This week’s reading, The Poison Trials: Wonder Drugs, Experiment, and the Battle for Authority in Renaissance Science, is a history of poison trials, which focuses on the Renaissance and addresses wider issues relating to authority, ethics, and experimentation. Its author is Professor Alisha Rankin, who teaches courses at Tufts University on Renaissance and Reformation Europe, gender, the history of science and medicine, and the history of books (https://facultyprofiles.tufts.edu/alisha-rankin). Dr. Rankin’s first book, Panacea’s Daughters: Noblewomen as Healers in Early Modern Germany, published in 2013, examines sixteenth century German noblewomen who were famous for their medical knowledge and talent for creating medical cures. The Poison Trials is her second book, which was published in 2021. In 2014 and 2016, Dr. Rankin also spent time at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin, where her research focused on the history of medicine in early modern Europe.
Dr. Rankin’s impressive background and her talent as a writer shines through in The Poison Trials. In each chapter, she uses memorable anecdotes to highlight important moments in the history of poison, ranging from antiquity to the Renaissance. For instance, chapter one begins with an introduction to King Mithridates VI of Pontus, who purportedly used criminals sentenced to death and himself as test subjects for antidotes to poison. According to an apocryphal story, after his forces lost against the Romans, the king ordered his servant to kill him with a sword, after the king discovered that he had developed a tolerance for poison. Rankin explains to her audience that this story is highly unreliable, but it still serves as an effective way to grab readers’ attention.
The Poison Trials is more than a collection of intriguing anecdotes. Rankin uses her anecdotes to develop themes that she summarizes in her introduction. As a result, The Poison Trials is book that keeps readers engaged with a clear and thought-provoking analysis. An example of Rankin’s analysis is in her introduction, where she presents three “overarching arguments” of her book. Argument one is about experimentation: while conducting poison trials, physicians engaged with what she refers to as “experimental thinking,” which involves paying attention to methodology, writing experimental reports, and a consideration of the issues related to using human beings as test subjects. Thus, she shows the connection between between medicine in early modern Europe with experimentation. As she puts it, Renaissance medicine went beyond conflicts about Aristotelian natural philosophy; scholarly research was part of a drive to develop conventions regarding experimentation.
Argument two is about authority: there was a blurring of the distinction between medical practitioners Rankin describes as “physicians,” who used poison trials for scholarly purposes and relied on “book learning,” and practitioners she describes as “empirics,” who focused on experiential knowledge and had a prominent voice in print media. Contrary to what one might expect, physicians were open to ideas practiced by empirics. Historical evidence, she explains, shows that physicians, who were developing scientific theories and practices, paid attention to alchemists, artisans, charlatans, craftsmen, and women working in domestic roles.
Argument three is about medical ethics: Rankin argues that people experimenting with poison trials had to struggle with issues of using human beings as test subjects. Renaissance physicians were well aware of the ethical problems related to human experimentation.
With such broad theoretical concerns in the context of a historical analysis that ranges from the ancients to the Renaissance, one might ask how clear The Poison Trials is about its theoretical analysis. For example, one wonders how Professor Rankin defines her basic terms and if her discussion of them is clear and thorough.
This review is nowhere near long enough to discuss thoroughly Rankin’s treatment of the theoretical concepts that organize her book. However, her comments about the term “experiment” in chapter three are a good example of how she addresses theory and makes sure her readers understand how their conception of “experiment” differs from seventeenth century Europeans’ perspective. Historical scholarship, she argues, demonstrates that seventeenth century Europeans understood terms like experiment, experience, proof, and history relatively interchangeably.
In chapter four, Rankin makes sure her readers understand how modern ideas about medical ethics do not fit ethical views of Europeans who conducted poison trials. She writes that modern medical ethics first appeared in 1803, when a British physician published a professional code entitled Medical Ethics. In its subsequent modern context, medical ethics embraced concepts of human dignity and autonomy; in poison trials, on the other hand, Rankin found that criminals, on whom medical experiments were performed, received rewards in the form of reduced punishment or freedom.
To summarize this review, The Poison Trials is a readable history of a fascinating subject. Alisha Rankin analyzes her subject with clarity and is careful to address ways that her audience’s understanding of key concepts differs from the ways her historical subjects understood them. There is one criticism that is worth keeping in mind having to do with the scope of Rankin’s book. In her introduction, she writes that her book traces poison trials from ancient Greece to the seventieth century and takes a “pan-European approach.” She also explains that most of her evidence comes from the Holy Roman Empire and Renaissance Italy. Readers should make note of this and pay attention to how Rankin moves from individual anecdotes, for instance, the case of King Mithridates’ experiments and death, into the wider view of the history of medicine and poison trials in a European context. To her credit in chapter one, she follows her discussion of Mithridates with a discussion of Galen and medicine in the Islamic and medieval European worlds. Still, readers should pay attention in every chapter how the author moves from anecdote to wider historical context.
