Alisha Rankin is associate professor of history at Tufts University. She is coeditor, with Elaine Leong, of Secrets and Knowledge in Medicine and Science, 1500–1800 and author of Panaceia’s Daughters: Noblewomen as Healers in Early Modern Germany, also published by the University of Chicago Press, which won the 2014 Gerald Strauss Prize for Reformation History.

• Introduction: Caravita’s OilPart One: Authorities1. Poison on Trial: Theriac2. Condemned Bodies: Oleum ClementisPart Two: Experiments3. Experimenting with Drugs: Mattioli’s Scorpion Oil4. To Cure a Thief: Silesian Terra SigillataPart Three: Wonder Drugs5. Powerful and Artful Substances: Bezoar Stone6. A Universal Cure: The Panacea AmwaldinaConclusion: Testing and Testimony: OrviétanAcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex

"Rankin describes the cruel human experiments in grisly detail in her book. . . . Her anecdotes are riveting. . . . But the book's fascination lies in its exposure of the early attempts at an approach to medicine that we would now call scientific—along with the revelation of how quickly and seemingly instinctively these attempts became enmeshed in a primitive version of what we would now call medical ethics. These tensions, like contagions, have always been with us."