Saint Anthony's Fire from Antiquity to the 18th Century

Premodern Health, Disease, and Disability
Table of Contents
List of Figures
Preface
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Interpreting Medical Texts: the Polysemantic Nature of the Lexicon
2. Disease in Non-Medical Texts: Symbol and Literary Topos
3. Studying Saint Anthony’s Fire
Part I: The Burning Disease
Different Names for the Same Disease or Different Diseases with the Same Name?
1. (‘Holy Fire’) in the Ancient World
2. Ignis Sacer in the Late Antique World
3. Outbreaks of the Burning Disease: Epidemics of Ergotism?
4. Outbreaks of Ignis Sacer
5. The Meaning(s) of Ignis Sacer in Medieval Medical
Sources
6. The Thaumaturgical Privilege of Healing the Burning Disease
7. The Emergence of Saint Anthony’s Fire
8. Saint Anthony’s Fire and Ignis Sacer:Was It the Same Disease?
9. Saint Anthony’s Fire in Medieval Chronicles and Hagiographical Texts
10. Many Different Names for the Same Disease: the ‘Wolf’, Saint Fiacre’s Disease and Saint Eligius’s Disease
11. Saint Anthony’s Fire and Ergotism in the Early Modern Period
Part II: St Anthony the Abbot , Thaumaturge of the Burning Disease, and the Order of the Hospital Brothers of St Anthony
1. A Brief Preface on the Antonine Order
2. The Legends of the Translation of the Body (or Bodies) of St Anthony the Abbot and the Birth of the Order of the Hospital Brothers of St Anthony
3. The Remains of St Anthony in Lézat and Their Thaumaturgical Powers
4. The Emergence of the Antonine Order and St Anthony’s Holy Remains as Treatment
5. The Hospital of Saint-Antoine-en-Viennois and Its Patients
6. Saint Anthony’s Fire Sufferers at the Hospital of Saint- Antoine-en-Viennois: the Early Modern Period
7. Beggars, Impostors and Simulators: Feigning Saint Anthony’s Fire
Part III: The Discovery of Ergotism (Saint Anthony’s Fire?)
1. Medieval Epidemics of the Burning Disease as Told by Historians in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century
2. The Discovery of Ergotism between the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century
3. Saint Anthony’s Fire as Ergotism? Contradictions in Eighteenth-Century Medical Texts
4. Ergotism in Nineteenth-Century Historiography
5. Ergotism and Convulsive Epidemics: Saint Anthony’s Fire?
6. A Final Observation on Ergotism
Conclusion
Bibliography
Printed Sources
Secondary works
About the Author
Index