Bibliograph

The book of madness and cures, by Regina O'Melveny

Type

Label

The book of madness and cures, by Regina O'Melveny

Language

eng

Illustrations

maps

Index

no index present

Literary Form

fiction

Main title

The book of madness and cures

Nature of contents

dictionaries

Oclc number

843125824

Responsibility statement

by Regina O'Melveny

Summary

Gabriella Mondini is a rarity in 16th century Venice: a woman who practices medicine. Her father, a renowned physician, has provided her entree to this all male profession, and inspired in her a shared mission to understand the secrets of the human body. Then her father disappears and Gabriella faces a crisis: she is no longer permitted to treat her patients, women who need her desperately, without her father's patronage. She sets out across Europe to find where and why he has gone. Following clues from his occasional enigmatic letters, Gabriella crosses Switzerland, Germany and France, entering strange and forbidding cities. She travels to Scotland, the Netherlands, and finally to Morocco. In each new land she probes the mystery of her father's flight, and opens new mysteries of her own. Not just mysteries of ailments and treatments, but ultimate mysteries of mortality, love, and the timeless human spirit. The novel contains medical lore and sensuous, vivid details of Renaissance life

Table Of Contents

Map: Gabriella's journey -- God's work or the devil's machinations -- Salt and sweet, tears and milk -- Dr. Cardano's house -- A tether -- One must be kind to beasts -- Before the sea of black woods -- The widow Gudrun -- Fires that never burn -- Dr. Rainer Fuchs, professor of botany -- Where the root is in the house, the devil can do no harm -- Manifestations of solar madness -- Lost governance of the whole -- What was lost was returned -- The patient owns the remedy -- The vanishing bend in the path -- To make way for the new -- Sorrow be banished -- The sap that slows the world -- The mountains are full of wonderful creatures -- Like cures like -- A border between continents -- My father's keeper -- We are housed by the past -- The basin of the dead -- A secret accord -- Make his entrance wide -- Stitching sky to mountain -- Braiding the tides

Classification