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An examination of the ways in which late medieval lyric poetry can be seen to engage with contemporary medical theory. This book argues that late medieval love poets, from Petrarch to Machaut and Charles d'Orléans, exploit scientific models as a broad framework within which to redefine the limits of the lyric subject and his body. Just as humoral theory depends upon principles of likes and contraries in order to heal, poetry makes possible a parallel therapeutic system in which verbal oppositions and substitutions counter or rewrite received medical wisdom. The specific case of blindness, a disability that according to the theories of love that predominated in the late medieval West foreclosed the possibility of love, serves as a laboratory in which to explore poets' circumvention of the logical limits of contemporary medical theory. Reclaiming the power of remedy from physicians, these late medieval French and Italian poets prompt us to rethink not only the relationship between scientific and literary authority at the close of the middle ages, but, more broadly speaking, the very notion of therapy. Julie Singer is Assistant Professor of French at Washington University, St Louis.

French poetry --- Italian poetry --- Blindness in literature. --- Therapeutics in literature. --- History and criticism. --- Blindness. --- French and Italian Poetry. --- Late Medieval Poetry. --- Medical Theory. --- Therapy.

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What Is Medicine? Western and Eastern Approaches to Healing is the first comparative history of two millennia of Western and Chinese medicine from their beginnings in the centuries BCE through present advances in sciences like molecular biology and in Western adaptations of traditional Chinese medicine. In his revolutionary interpretation of the basic forces that undergird shifts in medical theory, Paul U. Unschuld relates the history of medicine in both Europe and China to changes in politics, economics, and other contextual factors. Drawing on his own extended research of Chinese primary sources as well as his and others' scholarship in European medical history, Unschuld argues against any claims of "truth" in former and current, Eastern and Western models of physiology and pathology. What Is Medicine? makes an eloquent and timely contribution to discussions on health care policies while illuminating the nature of cognitive dynamics in medicine, and it stimulates fresh debate on the essence and interpretation of reality in medicine's attempts to manage the human organism.

Medicine --- Medicine, Oriental --- Oriental medicine --- Alternative medicine --- Health Workforce --- Philosophy --- History. --- Cross-cultural comparison. --- Medicine, East Asian Traditional. --- Philosophy, Medical. --- ancient healing. --- china. --- chinese medicine. --- cognitive dynamics. --- comparative history. --- debate. --- doctors and patients. --- eastern medicine. --- economics. --- europe. --- european medicine. --- healing and medicine. --- health and wellness. --- health care policies. --- health care professionals. --- history of medicine. --- human health. --- medical theory. --- modern medicine. --- molecular biology. --- nonfiction. --- pathology. --- physiology. --- political shifts. --- scientists. --- traditional practices. --- western adaptations. --- western medicine.