putrefaction

antonio guaineri

...no clear distinction between poisoned food, poisonous medicine, and absolute poison.

Paracelsus

sante arduino

...supposing decay has set in digestion and the [inner] alchemist fails in his analysis (that is separating the good stuff from the bad stuff in what we eat)…there is thus generated in the place in question a putrefaction, which is poisonous. For, every putrefaction poisons the site in which it has occurred and … then [that place] becomes a hearth for those diseases which are subject to it.

“the difference between poison and deadly medicine is that poison is that which corrupts the complexion and substance of the body only through its properties or specific form, such as viper venom or napellus.” Deadly medicine, on the other hand, “is medicine that corrupts the body only through manifest qualities or its elementary complexion, such as euphorbium and opium.”

late 16th c. poison tracts

mattioli adds poison

to dioscorides

girolamo cardano

(1501-1576)

Poison and Putrefaction in the Sixteenth Century

putridity

poison

panaceas

contagion

plague

Classical Toxicology

corrupted air

[putrid vapors] corrupt the air in its total substance, which penetrates the heart, corrupts the substance of the spirit that is in it and putrefies that around it with humidity; this generates a warmth, harmful in nature, corrupting the principle of life.

girolamo fracastoro

without putrefaction

there can be no contagion

John of Burgundy (1365): “it was therefore by the influence of the heavenly bodies that the air was recently corrupted and made pestilential. I do not mean by this that the air is corrupted in its substance—because it is an uncompounded substance and that would be impossible—but it is corrupted by reason of evil vapors mixed with it.”

Pietro d'Abano

archangelicus mercenarius

thomas erastus

classical:

condition of being poisoned

late medieval:

substance of poison itself

• What is putrefying? (the body or some foreign material like a seed?)
• What prompts it to putrefy?
• What is the role of specific form in putrefaction?
• How we should understand what Aristotle means by ambient heat?
• Is cold is used in the generation of mixtures?
• What are the differences and species of putridity?

giovanni battista da monte

Gentile da Foligno

contagion depends on grade of putrefaction

Later 14th c. authors

When the corruption enters a body, a ‘poisonous matter’ (materia venenosa) is generated near the heart and lungs and acts as the most immediate cause of disease. This material does not act by means of its qualities but through a property of being poisonous (per proprietatem venenositatis).

...plague is the most venomous of all the poisons that infects and stains the whole body with its irradiation.

Someone bragged to King Charles that he had a certain Bezoar stone that would protect against all manner of poysons. Then the King asked of me, whether there were any Antidote which was equally and in like manner prevalent against all poysons? I answered, that nature could not admit it; for neither have all poysons the like effects, neither do they arise from one cause; for some work from an occult and specifick property of their whole nature, others from some elementary quality which is predominant. Wherefore each must be withstood with its proper and contrary Antidote.

ambroise paré

William de Marra &

Cristoforo de Honestis

• why poison travels to the heart
• whether poison affects entire body
• why the horn of a serpent sweats near poison

New interest in properties of poison

jean fernel

Fred Gibbs

The efficient cause of the venereal sickness is an occult and venomous quality, or rather a pernicious venom contracted by contagion and touch; although it is light and insubstantial, and beyond the grasp of our senses, it is not simple and unmixed but subsists in a humor or some other substance which serves it as a support and vehicle; for by what other means could an incorporeal power force entry into the human body?

Plague and Poison Tracts

Where it is needefull lykewise the venomes doo preserve from diseases: As quicksilver beeyng carryed about, one dooeth preserve Children from the evill of the eye: and the Sublimatum from the Plague.

nicolaus monardes

...to show the proper Virtues of these remedies so excellent in Medicine: it is needful first to know, and therefore treat the Venoms as a beginning of the work: and to declare what Venom is, and the cause of such as have taken Venom, and then the remedies thereof, and how they may bee preserved from them.

Conrad van der Weyden

• mala qualitate venenosa
• macula putrida venenosa

also, Antonio Guaineri

George Mason University

konrad gessner

[chelidonia] tempers all poison near the heart, and expels poison from it. It cures all disease that attack the lungs. It purges the blood, and preserves man from all corruption by its natural virtue.