Marijke Gijswijt-Hofstra is Professor of Social and Cultural History at the University of Amsterdam. She has published widely on the history of witchcraft and alternative healing., Hilary Marland is Wellcome University Award Holder at the Centre for Social History, Warwick University, and is an editor of Social History of Medicine. Among her many publications are works on the history of midwifery., Hans de Waardt is Lecturer in History at Erasmus University Rotterdam, and has published extensively on witchcraft, sorcery and preacher-healers.

'...those interested in the history of irregular or alternative medicine, witchcraft and demonology, the relations between medicine and religion, hysteria or twentieth-century abortion, will need to consult one or another of the articles in this collection.' - History Review

• Introduction, MarijkeGijswijt-Hofstra, HilaryMarland, Hans deWaardt; Chapter 1 Magical healing, witchcraft andelite discourse in eighteenth– andnineteenth-century France, Matthew Ramsey; Chapter 2 Demons and disease, StuartClark; Chapter 3 Demonic affliction or divinechastisement?, Gary K.Waite; Chapter 4 A false living saint in Cologne in the1620s, AlbrechtBurkardt; Chapter 5 Popular Pietism and the language of sickness, WillemFrijhoff; Chapter 6 Charcot's demons, SarahFerber; Chapter 7 Breaking the boundaries, Hans deWaardt; Chapter 8 Conversions to homoeopathy in the ineteenth century, MarijkeGijswijt-Hofstra; Chapter 9 Abortion for sale!, CornelieUsborne; Chapter 10 Healing alternatives in Alicante, Spain, in the late nineteenth and late twentieth centuries, EnriquePerdiguero; Chapter 11 Bosom serpents and alimentary amphibians, GillianBennett; Chapter 12 Women as Winti healers, Ineke vanWetering;