Saint Anthony's Fire from Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century. Introduction

The introduction outlines the author's methodological approach. In a departure from the historiographical tradition, she aims to demonstrate that the term Saint Anthony's Fire, coined in the Middle Ages, was only rarely used at the time to describe ergotism a disease triggered by the consumption of a parasitic fungus on grain cereals, which mainly caused gangrene in the limbs. Adopting appropriate epistemological criteria, the author collects and interprets the different meanings of the expression in medical, literary, hagiographical and legal texts. Differing methodological approaches are needed for these sources, particularly because the disease could sometimes assume a symbolic value in non -medical texts. This requires interpretation and complicates the task of the historian studying the diseases of the past.