Bodily Fluids, Chemistry and Medicine in the Eighteenth-Century Boerhaave School (Palgrave Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Medicine)

This book explores the importance of bodily fluids to the development of medical knowledge in the eighteenth century. While the historiography has focused on the role of anatomy, this study shows that the chemical analyses of bodily fluids in the Dutch Republic radically altered perceptions of the body, propelling forwards a new system of medicine. It examines the new research methods and scientific instruments available at the turn of the eighteenth century that allowed for these developments, taken forward by Herman Boerhaave and his students. Each chapter focuses on a different bodily fluid – saliva, blood, urine, milk, sweat, semen – to investigate how doctors gained new insights into physiological processes through chemical experimentation on these bodily fluids. The book reveals how physicians moved from a humoral theory of medicine to new chemical and mechanical models for understanding the body in the early modern period. In doing so, it uncovers the lives and works of an important group of scientists which grew to become a European-wide community of physicians and chemists. Acknowledgements Contents List of Figures Chapter 1: Introduction Histories of Physiology and Chemistry The Boerhaave School Sources and Structure Chapter 2: Savouring Alchemy A Salivary Theory of Digestion Heat and Acid The Chemical Analysis of Saliva Chapter 3: The Nature of Blood Lifeblood Blood Chemistry Haematology Chemistry Contested Chapter 4: Piss Prophets and Urine Matters Chymical Uroscopy Urine Chemistry Urinalysis Chapter 5: Crying Over Spilt Milk The Merits of Milk Promoting Lactation Moralising Mothers Chapter 6: Sweat It Out Balancing Ingestion and Excretion Perspiration and the Nerves Transpiring Juices, Distilling Spirits Sweating It Out Chapter 7: Semen in Flux Gonorrhoea A ‘Rational Pathology’ Classifying Symptoms Morbid Anatomy Disseminating the New Pathology Chapter 8: Conclusion Bibliography Manuscripts and Objects Amsterdam, University Library Bordeaux, University Library of Arts, University Michel de Montaigne Copenhagen, Royal Library Groningen, University Library Haarlem, Noord-Hollands Archief Leeuwarden, Tresoar Leiden, Rijksmuseum Boerhaave Leiden, Museum de Lakenhal Leiden, University Library London, British Library London, Royal College of Surgeons of England London, Science Museum London, Wellcome Library Lyon, Inter-University Library, Diderot Middelburg, Zeeland Library Montpellier, Inter-University Library, Section Medicine Oxford, Bodleian Library St Petersburg, S.M. Kirov Military Medical Academy The Hague, Royal Library Uppsala, University Library Vienna, ONB Yale, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library Primary Sources Secondary Sources Index