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学毒性的感知。在这一时期，我们看到了一种思维模式的发展，这种思维模式确定了我们现在认为对健康有益的地方的危险空气和蒸汽，例如森林和湖泊。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，以及大气化学在经验科学发展中的作用。这个项目的介入提供了一个新的视角来讨论空气和现代早期流行文化和学术文化中的气氛。为此，它将中世纪的自然哲学和医学文本作为理解不同社区为减轻“坏空气”影响而采取的实际步骤的关键背景，这些步骤记录在行政和法律的文件中。这种干预提供了一个新的知识谱系和实践为基础的历史，当代关注的空气，无论是作为环境污染的网站和空气传播的疾病和其他医疗威胁的媒介。它表明，复杂的环境问题存在之前，通常被确定为引起一个前现代的“环保”的反应，如森林砍伐和工业化的问题。

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.