Medical and scientific understandings

[Extract] Susan Broomhall Emotions were a fundamental part of medical and natural philosophical understandings of the human and natural world in the late medieval period and the sixteenth century. They underpinned theories about the corporeal and mental health of humans, animals, and the wider environment; made sense of relationships between these co-inhabitants of the natural world; and informed treatments for perceived imbalances and illnesses experienced by all forms of life. Furthermore, during the period 1300 to 1600, there were deep shifts in how emotions were theorized and practiced in the domains of medicine and natural philosophy in Western Europe. These came as a result of new bodily experiences, innovations in technologies and tools, and concepts of nature and the human that were informed by religious changes and encounters with others around the globe. Yet despite their importance to medieval and scientific thought and practice, emotions have only been haphazardly, and very..