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The reliquary of Jacques de Vitry, a prominent clergyman and theologian in the early 13th century, has experienced several transfers over the last centuries, which seriously question the attribution of the remains to the late Cardinal. Uncertainty about the year of his birth poses an additional question regarding his age at death in 1240. The reliquary, located in the Saint Marie d'Oigines church, Belgium, was reopened in 2015 for an interdisciplinary study around his relics as well as the Treasure of Oignies, a remarkable cultural heritage notably built from Jacques de Vitry's donation. Anthropological, isotopic and genetic analyses were performed independently on the remains found in the reliquary. Results of the analyses provided evidence that the likelihood that these remains are those of Jacques de Vitry is very high: the remains belong to the same human male individual and the historical tradition about his age is confirmed. In addition, a separate relic (left tibia) was analysed and found to match with the remains of the reliquary (right tibia). The unique Jacques de Vitry's mitre, made of parchment, was sampled non-destructively and the extracted parchment collagen was analysed by a proteomic method in order to determine the animal species. The results showed that, surprisingly, not all parts of the mitre were made from the same species. All together, these findings are expected to fertilize knowledge carried by historical tradition around the relics of Jacques de Vitry and his related cultural heritage., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

This study discusses the historical significance of the Natural Cure Movement of Germany, centering on the Kneipp Cure, a form of hydrotherapy practiced by Father Sebastian Kneipp (1821-1897). The Kneipp Cure rested on five main tenets: hydrotherapy, exercise, nutrition, herbalism, and the balance of mind and body. This study illuminates the reception of the Kneipp Cure in the context of the trilateral relationship among the Kneipp Cure, the Natural Cure Movement in general, and modern medicine. The Natural Cure Movement was ideologically based on naturalism, criticizing industrialization and urbanization. There existed various theories and methods in it, yet they shared holism and vitalism as common factors. The Natural Cure Movement of Germany began in the early 19th century. During the late 19th century and the early 20th century, it became merged in the Lebensreformbewegung (life reform movement) which campaigned for temperance, anti-tobacco, and anti-vaccination. The core of the Natural Cure Movement was to advocate the world view that nature should be respected and to recognize the natural healing powers of sunlight, air, water, etc. Among varied natural therapies, hydrotherapy spread out through the activities of some medical doctors and amateur healers such as Johann Siegmund Hahn and Vincenz Prie βnitz. Later, the supporters of hydrotherapy gathered together under the German Society of Naturopathy. Sebastian Kneipp, one of the forefathers of hydrotherapy, is distinguished from other proponents of natural therapies in two aspects. First, he did not refuse to employ vaccination and medication. Second, he sought to be recognized by the medical world through cooperating with medical doctors who supported his treatment. As a result, the Kneipp cure was able to be gradually accepted into the medical world despite the "quackery" controversy between modern medicine and the Natural Cure Movement. Nowadays, the name of Sebastian Kneipp remains deeply engraved on the memories of German people through various Kneipp spa products, as well as his books such as My water Cure and Thus Shalt Thou Live! Wörishofen, where Kneipp had served as catholic priest as well as hydrotherapist for 42 years from 1855, changed its name to "Bad Wörishofen" ("Wörishofen Spa" in German). The Kneipp Cure and the Natural Cure Movement became a source of ecologica l thought which is currently gaining more and more sympathy from German people. It is regarded as a lieu de mémoire (site of memory) reflecting the collective identity of German people.

Jacques Bénigne Bossuet--nicknamed 'the Bright Eagle from Meaux' by Voltaire--died at 77, in his Parisian place of residence, on April 12th 1704. Which disease so took this robust prelate of Burgundian origin, bishop since he was 53 and whose active life had been filled with important duties and honours. If bibliography about his life is copious we owe before any trusting the testimony of his private secretary, priest François Le Dieu, whose diary describes everyday life in detail. Thus we know his fevers, skin rashes in 1699, and his bronchial and digestive problems and we can follow the evolution of his vesical lithiasis complicated with purulent, necrosing cystisis which led to the lethal evolution in spite of the efforts of renowned praticians.

The few elements concerning health and medicine discovered during the exhaustive study of the numerous documents evoking the Rohan family are presented here. They concern essentially Gaston de Rohan (1674-1749). Born in Paris the 27th of June 1674, son of François de Rohan, Prince of Soubise, lieutenant-general of the French royal army, and of Anne Julienne de Rohan-Chabot, Gaston de Rohan was elected canon of the great-chapter in Strasbourg in 1690, then coadjutor of the Prince-bishop of Strasbourg in 1701. He became Prince-bishop of Strasbourg in 1704 and cardinal in 1712. He died in Paris the 19th of July 1749. The "gout" of the cardinal is omnipresent in the life of this man of the Church. Moreover, gout imposes upon the life of this statesman, preventing him from going to a given place which doesn't fill him with enthusiasm. His gout also allows to impose etiquette, since it obliges to go at the cardinal place, who receives. The illness becomes non diplomatic, but diplomacy.

The contemporary dialogue between religion and psychiatry has its roots in what is called the clinical pastoral movement. The early leaders of the clinical pastoral movement (Anton Boisen, Elwood Worcester, Helen Flanders Dunbar, and Richard Cabot) were individuals of talent, even genius, whose lives and work intersected one another in the early decades of the twentieth century. Their legacy endures in the persons they inspired and continue to inspire and in the professional organizations and academic programs that profit from their pioneering work. To understand them and the era of their greatest productivity is to understand some of what psychiatry and religion have to say to each other. Appreciating their legacy requires attention to the context of historical movements and forces current in America at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century that shaped religious, psychiatric, and cultural discourse. This essay attempts to provide an introduction to this rich and fascinating material. This material was first presented as a Grand Rounds lecture at The New York Presbyterian Hospital, Payne Whitney Westchester in the Department of Psychiatry, Weill Cornell Medical College.

J.Fr. Oberlin was a Lutheran clergyman in a remote valley of Vosges between Alsace and Lorraine. He is well-known for his numerous philantropic acrivities and his spiritual living. In his youth he acquired some knowledge in medicine and botany which allowed him to cure many people whose well-being and vitality improved during the 60 years of his life at the Ban de la Roche. He profited of progress of medicine in the XVIIIth and XIXth centuries and the exceptionnel botanical abundance of the valley. There are little information about the stock and the preparation of drugs but Oberlin is the source of a great liveliness for medical researchers about medicine of his epoch.

Wicbold Stutte of Osnabrueck, Master of Arts and of Medicine at the 14th century University of Prague and Rector there in 1375, has been known until recently only through some documents. An examination of the codex Mainz, Stadtbibliothek, Hs I 613, uncovered for the first time a literary work of Wicbold's, viz. a voluminous commentary on (part of) Aristotle's 'Parva naturalia'. A first reading of this work and further special research yielded finally a list of twelve writings done or projected by Wicbold, three of which are known at present to be extant, viz. the just mentioned philosophical work and two medicinal ones. This contribution describes Wicbold's quite impressive career, both academical and clerical (section I), gives a list of his extant and testified works together with their manuscript traditions, incipits, and explicits as far as available (section II) and gives finally a list of the known documents regarding Wicbold's life and career (section III).

As the Catholic Church responded to secular models of the nineteenth-century hero by refurbishing its saints, the Irish Church promoted its native saint, Colmcill, as the sole authentic positive stereotype deserving of the Irishman's emulation. At a time when the concepts of Irishness and manliness were being contested, the League of St. Columba proposed that the physical, psychological, and spiritual characteristics of Colmcill be materialized in the new Irish youth. By folding the mystical rhetoric of Catholicism into the search for national identity, the League altered the course of Irish nationalism and inflected the trajectory of Irish masculine development. While Colmcill's ascendance as an emulatory type was brief, the qualities he was shaped to embody were reinscribed in the Catholic priest, who became installed as the aspirational model for the youth of Ireland.

The article analyzes certain aspects of "Tesouro descoberto no rio Amazonas" (Treasure discovered on the Amazon River), written by João Daniel (1722-76) during his time in the State of Maranhão e Grão-Pará as a Jesuit missionary between 1741 and 1757; the priest was banished to Lisbon two years before the Company of Jesus was expelled from Portuguese America. This unique record of the mid-eighteenth-century Amazon is a compendium on the region's wealth and potential. Most importantly, it put forward a colonization project that was critical of the model then in place; the new proposal was an integrated whole which took environmental conditions, technology, and social relations into account in the organization of local society. In centering his project on the issue of labor, João Daniel revives, as a metaphor, the idea of the Amazon as an earthly paradise-a notion that had characterized seventeenth-century missionary literature but was practically abandoned in the eighteenth century.

The author informs about a manuscript containing a communication of Agostino Gemelli's to the Brescia University (1906). He analyzes end compares it with a similar communication given by Gemelli to the Lombard Institute in Milan, concerning the regeneration of peripheral nerves.

Don Carlo dei Medici (1595-1666) is the son of Ferdinando I (1549-1609), Granduca of Tuscany, and becomes Cardinal of Catholic Roman Church in 1615. In 1604 Fabrizio d'Acquapendente is called in Florence to treat him, because of an aggravation of his health, and of his congenital neck's gibbosity. The recent paleopathological researches have diagnosed his congenital cervical gibbosity as effect of the Klippel-Feil's syndrome, and characteristic lesions of tubercolosis.

Contrary to Tournier's assertion (thesis of 1938), the law of germinal (the seventh month of the eleventh year of the French Republican Calendar) had not been respected by the regular/secular priesthood because it was so ambiguous that they could seize the opportunity to carry on practising the art of medicine or manufacturing and selling drugs. In fact there were three reasons for the lack of steadiness of authorities: the practice of charity, financial concerns and the rise of the science which incited to illegal practice of pharmacy although professionals protested against. On the other hand, the priesthood officials tardily took the decision of forbidding the practice of medicine, surgery and pharmacy until 1936 when it was anew forbidden after a meeting of French cardinals and bishops. In 1941, with the agreement of all concerned persons the problem came to its end.

Some of the early pioneers of community health promotion in Norway were clergymen. One of these "potato priests", as they often are referred to, was the Rev. Niels G.A. Dahl (1778-1852) in Gulen, a poor rural district in western Norway. In a spirit of paternalism he engaged in many non-religious activities promoting the lives and health of his congregation. He engaged in vaccination, medical treatment, control of infectious diseases and provision for the poor, hired a midwife, struggled hard against heavy liquor drinking among locals and promoted primary education. This article highlights Dahl's contributions to community health promotion. Effective community health promotion depends on local knowledge, as well as local authority, influence and personal engagement. Maybe a dose of the paternalistic spirit is called for also in today's health promotion?

The present work is a study of social-historical nature. It has as its objective understanding the participation of Sister Mathilde Nina, as a representative of the Companhia das Filhas da Caridade (Daughters of Charity Company), in the history of the Brazilian Association of Nursing (ABEn). It discusses the association of this sister to ABEn as a way of spreading the catholic ideology. The study covers a period of time between 1939 and 1950. The primary data was collected through written documents and reports of people who were close to Mathilde Nina. The dialectic method was adopted and the discussion of the findings is based on Pierre Bourdieu's thoughts. As a consequence of the edict 20.109/31, the Sisters of Charity made their insertion in the formal education in Brazil. As the first representative of the Company to graduate, sister Nina could perform in different instances of the nursing profession. Her participation in ABEn was a way of spreading the catholic ideology in nursing.

It has long been known that Nicole Oresme was a master of arts and a student in theology at Paris by 1348. A recently discovered papal letter of provision granting Oresme an expectation of a benefice establishes that he was already a regent master in arts by 1342. The text of the letter as copied in the papal registers also mentions those persons mandated to help implement the provision, thus revealing part of Oresme's early patronage network, which included an important regent master of theology from Normandy and a bachelor of theology who had been summoned to Avignon in 1340 along with Nicolas of Autrecourt. This earlier dating of Oresme's arts degree places him at Paris during the crisis over William of Ockham's natural philosophy.

The theological doctrine of biblical inerrancy is the intellectual basis for modern creation science. Yet Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield of Princeton Theological Seminary, the theologian who more than any other defined modern biblical inerrancy, was throughout his life open to the possibility of evolution and at some points an advocate of the theory. Throughout a long career Warfield published a number of major papers on these subjects, including studies of Darwin's religious life, on the theological importance of the age of humanity (none) and the unity of the human species (much), and on Calvin's understanding of creation as proto-evolutionary. He also was an engaged reviewer of many of his era's important books by scientists, theologians, and historians who wrote on scientific research in relation to traditional Christianity. Exploration of Warfield's writing on science generally and evolution in particular retrieves for historical consideration an important defender of mediating positions in the supposed war between science and religion.

This study relates to the birth and the development of the Company of the Sisters of Charity of São Vicente de Paulo in France since 1633. This study has as its objective historically rebuild the process of creation of the Company of the Sisters of São Vicente de Paulo and the role of Luiza de Marillac and Father Vicente de Paulo in this process, and discuss the importance of this Company for the proposal of a pre-professional nursing care, imposing the bases of what would be called later the nursing techniques. It is a study of social and historical nature, to which I will use Michel Foucault preconceived ideas, regarding the analysis and discussion of the documents under the light of the genealogical analysis. This study focuses mainly the aspects that concern to implementation of a nursing practice towards the care of the sick body, and to the catechisation of the poor and the sick people. It focuses also the importance of Luiza de Marillac as a nurse, master and guide to the other Sisters.

When the CMA General Council meets in Cape Breton, NS, Aug. 18-21, physicians will have an opportunity to visit the largest reconstructed colonial town in North America, which is only 40 km from the meeting site in Sydney. This article looks at the medical treatment available at the historic Fortress of Louisbourg in 1744, when it was France's Atlantic coast bastion.