Editing Hildegard of Bingen (section)

===Scientific and medicinal writings===
[[File:Hildegard of bingen and nuns.jpg|thumb|Hildegard of Bingen and her nuns]]
Hildegard's medicinal and scientific writings, although thematically complementary to her ideas about nature expressed in her visionary works, are different in focus and scope. Neither claim to be rooted in her visionary experience and its divine authority. Rather, they spring from her experience helping in and then leading the monastery's herbal garden and infirmary, as well as the theoretical information she likely gained through her wide-ranging reading in the monastery's library.<ref name="Glaze">Florence Eliza Glaze, "Medical Writer: 'Behold the Human Creature,'" in ''Voice of the Living Light: Hildegard of Bingen and Her World'', ed. Barbara Newman (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1998), pp. 125–48.</ref> As she gained practical skills in diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment, she combined physical treatment of physical diseases with holistic methods centered on "spiritual healing".<ref name="Sweet">Sweet, V. (1999). "Hildegard of Bingen and the greening of medieval medicine". ''Bulletin of the History of Medicine'', 73(3), pp. 381–403. ''Project MUSE'', doi:10.1353/bhm.1999.0140</ref> She became well known for her healing powers involving the practical application of tinctures, herbs, and precious stones.<ref>Maddocks, Fiona. ''Hildegard of Bingen: The Woman of Her Age'' (New York: Doubleday, 2001), p. 155.</ref> She combined these elements with a theological notion ultimately derived from Genesis: all things put on earth are for the use of humans.<ref>Hozeski, Bruce W. ''Hildegard's Healing Plants: From Her Medieval Classic Physica'' (Massachusetts: [[Beacon Press]], 2001), pp. xi–xii</ref> In addition to her hands-on experience, she also gained medical knowledge, including elements of her humoral theory, from traditional Latin texts.<ref name=Sweet/>

Hildegard catalogued both her theory and practice in two works. The first, {{lang|la|Physica}}, contains nine books that describe the scientific and medicinal properties of various plants, stones, fish, reptiles, and animals. This document is also thought to contain the first recorded reference of the use of hops in beer as a preservative.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Kitsock |first=Greg |title=Hops: The beer ingredient (most) drinkers love |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/hops-the-beer-ingredient-most-drinkers-love/2014/02/10/fd5daab0-8f57-11e3-84e1-27626c5ef5fb_story.html |newspaper=The Washington Post}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Oliver |first=Garrett |title=The Oxford Companion to Beer |date=9 September 2011 |publisher=Oxford University Press |page=435}}</ref> The second, {{lang|la|Causae et Curae}}, is an exploration of the human body, its connections to the rest of the natural world, and the causes and cures of various diseases.<ref name="medical">Hildegard von Bingen, ''Causae et Curae (Holistic Healing)'', trans. by Manfred Pawlik and Patrick Madigan, ed. by Mary Palmquist and John Kulas (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, Inc., 1994); Hildegard von Bingen, ''Physica'', trans. Priscilla Throop (Rochester, Vermont: Healing Arts Press, 1998).</ref> Hildegard documented various medical practices in these books, including the use of bleeding and home remedies for many common ailments. She also explains remedies for common agricultural injuries such as burns, fractures, dislocations, and cuts.<ref name=Sweet/> Hildegard may have used the books to teach assistants at the monastery. These books are historically significant because they show areas of medieval medicine that were not well documented because their practitioners, mainly women, rarely wrote in Latin. Her writings were commentated on by [[Mélanie Lipinska]], a Polish scientist.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Walsh |first=James |url=https://archive.org/details/OldTimeMakersOfMedicine |title=Old Time Makers of Medicine |publisher=Fordham University Press |year=1911 |location=New York |pages=[https://archive.org/details/OldTimeMakersOfMedicine/page/n206 194]–201}}.</ref>

In addition to its wealth of practical evidence, {{lang|la|Causae et Curae}} is also noteworthy for its organizational scheme. Its first part sets the work within the context of the creation of the cosmos and then humanity as its summit, and the constant interplay of the human person as microcosm both physically and spiritually with the macrocosm of the universe informs all of Hildegard's approach.<ref name=Glaze/> Her hallmark is to emphasize the vital connection between the "green" health of the natural world and the holistic health of the human person. {{lang|la|[[Viriditas]]}}, or greening power, was thought to sustain human beings and could be manipulated by adjusting the balance of elements within a person.<ref name="Sweet" /> Thus, when she approached medicine as a type of gardening, it was not just as an analogy. Rather, Hildegard understood the plants and elements of the garden as direct counterparts to the humors and elements within the human body, whose imbalance led to illness and disease.<ref name=Sweet/>

The nearly three hundred chapters of the second book of {{lang|la|Causae et Curae}} "explore the etiology, or causes, of disease as well as human sexuality, psychology, and physiology."<ref name=Glaze/> In this section, she gives specific instructions for bleeding based on various factors, including gender, the phase of the moon (bleeding is best done when the moon is waning), the place of disease (use veins near diseased organ or body part) or prevention (big veins in arms), and how much blood to take (described in imprecise measurements, like "the amount that a thirsty person can swallow in one gulp"). She even includes bleeding instructions for animals to keep them healthy. In the third and fourth sections, Hildegard describes treatments for malignant and minor problems and diseases according to the humoral theory, again including information on animal health. The fifth section is about diagnosis and prognosis, which includes instructions to check the patient's blood, pulse, urine, and stool.<ref name=Sweet/> Finally, the sixth section documents a lunar horoscope to provide an additional means of prognosis for both disease and other medical conditions, such as conception and the outcome of pregnancy.<ref name=Glaze/> For example, she indicates that a waxing moon is good for human conception and is also good for sowing seeds for plants (sowing seeds is the plant equivalent of conception).<ref name=Sweet/> Elsewhere, Hildegard is even said to have stressed the value of boiling drinking water in an attempt to prevent infection.<ref name="encyclopedia">"Hildegard of Bingen." Encyclopedia of World Biography. 2004.</ref>

As Hildegard elaborates the medical and scientific relationship between the human microcosm and the macrocosm of the universe, she often focuses on interrelated patterns of four: "the four elements (fire, air, water, and earth), the four seasons, the four humors, the four zones of the earth, and the four major winds."<ref name=Glaze/> Although she inherited the basic framework of [[humorism|humoral theory]] from ancient medicine, Hildegard's conception of the hierarchical inter-balance of the four humors (blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile) was unique, based on their correspondence to "superior" and "inferior" elements – blood and phlegm corresponding to the "celestial" elements of fire and air, and the two biles corresponding to the "terrestrial" elements of water and earth. Hildegard understood the disease-causing imbalance of these humors to result from the improper dominance of the subordinate humors. This disharmony reflects that introduced by Adam and Eve in the Fall, which for Hildegard marked the indelible entrance of disease and humoral imbalance into humankind.<ref name=Glaze/> As she writes in {{lang|la|Causae et Curae}} c. 42:

{{blockquote|It happens that certain men suffer diverse illnesses. This comes from the phlegm which is superabundant within them. For if man had remained in paradise, he would not have had the {{lang|la|flegmata}} within his body, from which many evils proceed, but his flesh would have been whole and without dark humor [{{lang|la|livor}}]. However, because he consented to evil and relinquished good, he was made into a likeness of the earth, which produces good and useful herbs, as well as bad and useless ones, and which has in itself both good and evil moistures. From tasting evil, the blood of the sons of Adam was turned into the poison of semen, out of which the sons of man are begotten. And therefore their flesh is ulcerated and permeable [to disease]. These sores and openings create a certain storm and smoky moisture in men, from which the {{lang|la|flegmata}} arise and coagulate, which then introduce diverse infirmities to the human body. All this arose from the first evil, which man began at the start, because if Adam had remained in paradise, he would have had the sweetest health, and the best dwelling-place, just as the strongest balsam emits the best odor; but on the contrary, man now has within himself poison and phlegm and diverse illnesses.<ref>Quoted in Glaze, "Medical Writer: 'Behold the Human Creature,'" p. 136.</ref>}}