Curing The Ailing City

DIVThe first comprehensive study of tuberculosis in Latin America demonstrates that in addition to being a biological phenomenon disease is also a social construction effected by rhetoric, politics, and the daily life of its victims./div

This innovative volume draws on recent research in archaeology, ancient history and the history of medicine to discuss how people in the ancient world understood and dealt with illness and death in the urban environment.

The Second Vatican Council stated that the church is always in need of purification and renewal, but it did not attempt to describe how this process takes place. This highly readable book presents lessons on church renewal for today from ten of the most significant reformers in church history. By looking at historical models from a variety of historical and cultural contexts, this book describes how reform takes place, what it looks and sounds like, and how it can be effective. The Great Catholic Reformers covers the careers of Pope Gregory the Great, Peter Damian, Bernard of Clairvaux, Clare of Assisi, Catherine of Siena, Jean Gerson, Jan Hus, Gasparo Contarini, John Henry Newman, and Dorothy Day. This diversity of reformers in our tradition suggests that legitimate reform within the Catholic Church can operate from different spiritualities, employ either gentle or harsh critiques, use secular or canon law to enforce discipline, and begin with lay men and lay women as well as with members of the religious or of the clergy. By offering these diverse models, The Great Catholic Reformers seeks to encourage every Catholic to take up the difficult task of reform and to provide them with examples that suit their own temperaments. It also aims at broadening tolerance for people who follow different approaches to reform. Book jacket.

Numerous historical studies use the term "community'" to express or comment on social relationships within geographic, religious, political, social, or literary settings, yet this volume is the first systematic attempt to collect together important examples of this varied work in order to draw comparisons and conclusions about the definition of community across early modern Europe. Offering a variety of historical and theoretical approaches, the sixteen original essays in this collection survey major regions of Western Europe, including France, Geneva, the German Lands, Italy and the Spanish Empire, the Netherlands, England, and Scotland. Complementing the regional diversity is a broad spectrum of religious confessions: Roman Catholic communities in France, Italy, and Germany; Reformed churches in France, Geneva, and Scotland; Lutheran communities in Germany; Mennonites in Germany and the Netherlands; English Anglicans; Jews in Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands; and Muslim converts returning to Christian England. This volume illuminates the variety of ways in which communities were defined and operated across early modern Europe: as imposed by community leaders or negotiated across society; as defined by belief, behavior, and memory; as marked by rigid boundaries and conflict or by flexibility and change; as shaped by art, ritual, charity, or devotional practices; and as characterized by the contending or overlapping boundaries of family, religion, and politics. Taken together, these chapters demonstrate the complex and changeable nature of community in an era more often characterized as a time of stark certainties and inflexibility. As a result, the volume contributes a vital resource to the ongoing efforts of scholars to understand the creation and perpetuation of communities and the significance of community definition for early modern Europeans.

In the mid-1920s a physiologist, a glass chemist, and a zoo embarked on a project which promised to turn buildings into medical instruments. The advanced chemistry of "Vita" Glass mobilised theories of light and medicine, health practices and glassmaking technology to compress an entire epoch’s hopes for a healthy life into a glass sheet – yet it did so invisibly. To communicate its advantage, Pilkington Bros. spared no expense as they launched the most costly and sophisticated marketing campaign in their history. Engineering need for "Vita" Glass employed leading-edge market research, evocative photography and vanguard techniques of advertising psychology, accompanied by the claim: "Let in the Health Rays of Daylight Permanently through "Vita" Glass Windows." This is the story of how, despite the best efforts of two glass companies, the leading marketing firm of the day, and the opinions of leading medical minds, "Vita" Glass failed. However, it epitomised an age of lightness and airiness, sleeping porches, flat roofs and ribbon windows. Moreover, through its remarkable print advertising, it strove to shape the ideal relationship between our buildings and our bodies.