Toxic Atmospheres in English thought, 1300 to 1600

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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.