Written in the Stars : A Study About the Medical Content of Swedish Almanacs 1608-1731

This thesis examines the medical content of Early Modern Swedish almanacs between the years 1608-1731. The aim of the study is to uncover the understanding of health, illness and the human body that is prevalent within the almanacs. This has been found to be strongly related to the medical paradigm of humorism, or Galenic Medicine. The almanacs also reveal the connection between the intellectual fields of medicine and astrology during the Early Modern Era, which I argue to be largely overlooked within the history of medicine in Sweden. Another central aspect of the study has been to analyze how the medical content and medical understanding changed during the studied period. The part of the almanacs called elections, were found to change quite drastically, and disappeared from the almanacs around 1700. When analyzing medical texts in the almanacs however, this change was not evident, indicating, among other results, that the relation between medicine and astrology remained.