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Materia medica animalis: Untersuchungen zum 'Tierbuch' (ca. 1478) des Zuercher apothekerknechts Hans Minner
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 2002
This dissertation edits, translates, and analyzes a previously unpublished late medieval pharmaceutical bestiary. While scholarship in medieval German studies has focused on bestiaries from theological and allegorical perspectives, few studies have pursued the medico-cultural implications of the uses of animal products in medieval medicine. My research addresses this gap, editing the Tierbuch by Hans Minner and comparing it formally and substantively to other medieval bestiaries and bestiary chapters in encyclopedias, through which I suggest that Minner created a new genre: the late medieval German apothecary's bestiary. Each passage is analyzed closely and discussed in relation to corresponding indications in the following and other texts: the encyclopedias of Thomas de Chantimpre, Bartholomaeus Anglicus, Vincent of Beauvais, Albertus Magnus, Konrad of Megenberg, and Pliny the Elder; the pharmaceutical texts of Dioscorides and Pseudo-Serapion; the Kyranides and the medical bestiary of Sextus Placitus. The comparison aims at an organo-therapeutic interpretation of the Tierbuch's often ambiguous contents, providing a basis for considering the text's participation in and location at the intersection of medical and sociocultural discourses as well as for engaging with the epistemological consequences of Minner's misreadings of his sources. - [Abstract
Language: German
ISBN: 0-493-74937-3; PQDD: AAT3059082
Last update February 22, 2025