Despite the recent upsurge in interest in alternative medicine and unorthodox healers, Illness and Healing Alternatives in Western Europe is the first book to focus closely on the relationship between belief, culture, and healing in the past. In essays on France, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, and England, from the sixteenth century to the present day, the authors draw on a broad range of material, from studies of demonologists and reports of asylum doctors, to church archives and oral evidence.

Despite the recent upsurge in interest in alternative medicine and unorthodox healers, Illness and Healing Alternatives in Western Europe is the first book to focus closely on the relationship between belief, culture and healing in the past. In essays on France, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain and England, from the sixteenth century to the present day, the authors draw on a broad range of material, from studies of demonologists and reports of asylum doctors to church archives and oral evidence. Engaging rigorously with the relationship between medical science, popular beliefs and healing, with the concept of a 'medical market place', and with alternative medicine right up to the present day, Illness and Healing Alternatives in Western Europe will make an invaluable resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students of medical, social and cultural history.

A new history which overturns the received wisdom that science displaced magic in Enlightenment Britain In early modern Britain, belief in prophecies, omens, ghosts, apparitions and fairies was commonplace. Among both educated and ordinary people the absolute existence of a spiritual world was taken for granted. Yet in the eighteenth century such certainties were swept away. Credit for this great change is usually given to science – and in particular to the scientists of the Royal Society. But is this justified? Michael Hunter argues that those pioneering the change in attitude were not scientists but freethinkers. While some scientists defended the reality of supernatural phenomena, these sceptical humanists drew on ancient authors to mount a critique both of orthodox religion and, by extension, of magic and other forms of superstition. Even if the religious heterodoxy of such men tarnished their reputation and postponed the general acceptance of anti-magical views, slowly change did come about. When it did, this owed less to the testing of magic than to the growth of confidence in a stable world in which magic no longer had a place.

A fascinating, wide-ranging survey examines the history of possession and exorcism through the ages.

Anti-psychiatry' is a movement more sloganized than analysed. Until now it has been associated in the English-speaking world primarily with R.D. Laing and a coterie of his associates, and a radical critique not just of psychiatric hospitalization but of the very premises of psychiatry itself and the basic institutions of society, especially the family. But are these notions accurate, or rather distorted images, created by Laing himself or by the media? In this book, which has emerged out of an Anglo-Dutch conference held in June 1997, the realities of critical psychiatry are explored, using comparisons and contrasts between the British and the Dutch experiences as a probe. There were, it turns out, various distinct anti-psychiatries - indeed, hardly anybody actually used that label about themselves - and they played a role in the reform no less than the rejection of regular psychiatry.

In the fifteenth century many authorities did not believe Inquisitors' stories of a supposed Satanic witch sect. However, the religious conflict of the sixteenth-century Reformation - especially popular movements of reform and revolt - helped to create an atmosphere in which diabolical conspiracies (which swept up religious dissidents, Jews and magicians into their nets) were believed to pose a very real threat. Fear of the Devil and his followers inspired horrific incidents of judicially-approved terror in early modern Europe, leading after 1560 to the infamous witch hunts. Bringing together the fields of Reformation and witchcraft studies, this fascinating book reveals how the early modern period's religious conflicts led to widespread confusion and uncertainty. Gary K. Waite examines in-depth how church leaders dispelled rising religious doubt by persecuting heretics, and how alleged infernal plots, and witches who confessed to making a pact with the Devil, helped the authorities to reaffirm orthodoxy. Waite argues that it was only when the authorities came to terms with pluralism that there was a corresponding decline in witch panics.

The history of sex education enables us to gain valuable insights into the cultural constructions of what different societies have defined as 'normal' sexuality and sexual health. Yet, the history of sex education has only recently attracted the full attention of historians of modern sexuality. Shaping Sexual Knowledge: A Cultural History of Sex Education in Twentieth Century Europe makes a considerable contribution not only to the cultural history of sexual enlightenment and identity in modern Europe, but also to the history of childhood and adolescence. The essays collected in this volume treat sex education in the broadest sense, incorporating all aspects of the formal and informal shaping of sexual knowledge and awareness of the young. The volume, therefore, not only addresses officially-sanctioned and regulated sex education delivered within the school system and regulated by the State and in some cases the Church, but also the content, iconography and experience of sexual enlightenment within the private sphere of the family and as portrayed through the media.