the first part of the seventeenth century, chemistry achieved recognition in settings like academies, pharmacies, hospitals, and monasteries. Chemical studies and the making of new remedies were spurred by the scientific exchange that Neapolitan <i>savants</i> established with scholars from different areas. The so-called medical pluralism and the recurrent outbreaks of epidemics stimulated the introduction of new chemical therapies, which coexisted with old ones<i>.</i> The establishment of chemical medicine was triggered by Marco Aurelio Severino (1580-1656), who, besides promoting chemical remedies, resorted to chemical theories, including Paracelsian ones, to account for physiological processes. Severino was the mentor of the chemical physicians who gave rise to the <i>Accademia degli Investiganti</i>. One of Severino's disciples was Giuseppe Donzelli (1596-1670), who fostered chemical remedies in Naples.</p>","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":" ","pages":"301-319"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141635593","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AmbixPub Date : 2024-08-01Epub Date: 2024-07-26DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2024.2367396
Georgiana D Hedesan
{"title":"Fire, <i>Vulcanus</i>, <i>Archeus</i>, and Alchemy: A Hybrid Close-Distant Reading of Paracelsus's Thought on Active Agents.","authors":"Georgiana D Hedesan","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2024.2367396","DOIUrl":"10.1080/00026980.2024.2367396","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The Swiss physician and philosopher Theophrastus von Hohenheim, called Paracelsus (1493-1541) is known for his strong advocacy of medical alchemy. That his natural philosophy was tied to medical alchemy is perhaps uncontroversial, but just how it was so is less straightforward. This article provides an insight into the connection between the two by means of Paracelsus's concept of active agents, with an emphasis on fire, its master <i>Vulcanus</i>, and the associated term <i>Archeus</i>. I will show how these evolved in the thought of Paracelsus by taking an evolutionary view of his works. The complexity of his views comes to light as a result of employing the method of hybrid reading, which integrates the traditional close reading technique with the much more novel one of distant reading. The latter is part of the emerging field of digital and computational humanities, and involves the analysis of corpora by means of digital tools, including computer programming (Python). In the article, I will attempt to combine distant and close reading and showcase how such hybrid reading approaches may provide new insights into historical corpora.</p>","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":" ","pages":"271-300"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141762406","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AmbixPub Date : 2024-08-01Epub Date: 2024-07-25DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2024.2371260
Justin Begley
{"title":"Distilling the Art of Distillation in an Unstudied Manuscript of \"Chymicall Notions\".","authors":"Justin Begley","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2024.2371260","DOIUrl":"10.1080/00026980.2024.2371260","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article focuses on a curious manuscript treatise in the British Library, Harley MS 6940, which the learned physician Samuel Bispham composed for the English patron and horseman William Cavendish (1593-1676), most likely in the mid-1640s. Sitting somewhere between a practical medical recipe book and theoretical chymical treatise, while being peppered with traditional causal explanations and Galenic precautions, Harley MS 6940 testifies to the erosion of the entrenched dichotomy between chymical and Galenic medicine in the mid-seventeenth century. Harley MS 6940 also lays bare how a learned physician used (and taught the use of) practice to confirm and sometimes challenge his learning, offering a counterpoint to recent scholarship that underscores the learning that apothecaries used to shore up their practice. Produced at the behest of a leading Royalist who sought both to acquire techniques for distilling and fermenting herbs and to advance his knowledge of chymical conceptions of spirits, seeds, and salts, the manuscript allows us to appreciate that the chymical art animated a broader set of individuals than the historiography often implies.</p>","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":" ","pages":"320-341"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141762405","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AmbixPub Date : 2024-08-01Epub Date: 2024-07-10DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2024.2372195
{"title":"Morris Award 2024.","authors":"","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2024.2372195","DOIUrl":"10.1080/00026980.2024.2372195","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":" ","pages":"364-365"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141565078","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AmbixPub Date : 2024-08-01Epub Date: 2024-07-26DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2024.2379961
Charles Wolfe
{"title":"Diderot's Vital Materialism.","authors":"Charles Wolfe","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2024.2379961","DOIUrl":"10.1080/00026980.2024.2379961","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In what follows I examine Diderot's chemically influenced vital materialism. Once condemned as \"mechanistic,\" materialism has had something of a renaissance in recent decades as scholars have rediscovered a tradition of \"vital materialism\" which they have opposed to older, cruder forms of the idea, e.g. materialisms full of life, affect, chimiatry, and transformation. Sometimes these rediscoveries have attached themselves to a figure of the past, like Margaret Cavendish's metaphysics of active matter, or to a construct of the still-emerging future, like Karen Barad's quantum physics-nourished \"agential realism\" present in all of matter. Another question concerns the extent to which these revivals of \"vital\" or \"active-matter\" materialism should be traced back to older Renaissance naturalisms. In what follows, I return to Diderot and the question of his \"vital materialism.\" Diderot draws both on older traditions, approvingly citing Van Helmont and gesturing towards a new chemistry of living matter and also speaks the language of scientific revolution, writing that \"We are on the verge of a great revolution in the sciences.\" In earlier work I sought to connect this language of revolution in the sciences to the emergence of biology as a science. Here I focus on his chemically charged materialism.</p>","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":" ","pages":"342-359"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141762404","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AmbixPub Date : 2024-07-10DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2024.2368942
Frank Veraart
{"title":"Ketens van Fossiele Grondstoffen: Procestechnologie en de transitie naar duurzaamheid","authors":"Frank Veraart","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2024.2368942","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2024.2368942","url":null,"abstract":"Published in Ambix (Ahead of Print, 2024)","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":"79 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-07-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141584713","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AmbixPub Date : 2024-04-16DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2024.2339658
Maria Fiammetta Iovine
{"title":"A Very “Distilled” Emblem in Baroque Rome: Natural Philosophy, Alchemy, and Atomism in the Academy of the Umoristi","authors":"Maria Fiammetta Iovine","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2024.2339658","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2024.2339658","url":null,"abstract":"Created and published in a printed volume in 1611, the emblem chosen by the literary Academy of the Umoristi is intriguing at multiple levels. At a time when the water cycle was still unknown, the ...","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":"2020 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-04-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140595169","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AmbixPub Date : 2024-04-15DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2024.2338632
Stefano Mulas
{"title":"Translating Forbidden Authors: New Evidence on the Alchemical Library of Don Antonio de’ Medici","authors":"Stefano Mulas","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2024.2338632","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2024.2338632","url":null,"abstract":"Research into the history of alchemy and Paracelsianism in Italy has highlighted the role of Italian courts in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as centres of elaboration and diffusion of alc...","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":"50 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140595049","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AmbixPub Date : 2024-04-05DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2024.2324618
Marco Beretta
{"title":"Lavoisier and the History of Chemistry","authors":"Marco Beretta","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2024.2324618","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2024.2324618","url":null,"abstract":"During the eighteenth century, authors of chemical treatises and courses on chemistry often introduced their work with a chapter devoted to the history of chemistry. While there may have been diffe...","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":"33 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-04-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140595171","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
AmbixPub Date : 2024-03-15DOI: 10.1080/00026980.2024.2325218
Cleo Nisse
{"title":"The Varnish and the Glaze: Painting Splendor with Oil, 1100–1500","authors":"Cleo Nisse","doi":"10.1080/00026980.2024.2325218","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2024.2325218","url":null,"abstract":"Published in Ambix (Ahead of Print, 2024)","PeriodicalId":50963,"journal":{"name":"Ambix","volume":"109 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2024-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140152087","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}