Toxic Atmospheres in English thought, 1300 to 1600

该项目将调查1300年至1600年间英国大气中环境和医疗毒性的看法。这一时期出现了一种思维模式，即在我们现在认为对健康有益的地方（如森林和湖泊）识别危险的空气和蒸汽。目前关于历史大气的学术研究主要集中在工业化和城市化的影响，以及大气化学在实证科学发展中的作用。该项目旨在为现代早期流行文化和学术文化中关于空气和大气的讨论提供一个新的视角。为此，它将中世纪自然哲学和医学文献作为关键背景，以理解行政和法律文件中记录的不同社区为减轻“恶劣空气”影响而采取的实际步骤。这种干预提供了一种新的知识谱系和基于实践的当代空气问题历史，既作为环境污染的场所，也作为空气传播疾病和其他医疗威胁的媒介。它表明，复杂的环境问题在通常被确定为引发前现代“环境主义者”反应的问题（如森林砍伐和工业化）之前就存在了。

This project will investigate the perceptions of environmental and medical toxicity in the atmosphere in England between 1300 and 1600. This period saw the development of a mode of thinking which identified dangerous airs and vapours in locations that we now consider beneficial to health, such as forests and lakes. Current scholarship on the historical atmosphere has focused on the effects of industrialization and urbanization, as well as the role of atmospheric chemistry in the development of empirical science. This project intervenes to provide a new perspective on discussions of air and the atmosphere in popular and learned culture in the early modern period. To do this, it engages medieval natural philosophical and medical texts as key contexts for understanding the practical steps taken by different communities to mitigate the effects of 'bad air', as recorded in administrative and legal documents. This intervention provides a new intellectual genealogy and practice-based history of contemporary concerns over the air, both as the site of environmental pollution and as a medium for air-borne diseases and other medical threats. It shows that complex environmental concerns existed before the issues that are usually identified as eliciting a premodern 'environmentalist' response, such as deforestation and industrialization.