Claus Priesner : ãDer zu vielen
Wissenschaften anweisende curišse KŸnstlerÒ. Alchemie, Volksmagie und
Volksmedizin in barocken HausbŸchern
GermanyÕs HausvŠterliteratur, the Òliterature of the fathers of the houses,Ó was once a popular genre
but today is seldom studied. Roughly, this literature, as its name suggests,
comprises books on the proper keeping of noble households and mansions. Interestingly,
besides the content which one might expect in such books, the organization of
personnel, the arrangement of festivities, discussions of the various branches
of technical skills, economic advice and the whole field of agriculture,
fishing and hunting, these books also contain remarkably large amounts of
information directly connected with magic and an associated popular medicine (Volksmedizin). This medicine involved treatment administered
mostly by laywomen instead of regular physicians and was based not just upon
traditional medical knowledge per se
but also upon magical practices. Also found in such texts are alchemical ideas
and recipes. This means that despite the fact that such books were written and
published in the 17th and early 18th century, the Age of Enlightenment,
conceptions found in them are still deeply rooted in older intellectual
currents, in Medieval and Renaissance thinking. The present study examines
examples of alchemical, magical and popular medical ideas in three such works
and seeks to explain how pre-enlightenment ideas and thought could maintain such
an influential place in the intellectual world of a later time dominated by other
philosophies.
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