Blood, Sweat and Tears – The Changing

Concepts of Physiology from Antiquity

into Early Modern Europe
 Intersections
Interdisciplinary Studies in Early Modern Culture
General Editor
Karl A.E. Enenkel
Chair of Medieval and Neo-Latin Literature
Westfälische Wilhelmsuniversität Münster
e-mail: kenen_01@uni_muenster.de

Editorial Board
W. van Anrooij (University of Leiden)
W. de Boer (Miami University)
K.A.E. Enenkel (University of Münster)
J.L. de Jong (University of Groningen)
W.S. Melion (Emory University)
K. Murphy (University of Oxford)
W. Neuber (NYU Abu Dhabi)
P.J. Smith (University of Leiden)
A. Traninger (Freie Universität Berlin)
C. Zittel (Freie Universität Berlin)

VOLUME 25 – 2012

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.nl/inte

Tobias Cohn, Ma’aseh Tobiyyah (Work of Tobias), published in Venice in 1708, illustrated the
human body as a house (fol. 107 recto). The house of the body divides body space so that the head
is the roof, the spleen the cellar, and the legs the foundations. The functions of the body are seen
according to a thermodynamic model that uses comparisons with the apparatus of distillation.
 Blood, Sweat and Tears –
The Changing Concepts of
Physiology from Antiquity into
Early Modern Europe

Edited by
Manfred Horstmanshoff, Helen King
and Claus Zittel

Leiden • boston
2012
Cover illustration: Tobias Cohn, Ma’aseh Tobiyyah (Work of Tobias), published in Venice in 1708. See
Introduction 9.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Blood, sweat, and tears : the changing concepts of physiology from antiquity into early modern
europe / edited by Manfred Horstmanshoff, Helen King, and Claus Zittel.
  p. cm. — (Intersections ; 25)
 Includes index.
 ISBN 978-90-04-22918-1 (hardback : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-90-04-22920-4 (e-book) 1. Medicine,
Ancient. 2. Medicine—History. 3. Physiology—History. I. Horstmanshoff, H. F. J. II. King, Helen,
1957– III. Zittel, Claus.

 R135.B56 2012
 610—dc23
2012010504

This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters
covering Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the
humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.nl/brill-typeface.

ISSN 1568-1811
ISBN 978 90 04 22918 1 (hardback)
ISBN 978 90 04 22920 4 (e-book)

Copyright 2012 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing,
IDC Publishers and Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.

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Fees are subject to change.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

 CONTENTS

Preface and Acknowledgements ................................................................. ix

Notes on the Editors ....................................................................................... xi
Notes on the Contributors ............................................................................ xiii
List of Illustrations ........................................................................................... xxi

Introduction ...................................................................................................... 1
. Helen King

PART ONE
HISTORY OF PHYSIOLOGY IN CONTEXT:
CONCEPTS, METAPHORS, ANALOGIES

Physiologia from Galen to Jacob Bording ................................................. 27

. Vivian Nutton 

Physiological Analogies and Metaphors In Explanations of the

. Earth and the Cosmos ............................................................................... 41
. Liba Taub

The Reception of the Hippocratic Treatise On Glands ........................ 65

. Elizabeth Craik

Between Atoms and Humours. Lucretius’ Didactic Poetry as a

. Model of Integrated and Bifocal Physiology ...................................... 83
. Fabio Tutrone

Losing Ground. The Disappearance of Attraction from the

. Kidneys ........................................................................................................... 103
. Michael R. McVaugh

The Art of the Distillation of ‘Spirits’ as a Technological Model

. for Human Physiology. The Cases of Marsilio Ficino,
. Joseph Duchesne and Francis Bacon .................................................... 139
. Sergius Kodera
vi contents

The Body is a Battlefield. Conflict and Control in Seventeenth-

. Century Physiology and Political Thought ......................................... 171
. Sabine Kalff

Herman Boerhaave’s Neurology and the Unchanging Nature of

. Physiology ..................................................................................................... 195
. Rina Knoeff

The Anatomy and Physiology of Mind. David Hume’s Vitalistic

. Account .......................................................................................................... 217
. Tamás Demeter

More than a Fading Flame. The Physiology of Old Age between

. Speculative Analogy and Experimental Method ............................... 241
. Daniel Schäfer

Suffering Bodies, Sensible Artists. Vitalist Medicine and the

. Visualising of Corporeal Life in Diderot .............................................. 267
. Tomas Macsotay

PART TWO
BLOOD

Blood, Clotting and the Four Humours .................................................... 295

. Hans L. Haak

An Issue of Blood. The Healing of the Woman with the

. Haemorrhage (Mark 5.24b–34; Luke 8.42b–48; Matthew 9.19–22)
. in Early Medieval Visual Culture ........................................................... 307
. Barbara Baert, Liesbet Kusters and Emma Sidgwick

The Nature of the Soul and the Passage of Blood through the
. Lungs. Galen, Ibn al-Nafīs, Servetus, İtaki, ‘Aṭṭār .............................. 339
. Rainer Brömer

Sperm and Blood, Form and Food. Late Medieval Medical Notions
. of Male and Female in the Embryology of Membra ........................ 363
. Karine van ’t Land
 contents vii

The Music of the Pulse in Marsilio Ficino’s Timaeus

. Commentary ................................................................................................. 393
. Jacomien Prins

‘For the Life of a Creature is in the Blood’ (Leviticus 17:11). Some

. Considerations on Blood as the Source of Life in Sixteenth-
. Century Religion and Medicine and their Interconnections ........ 415
. Catrien Santing

White Blood and Red Milk. Analogical Reasoning in Medical

. Practice and Experimental Physiology (1560–1730) ......................... 443
. Barbara Orland

PART THREE
SWEAT AND SKIN

The “Body without Skin” in the Homeric Poems ................................... 481

. Valeria Gavrylenko

Sweat. Learned Concepts and Popular Perceptions, 1500–1800 ........ 503

. Michael Stolberg

Of the Fisherman’s Net and Skin Pores. Reframing Conceptions of

. the Skin in Medicine 1572–1714 ............................................................... 523
. Mieneke te Hennepe

PART FOUR
TEARS AND SIGHT

Vision and Vision Disorders. Galen’s Physiology of Sight ................... 551

. Véronique Boudon-Millot

Early Modern Medical Thinking on Vision and the Camera

. Obscura. V.F. Plempius’ Ophthalmographia ....................................... 569
. Katrien Vanagt
viii contents

The Tertium Comparationis of the Elementa Physiologiae. –

. Johann Gottfried von Herder’s Conception of “Tears” as Mediators
between the Sublime and the Actual Bodily Physiology ................ 595
. Frank W. Stahnisch

PART FIVE
BODY AND SOUL

From Doubt to Certainty. Aspects of the Conceptualisation and

. Interpretation of Galen’s Natural Pneuma ......................................... 629
. Julius Rocca

Metabolisms of the Soul. The Physiology of Bernardino Telesio in

. Oliva Sabuco’s Nueva Filosofía de la Naturaleza del Hombre
. (1587) ............................................................................................................... 661
. Marlen Bidwell-Steiner

“Full of Rapture”. Maternal Vocality and Melancholy in Webster’s

. Duchess of Malfi ........................................................................................... 685
. Marion A. Wells

The Sleeping Musician. Aristotle’s Vegetative Soul and Ralph

. Cudworth’s Plastic Nature ........................................................................ 713
. Diana Stanciu
 
Index Locorum ................................................................................................. 751
Index Generalis ................................................................................................ 760
 PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

One of the main questions underlying the colloquium from which this
volume derives concerned the many different ways in which we can char-
acterise thinking about the function of the body in the period from the
ancient world into early modern Europe. What was meant by ‘physiology’
before 1800, and how and why did this change? How can different aca-
demic disciplines contribute to our understanding of earlier theories of
the way the body works? The colloquium was held on 15–18 April 2009
at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and
Social Sciences (NIAS), Wassenaar, under the aegis of KNAW (the Royal
Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences) and with additional funding from
the C.L. Thijssen-Schoute Stichting, the Stichting Historia Medicinae, the
Kunsthistorisches Max Planck Institut Florence and the Wellcome Trust.
We offer our profound thanks to the NIAS staff and especially Mrs Eline
van der Ploeg for their friendly and efficient organisation of the confer-
ence. Over 50 abstracts were submitted, and 23 papers were selected for
presentation.1 In addition, scholars whose abstracts had not been accepted
for presentation were invited by the editors to write papers for consider-
ation. Some of those attending the conference as delegates subsequently
submitted papers, while word of mouth brought to the attention of the
editors still others interested in contributing.
The contributors to this collection thus come from a wide range of
disciplinary approaches, but all aim to contextualise the theories of the
function of the body that were proposed in the periods they study. In
addition to thanking all our contributors, we would like to put on record

1
 The following papers were also selected for presentation, but in the event could
not, for a variety of reasons, be included in this volume: Armelle Debru, “Motions and
Emotions”; Svetlana Hautala, “ ‘The Dull Wave’: Meteorological Analogies in the Ancient
Medicinal Thought”; Jürgen Helm, “Soul and Spirit in the 16th Century”; Willem van Hoorn,
“Descartes’ Physiological Misunderstanding of Harvey’s Heart”; Manfred Horstmanshoff,
“Analogy versus Anatomy: Petitus and Steno on Tears (1661)”; Eric Jorink, “René Descartes
(1596–1650), Jan Swammerdam (1637–1680) and the problem of generation”; Christo-
pher Pierce, “Anatomy, Allegory and Architecture: Ideas on the Role of the Church Inte-
rior in Seventeenth-Century Netherlandish Art”; Roberto Lo Presti, “ ‘As if bodies were
machines’: Remarks on the Birth of ‘Modern’ Physiology and the (Re)invention of the
Greek Notion of ‘Automaton’ ”; Georgios Papadopoulos, “Transformations of (the Concepts
of ) Natural Faculties in Renaissance Physiology”; Marco A. Viniegra, “Galenism and the
Rise of Black Bile”.
x preface and acknowledgements

our gratitude to the fifty or so scholars who acted as blind peer reviewers
for the submissions, many of these serving as reviewers for more than
one paper.
For assistance with translation, the editors would like to thank Neil
Allies for his efficient and sensitive work; in addition, for help with par-
ticular issues, we would like to thank Peter Kruschwitz, Laura Robson,
Daniel Nicolae and Cristina Alvarez-Millàn. This book would not have
come to fruition so efficiently without the eye for detail of our editorial
assistant, Cornelis van Tilburg who also laid the foundation for the index
locorum and the index generalis.
 NOTES ON THE EDITORS

Manfred (H.F.J.) Horstmanshoff has taught Ancient History at Leiden

University since 1976 and was Professor of Ancient Medicine there from
2006–2011. In 1992 he co-organised (with Philip van der Eijk and Piet
Schrijvers) the conference “Ancient Medicine in its Socio-Cultural Con-
text” (papers published in 1995, Amsterdam, 2 vols). In 2000–2001 and in
2008–2009 he was Fellow-in-residence at the Netherlands Institute for
Advanced Study. He co-ordinated with Marten Stol at NIAS a research
group on “Magic and Rationality in Ancient Near Eastern and Graeco-
Roman Medicine” (papers published 2004). In 2002 he published (with
others) the folio-edition, with full commentary, of Four Anonymous
Engravings from the Trent Collection (Duke University, Durham, NC) as
The Four Seasons of Human Life (2002). He was convenor of the XIIth Col-
loquium Hippocraticum at Leiden (2005) and editor of its Selected Papers:
Hippocrates and Medical Education (2010). In 2011–2012 he will be a Fellow
of the Internationales Kolleg Morphomata, University of Cologne, study-
ing the patient’s history in a comparative perspective.

Helen King is Professor of Classical Studies at the Open University. She

works on ancient Greek and Roman medicine and its reception from
the sixteenth century onwards, focusing on gynaecology and obstetrics.
She has been a Fellow of the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study,
a Crake Lecturer at Mount Allison University, Sackville NB, Canada, a
Visiting Professor at the University of Texas and a Landsdowne Visiting
Lecturer at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. Her publications
include The Disease of Virgins. Green Sickness, Chlorosis and the Problems
of Puberty (2003); Midwifery, Obstetrics and the Rise of Gynaecology. Users
of a Sixteenth-Century Compendium (2007) and (with Véronique Dasen),
La médecine dans l’Antiquité grecque et romaine (2008).

Claus Zittel teaches philosophy and German literature at the Universi-

ties of Frankfurt am Main, Berlin (FU) and Olsztyn (Poland) and is the
co-leader of the Max-Planck Research group “The Conscious Image” at
the Kunsthistorisches Institut/Max Planck-Institut Florence. He is inter
alia the author of Das ästhetische Kalkül von Friedrich Nietzsches ‘Also
sprach Zarathustra’ (2000–2012) and Theatrum philosophicum. Descartes
xii notes on the editors

und die Rolle ästhetischer Formen in der Wissenschaft (2009), editor of René
Descartes. Les Météores/Die Meteore (2006); and co-editor (with Sylwia
Werner) of Ludwik Fleck. Denkstile und Tatsachen (2011); (with Moritz
Epple) Science as Cultural Practice Vol. 1. Cultures and Politics of Research
from the Early Modern Period to the Age of Extremes (2010); (with Gisela
Engel and Romano Nanni) Philosophies of Technology. Francis Bacon and
his Contemporaries, “Intersections” (2008); (with Wolfgang Detel) Ideals
and Cultures of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe (2002).
 NOTES ON THE CONTRIBUTORS

Barbara Baert studied art history and philosophy at the University of

Leuven and Università degli Studi of Siena, Italy. Her doctorate on the
legend of the Holy Cross, A Heritage of Holy Wood, appeared in 2004. She
is currently Professor of Medieval Art and Iconology at the University of
Leuven. In 2008 she founded the Iconology Research Group, an interna-
tional and interdisciplinary platform for the study of the interpretation
of images. Her publications include Interspaces between Word, Gaze and
Touch. The Bible and the Visual Medium in the Middle Ages. Collected Essays
on Noli me tangere, the Woman with the Haemorrhage, the Head of John the
Baptist, Annua Nuntia Lovaniensia, LXII (2011).

Marlen Bidwell-Steiner holds an Elise-Richter-grant from the Aus-

trian Science Fund (FWF) to work on her habilitation “Persistent Cor-
porealities: Early Modern Natural Philosophy Meets Postmodern Gender
Theory”. She is Head of the Gender Research Office at the University of
Vienna. She gained her doctorate in 2007 and works on gender studies,
body images, early modern body-soul images, and theories of metaphor.
Her publications include (with Stefan Krammer) (Un)Doing Gender als
gelebtes Unterrichtsprinzip. Sprache-Politik-Performanz (2010) and Große
Welt – Kleine Welt – Verkehrte Welt. Die philogyne Naturphilosophie der
Renaissance-Denkerin Oliva Sabuco de Nantes y Barrera (2009).

Véronique Boudon-Millot is Director of the Research Centre on

Ancient Medicine at the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scien-
tifique) in Paris at the Sorbonne University. She has published widely on
ancient medicine, philosophy and science. She has edited critical editions
of six Galenic works. She co-edited Les Pères de l’Eglise face à la science
médicale de leur temps (2005) and La science médicale antique. Nouveaux
regards (2007).

Rainer Brömer works at the Philosophy Department, Fatih University

(Istanbul). His research concerns the history of medicine in the Ottoman
Empire, especially human anatomy of the seventeenth to nineteenth cen-
turies. He has published on the history of Darwinism, including Rainer
Brömer, Uwe Hoßfeld and Nicolaas Adrianus Rupke, Evolutionsbiologie
xiv notes on the contributors

von Darwin bis heute (2000), Uwe Hoßfeld and Rainer Brömer, Darwin-
ismus und/als Ideologie (2001) and Rainer Brömer, Plastidules to Humans.
Leopoldo Maggi (1840–1905) and Ernst Haeckel’s Naturalist Philosophy in
the Kingdom of Italy (2011).

Elizabeth Craik, formerly Professor of Classics at Kyoto University, held

a Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship 2003–2005 and is now attached to
Newcastle University and to the University of St. Andrews. She has edited
and translated several Hippocratic texts, with introduction and commen-
tary: Places in Man (1998), Two Hippocratic Treatises. On Sight and On
Anatomy (2006) and The Hippocratic Treatise On Glands (2009), as well
as publishing extensively on Greek literature and civilisation. Her current
project is a book, aiming to cover and contextualise all the treatises of the
Hippocratic Corpus.

Tamás Demeter is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Philosophi-

cal Research, Hungarian Academy of Sciences. He was formerly Lorenz
Krüger Fellow at the Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte,
Berlin, and he has held Fellowships at the IASH, Edinburgh and the
Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study. His research is focused on the
philosophy of mind, the history of eighteenth-century philosophy and sci-
ence, and Austro-Hungarian intellectual history. He is editor of Essays on
Wittgenstein and Austrian Philosophy (2004) and co-editor (with Kathryn
Murphy and Claus Zittel) of the forthcoming “Intersections” volume, Con-
flicting Values of Inquiry. The Ideologies of Epistemology in Early Modern
Europe.

Valeria Gavrylenko studied and taught at the Department of Theory

and History of Culture at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy,
Kyiv, Ukraine. She works on the history of the human body (with particu-
lar focus on skin and touch) in ancient Greek culture. She defended her
PhD at the Kharkiv State Academy of Culture in 2007. She has published
several articles in Russian, Ukrainian and French on Greek tragedy and on
the history of the body in Antiquity.

Hans L. Haak studied medicine in Leiden, was trained in haematology

and obtained his PhD in 1978. He was head of the department of Hae-
matology and consultant in a major hospital in the Hague, and has writ-
ten over seventy scientific papers. After his retirement he studied classics
and history of medicine, on which he has published articles on Rufus of
 notes on the contributors xv

Ephesus’ Quaestiones Medicinales and on ancient ideas on vision. He is

currently preparing a monograph on Rufus.

Mieneke te Hennepe is curator of medical history at Museum Boerhaave,

the National Museum of the History of Science and Medicine in Leiden, the
Netherlands. Her PhD thesis Depicting Skin: Visual Culture in Nineteenth-
century Medicine (2007) was awarded a Research Prize by the Praemium
Erasmianum Foundation in 2008. She specialises in visual representation
and body history, and her current work concerns early science films and
popular representations of female anatomy in flap books.

Sabine Kalff studied German literature, cultural history and American

studies at Humboldt University, Berlin and La Sapienza, Rome. Her MA
thesis (2006) was on Monstro Simile. Sovereignty and the Idea of the Body
Politic in Early Modern Literature and Political Thought. She completed
her doctoral thesis on Political Medicine in the Early Modern Period in
2011. She has held research grants from the German Research Foundation
(DFG), 2007–2008, and the Gerda Henkel Foundation, from 2008. She is
currently a Research Fellow at the Peter Szondi Institut für Allgemeine
und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft at the Freie Universität Berlin.

Rina Knoeff gained her PhD from Cambridge (2000) and is currently
a postdoctoral research fellow at the Faculty of Humanities, Leiden
University, where she works on a project funded by the Dutch Research
Council (NWO) on the history of the Leiden anatomical collections. She
is particularly interested in the collections from the visitors’ point of view.
She has written numerous articles on early modern medicine and she is
the author of Herman Boerhaave (1668–1738). Calvinist Chemist and Physi-
cian (2002).

Sergius Kodera teaches philosophy at the University of Vienna. He has

published on Marsilio Ficino, Fernando de Rojas, Leone Ebreo, Matteo
Ricci, Girolamo Cardano, Giambattista della Porta, and Giordano Bruno.
His last monograph is on Disreputable Bodies. Magic, Medicine, and Gen-
der in Renaissance Natural Philosophy (2010).

Liesbet Kusters holds a Master’s degree in Art History (2004). Currently

she is involved in a PhD project entitled The Haemorrhaging Woman
(Mark 5:24–34). An Iconological Research into the Meaning of the Bleeding
Woman in Medieval Art (4th–15th century) supervised by Barbara Baert. In
xvi notes on the contributors

addition she teaches art history of the Middle Ages at the Royal Academy
for Fine Arts (KASK) in Ghent.

Karine van ’t Land is preparing a dissertation about nutrition and iden-

tity in late medieval commentaries on Avicenna’s Canon at Radboud
University Nijmegen, Netherlands. Together with Patricia Baker and Han
Nijdam, she edited the volume Medicine and Space. Body, Surroundings
and Borders in Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Leiden: 2011).

Tomas Macsotay is a Henry Moore Foundation Fellow in Sculpture

Studies at Leeds. His dissertation was awarded the Prix Marianne Roland-
Michel, marking outstanding studies in eighteenth-century French art.
He is currently preparing a book on the basis of his dissertation on
eighteenth-century French sculptors and the Académie royale de peinture
et de sculpture. His research interests include the definition and function
of eighteenth-century sculpture across national barriers, theories of mak-
ing and their impact on the cultural history of the workshop between the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Michael McVaugh is Wells Professor of History Emeritus at the Uni-

versity of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He has published widely on
thirteenth- and fourteenth-century medicine, including Medicine before
the Plague. Practitioners and their Patients in the Crown of Aragon, 1285–
1345 (1993), which was awardedthe Welch Medal of the American Associa-
tion for the History of Medicine in 1994, and The Rational Surgery of the
Middle Ages (2006). He has been one of the general editors of the Arnaldi
de Villanova Opera Medica Omnia since 1975, and is currently work-
ing on two editions for inclusion in that series. Since 2008, he has also
been publishing the medieval Latin translations of Maimonides’ medical
works in the collection of Arabic and Hebrew texts now being edited
by Gerrit Bos. He was awarded the Sarton Medal of the History of Science
Society in 2010.

Vivian Nutton is a former Director of the Wellcome Trust Centre,

London – formerly the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine –
where he taught from 1977, and a Fellow of the British Academy. He
specialises in the history of the classical tradition in medicine, from
Antiquity to the present, and particularly on Galen, and on medicine dur-
ing the Renaissance. A prolific writer, editor and translator, his publica-
tions include the first ever edition and translation of Galen’s On My Own
 notes on the contributors xvii

Opinions (1999) an edited issue of Renaissance Studies, Medicine in the

Renaissance City (2001), and Ancient Medicine (2004).

Barbara Orland is a senior scientist at the Science Studies Program,

University of Basel (Switzerland). From 2004–2007 she was the managing
director of the newly founded Centre History of Knowledge at the Federal
Institute of Technology and the University of Zurich. She has been the
Käthe-Leichter guest professor at the University of Vienna (2007–2008)
and is currently acting Professor of the History of Science at the Univer-
sity of Konstanz. Her research interests cover different fields of the his-
tory of life sciences and biomedical technologies. She is the author of Eine
Geschichte der Ernährungstheorien. Vom antiken zum modernen Wissen
(forthcoming, 2012) and the editor, with Emma C. Spary, of Assimilating
Knowledge. Food and Nutrition in Early Modern Physiologies, Special Issue
of Studies in History and Philosophy of the Sciences 1 (2012) forthcoming.

Jacomien Prins is based at the Department of Philosophy of Oxford Uni-

versity and is a Fellow of Wolfson College. Her current research focuses on
the reception of ideas about cosmic harmony in Plato’s Timaeus during the
Italian Renaissance. Her publications include Echoes of an Invisible World.
Marsilio Ficino and Francesco Patrizi on Cosmic Order and Music Theory
(2009 and 2011) and she edited the Dutch volume Harmonisch labyrint. De
muziek van de kosmos in de westerse wereld (Harmonious Labyrinth) (2007)
and she has published several articles on the philosophy of music.

Julius Rocca holds a Wellcome Trust Award at the Department of Clas-

sics and Ancient History, University of Exeter. He is the author of Galen on
the Brain (2003), articles on ancient medicine and philosophy, and is writ-
ing a monograph on Galen’s teleology. He is preparing a volume of essays
based on the Exeter 2009 Wellcome Trust funded conference “Teleology
in Ancient Philosophy and Medicine”, to be submitted to Cambridge Uni-
versity Press.

Catrien Santing is the Professor of Medieval History at the University of

Groningen. She studied history and art history at the University of Gron-
ingen, then worked for the Dutch Institute in Rome from 1998 until 2003.
A cultural historian of the Late Middle Ages and Renaissance, she focuses
on the history of medicine and the body in the Late Middle Ages. A for-
mer Fellow of the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies, she has
published widely on northern Humanism, visual culture, medievalism and
xviii notes on the contributors

the interchange between art and science. She has edited (together with
Flos Wilschut), Ophelia, melancholie en sehnsucht. Tentoonstellingscatalo-
gus Museum voor de Moderne Kunst Arnhem (2009) and (together with
Jetze Touber) Blood Symbol Liquid (2011).

Daniel Schäfer studied medicine and medieval studies at Albert-

Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg and gained his doctorates from this univer-
sity. He works at the Institute of History and Ethics of Medicine at the
University of Cologne, where he was promoted to extraordinary Professor
in 2007. In April 2009 his revised thesis won a Fritz Thyssen Foundation
prize. His main interests are the history of ageing, gynaecology, preventa-
tive medicine, and death. His publications include Old Age and Disease
in Early Modern Medicine (2011) and (with Héctor Wittwer and Andreas
Frewer) Dying and Death. An Interdisciplinary Manual. History, Theory,
Ethics (2010).

Emma Sidgwick holds a Master’s degree in Fine Arts and in Social and
Cultural Anthropology. Together with Liesbet Kusters she is involved in
a PhD project entitled The Haemorrhaging Woman (Mark 5:24–34). An
Iconological Research into the Meaning of the Bleeding Woman in Medieval
Art (4th–15th century) supervised by Barbara Baert.

Frank W. Stahnisch holds the AMF/Hannah Professorship in the His-

tory of Medicine and Health Care at the University of Calgary in Alberta,
Canada, and is cross-appointed to the Department of History and the
Department of Community Health Sciences. He is also a full academic
member of the Hotchkiss Brain Institute and the Calgary Institute for Pop-
ulation and Public Health. His research comprises the history of experi-
mental physiology, the relationship between the neurosciences and the
philosophy of mind, the historical epistemology of the life sciences, and
the history of visualisation practices in medicine. Publications include
Ideas in Action (2003), (co-edited with Florian Steger) Medizin, Geschichte
und Geschlecht (2005), and (co-edited with Ulrich Schoenherr and Anto-
nio Bergua) Albert Neissers ‘Stereoscopischer Medicinischer Atlas’ (2006),
(co-edited with Heijko Bauer) Bild und Gestalt (2007). His current book
project focuses on the development of interdisciplinary research tradi-
tions of the brain sciences in relation to their cultural context.
 notes on the contributors xix

Diana Stanciu is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Faculty of The-

ology, The Catholic University of Leuven, researching the reception of
Augustine versus that of Aristotle in seventeenth-century Louvain. She
was formerly an associate professor at the University of Bucharest. Her
research interests include grace and free will, rational religion, freedom
of conscience, toleration and prudence. Her publications include: Shaft-
esbury’s ‘Characteristics’ – A ‘Socratic’ Programme of the Eighteenth Cen-
tury (PhD thesis; 2004); The Ninth-century Debate on Predestination and its
Theologico-Political Context (2005); (co-edited with Heinrich Kuhn) Ideal
Constitutions in the Renaissance (2009), and The Reception of Aristotle in the
Augustinian Context of Seventeenth-century Louvain (forthcoming 2012).

Michael Stolberg is Professor of History of Medicine and Director of

the Institut für Geschichte der Medizin at the University of Würzburg. His
major areas of research are the social and cultural history of early modern
medicine and the history of medical ethics and terminal care. His pub-
lications include Homo patiens. Krankheits- und Körpererfahrung in der
Frühen Neuzeit (2003), Die Harnschau. Eine Kultur- und Alltagsgeschichte
(2009) and Die Geschichte der Palliativmedizin. Medizinische Sterbebeglei-
tung von 1500 bis heute (2011).

Liba Taub is Professor of History and Philosophy of Science and Director

and Curator of the Whipple Museum of the History of Science, at the Uni-
versity of Cambridge; she is a Fellow of Newnham College. Her primary
research interests are in the areas of Greco-Roman science and the mate-
rial culture of science. She is the author of Ptolemy’s Universe. The Natu-
ral Philosophical and Ethical Foundations of Ptolemy’s Astronomy (1993),
Ancient Meteorology (2003), and Aetna and the Moon. Explaining Nature
in Ancient Greece and Rome (2008). She has co-edited (with Aude Doody)
Authorial Voices in Greco-Roman Technical Writing (2009) and (with Fran-
ces Willmoth) The Whipple Museum of the History of Science. Instruments
and Interpretations (2006).

Fabio Tutrone is a Research Fellow at the University of Palermo (Italy),

where he also obtained his PhD in Greek and Latin Philology and Culture
in 2009. In 2008 he was Visiting Scholar at the Department of Classics at
Columbia University in the City of New York and in 2009 he was awarded
a research scholarship at the Fondation Hardt pour l’Étude de l’Antiquité
Classique (Geneva). He works on different themes related to ancient lit-
erature, science and philosophy, but in particular on animal representa-
tions and man-animal relationships in Roman culture.
xx notes on the contributors

Katrien Vanagt received her doctorate from the University of Twente in

2010, for a thesis entitled The Emancipation of the Eye. V.F. Plempius’ Oph-
thalmographia and Medical Conceptions of Sight. She has recently been
awarded a two-year Rubicon Postdoctoral Fellowship by the Netherlands
Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) to pursue her research at the
Huygens Institute ING in The Hague. In investigating early modern theo-
ries of vision, Vanagt seeks to understand how knowledge is transmitted
between groups of people who use different disciplinary discourses, the
process of appropriation which this entails, and the generation of new
interpretations and meanings.

Marion A. Wells teaches in the Department of English and American

Literatures at Middlebury College, USA. She has a BA in Classics and
Modern Languages from Jesus College, Oxford, and a PhD in Compara-
tive Literature from Yale University. Her book The Secret Wound. Love-
Melancholy and Early Modern Romance was published by Stanford
University Press in 2007. Current research interests include the epitha-
lamic tradition from Virgil to Ariosto, ekphrasis, and expressions of mater-
nal grief in early modern Europe. She is currently working on a new book
manuscript tentatively entitled Philomela’s Song. Maternal Voice in Early
Modern Europe.
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures 1–2 (belonging to the Introduction by Helen King):

1. . Francis Bacon, The Historie of Life and Death (London,
. Humphrey Mosley: 1638), title page. Engraving. © Trustees of
. the British Museum ................................................................................... 12
2. .Philippi Jacobi Sachs a Lewenheimb, Oceanus Macro-
. Microcosmicus (Wroclaw, Fellgiebel: 1664). Frontispiece .............. 14

Figures 1–2 (belonging to the article by Michael R. McVaugh):

1.. Human kidney. Drawing Lauren Keswick © 2011 www
. .medicalartstudio.com ............................................................................... 104
2.. Hollow kidney divided into two halves, in Andreas Vesalius, De
humani corporis fabrica V.10 (Basel, Oporinus: 1543; repr.
. Nieuwendijk, De Forel: 1975) 515 ........................................................... 114

Figures 1–5 (belonging to the article by Daniel Schäfer):

1. . Cover of Gabriele Zerbi’s Gerontocomia (Rome, Eucharius
. Silber: 1489) .................................................................................................. 251
2. .Diagram of the physiology and pathology of age and ageing, in
. François de Fougerolles, De senum affectibus praecavendis
. nonnullisque curandis enarratio (Lyons, Ian. de Gabiano and
. Laur. Durand: 1617) 53 ............................................................................... 254
3. .Title page of the reprint of Jacob Hutter’s dissertation/thesis
. (Halle, Christian Hilliger: 1732) .............................................................. 258
4. .Bills of Mortality, London 1666 (from http://www.slought.org/
. content/410265/) ......................................................................................... 261
5. .Cornelis Huijberts, engraving of a socalled ‘diorama’: Foetus
. with vascular preparations etc., C. Huijberts ad vivum sculpsit,
. in Frederik Ruysch, Thesaurus anatomicus octavus. Het achtste
. anatomisch cabinet van Frederic Ruysch (Amsterdam,
. Joannes Wolters: 1709) .............................................................................. 263
xxii list of illustrations

Figures 1–2 (belonging to the article by Tomas Macsotay):

1. . Laocoön, copied from the original (ca. 200 BC) by the three
. Rhodian sculptors Agesander, Athenodorus and Polydorus.
. Marble, height 184 cm. Rome, Vatican, Museo Pio-
. Clementino ................................................................................................. 276
2. . Etienne Maurice Falconet, Milo of Crotona. 1754. Marble,
. height 66 cm, width 64 cm. Paris, Louvre ........................................ 282

Figures 1–12 (belonging to the article by Barbara Baert et al.):

1. . Healing of the Haemorrhoissa, mural in the catacomb of Saints
. Peter and Marcellinus, third century. Rome ................................... 315
2. . Healing of the Haemorrhoissa, detail of the Brescia Casket,
. ca. 360–370. Ivory relief. Brescia, Museo Civico ............................. 317
3. . Healing of the Haemorrhoissa, detail of the Sarcophagus of
. Adelphia and Syrakus. Rome, ca. 340. Syracuse (Sicily), Museo
. Nazionale .................................................................................................... 318
4. . Healing of the Haemorrhoissa, detail of a sarcophagus, fifth
. century. Istanbul, Archaeological Museum ..................................... 319
5. . Healing of the Haemorrhoissa, miniature in the Codex Egberti
(Reichenau, 977–993). Trier, Stadtbibliothek (ms. 24, f. 90
. verso) ........................................................................................................... 320
6. . Healings and Miracles of Christ, Encolpion from Adana, end of
. the sixth century ...................................................................................... 322
7. . Healing of the Haemorrhoissa and Peter turning the prison wall
. into water, Celsus sarcophagus, fourth century. Milan, S. Maria
. presso S. Celso ........................................................................................... 323
8. . Resurrection of Lazarus and Healing of the Haemorrhoissa,
fifth century. Coptic textile. London, Victoria and Albert
. Museum (inv. no. 722–1897) ................................................................. 326
9. . Healings and Miracles of Christ, early Byzantine amulet.
. London, British Museum (reg. no. 1938) ........................................... 327
10.. Healing of the Haemorrhoissa, crystal amulet. Rock crystal,
. 30 × 20 × 4 cm. New York, America Numismatic Society
. (inv. no 307) ............................................................................................... 329
11. .Healing of the Haemorrhoissa and Mary in Orant, haematite
. amulet. Egypt, late Antiquity. New York, Metropolitan
. Museum of Art (17.190.491) .................................................................... 330
 list of illustrations xxiii

12. . Healing of the Haemorrhoissa and hysteria motif, amulet.

. Private collection ..................................................................................... 331

Figures 1–4 (belonging to the article by Rainer Brömer):

1. . Skeleton, from Andreas Vesalius’ De humani corporis fabrica
. libri septem (Basel, Oporinus: 1543) 164. Image © National
. Library of Medicine [Vesalius_Pg_164.jpg, http://www.nlm.nih
.gov/exhibition/historicalanatomies/Images/1200_pixels/
Vesalius_Pg_164.jpg] ................................................................................ 352
2. . Skeleton, from Şemsettin İtaki, Teşrîh-i Ebdân ve Tercümân
Kıbâle-ı Fezlesûfān (Hüsrev Paşa 464 fol. 31). Image
© Süleymaniyye Kütüphanesi, Istanbul, Turkey [HUSREV
PASA 464–_00031.jpg] ............................................................................. 353
3. . Venous system from Manṣūr ibn Ilyās, Tashrīh-i badan-i insan,
. (Ayasofya 3597 fol 25b). Image © Süleymaniyye Kütüphanesi,
. Istanbul, Turkey [AYASOFYA 3597–_00028.jpg] ............................ 354
4. . Venous system from Şemsettin İtaki’s Teşrîh-i Ebdân ve
. Tercümân Kıbâle-ı Feylesûfān (Hüsrev Paşa 464 fol. 84b).
. Image © Süleymaniyye Kütüphanesi, Istanbul, Turkey
. [HUSREV PASA 464–_00085.jpg .......................................................... 355

Figures 1–3 (belonging to the article by Jacomien Prins):

1.. Physician taking the pulse of a plague victim. Frontispiece
. from Ioannis de Ketham’s Fasciculo di Medicina Vulgare
. (Fasciculus medicine compositus per [. . .] dominum Ioannem
. de Ketham (Venice, I. et G. de Gregoriis: 1495). Oxford,
. Bodleian Library (AA 21(1) Med.Seld) ................................................ 397
2. . Threefold man, from Robert Fludd, Utriusque cosmi maioris
. scilicet et minoris metaphysica, physica atque technica historia
. in duo volumina secundum cosmi differentiam divisa
. (Oppenheim, Johann-Theodor de Bry, Hieronymus Galler:
. 1617/1621), vol. II.a.1, p. 105. Copper engraving. Oxford,
. Bodleian Library (Ashm. 1704 v.2:pt.1–v.2:pt.2) ............................... 401
3. . Diagram. Blood circulation and the sense of hearing following
. the same archetypal laws of circular thrust. Basis design:
. Plato’s Cosmology. The Timaeus of Plato, tr./comm.
F. MacDonald Cornford (London-New York: 1937) 313
(with additions and revisions by J. Prins) ........................................ 409
xxiv list of illustrations

Figures 1–4 (belonging to the article by Catrien Santing):

 1.. Jacob van Oostsanen, Man of Sorrows, ca. 1520. Antwerp,
. Museum Mayer van den Bergh .............................................................. 421
2. .Titlepage of the English translation of Lemnius’ De habitu et
. constitutione corporis, tr. Newton Thomas (London, Thomas
. Marsh: 1576). Amsterdam, Universiteitsbibliotheek (UvA),
. bijzondere collecties (OTM: OK 74–181) ............................................. 425
3. .Maarten van Heemskerck, Christ crowned with thorns,
. ca. 1550/1555. Haarlem, Frans Hals Museum ...................................... 430
4. .Beginning of the first book of Andrea Cesalpino’s handbook
. Ars Medica with an image of the Vera Icon in the margin.
. Amsterdam, Universiteitsbibliotheek (UvA), bijzondere
. collecties (OTM: O 62–9143) ................................................................... 436

Figures 1–10 (belonging to the article by Mieneke M. G. te Hennepe):

1. . Gasparo Becerra, “Standing male écorché”, in Juan Valverde de
Hamusco, Historia de la Composición del Cuerpo Humano
. (Rome, Salamanca and Lafreri: 1556), Book II, Tabula I. Copper
engraving. Image © Wellcome Library, London .............................. 530
2. .Gerard de Lairesse, “Microscopical anatomy of the skin” in
. William Cowper’s The Anatomy of Humane Bodies (Oxford,
. S. Smith and B. Walford: 1698), Tabula 4. Copper engraving.
. Image © Wellcome Library, London .................................................... 533
3. .Porous appearance of cork viewed under a microscope, in
. Robert Hooke, Micrographia (London, J. Martyn & Allestry: 1665)
Scheme IX, Fig. 1. Engraved illustration. Image © Wellcome
. Library, London .......................................................................................... 535
4. .Pores of the skin of the hands positioned on ridges as depicted
. by Nehemiah Grew, in Philosophical Transactions Volume 14
. (1684) 566. Engraving illustration. Image © Wellcome Library,
. London ........................................................................................................... 537
5.. Simple microscope made and used by Antoni van
. Leeuwenhoek. Leiden, Museum Boerhaave, V7017. Photo
. © Museum Boerhaave, Leiden ............................................................... 539
6. .Scales of the skin resembling ‘fish scales’ as depicted by van
. Leeuwenhoek published as illustration in Philosophical
. Transactions 14 (1684). Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek
. (560 B 8–E 8). Image © University Library Leiden .......................... 540
 list of illustrations xxv

7. . Jonas Dryander, Vapour baths apparatus. Frankfurt, 1547.

. Wood engraving. Image © Wellcome Library, London ............... 542
8. . J. Harrewijn, Sweat treatment to cure syphilis in Steven
. Blankaart, Venus belegert en ontset. Oft Verhandelinge van de
. pokken, en des selfs toevallen, met een grondige en zekere
. genesinge. Steunende meest op de gronden van Cartesius
. (Amsterdam, Timotheus ten Hoorn: 1684), Tab. VI. Copper
. engraving. Image © Wellcome Library, London ............................ 543
9. . Scales of the skin reappear in a popular work on microscopy,
. in Henry Baker The Microscope Made Easy (London, R. Dodsley:
1744), plate XIII, Fig.III. Copper engraving. Image © Wellcome
Library, London ........................................................................................ 545
10. Microscopical representation of the skin in a popular hygiene
. work, in E. Wilson, Healthy Skin. A Popular Treatise on the Skin
. and Hair, their Preservation and Management (London: 1953)
. Fourth edition, Fig. 10, page 24. Wood engraving. Image
. © Wellcome Library, London ............................................................... 547

Figures 1–2 (belonging to the article by Katrien Vanagt):

1. . Comparison between the working of an eye and a camera
. obscura in Christoph Scheiner, Rosa Ursina (Bracciano,
. Andreas Phaeus: 1630) 109, ‘Artis et Naturae Tubi et Oculi in
. speciebus solaribus praesentandis consensus’. Leiden,
. Universiteitsbibliotheek (676 A 24) .................................................... 586
2.. Illustration of the dissection-experiment in René Descartes,
. Discours de la Méthode (Leiden, Jan Maire: 1637) 36. Leiden,
. Universiteitsbibliotheek (20643 F 8) .................................................. 589

Figures 1–3 (belonging to the article by Frank W. Stahnisch):

1.. Johann Gottfried von Herder, Certificate from the Society for
. Natural History and Science, 1793 (Capsule XXXVII, No. 134;
. AHN; of the Manuscript and Incunables Collection of the
. Berlin State Library; Culture Forum). Scan Reproduction
. © Berliner Staatsbibliothek ..................................................................... 601
2.. Friedrich Rehberg, Johann Gottfried von Herder, before 1800.
. Archival records of Johann Gottfried Herder, Goethe and
. Schiller Archive. Oil portrait on canvas. Image © Klassik
. Stiftung Weimar .......................................................................................... 604
xxvi list of illustrations

3.. Johann Gottfried von Herder, Table of Notes on Physiology,

. Psychology and Anthropology, ca. 1765 (Capsule XXVIII, No. 2;
. AHN; of the Manuscript and Incunables Collection of the Berlin
. State Library; Culture Forum). Scan Reproduction © Berliner
. Staatsbibliothek .......................................................................................... 612
 INTRODUCTION

Helen King

Writing physiology

In the history of early modern medicine, physiology – now understood as

the theory of the normal functioning of living organisms – remains the
poor relation.
The papers presented here are intended to help scholars in a range of
disciplines to consider why it is so difficult to provide a history of physi-
ology; how far is this due to changing notions of what physiology is, and
how far does it depend on the methods by which physiology comes to its
conclusions? There has been no general history of physiology for the last
forty years and, in contrast to anatomy, the topic has received very little
attention at all from historians in that period. Within philosophy, the situ-
ation is rather different; the work of Dennis Des Chene, particularly his
Physiologia. Natural Philosophy in Late Aristotelian and Cartesian Philoso-
phy (Cornell University Press, 1996) has been welcomed by philosophers
but has had surprisingly little impact outside that field. In this book, and
in his subsequent monograph Life’s Form. Late Aristotelian Conceptions of
the Soul (2000), Des Chene locates Descartes within his Aristotelian back-
ground, exploring the emergence of modern ideas of ‘science’ from medi-
eval philosophy. The standard modern histories of physiology include
Thomas Hall’s work, originally published in 1969 and subsequently reis-
sued as History of Physiology 200 BC–AD 1900 in 1975, and the 1953 book in
German by Karl Rothschuh, published in English translation in 1973.1 Hall
set out what he regarded as the ‘classic questions’ of physiology, from the
Greeks onwards: these concerned ‘motion, generation, nutrition’ and ‘the
life-matter problem, of the nature of life and of its seat in the body’.2 In
his Introduction to the English translation of Rothschuh, Leonard G. Wilson
stated that ‘Physiology, as a subject of inquiry has a long and remarkably

1 Hall T., History of Physiology 200 BC to AD 1900 (Chicago: 1975); Rothschuh K., History
of Physiology, tr. Risse G. (Huntington, NY: 1973).
2 Hall, History of Physiology 7.
2 helen king

continuous history beginning with studies and speculations of the Greeks in

the fifth century BC’.3
This image of continuity has been challenged by the work of Andrew
Cunningham, whose papers published in 2002 and 2003 respectively,
cited by a number of contributors to this volume, are among the very few
modern studies of the relationship between anatomy and physiology in
the Early Modern period. Cunningham emphasised how physiology used
reason rather than experiment, and that it remained very close to phi-
losophy, so that ‘When explanations in natural philosophy changed, so
explanation in physiology also changed’.4 While the word ‘physiology’ is
thus found in texts written before the nineteenth century, there is a wide
range of concepts working underneath the same name.
In contrast to the neglect of the unified and functioning body of ‘physiol-
ogy’, the history of ‘anatomy’ – traditionally seen as concerned with struc-
ture, rather than function – has been the subject of considerable recent
study. Trends in medical history towards ‘the body in parts’ approach have
privileged anatomy; literally, the cutting-up or ‘division’ of the body. They
have done this by concentrating on a single body part – heart, head, foot –
and tracing its representation and interpretation across time.5 Anatomy has
been important in recent histories of early modern medicine partly because
of its place in education; for example, Katy Park’s Secrets of Women (2006)
traced the rise of human dissection from its emergence in the thirteenth cen-
tury to its establishment in the curriculum of European universities in the
mid-sixteenth century, and showed how the quest to understand women’s

3 Rothschuh, History of Physiology xi. On the claims for continuity, see further Cun-
ningham A., “The Pen and the Sword: Recovering the Disciplinary Identity of Physiology
and Anatomy before 1800 I: Old Physiology – The Pen”, Studies in History and Philosophy
of Science Part C. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 33
(2002) 636.
4 Cunningham, “Old Physiology – The Pen” 641. The companion article is “The Pen and
the Sword: Recovering the Disciplinary Identity of Physiology and Anatomy before 1800 II:
Old Anatomy – The Sword”, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C. Studies in
History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 34 (2003) 51–76.
5 King H., “Inside and Outside, Cavities and Containers: the Organs of Generation in
Seventeenth-century English Medicine” in Baker P. – Land-van Wesenbeeck K. van ’t
(eds.), Medicine and Space. Body, Surroundings, and Borders in Antiquity and the Middle
Ages (Leiden: 2011) 37–60. See for example Hillman D. – Mazzi C. (eds.), The Body in Parts.
Fantasies of Corporeality in Early Modern Europe (London-New York: 1997); Porter J. (ed.),
Constructions of the Classical Body (Ann Arbor, MI: 1999); Egmond F. – Zwijnenberg R.
(eds.), Bodily Extremities. Preoccupations with the Human Body in Early Modern European
Culture (Aldershot: 2003). See also Cunningham, “Old Anatomy – The Sword” 57 ‘anato-
mists were, in general, more concerned with the parts than with the whole body, which
was the subject-matter of the old physiologist’.
 introduction 3

interior ‘secrets’ informed this anatomical turn to medicine.6 The division

of the body was, she has shown, an important part of early modern cultural
practices even before the rise of dissection for educational purposes; parts
of the dead, saintly body could be buried separately, and preserved indepen-
dently as relics.7 Furthermore, the demonstrations in the anatomy theatres
of sixteenth-century Europe were less about anatomical training and more
about moral education, with the audiences including civic dignitaries and
interested men of learning.8
What Cunningham characterises as ‘old physiology’ – in order to dis-
tinguish it from the ‘experimental physiology’ of the nineteenth century –
emerged as a ‘sub-discipline of the experimental discipline of anatomy’ in
the eighteenth century, and was seen as a speculative activity in which the
scientist took the facts of anatomy as the basis of his speculations.9 In the
eighteenth century, physiology was close to physics, since it depended on
notions of the nature of matter and of motion. Albrecht von Haller recogn-
ised that it was necessary to become an expert anatomist before becoming
a physiologist and described physiology as ‘animated anatomy’.10 William
Hunter wrote in his Two Introductory Lectures [. . .] to his Last Course of Ana-
tomical Lectures that ‘every good Anatomist, who has a cool head, and keeps
a guard over his imagination, knows, that many of the received hypotheses
in Physiology, are build on very loose foundations, and liable to weighty
objections; or, demonstrably repugnant to what we already know of the
structure of our body’.11
But what of the period before the eighteenth century, on which this
collection of essays focuses? What was physiology, before it became the
speculative wing of anatomy? Tilly Tansey’s chapter on ‘The physiological
tradition’ in Bynum and Porter’s Companion Encyclopedia of the History of

6 Park K., Secrets of Women. Gender, Generation and the Origins of Human Dissection
(Brooklyn, NY: 2006); Cunningham, “Old Anatomy – The Sword” 52.
7 See Cunningham A., The Anatomical Renaissance. The Revival of the Anatomy Proj-
ects of the Ancients (Aldershot: 1997); Santing C., The Heart of the Matter. Signification and
Iconic Reification of Human Remains at the Papal Court, ca. 1450–1600 (forthcoming).
8 Huisman T., The Finger of God. Anatomical Practice in 17th-century Leiden (Leiden:
2009).
9 Cunningham A., The Anatomist Anatomis’d. An Experimental Discipline in Enlighten-
ment Europe (Aldershot: 2010) 156–157.
10 Cunningham, The Anatomist Anatomis’d 93 and 157. On von Haller, see further Cun-
ningham, “Old Physiology – The Pen” 650–657.
11 Hunter William, Two Introductory Lectures, Delivered by Dr William Hunter, to his Last
Course of Anatomical Lectures (London, printed by order of the Trustees, for J. Johnson:
1784) 93–94; cited in Cunningham, The Anatomist Anatomis’d 138–139.
4 helen king

Medicine (1993) contained only two pages on ‘the Renaissance’, one of them
being devoted to William Harvey.12 One of the roles of the present volume is
to try to flesh out the period before Harvey. Anatomy claimed as its founder
the great hero of classical medicine, the second-century AD writer Galen
whose ideas, systematised into ‘Galenism’, dominated medicine into the
Early Modern period. Galen himself had not been able to perform system-
atic human dissection, but his work on animals led him to stress the impor-
tance of understanding the structure in order to comprehend the function.
Thus those sixteenth-century writers who argued that the true study of the
physician or surgeon should be the ‘book’ of the human body itself could
still call on Galen for support; if only he had been allowed by the conven-
tions of his day to perform dissection, he would have done exactly as they
were now able to do. Hence Cunningham, memorably, described the great
Renaissance anatomist Andreas Vesalius as ‘simply Galen restored to life’.13
At the peak of the practice of ‘anatomy’ in early modern Europe there was
also a move towards seeing medicine itself as unduly ‘divided’ by changes
in its professional and intellectual structure between the ancient world and
the Renaissance. In the Preface to De corporis humani fabrica (1543) Vesalius
produced a polemic against the perceived inadequacies of the medicine of
his own day. In this text on the fragmentation of the body, the great evil is
another sort of ‘fragmentation’: ‘that evil fragmentation of the healing art’.
‘So much did the ancient art of medicine decline many years ago from its
former glory’: Vesalius regards the lost ideal as being the Alexandrian medi-
cine of the third century BC, which he saw as bringing together control of
diet, drugs and surgery in a single person, in contrast to the medicine of
his own day when nurses supervise diet, apothecaries drugs, and barbers all
manual operations. In Vesalius himself – according to Vesalius – the three
spheres had been reunited; this supposed ideal of classical Greek medicine
had been realised afresh. Was physiology part of the role of this ideal, holis-
tic, physician?
But, as Vivian Nutton shows in the essay which opens this collection,
while Galen wrote a great deal about anatomy, he was less enthusiastic
about the role of ‘physiologising’ in medicine. Lending another dimension to
the point that the modern division between anatomy and physiology is itself
a historical construct, for Galen, the term physiology extended well beyond

12 Tansey E.M., “The Physiological Tradition” in Walker Bynum C. – Porter R. (eds.),

Companion Encyclopedia of the History of Medicine (London: 1993), vol. 1. On Harvey as ‘no
physiologist but an anatomist’, see Cunningham, “Old Anatomy – The Sword” 55.
13 Cunningham, Anatomical Renaissance 115.
 introduction 5

later concepts of the normal functioning of an organism and even included

far more than those areas which we would label the life sciences and medi-
cine. Deriving from the Greek phusiologia, in the ancient world physiology
formed part of what is better translated as ‘the enquiry into nature’ rather
than as ‘natural history’, and represented a search for a better understand-
ing of the power of nature and of what is ‘natural’ and ‘contrary to nature’.
In medicine, Galen believed, these types of speculation should hold only a
minor place.
In its original meaning, then, phusiologia was the entire tree, rather
than only one branch. As a predecessor of Galen wrote, ‘The physiological
is that which treats of the investigation, theôria, into the power of nature
that organises and regulates us’.14 As for the modern sense of ‘physiology’,
which is commonly traced back to Jean Fernel, this concept can be traced
back to the fifth century AD; furthermore, Fernel too included anatomy
under the heading of physiology.15 Nutton argues that Fernel used the
term ‘physiology’ in order to emphasise his Greek credentials, and that
it was only in the second half of the nineteenth century that physiology
came to be seen as separate from anatomy.
The discourse of medical paternity sometimes makes Fernel ‘the Father
of Physiology’, but – in comparison with anatomy – the situation is again
less clear. While Herophilus is labelled ‘the Father of Anatomy’ – Vesalius
sometimes rivals him, but as ‘Father of Modern Anatomy’ – who holds
the corresponding role for physiology? Sometimes it is Herophilus’s fel-
low physician Erasistratus, but this in fact imposes on to these two men
a later division, projecting back distinctions that were not made in their
period, the third century BC. Other contenders for ‘the Father of Physi-
ology’ include Herman Boerhaave, William Harvey, and the nineteenth-
century William Sharpey or Claude Bernard, for whom – reversing the
priority order of the previous century – ‘Anatomy is indeed only the first
step in physiology’.16

The movement of fluids

It has become a commonplace that the pre-modern body was ‘a body of

fluids’ rather than a ‘body of organs’, but study of these fluids has thus

14 Galenus, Definitiones medicae 11 (19.351 K.); see below, V. Nutton 29 in this volume.
15 On Fernel, see Cunningham, “Old Physiology – The Pen” 641–648.
16 Cunningham, “Old Physiology – The Pen” 639.
6 helen king

far tended to concentrate on the humours.17 The colloquium as originally

conceived aimed to expand the boundaries and to include studies of non-
humoral fluids such as sweat, semen, urine and tears, as well as more
individual concepts such as the medieval theories of two types of female
seed (discussed here by Karine van ’t Land), Boerhaave’s ‘nervous juice’
or Sabuco’s chilo, studied in Marlen Bidwell-Steiner’s contribution to
this volume.
Specifically, when Manfred Horstmanshoff and Helen King began to
draft the original Call for Papers, Horstmanshoff was beginning a proj-
ect on tears, focusing in particular on the French physician Pierre Petit
(Petrus Petitus, 1617–1687). Pliny the Elder had claimed the capacity to
shed tears as something that defined human beings against other animals,
stating that ‘Man alone Nature deposits naked on the naked ground at
the time of his birth, immediately to wail and cry’ (Natural History 7.2).18
Horstmanshoff noted that the classically-rooted work of Petit, De lacrymis
libri tres (1661), was published in the same year as the Danish anatomist,
geologist, mathematician, theologian, and craftsman Niels Stensen (Nico-
laus Stenonius) defended at the University of Leiden his thesis on the
glands of the human face.19 While the thesis did not discuss the lachry-
mal glands, in December of the same year Stensen published De glandulis
oculorum novisque earundem vasis observationes anatomicae, quibus veri
lacrymarum fontes deteguntur. It was then printed again, with the 1661
dating, within a more accessible book: Observationes anatomicae (1662).
Horstmanshoff was struck by the synchronicity of the 1661 events. The
same year saw a thoroughly ‘classical’ discussion of questions such as how
tears are produced and ‘Whether the substance of tears is already in the
body before weeping, or comes into existence by weeping itself ’, struc-
tured in Aristotelian terms, drawing on Greek and Latin sources as well as

17 Cunningham, The Anatomist Anatomis’d 158 cites Winslow’s 1733 comment that ‘The
history of the fluid parts [. . .] properly belongs to what is called Physiology or the Animal
Oeconomy’.
18 ‘<Natura> hominem tantum nudum et in nuda humo natali die abicit ad vagitus
statim et ploratum’.
19 Stensen’s thesis: Disputatio anatomica de glandulis oris, et nuper observatis inde pro-
deuntibus vasis prima, Leiden, Johannes Elzevir: 1661. De glandulis oculorum novisque ear-
undem vasis observationes anatomicae, quibus veri lacrymarum fontes deteguntur is printed
from 79 in his Observationes anatomicae, Leiden, Jacobus Chouët: 1662. There he says: ‘Ex
hisce glandulis, earumque vasis, qui palpebras inter oculique globum observatur, humor
procedens, per lacrymalia puncta in nares defluit’, ‘The fluid flowing from these glands
and their vessels, observable between the eyelids and the eyeball, flows down through the
punctum lacrimalis into the nose’.
 introduction 7

the Bible and the Church fathers (all seen by Petit as making up a single,
living tradition) and using the concepts of spiritus and humours: but also
a ‘modern’ analysis, based on observation of animal dissection, coming
to the conclusion that the function of tears is simply to irrigate the eyes.20
The role of tears forms part of a wider discussion on the role of the emo-
tions, and how far this changed in the Enlightenment,21 but the synchron-
icity of Petit and Stensen also illustrates well how arguments based on
analogy, and arguments derived from observation and experimentation,
were both being made in 1661. However, at this period, ‘experiment’ could
simply mean ‘experience’.22

Structure and function, movement and stability

How does physiology fit into the ideals of seeing for oneself, and of a
unified medical science? Whereas structure can be discovered by dissec-
tion, function cannot easily be seen in the same way;23 Galen used his
observations from dissection as the basis for his theories of physiology
but, as Véronique Boudon-Millot points out in her chapter in this col-
lection, he was trying to account for ‘a reality that is, by its very nature,
unobservable’.24 His theories of vision, specifically, relied on the invisible
pneuma, which he believed was so thin and light that it escaped even
before the dissection commenced. Boudon-Millot thus extends to the
ancient world Cunningham’s point that physiology could be seen as the
speculative narrative based on the structures shown by anatomical inves-
tigations, but adds the further idea that invisible substances could be used
as the basis of the speculation.25
But it is important to acknowledge that even structure is not ‘given’ to
experience; while some bodily structures, such as a bone or an organ, may
appear to be self-evident entities, even here interpretation is needed. For

20 Existimo itaque lacrymas nihil esse, nisi humorem, qui oculo irrigando destinatus est
(92–93).
21 See Page Bayne S., Tears and Weeping. An Aspect of Emotional Climate Reflected in
Seventeenth-Century French Literature (Tübingen-Paris: 1981) and Lange M.E., Telling Tears
in the English Renaissance (Leiden-New York-Cologne: 1996).
22 Cunningham, “Old Anatomy – The Sword” 60.
23 Cunningham, The Anatomist Anatomis’d 156.
24 See the contribution of V. Boudon-Millot 559 in this volume.
25 Cunningham, “Old Anatomy – The Sword”; see also Cunningham, The Anatomist
Anatomis’d.
8 helen king

example, early modern treatises often regarded the vagina not as a different
organ, but as part of the womb. In early modern medical Latin, the word
vagina could mean what we call ‘the womb’, with what we call the vagina
being regarded as ‘the neck of the womb’.26 In European Sexualities, 1400–
1800 Katherine Crawford notes that ‘Female parts were not distinct enough
to merit separate names’.27 This is rather overstating the situation; while
the late medieval infertility treatises studied by Amy Lindgren show ‘blurry
or even nonexistent’ boundaries between the womb, vulva and female
testes, writers in this period who focused on anatomy did separate out
the ‘neck’ of the womb as a separate structure.28 By the early seventeenth
century, works such as Bauhin’s Theatrum anatomicum (1605) included
the fundus, the os, the cervix and the various parts of the pudendum
externum, among them the clitoris and labia. Because early seventeenth-
century medical writers accepted Galen’s view that women as well as men
produce seed, they organised their discussions of the female generative
parts on the model of the male body, first describing the vessels that pro-
duce, store and evacuate this seed, before moving to the organ of evacu-
ation: the penis or the womb.29 The perception of structure could thus
derive from beliefs about function. Sometimes function led to a belief in
a part of the body that we no longer accept. In this collection, Michael
Stolberg draws our attention to a previously-unstudied aspect of the early
modern body, a space ‘between the flesh and the skin’, which appears to
result from a greater interest in sweat as a means of excreting unhealthy
substances. Valeria Gavrylenko goes back to the Homeric poems to ask
when ‘skin’ became a body part, and argues that, while the terms for ani-
mal skin, or hide, could be applied to humans in poetic language, the
Homeric heroic body is a ‘body without skin’ in which surface and depth
are united, and the whole flesh can ‘melt’ under the impact of emotion.
Even where we agree on the bodily part, our view of it may be very dif-
ferent; for example, Michael McVaugh offers a sense of how our ‘kidney’
differs from that of Mondino.

26 See for example Hobby E. (ed.), Jane Sharp. The Midwives Book, or, the Whole Art of
Midwifry Discovered (New York-Oxford: 1999) xxxi.
27 Crawford K., European Sexualities, 1400–1800 (New York: 2007) 106–108.
28 Lindgren A., The Wandering Womb and the Peripheral Penis. Gender and the Fertile
Body in Late Medieval Infertility Treatises (PhD thesis, University of California, Davis: 2005)
103; 92–93.
29 E.g. Bauhin, Theatrum anatomicum 214; ibidem Institutiones anatomicae 78–80 on the
woman’s ‘vasa spermatica, testes, vasa deferentia seu eiaculatoria’; 80–86 on the womb.
 introduction 9

The characterisation of anatomy as static, physiology as concerned with

motion, also merits historical study. Sabine Kalff looks at seventeenth-
century arguments, that motion was the way to preserve the health of
both bodies and states, proposed by writers outside the area of medi-
cine. Tomas Macsotay’s paper also looks outside medical views of health
and disease to examine how eighteenth-century artists interacted with
medicine in their own explorations of the body. He discusses how artistic
education at the Paris Royal Academy was criticised for relying on the
anatomical model or the posed body, with Diderot proposing the obser-
vation of real people moving about as they performed everyday tasks.
Diderot admired ancient Greek sculptors, while at the same time taking
ideas from Montpellier vitalism.

Analogy and metaphor

In pre-modern medicine, represented for example by Petit, the dominant

model of thinking about the function of the body was an analogical one;
rather than discussing causality, analogies were drawn between bodily
systems, with other aspects of the natural world, and with emerging tech-
nologies. The woodcut we have chosen as our cover image is a striking
example of analogical thinking. In the third part of his encyclopaedia
Ma’aseh Tobiyyah (Work of Tobias), published in Venice in 1708, Tobias
Cohn illustrated the human body as a house (fol. 107 recto).30 One of the
first Jews to study medicine in a German university, Frankfurt-am-Oder,
Cohn moved to Padua because, as a Jew, he could not graduate at Frank-
furt. He then worked in Poland and as a doctor to five successive sultans
in Adrianople and then Constantinople. The house of the body divides
body space so that, for example, the head is the roof, the spleen the cellar,
and the legs the foundations. The functions of the body are seen accord-
ing to a thermodynamic model that uses comparisons with the apparatus
of distillation. Allan has shown how this eclectic representation picks up
analogies used by William Harvey and John Donne; the illustration both
summarises and transmits the Galenic tradition, and incorporates the

30 Allan N., “Illustrations from the Wellcome Institute Library: A Jewish Physician in
the Seventeenth Century”, Medical History 28 (1984) 324–328; 324 n. 1 discusses the date of
this work. On Cohn see http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=656&letter=C
&search=cohn accessed 8 January 2011.
10 helen king

newest discoveries.31 As heat is represented as the motor, the ideas of Des-

cartes and the thermodynamic model of the body are also incorporated.32
We have already noted that, while anatomical structures can be discov-
ered by dissection, function can less readily be seen. A further important
point follows from this; because physiology cannot base its knowledge
on visible structures, it needs to use analogies in a different way. Instead
of linking two visible phenomena, physiological analogies have to con-
ceptualise what cannot be seen by the eye. However, anatomical analo-
gies may then lead to assumptions about physiology. In this collection,
Elizabeth Craik examines the Hippocratic treatise On Glands, which
proposed that ‘glandular parts belong to an integrated system’. Based
on knowledge of comparative anatomy gained in sacrifice and cooking,
these glands are said to be ‘sponge-like’ or ‘fat-like’ in appearance from a
very early date. However, while their appearance was well-known, their
function was less easy to discover. On Glands itself played little part in
early modern discussions, perhaps because it favoured flux theory over
humoralism. Furthermore, as physiology studies processes rather than
structures, for physiology even the term ‘structure’ is misleading, resting
as it does on the claim of an isomeric structural analogy between visible
and invisible parts of bodies. Different types of metaphors are needed in
physiology, in particular those borrowed from art and meteorology, as the
contributions of Tomas Macsotay and Barbara Orland demonstrate here.33
Sabine Kalff concentrates on the ways in which views of dynamic motion
in physiology interacted with the utopian views of Tommaso Campanella
and Francis Bacon, examining in particular the image of the body as a
battlefield, with fever, for example, being seen not as a sign of disorder,
but as part of the process of healing.
Aristotle described how analogy can connect what is not fully under-
stood with what is known. An example would be his own comment that
the formation of the embryo is like the process of turning milk into cheese,
discussed here by Karine van ’t Land. However, the analogy is capable of
more than one use. When Avicenna repeated this analogy, he departed
from it in that he considered that the active principle – the rennet, or
male sperm – itself became part of the final product. Liba Taub’s chapter

31 Allan, “A Jewish Physician in the Seventeenth Century” 327. We thank Ana Resende
for bringing this illustration to our attention.
32 I owe this point to Claus Zittel.
33 See further on this point Zittel C., Theatrum philosophicum. Descartes und die Rolle
aesthetischer Formen in der Wissenschaft (Berlin: 2009).
 introduction 11

discusses the difference between analogy and metaphor, arguing that,

while ‘analogies point to resemblances [. . .] metaphors may include nov-
elty as an important feature’.34 As Daniel Schäfer argues, when discussing
the image of ageing as a fading flame, analogies to natural or cultural pro-
cesses regularly served as starting points for medical thinking, or as confir-
mations of medical conceptions. In the frontispiece to Francis Bacon’s The
Historie of Life and Death (London, Humphrey Mosley: 1638), a work which
Schäfer discusses, scenes of life and death surround the author’s portrait.
This metaphor for ageing immediately draws the reader’s attention to the
obvious analogies between nature and culture which, for Bacon, become
scientific analogies, made possible by the imagination.35 This kind of sci-
entiae analogia36 was not thought to be a law or even a natural structure,
but rather was used as a heuristic tool in the search for experimental
knowledge.37 [Fig. 1]
Schäfer shows both continuity and change in the Early Modern period,
when analogies drawn from iatrochemistry (such as fermentation) and
iatromechanics (the body as a machine wearing out) came into play. Tamás
Demeter’s chapter includes discussion of Hume’s question as to whether
the mind is more like a wind instrument, or a string instrument; imagery
and practice were closely connected, with Prins’s chapter on Ficino look-
ing not only at ‘the music of the pulse’, but also at the use of music to
change the pulse. Kalff shows how Campanella represented the pulse as
a drum, summoning the spirits to battle against a fever. The theme of the
senses is found in many papers in this collection, with hearing and voice
also considered by Wells, and sight by Boudon-Millot and Vanagt.
By the Early Modern period, ancient explanations of physiological phe-
nomena thus existed alongside newly emerging methods of explanation
based on the study of nature. Jacomien Prins, however, draws our atten-
tion to alternative constructions even of ‘nature’; when Marsilio Ficino
talks about it, ‘the “nature” of which [he] speaks is not our observed

34 See the contribution of L. Taub 42 in this volume.

35 See for example Jardine L., “Experientia literata or Novum Organum? The Dilemma
of Bacon’s Scientific Method”, in Sessions W.A. (ed.), Francis Bacon’s Legacy of Texts (New
York: 1990) 47–68; Eamon W., Science and the Secrets of Nature (Princeton, NJ: 1994).
36 Temporis partus masculis, in Bacon Francis, The Works of Francis Bacon, Baron
of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, and Lord High Chancellor of England, eds. Spedding J. –
Ellis R.L. – Heath D.D., 14 vols. (London: 1858–1874), vol. III, 538.
37 See Bacon Francis, Novum Organum, vol. II, nr. 42, in Bacon Francis, The Works of
Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Albans, and Lord High Chancellor of England,
eds. Spedding J. – Ellis R.L. – Heath D.D., 14 vols. (London: 1858–1874), vol. I, 316.
12 helen king

Fig. 1. English of Francis Bacon, The Historie of Life and Death (London, Humphrey
Mosley: 1638); five panels with scenes representing life and death surround the
title in the centre. In the top panel, there are animals, trees and figures in a land-
scape. At the left of this panel is a crowned woman with a wand and the inscrip-
tion ‘Art can slay Natures decay’. To the right, Time holds a book and a scythe.
The inscription here is: ‘Let time Looke on this booke’. To the left of the title
an elderly couple with walking sticks is represented, and to the right mourners
amidst dead livestock, as birds fall from the sky. The bottom section has a portrait
of Francis Bacon at the centre; to the left, a medallion showing dead animals, with
the inscription ‘To death all’, at the right side another depicting tombs and bones,
with the inscription ‘At last fall’. Engraving. © Trustees of the British Museum.
 introduction 13

nature, but the supernatural nature of the intelligible harmonic realm’.

The analogical movement operated in both directions; in meteorology,
geology, cosmology, and political and economic theory, analogies and
metaphors derived from physiology could be used. This was not simply
an early modern phenomenon; Liba Taub’s chapter looks at the use of
physiological analogies in ancient meteorology, an area that would today
be seen as ‘geology’, and shows how the imagery of digestion, in particu-
lar, was applied to other areas of the ancient ‘enquiry into nature’ such as
the cause of earthquakes. She reminds us of Piet Schrijvers’ comments on
Lucretius, noting that the use of physiological analogies, by referring to
the familiarity of the human body, can make otherwise daunting natural
phenomena less terrifying. ‘What’, Taub asks, ‘is more familiar to us than
our own bodies, and the processes they undergo?’38
In the frontispiece to a 1664 publication by Lewenheimb (Philipp
Jakob Sachs von Lewenheimb, 1627–1672),39 we find a rare example of
a pictorial representation of such analogies between meteorology and
physiology. [Fig. 2]
The comparison between the veins of the earth and of the body had
been used to explain weather since Aristotle (Arist. Mete. 32a); it was
still firmly established in the scientific communities of the seventeenth
century,40 and can be found even in Harvey and Descartes. In his Principia
Descartes went so far as to compare explicitly the circulation of the blood
discovered by Harvey, and the weather cycle.41 The French edition of the
Principia includes further interesting additions: ‘De façon que le cours de
l’eau en cette Terre imite celuy du sang dans le corps des animaux, où il

38 Schrijvers P., “Seeing the Invisible: A Study of Lucretius’ Use of Analogy in De rerum
natura”, in Gale M. (ed.), Oxford Readings in Classical Studies. Lucretius (Oxford: 2007)
255–288; see the contribution of L. Taub 58 in this volume.
39 For Lewenheimb see Margulis L. – Sagan D., Dazzle Gradually. Reflections on the
Nature of Nature (White River Junction, VT: 2007) 157–158.
40 Cf. Perrig A. “Leonardo: die Anatomie der Erde”, Jahrbuch der Hamburger Kunst-
sammlungen 25 (1980) 51–80. Thanks to Claus Zittel for this example and for the bibliog-
raphy discussing it.
41 ‘Atque ita, ut animalium sanguis in eorum venis et arteriis, sic aqua in terrae venis
et in fluviis circulariter fluit’, Descartes, Principia, vol. IV § 6, Adam C. – Tannery P. (eds.),
Œuvres de Descartes (Paris: 1897–1913), vol. VIII, 244). Cf. Harvey, De motu cordis ch. 8;
Gregory A., “Harvey, Aristotle and the Weather Cycle”, Studies in History and Philosophy of
Biological and Biomedical Sciences 32 (2001) 153–168; Pulkkinen J., “The Role of Metaphors
in William Harvey’s Thought”, in Zittel C. – Engel G. – Nanni R. (eds.), Philosophies of Tech-
nology. Francis Bacon and his Contemporaries (Leiden-Boston: 2008) 253–286.
14 helen king

Fig. 2. Frontispiece to Philippi Jacobi Sachs a Lewenheimb, Phil. et Med. D. et

Collegii Naturae-Curiosorum Collegae Oceanus Macro-Microcosmicus seu Disser-
tatio Epistolica De Analogo Motu Aquarum ex et ad Oceanum, Sanguinis ex et ad
Cor. / ad [. . .] Dn. Thomam Bartholinum, Medicum et Anatomicum Incomparabilem
Professorem Regium Honorarium, et Decanum Fac. in Regia Hafnensi Perpetuum
(Wroclaw, Fellgiebel: 1664).
 introduction 15

fait un cercle en coulant sans cesse fort promptement de leurs veines en

leurs arteres, et de leurs arteres en leurs veines’.42

Change, continuity and authority

A major theme of this collection is that what appears to be ‘new’ in early

modern writing may not in fact be new at all, but may derive from the
ancient texts with which writers in early modern Europe were often very
familiar. Many ideals of Greek medicine were inherited by Renaissance
and early modern writers. Claims are still made for the ‘Greek miracle’;
for the origin of rationality in medicine, the retreat from superstition and
magic, and the emergence of the belief that natural causes lie behind dis-
ease, and that natural substances can cure it. This can of course be over-
stated; the Hippocratic writers of the classical Greek period rarely attack
religion, for example, and where they do, they attack individual wander-
ing healers but not the religion of the city-state. In Greek medicine, there
is always debate; there are claims to knowledge in which it is important
where that knowledge came from. Contrary to the standard legend of the
historiography of science, which locates only in the Early Modern period
the shift from the ‘book’ of the classical authority to first-hand observa-
tion by the individual, such claims are often based on one’s own eyes –
‘I myself have seen’, as in Nature of the Child 13 where the writer claims to
have seen a very early conception – or in the appeal to the individual case
history, to the patient, as in the seven books of the Hippocratic Epidemics.
This raises questions about the validity of experience, and the relevance
of the individual case. Rina Knoeff ’s paper for this collection shows how
Boerhaave was doing ‘armchair medicine’, based ‘on conceptual reason-
ing; it was a medical system which had little to do with the discussion
and treatment of individual cases’. In this sense, early modern physiology
was a long way from the idealisation of observation and the individual
case of Hippocratic Greece. Even the concept of ‘empirical research’ was
very different in the Early Modern period, a point addressed by Marlen
Bidwell-Steiner. Rainer Brömer reminds us of the conflicts in the Islamic
world between those who followed the Greek philosophers and those who
argued from ‘scripture and prophetic traditions’.

42 Descartes, Principes, in Œuvres de Descartes, vol. IX, 237.

16 helen king

After the Middle Ages, Aristotle continued to dominate the field of sci-
entific writing, and perhaps most famously has been seen as contributing
to Harvey’s work by suggesting that the circle is the most perfect shape,
but many other ancient texts continued to hold appeal for Renaissance
and early modern scientists; for example, Lucretius’ De rerum natura, dis-
cussed here by Fabio Tutrone, who focuses on Lucretius’ views on the
nature of ‘matter’ and his role in the acceptance of atomistic theories in
sixteenth- and seventeenth-century physiology; or Hippocrates, regarded
by Boerhaave as compatible with Harvey. Stoic and Epicurean philoso-
phy also had a lasting influence on images of the body, as Bidwell-Steiner
argues when looking at sixteenth-century Italian and Spanish writers. In
his True Intellectual System of the Universe (1678), Ralph Cudworth pre-
sented the great thinkers of the past and the present as forming a continu-
ous thread of insight, offering answers to the same questions, but using
terminology that had often obscured the concordance between them. As
Diana Stanciu shows here, his concept of ‘plastic nature’ drew on sources
including Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, the Stoics, Galen, Harvey, Paracelsus
and van Helmont. Cudworth presented plastic nature as an immaterial
and immanent force in both nature and living things, thus offering a chal-
lenge to a mechanistic physiology in the style of Descartes. Tracing the
reception of Ibn al-Nafīs and his supposed ‘discovery’ of the pulmonary
transit, Rainer Brömer reminds us that links existed not only across time,
but also across space, in this case between opposite ends of the Mediter-
ranean, and across the Muslim world.
Furthermore, where technological change may lead us to expect that
ancient ideas would be challenged, this was not necessarily the case. Some-
times analogies could be adapted to fit a new situation. Tamás Demeter
concentrates on the eighteenth century, after Newton, and challenges the
view according to which Hume drew from mechanical models, arguing
instead that he was closer to vitalist physiology. Hume, Demeter argues,
applied the ‘language of natural phenomena to the moral domain’.
In the seventeenth century, the new technology of microscopy con-
firmed the established view that the skin was porous, and shifted the focus
from the substance to the spaces in between, but Mieneke te Hennepe
shows here how the ancient image of a fisherman’s net, taken from Plato’s
Timaeus, continued to be used. The intellectual approach to the skin altered,
but – despite some evidence of patients experiencing their bodies differ-
ently because of the new knowledge – not the practical expression of this
knowledge in medical treatment. Microscopic viewing of the skin was fol-
lowed by an increased interest in the physiology of sweat. Michael Stolberg
 introduction 17

also examines changes in the understanding of skin in this period, includ-

ing the argument that visible sweat was produced by specific tiny glands,
with ‘insensible transpiration’ occurring through tiny pores. Above all, he
emphasises the enormous range of types of sweat that can be found in
early modern medical writing.

Spirits and blood

Across the papers collected here, two aspects of physiology recur in many
different guises: spirits and blood. The first is alien to us, and invisible,
while the second is all too familiar to our experience, but we may be sur-
prised at the range of variations in each that can be explored.
Julius Rocca, for example, focuses on the role of ‘spirits’ in the body. He
looks at Galen’s ‘natural pneuma’, showing how valuable it is in thinking
about the body precisely because it is ‘indeterminate, invisible, and, above
all, malleable’.43 He traces its origins and also its fortunes in Galenism,
in both late antique and Arabic medicine, showing how, as an analogical
model, it survived especially in non-experimental physiological systems.
Brömer examines the role of ‘spirit’, and the substance from which it is
made, in Ibn al-Nafīs, arguing that it is the theological basis of the argu-
ment, rather than any anatomical study of the body, that leads Ibn al-Nafīs
to argue against a permeable septum in the heart. Sergius Kodera argues
for the role of the technology of distillation in transforming the role of
‘spirits’ in the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries; ‘spirits’ provided a model
by which physiological phenomena such as digestion could be explained,
accounted for human ageing, and provided explanations for health and
disease that differed from those offered by the humoral system. Kodera
contrasts the Neoplatonic Ficino, who used the imagery of distillation but
did not appear to have been involved with the practical use of the still,
with the Paracelsian Duchesne, who used the knowledge he had gained
from observation in his personal experience of distilling liquors. Kodera
shows how the art of distillation could apply to both the macrocosm and
the microcosm; in the work of Bacon, the body is a still, and cooling all of
the body except the stomach is necessary to keep the ‘spirits’ in check and
prolong life. In another version, proposed by Bernardino Telesio, ‘spirits’
also feature in the papers of Tutrone, Kalff and Bidwell-Steiner, while the

43 See the contribution of J. Rocca 634 in this volume.

18 helen king

role of pneuma in vision is discussed by Boudon-Millot. Vanagt’s paper

on the development of the camera obscura illustrates the challenges to
‘spirits’ in accounts of the process of seeing, and the use of physiological
experiments to cut through the apparent impasse between the differing
views concerning sight in the ancient authorities; in 1632, looking at the
camera obscura from a medical point of view, Plempius urged his readers
to dissect for themselves the eye of a freshly-butchered ox.
Several papers address different aspects of blood, one of the canonical
four humours, but important far beyond the others in conceptions of the
body. Their authors note not only that there were thought to be different
kinds of blood, as Catrien Santing shows for Andrea Cesalpino in particu-
lar, but also that fluids can be understood as being composed of other
fluids – thus, blood includes water and serum – with ideas about one fluid
influencing those about another. The word serum, as Stolberg reminds
us, comes from the Latin for ‘whey’, the liquid by-product of cheesemak-
ing. The skin is thus represented as a sieve. McVaugh looks at early dis-
cussions of whether the kidney is a strainer, separating liquid from solid,
or a sieve, removing smaller solid particles and not the larger; for Galen,
sometimes it is one, but sometimes the other. McVaugh argues that ‘Galen
appears to think mechanically up to the point where he has to conclude
that mechanical explanation will no longer work, at which point he turns
to attraction as an explanatory principle’.
Barbara Orland discusses the use of analogy in thinking about the
unseen parts of the body, taking as her focus the analogy between blood
and milk, derived from Aristotle. The analogy worked both ways: milk
could be seen as ‘white blood’ while blood could be seen as ‘slightly
coloured’ milk. The model survived to the nineteenth century, but it is
important to understand how it was adjusted in order to survive in dif-
ferent contexts. Indeed, how far was this an ‘analogy’, and how far did it
indicate that the two fluids were seen as different forms of a single fluid?
Using Cornelis Bontekoe’s Life, Health, Illness and Death (1684), Orland
counters Laqueur’s claims for the ‘fungibility’ of fluids,44 instead insist-
ing that blood and milk were seen as different substances, while Bidwell-
Steiner shows how, a century earlier, Oliva Sabuco had challenged the
idea that sperm and milk were formed from blood.

44 Laqueur T., Making Sex. Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, MA:
1990).
 introduction 19

This interest in the transformation of fluids and the degree to which

they are separate is common to many papers here. Marion Wells draws
our attention to Webster’s Duchess of Malfi, where Bosola says of his unex-
pected tears, ‘These tears, I am very certain, never grew | In my mother’s
milk’. A similar interest can be found in Jacomien Prins’s comments on the
Italian Renaissance philosopher Marsilio Ficino, for whom phlegm comes
out through sweat and tears while, in the harmonious body, the blood
should contain an ideal balance of the other humours. Michael McVaugh
links the question of analogy to that of the relationships between bodily
fluids; Berengario da Carpi uses a complex analogy in which sweat, milk
and urine come together, so that urine is ‘sweated out like milk from
the breast’. Michael Stolberg notes how, in Galen, sweat and urine were
formed from the same matter, and both contained bile, while inadequate
loss of one of the two fluids could be compensated by a greater evacua-
tion of the other.
In order to explore how the analogy between blood and milk was used
in medical practice, Orland looks at the fields of generation, where the sup-
posed ‘sympathy’ between womb and breasts was regarded as a possible
source of disease, and nutrition, particularly of the foetus. Orland investi-
gates in particular how the analogy survived when a humoral model was
replaced in the seventeenth century by the mechanical ‘hydraulic body’,
and when the amniotic fluid came to be seen not as waste material, but
as a form of milk. She concludes that blood came to be seen as ‘red milk’,
while ‘milk’ was set in a new relation to ‘white chyle’. Interestingly, she
argues, the idea of blood circulation served only to strengthen the old
assumptions about materials moving within the body.
Blood in the female body is also discussed by Baert, Sidgwick and Kusters,
who examine the representation in the late antique and early medieval
world of the Biblical figure of the ‘woman with the issue of blood’, healed
by touching the hem of Christ’s garment. The story was used to articulate
concerns about menstruation and purity, with the Haemorrhoissa being
enlisted on both sides of the debate. While visual arts shied away from
showing her bleeding, they suggested this with strategically-placed wells
or fountains. Meanwhile the materials of magical healing – gems, amulets
and spells – used her as a figure of power, not only because of the power
she draws from Christ, but also because of her own faith in believing in
his healing potential. Catrien Santing emphasises the close connections
between Christian and medical approaches to blood in the sixteenth cen-
tury. The subject of one of her two case studies, Levinus Lemnius, praised
the man dominated by the humour of blood, but embedded his Galenic
20 helen king

views within a firmly Christian framework. The other, Andrea Cesalpino,

linked the four blood vessels of the heart to the four rivers of Paradise.
In medieval and early modern medical writing, menstrual blood was
seen both as ‘filthy’ and as laudable since, although it was regularly
expelled, it also acted as nourishment for the foetus. Wells invites us
to consider the pregnant body as a location in which the foetal mind is
affected by the mental state of its mother. Karine van ’t Land looks at the
connections between generation and nutrition; in both processes, creat-
ing respectively a new being, and new tissue, blood was thought to play
a central role. She charts the complex variations on the fluids blood and
semen, starting from the point that ‘According to the medieval medical
tradition, sperm and menstrual blood left their traces in the body during
the whole course of life’. Some parts – those that were hard and white,
like the bones – were thought to derive from semen, others from blood.
But this was by no means the end of the story. Both sexes produced two
different types of ‘sperm’, while the term menstruum could in medieval
literature include ‘female sperm’. Concentrating on four medieval com-
mentaries on Avicenna, van ’t Land shows how tissue formed from dif-
ferent fluids was thought to behave differently during a person’s life, with
parts formed from blood having a greater capacity to regenerate than
those formed from sperm; this, then, concerned far more than genera-
tion. Bidwell-Steiner introduces us to a very different model of the female
body, proposed by a woman; the seventeenth-century Oliva Sabuco,
whose maternal metaphors were part of a materialist model of the body in
which menstrual blood nourished the single fluid which, for her, replaced
the three Galenic spirits.

Conclusion

While the papers collected here show the different possible meanings of
‘physiology’ and help us to see that ideas about the function of the body
are historically specific and culturally determined, what wider lessons for
the history of medicine and of the body can be taken from these studies?
The most important may simply be to bear in mind the links between
different genres of writing. For example, Lewenheimb and Lohenstein
shared a publisher, and this could facilitate the exchange of physiological
metaphors and concepts between medicine and literature, a topic covered
here by the papers of Wells and Kalff. In Lohenstein’s plays, for instance in
his Agrippina (1665), the temperaments of the characters are explained by
 introduction 21

using the physiological concepts of the time; the hearts of Agrippina and
Nero are sometimes soft or hard, cold or hot.45
Several papers challenge the periodisation of the history of the body
and our tendency to set up milestones. For example, as we have seen,
Nutton argues against the ‘traditional ascription to Jean Fernel of the cre-
ation of physiology as a specific area of medicine’ while McVaugh takes
issue with those who wish to identify Mondino, Vesalius or Malphighi as
discoverers of the modern kidney: ‘changes were already occurring in the
perception of that organ well before Malpighi wrote, indeed before Har-
vey’s proclamation of the circulation in 1628’.46 The collection as a whole
also challenges the category of ‘Early Modern’, as it illustrates the conti-
nuities between the Ancient and the Modern world, and includes several
papers that examine the Enlightenment. Tomas Macsotay, for example,
looks at medical knowledge in eighteenth-century philosophers, focusing
on the relationship between medicine and artistic production, in partic-
ular how images of suffering were read, while Tamás Demeter looks at
Hume’s relationship both to mechanism and to vitalism. Rainer Brömer
further challenges our need to create a story of discovery, in this case
of ‘the circulation of the blood’, showing that ‘when Ibn al-Nafīs, Servet,
İtaki, al-’Aṭṭār, and finally the twentieth-century historians of medicine
talk about the structure and function of the cardio-pulmonary system,
they are not speaking of the same “thing” ’.47
Many contributors also interrogate the concept of ‘humoral’ medi-
cine. Wells, for example, uses Webster’s Duchess of Malfi to investigate
how valid a humoral model was for interpreting mental symptoms in
the seventeenth century, and asks whether the passions caused humoral
imbalance, or humoral imbalance generated the passions, a question
also addressed by Santing. Stahnisch argues that, by the end of the eigh-
teenth century, conditions formerly linked to the humours were coming
to be more closely tied to specific bodily organs. Several essays introduce
very different ways of modelling the body, such as Telesio’s view that

45 Cf. Brancaforte C., “Liebesmetaphorik in Lohensteins Agrippina im Lichte wissen-

schaftlicher Debatten des 17. Jahrhunderts”, Daphnis 12 (1983) 305–320; Rahn T., “Affektpa-
thologische Aspekte und therapeutische Handlungszitate in Lohensteins ‘Agrippina’ ” in
Benzenhöfer U. – Kühlmann W. (eds.), Heilkunde und Krankheitserfahrung in der Frühen
Neuzeit. Studien am Grenzrain von Literaturgeschichte und Medizingeschichte (Tübingen:
1992) 201–227 and Rahn T., “Anmerkungen zur Physiologie der Liebesblicke in Lohensteins
‘Agrippina’ ”, Simpliciana 14 (1992) 163–176. I owe these references to Claus Zittel.
46 See 105 in this volume.
47 See 359–360 in this volume.
22 helen king

conflict between the Sun and Earth was responsible for all things (Bidwell-
Steiner), or Campanella’s presentation of hot and cold as the adversarial
forces, their rivalry having a creative effect (Kalff ).
One aspect that we would like to have addressed in more detail is that
of the patient’s experience of the body. Frank Stahnisch addresses the
theme of tears through the experiences of a famous patient, Johann Got-
tfried von Herder. He argues that Herder’s experiences not only of suf-
fering from repeated infections due to a blocked tear duct, but also of
unsuccessful surgical treatment, led him to examine the place of tears
in the human condition, first through medical training and then through
philosophy and theology. As a result, Herder went beyond Haller’s theo-
ries of ‘irritability’ and looked forward to a future ‘physiologist of both the
soul and the body of man’ (‘Ein Physiologe der Seele und des Koerpers des
Menschen’).48 The place of the soul, and of consciousness, in the body is
another area which we would like to have developed; for example, Brömer
discusses the corporeality of the soul in Islamic medicine, and Stanciu
looks at Cudworth’s metaphor of the ‘sleeping musician’, whose musical
skill is still within him, even when he is not himself conscious of it.
Nevertheless, we hope that the individual papers presented here, as well
as this collection as a whole, will present a challenge to existing master
narratives of ‘continuity’ and ‘progress’, by showing the many variations
across time and space in early modern Europe, broadly conceived. We
would like to see this book as the start of a process of greater dialogue
not only between those working in different periods, but also different
academic disciplines. The relative ranking of physiology and anatomy has
shifted over time, with physiology being seen as the prior field of knowl-
edge; as the speculative side of anatomy; and as a sub-discipline of anat-
omy. But only if we talk to each other, and share our knowledge, will we
be able to understand what physiology meant in the past.

48 Herder J.G. von, Zum Sinn des Gefuehls (1800) in Pross, “Herder – Werke”, vol. II,
244.
 introduction 23

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Seventeenth Century”, Medical History 28 (1984) 324–328.
Bacon Francis, The Works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, and
Lord High Chancellor of England, eds. Spedding J. – Ellis R.L. – Heath D.D. (London:
1858–1874).
Bauhin Caspar, Institutiones Anatomicae Corporis Virilis et Muliebris Historiam Exhibentes
(Berne?, J. Le Preux: 1604).
——, Theatrum anatomicum (Frankfurt, M. Becker: 1605).
Bontekoe Cornelis, Korte verhandeling van’s menschen leven, gesondheit, siekte, en dood,
begrepen in een drie ledige reden (The Hague, Pieter Hagen: 1684).
Brancaforte C., “Liebesmetaphorik in Lohensteins Agrippina im Lichte wissenschaftli-
cher Debatten des 17. Jahrhunderts”, Daphnis 12 (1983) 305–320.
Cohn Tobias, Ma’aseh Tobiyyah (Venice, Bragadin Press: 1708).
Crawford K., European Sexualities, 1400–1800 (New York: 2007).
Cudworth Ralph, The True Intellectual System of the Universe (London: 1678).
Cunningham A., The Anatomical Renaissance. The Revival of the Anatomy Projects of the
Ancients (Aldershot: 1997).
——, The Anatomist Anatomis’d. An Experimental Discipline in Enlightenment Europe
(Aldershot: 2010).
——, “The Pen and the Sword: Recovering the Disciplinary Identity of Physiology and
Anatomy before 1800 I: Old Physiology – The Pen”, Studies in History and Philosophy of
Science Part C. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 33
(2002) 631–665.
——, “The Pen and the Sword: Recovering the Disciplinary Identity of Physiology and
Anatomy before 1800 II: Old Anatomy – The Sword”, Studies in History and Philosophy
of Science Part C. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
34 (2003) 51–76.
Descartes, René, Œuvres de Descartes, eds. Adam C. – Tannery P., Paris: 1897–1913.
Des Chene D., Life’s Form. Late Aristotelian Conceptions of the Soul (Ithaca, NY: 2000).
——, Physiologia. Natural Philosophy in Late Aristotelian and Cartesian Philosophy (Ithaca,
NY: 1996).
Eamon W., Science and the Secrets of Nature (Princeton, NJ: 1994).
Egmond F. – Zwijnenberg R. (eds.), Bodily Extremities. Preoccupations with the Human
Body in Early Modern European Culture (Aldershot: 2003).
Gregory A., “Harvey, Aristotle and the Weather Cycle”, Studies in History and Philosophy
of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 32 (2001) 153–168.
Hall T., History of Physiology 200 BC to AD 1900 (Chicago: 1975).
Hillman D. – Mazzi C. (eds.), The Body in Parts. Fantasies of Corporeality in Early Modern
Europe (London-New York: 1997).
Hobby E. (ed.), Jane Sharp. The Midwives Book, or, the Whole Art of Midwifry Discovered
(New York-Oxford: 1999).
Huisman T., The Finger of God. Anatomical Practice in 17th-century Leiden (Leiden: 2009).
Hunter William, Two Introductory Lectures, Delivered by Dr William Hunter, to his Last
Course of Anatomical Lectures (London, Printed by order of the Trustees, for J. Johnson:
1784).
Jardine L., “Experientia literata or Novum Organum? The Dilemma of Bacon’s Scien-
tific Method”, in Sessions W.A. (ed.), Francis Bacon’s Legacy of Texts (New York: 1990)
47–68.
King H., “Inside and Outside, Cavities and Containers: The Organs of Generation in
Seventeenth-Century English Medicine” in Baker P. – Land-van Wesenbeeck K. van ’t
(eds.), Medicine and Space. Body, Surroundings, and Borders in Antiquity and the Middle
Ages (Leiden: 2011) 37–60.
24 helen king

Lange M.E., Telling Tears in the English Renaissance (Leiden-New York-Cologne: 1996).
Laqueur T., Making Sex. Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, Mass.:
1990).
Lindgren A., The Wandering Womb and the Peripheral Penis. Gender and the Fertile Body in
Late Medieval Infertility Treatises (Davis: 2005) (PhD thesis, University of California).
Margulis L. – Sagan D., Dazzle Gradually. Reflections on the Nature of Nature (White River
Junction, VT: 2007).
Page Bayne S., Tears and Weeping. An Aspect of Emotional Climate Reflected in Seventeenth-
Century French Literature (Tübingen-Paris: 1981).
Park K., Secrets of Women. Gender, Generation and the Origins of Human Dissection
(Brooklyn, NY: 2006).
Perrig A. “Leonardo: Die Anatomie der Erde”, Jahrbuch der Hamburger Kunstsammlungen
25 (1980) 51–80.
Petitus Petrus, De lacrymis libri tres (Paris, Claudius Cramoisy: 1661).
Porter J. (ed.), Constructions of the Classical Body (Ann Arbor, MI: 1999).
Pulkkinnen J., “The Role of Metaphors in William Harvey’s Thought”, in Zittel C. –
Engel G. – Nanni R. (eds.), Philosophies of Technology. Francis Bacon and his Contempo-
raries (Leiden-Boston: 2008) 253–286.
Rahn T., “Affektpathologische Aspekte und therapeutische Handlungszitate in Lohensteins
‘Agrippina’ ”, Benzenhöfer U. – Kühlmann W. (eds.), Heilkunde und Krankheitserfahrung
in der Frühen Neuzeit. Studien am Grenzrain von Literaturgeschichte und Medizinge-
schichte (Tübingen: 1992) 201–227 [= Frühe Neuzeit 10].
——, “Anmerkungen zur Physiologie der Liebesblicke in Lohensteins ‘Agrippina’ ”, Sim-
pliciana 14 (1992) 163–176.
Rothschuh K., History of Physiology, tr. Risse G. (Huntington, NY: 1973).
Santing C., The Heart of the Matter. Signification and Iconic Reification of Human Remains
at the Papal Court, c. 1450–1600 (forthcoming).
Schrijvers P., “Seeing the Invisible: A Study of Lucretius’ Use of Analogy in De rerum
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bus vasis prima (Leiden, Johannes Elzevir: 1661).
——, Observationes Anatomicae, quibus varia oris, oculorum, et narcium vasa describun-
tur, novique salivae, lacrymarum et muci fontes deteguntur, et novum nobilissimi Bilsii
de lymphae motu et usu commentum examinatur et rejicitur (Leiden, Jacobus Chouët:
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Encyclopedia of the History of Medicine (London: 1993), vol. 1.
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Wissenschaft (Berlin: 2009).
 PART ONE

HISTORY OF PHYSIOLOGY IN CONTEXT:

CONCEPTS, METAPHORS, ANALOGIES
 PHYSIOLOGIA FROM GALEN TO JACOB BORDING

Vivian Nutton

Summary

Jean Fernel is frequently quoted as the Father of Physiology. Yet the word and
concept in medicine can be traced back at least to the first century AD, and it
became one of the standard divisions of medicine in late-antique Galenism. Galen
himself is ambivalent as to its value within medicine. In 1542 Fernel produced
his recasting of Avicenna’s Canon in a more Galenic form under the title, On the
Natural Part of Medicine. It encompassed elements, mixtures, humours, spirits,
faculties and anatomy, standard features of medieval Galenism. In 1554, in his
second edition, Fernel (or his editor) altered the title to Physiologia, but without
making any substantial changes to his text. For Fernel, and for his successors
down to the nineteenth century, anatomy, in the sense of a description of the
body’s structures, remained an essential part of all treatises entitled Physiology,
and vice-versa.

This paper is an appeal for clarity, not because of a wish to accuse others
of obfuscation, but because of the ambiguities inherent in the very term
‘physiology’. The definition of physiology has altered over the centuries,
and, indeed, is still changing; and what doctors understood by physiol-
ogy in the twentieth century, and, as a consequence, the concepts which
twenty-first century historians bring to writing about earlier medicine,
differ from the use of the word in the sixteenth century, let alone in the
period of the Roman Empire. It is a failure to take due note of this fluidity
that lies behind the traditional ascription to Jean Fernel of the creation
of physiology as a specific area of medicine. This accolade, which goes
back at least to the distinguished physiologist Sir Charles Sherrington, is
more than a little dubious, for what Fernel and his successors for centu-
ries understood by the term was far wider than Sherrington and his fol-
lowers have believed.1

1 Sherrington C., The Endeavour of Jean Fernel (Cambridge: 1945), entitles his central
chapter, 60–97, ‘The earliest physiology’. By contrast, Figard L., Un médecin philosophique
au XVIe siècle (Paris: 1903) 60, rightly declared that ‘Il y a dans la Physiologie de Fernel
beaucoup de métaphysique et peu de physiologie au sens que nous le donnons’ (emphasis
mine).
28 vivian nutton

For enlightenment on the history of physiology English readers natu-

rally turn to the classic two volumes by Thomas S. Hall, published forty
years ago under the title, Ideas of Life and Matter. Studies in the History
of General Physiology, a more appropriate title than that of the second
impression of 1975, History of General Physiology. Publishers, as we shall
see, have a greater deal of responsibility for misinformation than authors.
Hall set his excellent survey of some aspects of the history of physiology
into the wider context of an enquiry into essential differences between liv-
ing and non-living things, to ‘the global exploration of life which it seems
proper to call general physiology’.2 His examples include respiration,
assimilation, developmental differentiation, indeed almost any activity of
an organism. A similar list can be found in Fulton and Wilson’s selec-
tion of texts on the history of physiology, but like Karl Rothschuh, neither
author bothers to define physiology.3 More interesting, for my purposes, is
the example of Kenneth Franklin a generation earlier in his Short History
of Physiology. Having rightly observed in his introduction that ‘the limita-
tion of physiology to knowledge of the normal functioning of organisms or
their constituent parts is an innovation of the last 100 years, i.e. post-1840’,
he then proceeded to ignore his own advice in the rest of his book.4
My point here is to post a warning notice, no more, to those who agree
with Hall in thinking of physiology solely as the study of the activities
and processes of the body. One should be careful about assuming that
when an ancient or a Renaissance doctor talked in terms of physiology he
understood by it what we mean today. It is well known, certainly among
classicists, that, for the most part, when the Greeks used the word phys-
iologia and its cognates, they were referring not to a branch of medicine
but to an investigation into nature as a whole. Several of the pre-Socratics
are said to have practised physiologein, and although we may prefer to see
the word as a coinage of the fourth rather than the fifth or sixth century
BC, there can be no doubt that within a generation of Aristotle’s death, if
not sooner, the word had entered common use. Certainly, by using Physi-
ologos as the title of a play at the end of the fourth century, the comedian

2 Hall T.S., History of General Physiology 600 B.C. to A.D. 1900 (Chicago-London: 1975) ix.
The first edition was published by the same press in 1969.
3 See the list of contents in Fulton J.F. ­– Wilson L.G., Selected Readings in the History of
Physiology (Springfield, Il.: 1966) vii.
4 Franklin K.J., A Short History of Physiology, ed. 2 (London-New York: 1949) 13. Roth-
schuh K., History of Physiology (Huntington, NY: 1973) (originally in German, 1953) says
nothing about Fernel. He says more about Fernel in his Physiologie. Der Wandel ihrer Kon-
zepte, Probleme und Methoden vom 16. bis 19. Jahrhundert (Freiburg-Munich: 1968) 41–47.
 physiologia from galen to jacob bording 29

Sopater was telling his audience in advance who was going to be the butt
of his jokes, and expecting them to laugh at the peculiarities of a natural
scientist.5
When the word physiologia entered medical discourse is uncertain, but
it was certainly before the time of Galen, for the author of the pseudo-
Galenic Medical Definitions specifies as one of the five standard divisions
of medicine, ‘which some people have called species, the physiological,
the pathognomonic, the dietetic, the material, and the therapeutic. The
physiological is that which treats of the investigation, theoria, into the
power of nature that organises and regulates us’.6 It was also known to
the Methodist Soranus, writing his Gynaecology in the early years of the
second century AD, for his tripartite division also includes physiology.7
That the physiological was a particular favourite of dogmatic or ratio-
nalist doctors by contrast with the Methodists or Empiricists is stressed
by another pseudo-Galenic writer, the author of the Introduction to Medi-
cine.8 He appeals to Hippocrates for the notion that the study of nature is
the foundation of medicine, paraphrasing Places in Man 2.1, and asserting
that the rationalists emphasise physiology for two reasons.9 It allows them
firstly to understand the natural state of an individual body in order to
determine the extent to which any phenomenon is natural or unnatural,
and, secondly, to use their knowledge of the nature of their remedies to
select whatever is most appropriate to a given case.10 This author, too,
includes the physiological among five canonical subdivisions of medicine,

5 Sopater, quoted by Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 3.101a.

6 Galenus, Definitiones medicae 11 (19.351 K.). For the date of this author, an older con-
temporary of Galen, see Kollesch J., Untersuchungen zu den pseudogalenischen Definitiones
medicae (Berlin: 1993).
7 Soranus, Gynaecia 1.1.2 and 3.3.5.
8 Galenus, Introductio seu medicus 7 (14.689–690 K.). The author is also likely to have
been a contemporary of Galen, see Petit C., Edition critique, traduction et commentaire de
l’Introductio sive Medicus du Pseudo-Galien (Thesis Paris IV–Sorbonne: 2004) LIII–LVIII.,
LXIV–LXV; published as (ed., trans.) Galien. Tome III. Le Médecin. Introduction (Paris: Les
Belles Letters, 2009).
9 For this tract, see now Craik E.M., Hippocrates, Places in Man (Oxford: 1998), although,
30, she refuses to commit herself to identifying this and other passages in Definitions as
coming from Places in Man. The choice of text is interesting, not least because Places in
Man is not rated highly by Galen, who appeals far more often to the more famous On the
Nature of Man; see the references in Galen assembled by Anastassiou A. – Irmer D., Testi-
monien zum Corpus Hippocraticum (Göttingen: 1997–2006), vol. II.1, 322–327, II.2, 249–251,
and cf. I.297, 301. The author’s preference for Places in Man is further proof that a more
rigid Hippocratism developed after Galen; see Nutton, V. “The Fatal Embrace: Galen and
the History of Medicine”, Science in Context 18 (2005) 111–121.
10 Galen, Introd. s. medic. 2 (14.677–678 K.). Similar comments at 8 (14.695 K.).
30 vivian nutton

which, unlike the author of Definitions, he then subdivides further into

three: ‘The five basic divisions of medicine are as follows, the physiologi-
cal, the aetiological or pathological, the hygienic, the semiotic and the
therapeutic. Athenaeus uses “the material” instead of “the semiotic”.
The physiological is that part where we discuss the natural make-up (to
phusikon) of Mankind. It is divided further into three parts, an account of
the elements of which Mankind is constituted, genesis and foetal develop-
ment, and, thirdly, the investigation of the internal and external parts of
the body when we dissect or describe the bones’.
Ludwig Englert suggested that this five-fold division long antedated the
age of Galen, arguing, probably rightly, that if it is Athenaeus of Attaleia
who is said to have held a different opinion about one of the constituents,
then that definition must already have been current around 80 AD.11 His
further suggestion that in some way or other it went back to Erasistratus
in the early third century BC is, however, implausible, even if it would pro-
vide some justification for one of the surprises in this investigation: Galen’s
less than fulsome praise of physiologia.12 In the opening chapter of On the
Divisions of the Medical Art, Galen uses physiology and pathology to exem-
plify subdivisions within medicine that have been introduced relatively
recently, and are not universally accepted. He repeats this view later on in
chapter 6, attributing the creation of these subdivisions to the very vague
‘some people’, but refraining from endorsing them himself.13 Elsewhere,
his use of both noun and verb typically retains much of the original sense
of the word as an investigation into the phusis, the nature, of a thing: he
talks, for example, of those who physiologise about thunder, the weather or
water.14 At other times he uses the word to characterise the ways in which
his teachers or his opponents adopt different ways of understanding the
whole natural world, of which mankind is but one part, i.e. the underlying

11 Englert L., Untersuchungen zu Galens Schrift Thrasybulos (Leipzig: 1929) 22–23. The
fact that Celsus a generation earlier does not use the term or this division might suggest
that this division was devised around AD 70, but the argument from silence is weak.
12 Englert may have been misled by Galen’s discussion of Erasistratus’ relationship to
the physiological theories of others at De facultatibus naturalibus 2.4 (2.88–92 K.), which
proves only that Galen believed that Erasistratus had adopted a wrong basic physiology,
not that he had used the term to describe his activities. Rothschuh, Physiology 13, wrongly
declares that Galen used the word only once, citing the pseudo-Galenic Introduction.
13 Galenus, De partibus artibus medicativae 1 and 6, CMG, Suppl. Or. II, 120, 124.
14 Galenus, De constitutione artis medicae 1 (1.227 K.); De usu partium 7.8 (3.541 K.);
De foetuum formatione 6 (4.689 K.); De differentiis pulsuum 4.3 (8.721 K.); De methodo
medendi 2.5 (10.107 K.); De simplicium medicamentorum temperamentis ac facultatibus 4.14
(11.664 K.); In Hippocratis Epidemiarum librum VI commentarius 4.10 (17B.161 K.) and 4.19
(17B.189 K.).
 physiologia from galen to jacob bording 31

structures of the universe. So he can talk of a Peripatetic physiology, or a

Stoic physiology, and contrast the physiology of Asclepiades, Erasistratus,
Epicurus, and Thessalus with that of Hippocrates and even Moses.15 This
sort of physiology he regards at times as inessential or even irrelevant to
medicine, or inappropriate to the discussion in hand, even praising Hip-
pocrates for not going down the road of physiology that Plato followed
in the Timaeus.16 In On the Properties of Simples, for example, he rejects a
detailed investigation into the physiology of drug action on the grounds that
it would be time-consuming and possibly inconclusive compared with the
rewards of experience.17 ‘Physiology’ might in some circumstances be use-
ful, but often all that it adds to experience is a confusion of terms.
This does not mean that Galen abandons this type of physiology entirely.
He acknowledges its possible contribution towards a more precise, sci-
entific demonstration, and he regards the notion that doctors should be
banned from physiologising as an unjustified tyranny.18 One can hardly
imagine that he would have responded in the negative to the question
he himself posed in his tract Is Physiologia Necessary for Ethical Philoso-
phy?, especially as in both On the Opinions of Hippocrates and Plato and
On Problematical Movements he was at pains to stress how a knowledge
of the anatomy of the body contributed to an understanding of the work-
ings of the soul or the brain.19 There is a role for physiologia, and Galen
does not deny it, but it is not central to his medicine. Should one wish
to go further, then he affirms that the physiology of Hippocrates, with its
elements, mixtures and humours, is far more satisfactory than that of the
Stoics or the atomist universe of Asclepiades and the Methodists. This is

15 Galenus, De elementis secundum Hippocratem 1.2 (1.449 K.); De facultatibus natu-

ralibus 2.4 (2.88 and 2.92 K.); De simpl. med. temp. ac fac. 4.14 (11.664 K.) (Aristotle and
Peripatetics); De meth. med. 1.2 (10.17 K.) (Stoics); De elem. sec. Hipp. 1.9 (1.486 K.); De fac.
nat. 1.14 (2.45 K.) (Asclepiades); 2.4 (2.88–92 K.) (Erasistratus); De meth. med. 1.2 (10.17 K.)
(Thessalus); De elem. sec. Hipp. 1.9 (1.486 K.); 10, 14, 17 K. (Hippocrates). Even Moses is
credited with physiologising, and doing so in a better manner than Epicurus, De usu part.
11.14 (3.905 K.).
16 Galen, De elem. sec. Hipp 1.2 (1.449 K.); Ad Thrasybulum, utrum medicinae an gymnas-
tices hygieine 30 (5.862 K.); De placitis Hippocratis at Platonis 9.9 (5.792 K.); De meth. med.
2.5 (10.107 K.); De simpl. med. temp. ac fac. 2.20 (11.517 K.) and 4.14 (11.664 K.); In Hippocratis
Epidemiarum librum I commentarius 3.2 (17A.805 K.).
17 Galen, De simpl. med. temp. ac fac. 2.1 (11.445 K.) and 4.4 (11.517 K.).
18 Galen, De causis pulsuum 1.10 (9.86 K.) and 1.13 (9.89 K.); De meth. med. 2.5 (10.107 K.);
De simpl. med. temp. ac fac. 2.20 (11.517 K.); In Hipp. Epid. I comment. 3.2 (17A.805 K.); In
Epid. VI comment. 4.19 (17B.189–190 K.). Of course, the gap between Galen’s rhetoric and
his practice may vary considerably.
19 For this now lost tract, see Galenus, De libris propriis 17 (19.48 K.). For On Problemati-
cal Movements, which survives only in Latin and Arabic versions, see my recent edition
(Cambridge: 2011).
32 vivian nutton

a lukewarm endorsement of physiology, compared with that of the two

pseudo-Galenic authors, who both see it as an essential characteristic of
medicine, and particularly, according to the author of the Introduction to
Medicine, that of the rationalists and the followers of Hippocrates.
Galen’s hesitant approval of the role of physiologia in medicine was,
then, at least on a theoretical level, less enthusiastic than that of some
other Hippocratics, but that is less significant than the fact that his practice
as described in his own writings could easily be viewed by outsiders as a
typically Hippocratic ‘physiological’ exposition of the basic principles that
govern the bodily universe. Galen frequently refers to mixtures, humours
and so on to support conclusions reached by observation, experiment or
logic, or, at the very least, to exclude ideas of others that he considered
erroneous. Certainly by the late fifth century AD, the belief in a ‘physi-
ological part of medicine’ was widespread in the Greek East, and in Latin
authors depending on Greek sources – Stephanus of Alexandria, John of
Alexandria, Palladius, Agnellus of Ravenna and pseudo-Soranus – as well
as in the Tabulae Alexandrinae described by Owsei Temkin and, at greater
length, by Beate Gundert.20 Indeed, it would not be wrong to conclude
that learned Greek medicine of the late fifth and sixth centuries took this
classification almost for granted. Given Galen’s hesitancy about physiolo-
gising, it is clear that we have here an example of Galenism as an evolv-
ing doctrine. Even if we do not posit any direct influence from the two
pseudo-Galenic texts already noted, Galen’s theories and comments in a
variety of different places were now transformed in late-antique Galenism
into something much more detailed and definite.21
What happens to this definition in the central Middle Ages in the West
and in the Arab world is less clear. It was available in a variety of Latin

20 Stephanus, In Hippocratis Aphorismos commentarii I.1: CMG XI.3.1.34; Johannes

Alexandrinus, In Hippocratis De natura pueri commentarium 1: CMG XI.1.4.132; Commen-
taria in librum De sectis Galeni 1: 11 Pritchet; Agnellus Ravennas, In Galeni De sectis commen-
tarium 5: 24 Westerink et alii; Palladius, Scholia in Galeni De sectis 75 Baffioni; [Soranus],
Quaestiones medicinales 23; Temkin O., The Double Face of Janus and Other Essays in the
History of Medicine (Baltimore: 1977) 189; Gundert B., “Die Tabulae Vindobonenses als
Zeugnis alexandrinischer Lehrtätigkeit um 600 n. Chr.”, in Fischer K.D. – Nickel D. –
Potter P. – (eds.), Text and Tradition. Studies in Ancient Medicine and its Transmission
presented to Jutta Kollesch (Leiden: 1998) 91–144. Note also that the reference to to phusi-
ologikon at Sor. Gynaecia 1.1.1, is taken over from an apparent quotation in the later Com-
mentaria in Aphorismos Hippocratis of Theophilus.
21 There is one caveat: the usual term is the physiological part of medicine, not physi-
ology, although Galen does use physiologia, admittedly not in the context of the parts
of medicine, and it would be relatively easy to consider the two terms as overlapping,
and Soranus earlier uses ‘the physiological’ at Gynaecia 1.1.2, but ‘physiology’ in a similar
context at 3.3.5.
 physiologia from galen to jacob bording 33

translations of Greek works, preserved in a substantial number of codices

from the pre-Salernitan period.22 But how far, if at all, it penetrated into
the Salernitan literature is not obvious, despite the growing tendency to
use the word physicus to denote a learned medical practitioner.23 Lexica
of later medieval Latin cite the word physiologus and its cognates only
in connection with natural science, not medicine. The word is absent
from Petrus de Sancto Floro’s medical lexicon, and, perhaps more tell-
ingly, from the list of quaestiones of Pietro d’Abano and his school listed
by Nancy Siraisi in her study of this late thirteenth-century scholar and his
pupils.24 Nor does it figure either in the Isagoge of Johannitius or in Avi-
cenna’s Canon I.1, two staples of late medieval medical education. Instead
we find discussions in terms of the naturals, the non-naturals and the
contra-naturals, and it is the naturals, i.e. the elements, complexions, the
faculties, the bones and so on, that take the place of what earlier Galenists
had termed ‘the physiological part of medicine’.25
That is why in 1542, Jean Fernel, a leading member of the Paris medical
faculty, entitled his study of the human body De naturali parte medici-
nae, to contrast it with works discussing diseases and their treatment.26
Twelve years later he produced a revised version as part of a much larger
work, his Medicina, in which this section receives a different title, Physiolo-
gia.27 For this alleged innovation he has been awarded a place among the
founding fathers of medicine. According to Chauncey D. Leake, he is ‘the

22 De Renzi Salvatore, Collectio Salernitana (Naples: 1852), vol. 1, 87–88. This corre-
sponds closely to Stephanus Alexandrinus’ Commentarii in Hippocratis Aphorismos, see
Beccaria A., “Sulle tracce di un antico canone latino di Ippocrate e di Galeno, II: Gli
Aforismi di Ippocrate nella versione e nei commenti del primo medioevo”, Italia medioe-
vale e umanistica 4 (1961) 35–41, who prints an edition of the text from four mss. Ihm S.,
Clavis commentariorum der antiken medizinischen Texte (Leiden: 2002) 172, lists many pre-
twelfth-century mss.
23 Bylebyl J.J., “The medical meaning of Physica”, in McVaugh M.R. and Siraisi N.G.
(eds.), Renaissance Medical Learning. Evolution of a Tradition, Osiris, n.s. 6 (1990) 16–41.
24 Sancto Floro Petrus de, Neue litterarische Beiträge zur mittelalterlichen Medicin: ed.
Pagel J.L. (Berlin: 1896); Siraisi N.G., Taddeo Alderotti and his Pupils. Two Generations of
Italian Medical Learning (Princeton: 1981) 314–317, despite the numerous references to
physiology in the index, 458.
25 ‘The natural’ also retains the ‘phusis’ element in the Greek, and what is included
under the heading of the naturals corresponds closely with to phusiologikon, even if the
non- and contra-naturals do not appear to have a direct Greek equivalent.
26 Fernel Jean, De naturali parte medicinae (Paris: 1542). I cite it from the reprint (Lyons,
J. Tornaesius and G. Gazeius: 1551).
27 Fernel Jean, Medicina (Paris, A. Wechel: 1554). This revision is now available in Eng-
lish as The Physiologia of Jean Fernel, 1567, A. Wechel, Translated and annotated by John M.
Forrester (Philadelphia: 2003), but not including the Dedication or the Preface of the 1554
edition.
34 vivian nutton

first to speak of physiology in the modern period, coining the term to sig-
nify the branch of biological research in the modern sense of the word’.28
Franklin, apparently applying the later title to the 1542 work, declares that
Fernel wrote the first book devoted solely to physiology, and thus gave the
discipline its name.29 This seems a substantial honour for a title and a
couple of sentences, for in reality what Fernel is doing is no more than
recasting the first book of Avicenna’s Canon in a neo-Galenist form,
including exactly the same topics – elements, mixtures, humours, spirits,
faculties and anatomy – but reverting to a purer Galenism and adopting
a new vocabulary.30 Fernel took his division of medicine from the two
pseudo-Galenic tracts, both of which had been very familiar in Paris since
1528, when his colleague Guinther von Andernach turned them into Latin.
Fernel’s Latin mirrors that of Guinther, although his Greek terminology
seems to be his own.31 Indeed, in 1542 he openly acknowledges his debt
to others, for in listing the five parts of medicine he declares that the part
that investigates and searches out the nature of men ‘they have called
phusiologikê’.32 The Latin form appears at the end of the preface to Book
Two, when Fernel expresses the hope that by bringing together a compre-
hensive physiologia he might produce something useful, and that ‘by way
of demonstrating’, we might achieve as complete a study of man as pos-
sible.33 (The Latin is far from simple, and the text itself may be corrupt.)
In 1554 Fernel produced a much clearer and briefer definition. Now physi-
ologikê is ‘that part of medicine which investigates the nature, powers and

28 Leake C.D., Some Founders of Physiology (Washington, DC: 1956) 89; cf. Rothschuh,
Physiologie 41–47.
29 Franklin, History 4, although elsewhere he seems to be citing the heavily revised
second edition, which he misdates (37) to 1544.
30 That Fernel regarded De naturali parte and physiologia as identical is clear from the
ending, where he has, in the first version, 655: ‘His omnem iam videor hominis ortum
atque adeo universam naturalem medicinae partem perstrinxisse, quae corporis humani
dum integre sanum est constitutionem explicat’. This is changed in 1554, 250 = 601 tr.
Forrester, to: ‘His omnem iam videor hominis ortum atque adeo Physiologiam complexus
quae hominis (dum prospere fruitur valetudine) constitutionem naturamque continet’. As
noted, above, ‘naturalis pars’ is a respectable translation of the Greek.
31 But Guinther kept the definitions in Greek in his version of the Introductio, and
Sylvanius, whose version of the Definitiones became standard in successive Froben and
Giuntine editions, misses out the relevant passage entirely.
32 Fernel, De naturali parte, Pref. 11 ‘quae universam hominis naturam indagat ac perqui-
rit φυσιολογική dixerunt’. For the revised formulation in the 1554 work, see below, note 34.
33 Fernel, De naturali parte 190 ‘ut cum inventum id fuerit, hinc compositionis initium
sumamus, simulque universam physiologiam contrahentes, quaecumque illa disputat
gradatim ad unius hominis commoditatem et usum deducamus et naturalem de homine
contemplationem demonstrandi via quoad eius fieri potest prosequimini’. The 1551 reprint
reads ‘minus hominis’, but the 1547 Venice edition has ‘unius’.
 physiologia from galen to jacob bording 35

functions of the wholly healthy individual’, and Fernel’s aspiration is to

bring together ‘a comprehensive physiology that establishes the natural
study of man by force of demonstration’.34 The content of the work is
revised, but there is no further discussion of physiology as such, and the
word itself does not reappear until the index.35 Fernel’s book remains a
classicising alternative to Avicenna’s Canon, differing most obviously in
its Latin style. It is not a novel approach to medicine, let alone a break-
through in understanding the body, and one might note that the word
was not coined by Fernel but could be found throughout the new Galenic
Corpus. Nor, for nearly a century, was this section of Fernel’s Medicina
published separately as Physiologia.36 It was, at best, one part of a much
larger and more ambitious work.
Fernel almost certainly emphasised the word Physiologia in the title of
his second edition (if indeed it was he and not his printer who decided on
the title) in order to emphasis his Greekness, just as, half a century earlier,
Antonio Benedetti had called his book on anatomy Anatomicê to stress its
trendy Hellenism.37 Fernel proclaims at one and the same time his indi-
vidualism and his adherence to Greek doctrine by using a choice word,
physiologia, and it is this apparent innovation that has gained Fernel the
reputation as the founder of the discipline.38
Yet at the same time historians of physiology have murmured against
Fernel’s choice of topics that they consider alien to their subject. Frank-
lin objects to his inclusion of mind, Loris Premuda to his inclusion of

34 Fernel, Medicina, Pref. sig. *vi recto ‘φυσιολογική quae hominis integre sani naturam
omnes illius vires functiones persequitur; 69 Sic universa contrahetur physiologia quae
naturalem de homine contemplationem demonstrationis vi (via?) constituit’.
35 For the change to the ending, see above, note 33. A further minor alteration occurs
in the index, where, sig. z. ii recto, physiologia replaces an earlier naturalis pars medicinae,
in both cases referring to the order of the bones.
36 Sherrington gives no separate entry for Physiologia on its own, and it is clear that,
unlike the Pathologia, it did not enjoy an independent existence. The first separate print-
ing would appear to be Les VII. Livres de la Physiologie traduit en français par Charles de
Saint Germain (Paris, J. Guignard: 1655), but the same firm brought out simultaneously
French versions of the Pathologie and the Thérapeutique, and it may be more convenient
to think of them as a triptych. If so, the first truly independent printing of the Physiologia
is the revision of the 1655 French version by José Kany-Turpin, La Physiologie (Paris: 2001),
and, in Latin and English, by John Forrester.
37 Ferrari G., L’esperienza del Passato. Alessandro Benedetti Filologo e Medico umanista
(Florence: 1996) 106–120.
38 Note also that his five categories are given Greek names. In 1542, Pref., 11, as well as
‘φυσιολογική’, they are ‘αἰτιολογική’, ‘σημειολογική’, ‘διαιτητκή ἠ ὑγιαντική’, and ‘θεραπευτική’.
The categories are slightly modified in 1554 (Guinther in his 1528 version had also retained
the original, neither transcribing nor translating them.).
36 vivian nutton

anatomical detail, which occupies almost a third of the book.39 Both

scholars forget that neither Fernel nor his successors saw any need to
distinguish anatomy from physiology.40 Indeed, even as more and more
books came to be published bearing the title of physiology, particularly
from the 1620s onwards, the anatomy of the body or of a particular organ
remained an essential part of any such book.
To show this coexistence best, I give three early examples, two from
France, and one from N. Germany. In 1543 Fernel’s senior colleague, Jaco-
bus Sylvius, brought out his introduction to anatomy as an appendix to
his revision of an earlier translation of Galen’s De usu partium. This was
reissued in both Latin and French in 1555 with a new title, In Hippocratis
et Galeni physiologiae partem anatomicam isagoge (An Introduction to the
Anatomical Part of the Physiology of Hippocrates and Galen).41 The imme-
diate influence of Fernel is patent, as is Sylvius’ assertion that anatomy
forms one part of physiology. An even earlier follower of Fernel may have
been the obscure Jean Lyège, Iohannes Lygaeus, who completed in early
October 1554 his versification of Galenic anatomy, his De humani corporis
harmonia libri IIII (Four Books on the Harmony of the Human Body).42 His
title page announces that it comes provided with discussions and notes
for the benefit of students of physiologia, and the book opens with an
address to the Lector physiologus. Whether by this he means a natural
scientist or, perhaps more likely, a trendy anatomist is unclear.
My final example is somewhat later, a book that was published twice,
under two different titles, and ascribed to two different authors. In 1576,
Johannes Boeckel became the first professor of medicine at the new Ger-
man university of Helmstedt. Formerly a student at Copenhagen and Wit-
tenberg, Boeckel quickly set about making Helmstedt a modern medical
school: he arranged for the building of a dissection hall on his own prop-
erty, planted a botanical garden, and set up a hospital for sick students. He

39 Franklin, History 37; Premuda L., Storia della Fisiologia. Problemi e Figure (Udine:
1965) 16. Franklin, History 37, merely says that he dealt at some length with human anat-
omy, ‘which is to physiology as geography is to history’.
40 Rothschuh, Physiologie 41–47, rightly notes that Fernel was doing nothing new, and,
earlier, 13, stresses that for Galen (and for Fernel) anatomy and physiology were not yet
distinguished.
41 Sylvius Jacobus, In Hippocratis et Galeni physiologiae partem anatomicam Isagoge,
and Introduction sur l’anatomique Partie de la Phisiologie d’Hippocrate et Galien (both Paris,
J. Hulpeau: 1555). The significance of this title was remarked on by Sherrington, Fernel 91.
42 Lygaeus Johannes, De humani corporis harmonia libri IIII (Paris, M. Vascosanus: 1555).
The preface is dated 1 October, 1554, from Bar sur Aube. Lygaeus is likely to have studied
with Fernel. His book, as an owner of the Wellcome copy (EPB 3918) remarks on the title
page, is little more than a versification of Galen’s De usu partium.
 physiologia from galen to jacob bording 37

was himself interested in anatomy, lecturing regularly on the subject at the

annual dissection of a male and a female corpse provided by the Duke of
Brunswick.43 Boeckel’s long exposition of anatomy came out in 1585 under
the title Anatome, seu descriptio partium humani corporis (Anatomy, or a
Description of the Parts of the Human Body).44 It was reprinted at Helmst-
edt in 1588, and again in 1589 at Wittenberg, as Historia partium humani
corporis, so its interest was not entirely local. Boeckel’s subtitle, announc-
ing that the book represented what was done and taught each year at
Helmstedt, may well be true, but it is also misleading. All but the first
chapter is taken over word for word from a then-unpublished anatomy
book written perhaps in 1559 by Jacob Bording, a fellow Fleming, who had
been professor of medicine at the universities of Rostock and Copenhagen,
where Boeckel had been his student.45 This plagiarism angered Bording’s
successor at Rostock, Levinus Battus, another Fleming, who published
his predecessor’s original manuscript in 1591, publicly accusing Boeckel
of theft. This time Bording’s material bore a different title, Physiologia,
and formed the first part of a volume that proclaimed that it too was the
result of lectures, this time at Rostock and Copenhagen.46 Obviously, Bor-
ding, who had died as long ago as 1560, could not be entirely responsible
for the title, and so it must have been his editor or publisher who took
the decision to disguise an aging discussion of anatomy under a new and
fashionable title, Physiologia. The influence of Fernel is obvious, for Battus
refers to Physiologia as one of the tres partes medicinae, using the same
division that Fernel had used. I shall not go further into this N. German
squabble, except to emphasise that the same book could be called both
an anatomy and a physiology. Indeed, Boeckel’s title and his introductory
chapter indicate that for him and his audience the teaching of anatomy
encompassed all that elsewhere Fernel had included in his Physiologia.
Henceforth while some writers on anatomy avoided discussion of what

43 Triebs M., Die medizinische Fakultät der Universität Helmstedt (1576–1810) (Wiesba-
den: 1995) 45–46.
44 Boeckel Johannes, Anatome vel descriptio partium humani corporis ut ea in Academia
Iulia quae est Helmstetui singulis annis publice praelegi, ac administrari solet (Helmstedt,
J. Lucius: 1585).
45 Gysel C., “Jan Boekel (1535–1605) en zijn ‘Anatome’ (1585), een plagiaat van Bordings
‘Physiologia’ (1591)”, Acta Belgica Historiae Medicinae 9 (1996) 21–27. On Bording, idem,
“Jacobus Bordingus Antwerpiensis (1511–1560): Humanist en professor medicinae”, ibidem
9 (1996) 2–11.
46 I have not seen Bording’s book, but take its title from the listing in the Verzeichnis
der im deutschen Sprachbereich erschienenen Drucke des XVI. Jahrhunderts, B6703. Physio-
logia, hygieine, pathologia. Prout has medicinae partes in inclytis Academiis Rostochiensi et
Haffniensi publice enarrauit Jacobus Bording (Rostock, S. Myliander: 1591).
38 vivian nutton

we might term physiological topics, and vice versa, most writers continued
to treat both together. Indeed, a cursory glance at the contents of treatises
bearing these titles suggests that treatises on anatomy tend to abandon the
study of the body’s process in favour of descriptive anatomy more often
than those dealing with physiology leave out the underlying anatomy of the
body parts they study.47 But the closer one comes to the nineteenth century,
the more the functions of the body are explained in terms of physics, chem-
istry, or electricity, with the body’s structures playing only a minor role.48
What’s in a name? This exposition has tried to trace the evolution of
the term Physiology from the Greeks to the Renaissance. It has tried to
show how a term not greatly admired by Galen became a shibboleth of
late-antique Galenism, and why modern historians’ belief in Fernel as
the founding father of physiology is optimistic, to say the least. If there
are heroes in this story, they are two of my favourite authors, Pseudo-
Galen and Anonymous. But this story still lacks an appropriate ending. As
Franklin noted, it is hard to say when anatomy and physiology came defi-
nitely to be viewed as two separate subjects – perhaps only in the 1850s
or even later – or when the study of physiology came to be defined solely
as the investigation of the body’s processes.49 Discipline-formation among
the sciences in the mid- and late nineteenth century may have played
the major role, as Franklin suggested. But modern medical science no lon-
ger sees the need for a strict differentiation between the two. The Depart-
ment of Anatomy at UCL, of which I was a member for over thirty years,
has included among its major research interests, as well as the history
of medicine, the brain and nervous function, developmental biology, and
hard tissue, nails and bones, all topics which can be found in Fernel’s
Physiologia or, for that matter, in Avicenna’s Canon. Modern medical sci-
ence continues to transcend the boundaries cherished by historians.

47 Anatomy continues to be covered in such a common textbook as Rivière Lazare,

Institutiones medicae [. . .], quibus totidem medicinae partes, physiologia, pathologia, semeio-
tice, hygieine et therapeutice dilucidè explicantur (The Hague, Adriaan Vlacq: 1663). A later
text combining old and new conceptions of physiology is Hamberger Georg Erhard, Phys-
iologia medica, seu de actionibus corporis humani sani coctrina principiis physicis a se editis,
itemque mathematicis atque anatomicis superstructa ( Jena, T.W.E. Gyth: 1751).
48 Two random examples: Frewen Thomas, Physiologia. Or, the Doctrine of Nature, com-
prehended in the Origin and Progression of Human Life; the Vital and Animal Functions;
Diseases of Body and Mind; and Remedies Prophylactic and Therapeutic (London, J. Bew:
1780); Moran F., Dissertatio inauguralis quaedam de physiologia ex effectibus electricitatis
orientia complectens (Edinburgh: 1820).
49 See, for a more detailed examination, Cunningham A., “The Pen and the Sword:
Recovering the Disciplinary Identity of Physiology and Anatomy before 1800. I, Old Physi-
ology – The Pen”, and “II, Old Anatomy – The Sword”, Studies in History and Philosophy of
Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 33 (2002) 631–665 and 34 (2003) 51–76.
 physiologia from galen to jacob bording 39

Selective bibliography

Anastassiou A. – Irmer D., Testimonien zum Corpus Hippocraticum (Göttingen: 1997–

2006).
Boeckel Johannes, Anatome vel descriptio partium humani corporis ut ea in Academia
Iulia quae est Helmstetui singulis annis publice praelegi, ac administrari solet (Helmstedt,
J. Lucius: 1585).
Bording Jacob, Physiologia, hygieine, pathologia. Prout has medicinae partes in incly-
tis Academiis Rostochiensi et Haffniensi publice enarrauit Jacobus Bording (Rostock,
S. Myliander: 1591).
Bylebyl J.J., “The Medical Meaning of Physica”, in McVaugh M.R. – Siraisi N.G. (eds.),
Renaissance Medical Learning. Evolution of a Tradition, Osiris, n.s. 6 (1990) 16–41.
Craik E.M., Hippocrates, Places in Man (Oxford: 1998).
Cunningham A., “The Pen and the Sword: Recovering the Disciplinary Identity of Physiol-
ogy and Anatomy before 1800 I: Old Physiology – The Pen”, Studies in History and Phi-
losophy of Science Part C. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical
Sciences 33 (2002) 631–665.
——, “The Pen and the Sword: Recovering the Disciplinary Identity of Physiology and
Anatomy before 1800 II: Old Anatomy – The Sword”, Studies in History and Philosophy
of Science Part C. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
34 (2003) 51–76.
Englert L., Untersuchungen zu Galens Schrift Thrasybulos (Leipzig: 1929).
Fernel Jean, De naturali parte medicinae (Lyons, J. Tornaesius and G. Gazeius: 1551).
——, Medicina (Paris, A. Wechel: 1554).
——, Physiologia: tr. Forrester J.M. (2003), The Physiologia of Jean Fernel (1567), Philadelphia.
Ferrari G., L’esperienza del Passato. Alessandro Benedetti Filologo e Medico umanista
(Florence: 1996).
Figard L., Un médecin philosophique au XVIe siècle (Paris: 1903).
Franklin K.J., A Short History of Physiology (London-New York: 19492).
Frewen Thomas, Physiologia. Or, the Doctrine of Nature, comprehended in the Origin and
Progression of Human Life; the Vital and Animal Functions; Diseases of Body and Mind;
and Remedies Prophylactic and Therapeutic (London, J. Bew: 1780).
Fulton J.F. – Wilson L.S., Selected Readings in the History of Physiology (Springfield, Il.:
1966).
Gundert B., “Die Tabulae Vindobonenses als Zeugnis alexandrinischer Lehrtätigkeit um
600 n. Chr.”, in Fischer K.D. – Nickel D. – Potter P. (eds.), Text and Tradition. Studies in
Ancient Medicine and its Transmission presented to Jutta Kollesch (Leiden: 1998) 91–144.
Gysel C., “Jacobus Bordingus Antwerpiensis (1511–1560): Humanist en professor medici-
nae”, Acta Belgica Historiae Medicinae 9 (1996) 2–11.
——, “Jan Boekel (1535–1605) en zijn ‘Anatome’ (1585), een plagiaat van Bordings “Physio-
logia” (1591)”, Acta Belgica Historiae Medicinae 9 (1996) 21–27.
Hall T.S., History of General Physiology 600 B.C. to A.D. 1900 (Chicago-London: 1975).
Kollesch J., Untersuchungen zu den pseudogalenischen Definitiones medicae (Berlin:
1993).
Leake C.D., Some Founders of Physiology (Washington DC: 1956).
Lygaeus Johannes, De humani corporis harmonia libri IIII (Paris, M. Vascosanus: 1555).
Moran Francis, Dissertatio inauguralis quaedam de physiologia ex effectibus electricitatis
orientia complectens (Edinburgh: 1820).
Nutton V., “The Fatal Embrace: Galen and the History of Medicine”, Science in Context
18 (2005) 111–121.
Petit C., (ed., trans.) Galien. Tome III. Le Médecin. Introduction (Paris: Les Belles Lettres,
2009).
Premuda L., Storia della Fisiologia. Problemi e Figure (Udine: 1965).
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Renzi Salvatore de, Collectio Salernitana, I (Naples: 1852).

Rothschuh K., History of Physiology (Huntington, NY: 1973).
——, Physiologie. Der Wandel ihrer Konzepte, Probleme und Methoden vom 16. bis 19. Jahr-
hundert (Freiburg-Munich: 1968).
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Pagel J.L. (Berlin: 1896).
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(Princeton: 1981).
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J. Hulpeau: 1555).
——, Introduction sur l’anatomique Partie de la Phisiologie d’Hippocrate et Galien (Paris,
J. Hulpeau: 1555).
Temkin O., The Double Face of Janus and Other Essays in the History of Medicine (Baltimore:
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1995).
 Physiological analogies and metaphors
in explanations of the earth and the Cosmos

Liba Taub

Summary*

This paper examines the use of analogies and metaphors drawn to physiological
processes in order to explain meteorological phenomena and expound cosmo-
logical ideas, particularly as reflected in the writings of Aristotle, Epicurus and
Lucretius. For these philosophical authors, the earth was not a living thing, yet
the analogies and metaphors they used indicate that a consideration of living
bodies, human and otherwise, could aid in understanding and explaining other
natural, but inanimate, phenomena. That the earth was not a living being may
have made the analogies and metaphors invoking physiological processes even
more compelling: their power was achieved simultaneously both through novelty
and intimate familiarity. A brief consideration of the use of similar analogies in
seventeenth-century England is included.

Introduction

References to the physiological processes experienced by living things,

including plants and animals as well as humans, are found in the expla-
nations offered by a number of ancient natural philosophers in their writ-
ings on other phenomena. So, for example, explanations of phenomena
classified in Antiquity as meteorological, but today described as geologi-
cal, often made reference to familiar bodily processes, particularly those
associated with digestion. In some cases, it appears that the cosmos itself
is described as a living organism, participating in various processes which
today are understood as physiological.

* I am grateful to Manfred Horstmanshoff, Helen King and Claus Zittel for inviting
me to participate in the Blood, Sweat and Tears project, and for their helpful comments. I
thank Andrew Cunningham, Aude Doody, Maija Kallinen, Vivian Nutton, Christine Sala-
zar, Laurence Totelin, Frances Willmoth and an anonymous referee for their useful sug-
gestions to an earlier draft. I am also grateful to Malcolm Wilson, who commented on an
earlier draft and very generously shared portions of his unpublished work on Aristotle’s
meteorology. I appreciate the support provided by Newnham College for my research, and
Emma Perkins’ and Katharina Fischer’s help in preparing this paper for publication.
42 liba taub

In their Call for Papers for the present volume, the editors highlighted
difficulties in applying the concept of physiology to ancient Greek and
Roman medicine; for example, they noted that ‘where we would expect
causality, we meet “only” with analogy’. Drawing attention to the situation
in the Early Modern period, in which ancient explanations of physiologi-
cal phenomena existed alongside newly emerging methods of explanation
based on the study of nature, they drew attention to meteorology, geology
and cosmology, as well as political and economic theory, as areas in which
metaphors derived from physiology gained popularity.
What follows is an examination of the use of analogies drawn to physi-
ological processes to explain meteorological phenomena and to expound
cosmological ideas, primarily in the Greco-Roman world; I shall also refer
briefly to the use of similar analogies in the Early Modern period. I will
focus on explanation-building, and the relationship of analogies to obser-
vations, particularly in Aristotle, Epicurus and Lucretius, not least because
these authors were important not only in Antiquity, but also in the Early
Modern period.1 Furthermore, both Aristotle and Epicurus commented on
analogies and/or metaphors, giving possible insight into their own use of
them. The relationship of analogies to metaphor will be addressed; gener-
ally, analogies point to resemblances, while metaphors may include nov-
elty as an important feature. Recognising that none of the ancient authors
under consideration thought that the earth or the cosmos itself is a liv-
ing being, I will consider issues raised by references to the body and its
associated physiological processes in analogies and metaphors intended
to explain the natural world.

Analogy and metaphor

Analogy has been recognised as pervasive in Greek natural philosophy,

and it is worth considering the use of the terms analogia and metaphora
by ancient authors. While the Greek word analogia (ἀναλογία can refer
to ‘proportion’ (for example, 2 is to 4 as 4 is to 8) – in fact the math-
ematical meaning is the first one listed in the Greek-English Lexicon of
Liddell, Scott and Jones (LSJ) – it can also mean ‘analogy’ in the sense of

1 These authors are also the focus because of the relative abundance of evidence for
their views. Because of limitations of space, other authors can only be mentioned very
briefly here. This paper develops ideas I explored in Taub L., “Das Lebewesen und die Erde:
Analogie oder Metapher in physikalischen Erklärungen der Antike?”, Antike Naturwissen-
schaft und ihre Rezeption 20 (Trier: 2010) 65–79.
 physiological analogies and metaphors 43

‘pointing to a resemblance between relations in two different domains’.2

Several ancient authors, including Aristotle and Epicurus, used the word
metaphora (μεταφορά = English ‘metaphor’) to refer to the transference
of a word to a new sense.3 Put in modern terms, and borrowing from
the philosopher of science Daniela Bailer-Jones, a metaphor ‘is a linguis-
tic expression in which at least one part of the expression is transferred
(metapherein; μεταφέρειν) from one domain of application where it is com-
mon, to another in which it is unusual’. While the relationship of analogy
is often (perhaps even usually) an important factor which facilitates the
understanding of a metaphor, it is not the case that analogy necessarily
precedes the metaphor. Bailer-Jones suggests that it can be argued equally
that the metaphor enables the recognition of an analogy.4
Metaphor has often been associated particularly with poetry, and is
regarded by some literary theorists as a characteristic literary feature
or trope. This association of metaphor with poetry may in fact go back
at least to Aristotle, who discusses metaphor in his Poetics (1457b6–33)
and also the Rhetoric (1410b12–15), as we will see. In some later traditions
the use of metaphor has been regarded largely as a matter of decoration,
intended to delight the hearer. Novelty or ‘freshness’ is often taken as a
sign of metaphoricity.5 But, for Aristotle and some other ancient authors,
metaphor was not merely about poetical decoration; we will return to
ancient views on the use of metaphor later, but first we need to consider
the use of analogia in more detail.
As an example of an ancient author who uses the word analogia to mean
‘pointing to a resemblance between relations in two different domains’, in
the first instance LSJ cites Aristotle’s History of Animals 486b19–22, quoted
here:
There are some animals whose parts are neither identical in form nor differ-
ing in the way of excess or defect; but they are the same only in the way of
analogy, as, for instance, bone is only analogous to fish-bone, nail to hoof,

2 Liddell H.G. – Scott R. – Jones H.S. et alii, A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford: 1968)
111; hereafter referred to as ‘LSJ’; Bailer-Jones D.M., “Models, Metaphors and Analogies”,
in Machamer P. – Silberstein M. (eds.), The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Science
(Malden, Mass.-Oxford: 2002) 110.
3 For example, LSJ 1118 cites Aristoteles, Poetica 1457b6; Rhetorica 1410b36; Epicurus, De
rerum natura 28.5.
4 Bailer-Jones, “Models, Metaphors and Analogies” 114.
5 Bailer-Jones, “Models, Metaphors and Analogies” 115. Metaphorical language is often
contrasted with literal language, but Bailer-Jones argues against a clear-cut distinction
here; rather, she maintains that there are ‘degrees’ of metaphoricity.
44 liba taub

hand to claw, and scale to feather; for what the feather is in a bird, the scale
is in a fish.6
The focus on anatomy in this use of the word analogia offers a vivid and
easily comprehensible picture.7

Aristotle on analogy and metaphor

The use of analogies in Greek philosophy has been explored by a number

of scholars, including Geoffrey Lloyd; indeed, as Lloyd argues, analogical
argument, or thinking by analogy, is sometimes pointed to as a hallmark
of the ‘scientific method’ of the ancient Greeks.8 In the Posterior Analytics,
in which he discusses demonstrative science, and what are often under-
stood as his views on ‘scientific method’, Aristotle makes direct reference
several times, very briefly, to the use of analogy.9 At 76a37–40 he states:
Of the things they use in the demonstrative sciences some are proper to
each science others common – but common by analogy, since things are
useful in so far as they bear on the kind [genus] under the science.10

6 ‘ Ἔνια δὲ τῶν ζῴων οὔτε εἴδει τὰ μόρια ταὐτὰ ἔχει οὔτε καθ’ ὑπεροχὴν καὶ ἔλλειψιν, ἀλλὰ
κατ’ ἀναλογίαν, οἷον πέπονθεν ὀστοῦν πρὸς ἄκανθαν καὶ ὄνυξ πρὸς ὁπλὴν καὶ χεὶρ πρὸς χηλὴν
καὶ πρὸς πτερὸν λεπίς· ὃ γὰρ ἐν ὄρνιθι πτερόν, τοῦτο ἐν τῷ ἰχθύι ἐστὶ λεπίς’. Tr. Thompson
D’A.W. (1984) 775.
7 These analogies suggest a similarity of function. Freudenthal G., Aristotle’s Theory
of Material Substance. Heat and Pneuma, Form and Soul (Oxford: 1995) 117 n. 27 briefly
mentions Aristotle’s notion of analogy as functional equivalence; cf., for example, Aris-
toteles, De partibus animalium 1.4 (644a16–23); see also Balme D.M., Aristotle’s De Par-
tibus Animalium I and De Generatione Animalium I (Oxford: 1972) 120, 148, and Wilson
M., Aristotle’s Theory of the Unity of Science (Toronto: 2000) 10–11. Questions relating to
whether functional equivalence has teleological (or non-teleological) force are outside
the scope of this paper. On analogy more generally in Aristotle’s writings on animals, see
Wilson Aristotle’s Theory ch. 2 (‘Analogy in Aristotle’s Biology’). As Sedley D., “Lucretius
and the New Empedocles”, Leeds International Classical Studies 2, 4 (2003) 9 has noted,
Empedocles (B82) proposed a functional equivalence between hair, leaves, feathers and
scales. From our modern perspective it may seem familiar and not entirely surprising; this
type of analogy is not entirely unlike the modern notion of homology used to relate the
parts of different species.
8 See, for example, Lloyd G.E.R., Polarity and Analogy. Two Types of Argumentation in
Early Greek Thought (Cambridge: 1966); Garani M., Empedocles redivivus: Poetry and Anal-
ogy in Lucretius (London: 2007) 18–25.
9 The difficulties of relating the scientific method prescribed in the Posterior Analytics
to Aristotle’s own scientific writings have been the focus of much scholarly debate; see
Barnes J., “Aristotle’s Theory of Demonstration”, Phronesis 14, 2 (1969) 123–152.
10 ‘ Ἔστι δ’ ὧν χρῶνται ἐν ταῖς ἀποδεικτικαῖς ἐπιστήμαις τὰ μὲν ἴδια ἑκάστης ἐπιστήμης τὰ δὲ
κοινά, κοινὰ δὲ κατ’ ἀναλογίαν, ἐπεὶ χρήσιμόν γε ὅσον ἐν τῷ ὑπὸ τὴν ἐπιστήμην γένει’. Tr. Barnes
(1975) 16. See also Arist. Analytica posteriora 98a20–23 (2.14) and 99a15–16 (2.17).
 physiological analogies and metaphors 45

He elaborates:
Proper: e.g. that a line is such and such, and straight so and so; common: e.g.
that if equals are taken from equals, the remainders are equal. But each of
these is sufficient in so far as it bears on the genus; for it will produce the
same result even if it is not assumed as holding of everything but only for
the case of magnitudes – or, for the arithmetician, for numbers.11
While this discussion of the use of analogy relates to geometry and arith-
metic, the Posterior Analytics was not meant to be applicable only to the
mathematical sciences. Indeed, as Jonathan Barnes noted, ‘analogies are a
profound feature of Aristotle’s biology’; Malcolm Wilson has pointed out
that Aristotle uses the concept, and term, ‘analogy’ most frequently and
systematically in his biological works.12 It is with this in mind that we
should understand the citation in LSJ of the passage from the History of
Animals quoted above, as a key example of the use of the term ‘analogy’:
analogies play a prominent role in Aristotle’s biological works.
In his Poetics (1457b7–16 and 20–22), Aristotle defined metaphor as the
application of an alien name by transference either from genus to spe-
cies, or from species to genus, or from species to species, or by analogy,
that is, proportion.13 The examples offered for the type ‘from analogy’ are
most like modern metaphors; here, quoting Aristotle: ‘metaphor by anal-
ogy means this: when B is to A as D is to C, then instead of B the poet will
say D and B instead of D [. . .] For instance, a cup is to Dionysus what a
shield is to Ares; so he will call the cup “Dionysus’s shield” and the shield
“Ares’ cup.” ’14

11 ‘ἴδια μὲν οἷον γραμμὴν εἶναι τοιανδὶ καὶ τὸ εὐθύ, κοινὰ δὲ οἷον τὸ ἴσα ἀπὸ ἴσων ἂν ἀφέλῃ, ὅτι
ἴσα τὰ λοιπά. ἱκανὸν δ’ ἕκαστον τούτων ὅσον ἐν τῷ γένει· ταὐτὸ γὰρ ποιήσει, κἂν μὴ κατὰ πάντων
λάβῃ ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ μεγεθῶν μόνον, τῷ δ’ ἀριθμητικῷ ἐπ’ ἀριθμῶν’. Tr. Barnes (1984) 124.
12 Barnes (1975) 240 (note to 98a20); Wilson, Aristotle’s Theory 53. Wilson devotes ch.
2 of his book to analogy in Aristotle’s biology; analogy and demonstration are treated in
ch. 3. On the use of the term ‘biology’ with reference to Aristotle’s writings, see Cunning-
ham A., “Aristotle’s Animal Books: Ethology, Biology, Anatomy, or Philosophy?”, Philosoph-
ical Topics 27, 1 (Spring 1999) 17–41.
13 ‘μεταφορὰ δέ ἐστιν ὀνόματος ἀλλοτρίου ἐπιφορὰ ἢ ἀπὸ τοῦ γένους ἐπὶ εἶδος ἢ ἀπὸ τοῦ εἴδους
ἐπὶ τὸ γένος ἢ ἀπὸ τοῦ εἴδους ἐπὶ εἶδος ἢ κατὰ τὸ ἀνάλογον’. Following this, Aristotle then gave
examples of these four types. Most of the examples he offers for the first three would
now be understood not as metaphors, but as examples of metonomy or synecdoche. See
Rapp C., “Aristotle’s Rhetoric”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2008 Edi-
tion); Zalta Edward N. (ed.), URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/entries/­
aristotle-rhetoric/, section 8.2 (“Aristotelian Metaphors”).
14 ‘τὸ δὲ ἀνάλογον λέγω, ὅταν ὁμοίως ἔχῃ τὸ δεύτερον πρὸς τὸ πρῶτον καὶ τὸ τέταρτον πρὸς
τὸ τρίτον: ἐρεῖ γὰρ ἀντὶ τοῦ δευτέρου τὸ τέταρτον ἢ ἀντὶ τοῦ τετάρτου τὸ δεύτερον. καὶ ἐνίοτε
προστιθέασιν ἀνθ᾽οὗ λέγει πρὸς ὅ ἐστι. λέγω δὲ οἷον ὁμοίως ἔχει φιάλη πρὸς Διόνυσον καὶ ἀσπὶς
πρὸς Ἄρη: ἐρεῖ τοίνυν τὴν φιάλην ἀσπίδα Διονύσου καὶ τὴν ἀσπίδα φιάλην Ἄρεως’. Aristotle
46 liba taub

Aristotle emphasises the cognitive function of metaphors; in the

Rhetoric (1410b12–15), he explains that metaphors bring about learning.
To understand a metaphor, the hearer must find something in common
between the metaphor and the thing to which it refers.15 Aristotle notes
that ‘when the poet calls old age ‘a withered stalk’, he conveys a new idea,
a new fact, to us by means of the general notion of ‘lost bloom’, which is
common to both things’. Aristotle’s treatment of metaphor occurs within
a broader discussion of how we learn; he explains that ‘we all naturally
find it agreeable to get hold of new ideas easily: words express ideas, and
therefore those words are the most agreeable that enable us to get hold
of new ideas. Now strange words simply puzzle us; ordinary words convey
only what we know already; it is from metaphor that we can best get hold
of something fresh’.16

Epicurus’ use of analogy

Epicurus was another ancient philosopher concerned with the use of lan-
guage and metaphor. He advocates the use of ‘ordinary language’ in phil-
osophical discourse, but acknowledges that metaphorical uses of words
are sometimes inevitable. He cautions that care must be taken lest such
metaphorical uses obscure philosophical concepts.17 (In his Letter to Hero-
dotus 37–38, he stated that ‘[. . .] the primary signification of every term
employed must be clearly seen, and ought to need no proving’).

himself regards the metaphors of this group, which are built from analogy, as the most
important type of enthymemes. In his Rhetoric, an enthymeme was defined as a ‘rhetorical
syllogism’ which was based on probable opinions, thus distinguishing it from a scientific
(demonstrative) syllogism. It aimed at persuasion whilst scientific syllogism aimed at dem-
onstration. See Rapp, “Aristotle’s Rhetoric”, section 6 (The Enthymeme).
15 See Rapp, “Aristotle’s Rhetoric” section 8.2 (“Aristotelian Metaphors”). As he explains:
‘Metaphors are closely related to similes; but as opposed to the later tradition, Aristotle
does not define the metaphor as an abbreviated simile, but, the other way around, the
simile as a metaphor. The simile differs from the metaphor in the form of expression:
while in the metaphor something is identified or substituted, the simile compares two
things with each other, using words as “like”, “as” etc. For example, “He rushed as a lion”,
is, according to Aristotle, a simile, but “The lion rushed” is a metaphor’.
16 ‘εἴπωμεν οὐ�̂ν καὶ διαριθμησώμεθα: ἀρχὴ δ’ ἔστω ἡμῖν αὕτη. τὸ γὰρ μανθάνειν ῥᾳδίως ἡδὺ
φύσει πᾶσιν ἐστί, τὰ δὲ ὀνόματα σημαίνει τι, ὥστε ὅσα τω̂ ν ὀνομάτων ποιεῖ ἡμῖν μάθησιν, ἥδιστα.
αἱ μὲν οὐ̂ν γλῶτται ἀγνῶτες, τὰ δὲ κύρια ἴσμεν: ἡ δὲ μεταφορὰ ποιεῖ τοῦτο μάλιστα’. Tr. Roberts
W. R. (1984) 2250.
17 Garani, Empedocles redivivus 152–153. See also Sedley D., “Epicurus on Nature Book
XXVIII”, Cronache ercolanesi 3 (1973) 21–23, and his reading of Epicurus’s On Nature.
 physiological analogies and metaphors 47

Analogy played an important role in Epicurus’ philosophy, and numer-

ous examples are found in his natural philosophical letters. Significantly,
for Epicurus analogy is one of the principal ways in which we come to
have thoughts. He emphasised that the study of nature requires a method
of inquiry; he set out his method, or kanôn, in a work which is no longer
extant, but which is summarised by Diogenes Laertius, in his Lives of Emi-
nent Philosophers. Intriguingly, the title of the work, Kanôn, may be under-
stood as referring, metaphorically, to a ruler or standard of measurement;
Epicurus’ Kanôn described the standards used to guide natural philosoph-
ical investigations.18 Elizabeth Asmis has emphasised that Diogenes Laer-
tius’ explanation of Epicurus’ canonic should not take precedence over
Epicurus’ own discussion in his Letter to Herodotus.19 Nevertheless, Dio-
genes Laertius’ summary indicates the important role of analogy, as one
of the principal ways in which we think ‘all thoughts come to be from the
perceptions by incidence, analogy, similarity, and combination, with some
contribution by calculation’.20 For Epicurus, the use of analogy allows us
to extend knowledge from what is perceived to that which cannot be per-
ceived. So, for example, in the Letter to Herodotus (58–59), the use of anal-
ogy is key to how we can understand the atom, as direct observation is
impossible; the word analogia is specifically used there by Epicurus.21 In
the Letter to Pythocles, many analogies are offered to understand celestial
and meteorological phenomena, even when the term analogia is not used;
some of these will be considered in more detail below.
With this brief consideration of Aristotle’s and Epicurus’ views on anal-
ogy and metaphor in mind, let us now examine some examples of analogy
and metaphor in their discussions of meteorological phenomena. There
are very few surviving Greco-Roman works devoted to the study of such
phenomena, and Aristotle’s Meteorology is the earliest.

18 Asmis E., Epicurus’ Scientific Method (Ithaca: 1984) 19.

19 Asmis, Epicurus’ Scientific Method 23–24.
20 Asmis, Epicurus’ Scientific Method 65–66.
21 See Asmis, Epicurus’ Scientific Method 177, where other terminology associated with
analogia is also discussed. See also Inwood B., “The Origin of Epicurus’ Concept of Void”,
Classical Philology 76, 4 (1981) 273–285; Rist J.M., Epicurus. Introduction (Cambridge: 1972)
35, 55 and passim.
48 liba taub

Analogy in Aristotle’s Meteorology

One of the questions implicit in a consideration of Aristotle’s Meteorology

is the extent to which the cosmos as a whole may be regarded as being
like a living thing. It is important to stress that while Aristotle repeatedly
points to analogies to living bodies, he does not seem to think of the cos-
mos itself as an animal, or living being.22 Nevertheless, the use of analo-
gies to living things and their bodily processes plays an important role,
particularly in his discussion of the exhalations central to his meteorologi-
cal theories; the analogies to living beings and the processes they experi-
ence link meteorology quite literally to the earth and help, for example, to
explain seismological activity. In particular, digestive analogies are used
with regard to earthquakes and the sea.23
As one example, in his explanation of earthquakes offered in the Meteo-
rology, Aristotle draws an extended analogy between exhalations trapped
in the earth and wind trapped in the human body. To begin with, both
can cause movements: ‘we must suppose that the wind in the earth has
effects similar to those of the wind in our bodies whose force when it is
pent up inside us can cause tremors and throbbings, some earthquakes
being like a tremor, some like a throbbing’.24 He adds: ‘We must suppose,
again, that the earth is affected as we often are after making water, when
a sort of tremor runs through the body as a body of wind turns inwards
again from without. For the force that wind has can be seen not only by
studying its effects in the air, when one would expect it to be able to pro-
duce them because of its volume, but also in the bodies of living things’.
He elaborates: ‘Tetanus and spasms are movements caused by wind, and
are so strong that the combined strength and efforts of a number of men
is unable to master the movements of their victims. And if we may com-

22 See Matthen M., “The Holistic Presuppositions of Aristotle’s Cosmology”, Oxford

Studies in Ancient Philosophy 20 (2001) 171–199.
23 A consideration of the use of other (non-physiological) analogies by Aristotle is out-
side the scope of this study.
24 Aristoteles, Meteorologica 366b14–19 ‘δεῖ γὰρ νοεῖν ὅτι ὥσπερ ἐν τῷ σώματι ἡμῶν καὶ
τρόμων καὶ σφυγμῶν αἴτιόν ἐστιν ἡ τοῦ πνεύματος ἐναπολαμβανομένη δύναμις, οὕτω καὶ ἐν τῇ
γῇ τὸ πνεῦμα παραπλήσιον ποιεῖν, καὶ τὸν μὲν τῶν σεισμῶν οἷον τρόμον εἶναι τὸν δ’ οἷον σφυγμόν,
καὶ καθάπερ συμβαίνει πολλάκις μετὰ τὴν οὔρησιν (διὰ τοῦ σώματος γὰρ γίγνεται ὥσπερ τρόμος
τις ἀντιμεθισταμένου τοῦ πνεύματος ἔξωθεν εἴσω ἀθρόου), τοιαῦτα [γὰρ] γίγνεσθαι καὶ περὶ τὴν
γῆν’. Tr. Lee H.D.P. (1952) 209.
 physiological analogies and metaphors 49

pare great things with small, we must suppose that the same sort of thing
happens to the earth’.25
Aristotle explains that just as the causes of earthquakes can be under-
stood as analogous with bodily processes, so can the saltiness of the sea,
which is due to the dry exhalation.26 In living bodies, the residues pro-
duced are salty and bitter; urine and sweat are the examples given. The
dry exhalation is, Aristotle explains, a residue of natural growth and gen-
eration, and so it is salty. The dry (salty) exhalation is mixed with the
moist and vaporous exhalation, condenses into clouds and falls as rain.
In this way, the sea contains salt, as a residue from the dry exhalation.27
The idea that the dry exhalation contains residues from generation and
growth reinforces analogies drawn in several of his writings, between the
earth and the means of nourishment in plants and animals.
While Aristotle used analogies to human physiological processes,
including the excretion of urine and sweat, to explain meteorological
phenomena, he rejected what he regarded as the use of ‘merely’ poetic
metaphors to describe such phenomena. In his discussion of the sea’s
salinity, he criticises the view of Democritus (that the sea’s volume is
diminishing, and that it will eventually disappear) as being like something
out of Aesop’s fables (356b9–12). He regards it as laughable to think that
Empedocles ‘has made an intelligible statement when he says that the
sea is the sweat of the earth’. Rather, he objects that ‘such a statement is
perhaps satisfactory in poetry, for metaphor is a poetic device, but it does
not advance our knowledge of nature’ (357a24–28).28 Aristotle demands a

25 Arist. Mete. 2, 366b19–30 ‘ὅσην δ’ ἔχει τὸ πνεῦμα δύναμιν, οὐ μόνον ἐκ τῶν ἐν τῷ ἀέρι δεῖ
θεωρεῖν γιγνομένων (ἐνταῦθα μὲν γὰρ διὰ τὸ μέγεθος ὑπολάβοι τις ἂν τοιαῦτα δύνασθαι ποιεῖν)
ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐν τοῖς σώμασι τοῖς τῶν ζῴων· οἵ τε γὰρ τέτανοι καὶ οἱ σπασμοὶ πνεύματος μέν εἰσιν
κινήσεις, τοσαύτην δὲ ἔχουσιν ἰσχὺν ὥστε πολλοὺς ἅμα πειρωμένους ἀποβιάζεσθαι μὴ δύνασθαι
κρατεῖν τῆς κινήσεως τῶν ἀρρωστούντων. τοιοῦτον δὴ δεῖ νοεῖν τὸ γιγνόμενον καὶ ἐν τῇ γῇ, ὡς
εἰκάσαι πρὸς μικρὸν μεῖζον’. Tr. Lee 209–211. In his discussion of the causes of earthquakes
and the views of various natural philosophers (Natural Questions, Book VI), Seneca also
points to analogies between the earth and living bodies; see, for example, 6.14.122. See also
Taub L., Ancient Meteorology (London: 2003) 151–152.
26 Wilson M., A More Disorderly Nature, usefully points to the prevalence of digestive
analogies in Aristotle’s discussions of earthquakes and the sea. I am grateful to him for
sharing his unpublished work, in which he discusses meteorological phenomena and Aris-
totle’s explanations of their causes in greater detail than is possible here.
27 Arist. Mete. 357b24–26; 358a3–25. See also Hankinson R.J., “Science”, in Barnes J.
(ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle (Cambridge: 1995) 157.
28 ‘ὁμοίως δὲ γελοῖον κἂν εἴ τις εἰπὼν ἱδρῶτα τῆς γῆς εἶναι τὴν θάλατταν οἴεταί τι σαφὲς
εἰρηκέναι, καθάπερ Ἐμπεδοκλῆς. πρὸς ποίησιν μὲν γὰρ οὕτως εἰπὼν ἴσως εἴρηκεν ἱκανῶς (ἡ γὰρ
μεταφορὰ ποιητικόν), πρὸς δὲ τὸ γνῶναι τὴν φύσιν οὐχ ἱκανῶς’. Tr. Lee 149.
50 liba taub

comprehensive explanation, in which causes are addressed; rejecting the

fable-like and poetic descriptions of predecessors, he offers his own, based
on his theory relating to two exhalations (357b21–26).
Aristotle explained that the exhalations arise when the earth is heated
by the Sun; a more vaporous exhalation comes from the moisture in
and on the earth, and a dry exhalation from the earth itself.29 The dry
exhalation is hot and easily flammable. Above the surface of the earth it
produces winds, comets, thunder and lightning. Its motion under the
surface of the earth gives rise to geological phenomena like earthquakes.
Aristotle also explains that ‘the sun not only draws up the moisture on
the earth’s surface but also heats and so dries the earth itself ’.30 The dry
exhalation apparently also heats the interior of the earth. Aristotle may
have thought of the hot exhalation circulating in the bowels of the earth
as supplying the heat which allows the earth to function as a surrogate
stomach.
Without using the term analogia, Aristotle presents his explanation of
the saltiness of the sea, which relies on an extended analogy to physiologi-
cal, specifically digestive, processes (357b24–358a26). He states that there
is a salty and bitter residue of some food processed by living bodies which
is the least digested matter; he suggests that something similar happens
in the world more generally. In his view, the exhalation on dry land is
a similar residue, analogous to that produced through the digestive pro-
cesses. Here, the explanation of the salinity of the sea involves both the
two-exhalation theory and an analogy to digestion. After the dry land pro-
duces its exhalation, the residue is mixed with the moist and vaporous
exhalation, which then condenses in clouds and is carried down as rain,
which – containing the dry residue, or salt – ends up in the sea.
An analogy between the earth and the digestive parts of animals is
explicitly presented in the Parts of Animals. Here Aristotle explains that
‘plants get their food from the earth by means of their roots; and this
food is already elaborated when taken in, which is the reason why plants
produce no excrement, the earth and its heat serving them just as [ὥσπερ]
a belly’. He suggests that the belly of animals is an ‘internal substitute
for the earth’.31 In On Youth, Old Age, Life and Death, and Respiration 1

29 Arist. Mete. 341b6–10.

30 Arist. Mete. 360a6–8. Tr. Lee 165.
31 Arist. PA 2.3 (650a21–25) ‘Τὰ μὲν γὰρ φυτὰ λαμβάνει τὴν τροφὴν κατειργασμένην ἐκ τῆς
γῆς ταῖς ῥίζαις (διὸ καὶ περίττωμα οὐ γίνεται τοῖς φυτοῖς· τῇ γὰρ γῇ καὶ τῇ ἐν αὐτῇ θερμότητι
χρῆται ὥσπερ κοιλίᾳ), τὰ δὲ ζῷα πάντα μὲν σχεδόν, τὰ δὲ πορευτικὰ φανερῶς, οἷον γῆν ἐν αὑτοῖς
 physiological analogies and metaphors 51

(468a9–12) Aristotle draws an analogy between plant and animal digestion,

stating that ‘there is a correspondence between the roots in a plant and
what is called the mouth in animals, by means of which they take in their
food, some from the earth, some by their own efforts’.32 According to
Aristotle, exhalations and heat arise when food is being digested,33 just
as exhalations and heat come from the earth when it is heated by the
warmth of the Sun. Here we might compare also the Hippocratic Humours
11, which states that ‘just as earth is to trees, so is the stomach to animals’.34
Both the mouth and stomach are required for nutrition and digestion to
occur in animals.
In On Youth, Old Age, Life and Death, and Respiration Aristotle empha-
sises that the retention of heat by animals and plants is crucial, because
‘everything living has soul, and it, as we have said, cannot exist without
the presence of natural heat’. In plants, the natural heat is sustained both
through nourishment (from the earth) and through the surrounding air.
He explains the effects of changes in air temperature on plants by draw-
ing an analogy with the ingestion of food by humans, which cools their
bodies:
For the food has a cooling effect when it enters (as it does for men immedi-
ately after a meal), whereas abstinence from food produces heat and thirst.
The air, if it be motionless, becomes hot, but by the entry of food a motion
is set up which lasts until digestion is completed and so cools it. If the sur-
rounding air is excessively cold owing to the time of year, there being severe
frost, the force of the heat dwindles; but when there are hot spells and the
moisture drawn from the ground cannot produce its cooling effect, the heat
comes to an end by exhaustion. Trees suffering at such seasons are said to
be blighted or star-stricken. Hence the practice of laying beneath the roots

ἔχει τὸ τῆς κοιλίας κύτος, ἐξ ἧς, ὥσπερ ἐκεῖνα ταῖς ῥίζαις, ταῦτα δεῖ τινι τὴν τροφὴν λαμβάνειν,
ἕως τὸ τῆς ἐχομένης πέψεως λάβῃ τέλος’. Tr. Ogle W. (Complete Works), vol. 1, 1012; cf. 4.4
(678a13), slightly modified. See also Freudenthal, Aristotle’s Theory of Material Substance
71–73. At several points in the Meteorology Aristotle refers to the internal heat of the earth.
Freudenthal 72 suggests that Aristotle’s ‘occasional allusions to an analogy between the
living animal body and the earth (e.g. Mete. 1.14, 351a26–27) may be taken to lend some
support’ to the idea that the earth inherently possesses ‘primeval’ heat: ‘Aristotle may have
thought that the earth possesses an internal source of heat, in analogy with the heart, the
source of vital heat in sanguineous animals’. See also Taub, Ancient Meteorology 99–100.
32 ‘ἀνάλογον γάρ εἰσιν αἱ ῥίζαι τοῖς φυτοῖς καὶ τὸ καλούμενον στόμα τοῖς ζῴοις, δι’ οὗ τὴν
τροφὴν τὰ μὲν ἐκ τῆς γῆς λαμβάνει, τὰ δὲ δι’ αὑτῶν’. Tr. Ross G.R.T. (Complete Works),
vol. 1, 746.
33 Arist. PA 672b14–19.
34 Hippocrates, De humoribus 11.1 (5.490 L.) ‘Ὥσπερ τοῖσι δένδρεσιν ἡ γῆ οὕτω τοῖσι ζώοισιν
ἡ γαστήρ’.
52 liba taub

stones of certain species or water in pots, for the purpose of cooling the
roots of the plants.35
These analogies between the earth and various types of living things, espe-
cially in relation to nourishment and digestion, are powerfully drawn and
evocative. They serve to emphasise the links between natural phenomena
(including earthquakes and winds) and living things, and play an impor-
tant role in underpinning Aristotle’s meteorological views.
Yet in spite of his frequent use of analogies, Aristotle – perhaps surpris-
ingly – does not examine their logical character.36 He offered no analysis
of the use of analogy; he seems simply to take for granted the usefulness
of analogies in helping to locate causes, that is, to develop and offer an
explanation of phenomena. At one point in the Metaphysics 1048a35–37,
he even suggests that in some cases an analogy will offer our best, and
only, way of understanding: ‘we must not seek a definition of everything
but be content to grasp the analogy’.37 Aristotle employs analogies from
everyday experience not as part of a demonstration or proof, but rather
to make the explanation comprehensible.38
The references to the body and bodily processes, notably digestion, and
comparisons such as the salty residue produced in dry exhalation with
sweat and urine, would have provided homely and familiar examples.39
The use of everyday examples provides, by analogy, an empirical basis for
Aristotle’s explanations of phenomena which are too distant or difficult
to be investigated directly. That certain features of meteorological theory
may be readily comprehensible through the use of analogy is reinforced

35 Aristoteles, De iuventute 470a23–b5 ‘καὶ γὰρ ἡ τροφὴ ποιεῖ κατάψυξιν εἰσιοῦσα, καθάπερ
καὶ τοῖς ἀνθρώποις τὸ πρῶτον προσενεγκαμένοις, αἱ δὲ νηστεῖαι θερμαίνουσι καὶ δίψας ποιοῦσιν·
ἀκίνητος γὰρ ὢν ὁ ἀὴρ ἀεὶ θερμαίνεται, τῆς δὲ τροφῆς εἰσιούσης καταψύχεται κινούμενος, ἕως
ἂν λάβῃ τὴν πέψιν. ἐὰν δὲ τὸ περιέχον ὑπερβάλλῃ ψυχρότητι διὰ τὴν ὥραν, ἰσχυρῶν γινομένων
πάγων, ἐξαυαίνεται ἡ τοῦ θερμοῦ ἰσχύς, ἂν δὲ συμβαίνῃ καύματα καὶ μὴ δύνηται τὸ σπώμενον
ἐκ τῆς γῆς ὑγρὸν καταψύχειν, φθείρεται μαραινόμενον τὸ θερμόν, καὶ λέγεται σφακελίζειν καὶ
ἀστρόβλητα γίνεσθαι τὰ δένδρα περὶ τοὺς καιροὺς τούτους. διὸ καὶ γένη τινὰ λίθων ταῖς ῥίζαις
ὑποβάλλουσι καὶ ὕδωρ ἐν ἀγγείοις, ὅπως αἱ ῥίζαι ψύχωνται τῶν φυτῶν. τῶν δὲ ζῴων ἐπεὶ τὰ
μέν ἐστιν ἔνυδρα τὰ δ’ ἐν τῷ ἀέρι ποιεῖται τὴν δίαιταν, ἐκ τούτων καὶ διὰ τούτων πορίζεται τὴν
κατάψυξιν, τὰ μὲν τῷ ὕδατι τὰ δὲ τῷ ἀέρι. τίνα δὲ τρόπον καὶ πῶς, λεκτέον ἐπιστήσασι τὸν λόγον
μᾶλλον’. Tr. Ross W.D. (Complete Works), vol. 1, 749. See also Freudenthal, Aristotle’s Theory
of Material Substance 71.
36 Bourgey L., “Observation and Experiment in Analogical Explanation”, in Barnes J. –
Schofield M. – Sorabji R. (eds.) Articles on Aristotle 1. Science (London: 1975) 175–182.
37 Aristoteles, Metaphysica 9.6, 1048a35–37, tr. Ross W.D. (Complete Works), vol. 2,
1655.
38 Hankinson, “Science” 155. I agree with Hankinson’s suggestion that Aristotle’s
analogies have no probative value; furthermore, he believes that Aristotle did not intend
them to.
39 See, for example, Arist. Mete. 2.3, 357a32–b1 on the analogy with the production of urine.
 physiological analogies and metaphors 53

by Aristotle’s frequent deployment of references to common experience:

such analogies attempt to offer empirical support for explanations of dis-
tant phenomena, by making comparisons to familiar and more intimately
observable occurrences.40
In the Meteorology Aristotle draws different types of comparisons, point-
ing to similarities between those phenomena which are familiar and those
which are more difficult to access. Some of his comparisons are rather
tentative, perhaps only intended to be suggestive. Sometimes he takes it
for granted that we supply the details of the analogy ourselves, presum-
ably because he considers the event to be so common. For example, as
part of his argument that the motion of the Sun inflames air, Aristotle
states that objects in motion are often found to melt, though he does not
give specific examples.
Indeed, in many cases it is not clear whether Aristotle intends his famil-
iar examples to serve ‘merely’ as an illustrative device (similar, perhaps,
to the idea of a ‘mere’ analogy pointed to by the editors of this volume)
or as a way of giving genuine explanatory information. It is possible to
say ‘conceive of X as analogous to Y’ and for this to be understood in two
different ways: simply as a means of illustrating something about X and,
more richly, with the intention of the reader carrying across some under-
standing of Y and thinking that the same sort of thing holds for X. It is
difficult to know the degree to which the use of an analogy indicates a
strong commitment, on Aristotle’s part, to what he regards as a genuinely
correct explanation. Certainly, a useful illustration can serve a number of
different ends, some of which may be pedagogical, without entailing any
strong explanatory claim. Wilson has argued that analogy serves a special
role more generally in Aristotle’s scientific works, by providing a way in
which a limited degree of unity across different scientific subjects may be
achieved. A study more detailed than the necessarily brief consideration
here should contribute to our understanding of the force of the physi-
ological analogies in the Meteorology.41

40 Different types of analogy are used in the Meteorology, as well as in other works
in the Aristotelian corpus, notably the writings concerned with living beings. On Aristo-
tle’s use of analogy see, for example, Lloyd G.E.R., “Experiment in Early Greek Philosophy
and Medicine”, in Lloyd G.E.R., Methods and Problems in Greek Science (Cambridge: 1991)
77–78, and Lloyd, Polarity and Analogy, particularly ch. 6, “The Analysis of Argument from
Analogy”; Hesse M.B., Models and Analogies in Science (Notre Dame, IN: 1966) chapter on
“Aristotle’s Logic of Analogy”; Fiedler W. Analogiemodelle bei Aristoteles. Untersuchungen zu
den Vergleichen zwischen den einzelnen Wissenschaften und Künsten (Amsterdam: 1978).
41 Wilson, Unity of Science 10–11, 53–115. Further, a consideration of the use of ‘familiar’
analogies with reference to Aristotle’s more general epistemological distinctions regarding
what is knowable might also prove useful.
54 liba taub

Analogy and metaphor in Epicurus’ and Lucretius’ explanations

Analogies also feature in the explanations of physical phenomena offered

by Epicurus and Lucretius. Epicurus’ explanation of earthquakes depends
on an analogy to the way in which buildings collapse.42 He states:
Earthquakes may be due to the imprisonment of wind underground, and to
its being interspersed with small masses of earth and then set in continuous
motion, thus causing the earth to tremble. And the earth either takes in this
wind from without or from the falling in of foundations, when undermined,
into subterranean caverns, thus raising a wind in the imprisoned air. Or they
may be due to the propagation of movement arising from the fall of many
foundations and to its being again checked when it encounters the more
solid resistance of earth.43
Lucretius draws out the analogy:
Whole mountains fall, and from the mighty shock
Tremors spread abroad in an instant far and wide;
Quite naturally, since buildings by the roadside
Tremble with the shock of waggons passing by
Of no great weight, and jump when the iron-shod wheels
On either side jolt over stones or potholes.44

42 See, for example, Long A.A. – Sedley D.N., The Hellenistic Philosophers (Cambridge:
1987), vol. 1, 63. Epicurean cosmology requires that phenomena be explained in purely
physical terms; Epicurean explanations are non-teleological. A comparison of Aristotle’s
teleological stance (and its possible role in his use of physiological analogies) to the non-
teleological explanations of the Epicureans might prove interesting. Some modern his-
torians have referred to certain ancient explanations, for instance those of Epicurus and
Lucretius, as ‘mechanistic’. See Berryman S., The Mechanical Hypothesis in Ancient Greek
Natural Philosophy (Cambridge: 2009) on the use of the terms ‘mechanistic’ and ‘mechani-
cal’ by historians discussing the seventeenth century, as well as Antiquity; she also consid-
ers the presumed dichotomy between teleological and ‘mechanistic’ explanations.
43 Epicurus, Epistula ad Pythoclem in Diogenes Laertius, De clarorum philosophorum
vitis 10.105 ‘Σεισμοὺς ἐνδέχεται γίνεσθαι καὶ κατὰ πνεύματος ἐν τῇ γῇ ἀπόληψιν καὶ παρὰ
μικροὺς ὄγκους αὐτῆς παράθεσιν καὶ συνεχῆ κίνησιν, ὃ τὴν κράδανσιν τῇ γῇ παρασκευάζει. καὶ
τὸ πνεῦμα τοῦτο ἢ ἔξωθεν ἐμπεριλαμβάνει <ἢ> ἐκ τοῦ πίπτειν εἴσω ἐδάφη εἰς ἀντροειδεῖς τόπους
τῆς γῆς ἐκπνευματοῦντα τὸν ἐπειλημμένον ἀέρα. <καὶ> κατ’ αὐτὴν δὲ τὴν διάδοσιν τῆς κινήσεως
ἐκ τῶν πτώσεων ἐδαφῶν πολλῶν καὶ πάλιν ἀνταπόδοσιν, ὅταν πυκνώμασι σφοδροτέροις τῆς γῆς
ἀπαντήσῃ, ἐνδέχεται σεισμοὺς ἀποτελεῖσθαι’. Tr. Hicks R.D. 631–633.
44 Lucretius, De rerum natura 6.547–551 ‘his igitur rebus subiunctis suppositisque |
terra superne tremit magnis concussa ruinis, | subter ubi ingentis speluncas subruit aetas;
| quippe cadunt toti montes magnoque repente | concussu late disserpunt inde tremores. |
et merito, quoniam plaustri concussa tremescunt | tecta viam propter non magno pondere
tota, | nec minus exultant, si quidvis cumque viai | ferratos utrimque rotarum succutit
orbes’. Tr. Melville R.
 physiological analogies and metaphors 55

But rather different analogies are used to explain other natural phenom-
ena. So, for example, Lucretius offers the following explanation of rain-
drops:
Now let me demonstrate how rainy moisture
Condenses in clouds high above, and falls
In a shower of rain upon the earth beneath.
First you will concede that many seeds [semina] of water
Rise up together with the clouds themselves
From things of every kind, and in this way
Both grow together, the clouds and whatever water
Is in the clouds, just as our bodies grow
Concurrently with the blood and sweat and whatever
Moisture there may in fact be in the limbs.45
In fact, the language used, by Epicurus and especially by Lucretius, often
draws ‘biological’ analogies, particularly alluding to generation and cor-
ruption, two very important processes undergone by living beings. And
many passages in Epicurus and Lucretius are replete with images of liv-
ing things and processes that affect them: seeds, irrigation, creation and
extinction.46
For example, Epicurus asserts (Ep. Pyth. 89) that it is possible for a
kosmos (world) to arise in another kosmos, or in one of the metakosmia
(the so-called intermundia, ‘the spaces, or interstices’ between worlds). He
describes the flowing of ‘seeds’ from a single world, or from several, which
‘undergo gradual additions or articulations or changes of place [. . .] water-
ings from appropriate sources, until they are matured and firmly settled
in so far as the foundations laid can receive them’. As David Furley has
noted, even though the text has difficulties and is vague, the language –
employing words like ‘seeds’ and ‘irrigations’ – offers a ‘biological’ model

45 Lucr. 6.495–503 ‘Nunc age, quo pacto pluvius concrescat in altis | nubibus umor et
in terras demissus ut imber | decidat, expediam. primum iam semina aquai | multa simul
vincam consurgere nubibus ipsis | omnibus ex rebus pariterque ita crescere utrumque |
et nubis et aquam quaecumque in nubibus extat, | ut pariter nobis corpus cum sanguine
crescit, | sudor item atque umor quicumque est denique membris’. Tr. Melville R., slightly
altered, replacing ‘atoms’ with ‘seeds’, for semina.
46 On the ‘biological’ imagery in Epicurus and Lucretius, see Furley D., “Cosmology” in
Algra K. – Barnes J. – Mansfeld J. – Schofield M. (eds.), The Cambridge History of Hellenistic
Philosophy (Cambridge: 1999) 425; Schrijvers P.H., “Seeing the Invisible: A Study of Lucre-
tius’ Use of Analogy in the De rerum natura”, in Gale M.R. (ed.), Oxford Readings in Classical
Studies. Lucretius (Oxford: 2007) 261; Taub L., “Cosmology and Meteorology” in Warren J.
(ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Epicureanism (Cambridge: 2009) 116–118.
56 liba taub

for the growth of kosmoi,47 and the analogies to living things are vivid.
Lucretius was motivated to present something more ‘decorated’ than Epi-
curus’ brief letters; he twice announces the ‘honeyed-cup’ character of his
work. But his originality was not only manifested through the aesthetic
poetic appeal, but through the intellectual possibilities his extended met-
aphors allowed for exploring and explicating some of the ideas contained
in Epicurus’, and other philosophers’ work.
So, for example, Lucretius uses his biological metaphors to describe
the world (mundus) itself. Building on the brevity of Epicurus, Lucretius
describes, at some length, the ‘life cycle’ of our world, once again invoking
images of living organisms at 2.1105–1174. Here, Lucretius represents the
world as what may be called a makranthrôpos, an image which recurs in
Books 5 and 6.48 The term makranthrôpos is borrowed from Adolf Meyer
(1900), to note that the ‘commonplaces’ described are taken from the
human body and applied to the whole world.49 Rather than the relation-
ship between mikrokosmos and makrokosmos, we have anthrôpos and
makranthrôpos: the kosmos is depicted as a large-scale anthrôpos, a living
human being. The passage in Lucretius is lengthy and beautiful, offering a
sober end to Book Two. Having used language that evokes biological func-
tions and processes, emphasising growth, nourishment and decay, Lucre-
tius closes his discussion (2.1164–1174) of the cosmic ‘life-cycle’ bemoaning
the current state of the earth and of agriculture, which no longer produces
food in abundance as it once did, food and nourishment necessary to sus-
tain, through physiological processes of digestion, human life.
There are questions that can be raised about the significance of the par-
ticular type of metaphor used – the body – to refer to how macrocosmic
processes are understood. Is this a reductive treatment? Is everything
meant to be understood relative to humans? Does it make human beings
central? Does it make concerns about the human body – including health,
disease and medicine – particularly important?50
This passage suggests that the world, the kosmos, in a similar manner
to living organisms, has a fixed life-cycle, being subject to growth and

47 Furley, “Cosmology” 425.

48 Solmsen F., “Epicurus on the Growth and Decline of the Cosmos”, American Journal
of Philology 74 (1953) 34–51, esp. 38–39; cf. Schrijvers, “Seeing the Invisible” 272–273.
49 Meyer A., Wesen und Geschichte der Theorie vom Mikro- und Makrokosmos (Bern:
1900). See also Schrijvers, “Seeing the Invisible” 271; Lloyd, Polarity and Analogy 252;
Mansfeld, J., The Pseudo-Hippocratic Tract περί ἑβδομαδων Ch. 1–11 and Greek Philosophy
(Assen: 1971) 104–105. Cf. Garani, Empedocles redivivus 77–81.
50 I thank Aude Doody for her insights here.
 physiological analogies and metaphors 57

decline. Our world – as well as the other worlds, or kosmoi – is not immor-
tal and everlasting, but will cease to exist. Like living beings, these worlds,
these kosmoi, grow, decline, and finally come to an end.51 The mortality of
the Epicurean kosmoi is in sharp contrast to the immortal and unchanging
nature of, for example, the Aristotelian kosmos.52 Furthermore, Lucretius
appears to have taken a rather brief reference to an analogy in Epicurus –
here between a living thing (zôion) and the cosmos or the Earth – and
developed it into an elaborate metaphor.53
In this way, Lucretius ends up in a seemingly paradoxical position. On
the one hand, the Epicureans, including Lucretius, ‘categorically deny that
the earth is a living thing and that the cosmos has a soul’.54 Yet, Lucretius
develops and exploits an analogy, through an elaborate metaphor, of the
world as a living thing (possibly even a makranthrôpos), subject to physi-
ological processes similar to other living beings. If Lucretius did not regard
the cosmos as a living being, why did he draw out the Epicurean analogy
into elaborate metaphors pointing to similarities between the cosmos and
living things? Aristotle had earlier asserted that metaphor conveys mean-
ing; the metaphors developed by Lucretius require philosophical engage-
ment in order to understand the limits of their meaning.
Piet Schrijvers, in a seminal article, posits that the elaboration allows the
exploration of ideas within a framework posited by the analogy.55 Through
his repeated and elaborated references to human bodies, Lucretius draws
on analogies which are familiar to all of us, and which would have
been familiar to all of his readers. These ‘biological’ analogies transcend
historical time, place and culture, and make reference to what is most
familiar to us: our own bodies. As Schrijvers has suggested: ‘Lucretius’ cos-
mology has the effect of belittling the importance of things usually experi-
enced as awe-inspiring’. Instead of emphasising a possible relationship of
macrocosm/microcosm, Lucretius uses the metaphor of the makranthrôpos,

51 See Solmsen, “Epicurus on the Growth and Decline of the Cosmos”, 50, citing frag-
ment 305 in Usener’s edition (=Aëtius 2.4). Asmis, Epicurus’ Scientific Method 314–315 com-
ments briefly on the idea that the growth and decline of worlds is analogous to the growth
and decline of living beings. It is worth noting that all composite bodies come to be and
are eventually dissolved (Epicurus, Epistula ad Herodotum in Diogenes Laertius, De claro-
rum philosophorum vitis 10.42).
52 See Solmsen, “Epicurus on the Growth and Decline of the Cosmos” 50 n. 62.
53 See Schrijvers, “Seeing the Invisible” 272–276.
54 Schrijvers, “Seeing the Invisible” 273–274.
55 Schrijvers, “Seeing the Invisible” 257–258, following the suggestion of the use of
‘root metaphors’ in Black M., Models and Metaphors. Studies in Language and Philosophy
(Ithaca: 1962).
58 liba taub

to build on analogies to anthrôpoi.56 The emphasis is on the similarity to

the human, the familiar: ‘The comparisons established between grandiose
cosmic phenomena and the minute scale of the human body have the
psychological consequence that, thanks to these parallels, the miraculous
and terrifying quality of the paradoxa is diminished’.57 Furthermore, the
elaborated metaphors constructed by Lucretius upon references to living
things confirm the power and importance, asserted by Aristotle, Epicurus,
and others (including Theophrastus and Seneca, for example) of arguing
by analogy to familiar things.58
The elaborate metaphorical references drawn by Lucretius to the cos-
mos as a living being, with similarities to a human being, are especially
powerful and compelling. This is the novelty, the ‘freshness’, of Lucretius’
elaboration of the analogy of the Earth to living things into the metaphor
of the cosmos as makranthrôpos. What is more familiar to us than our
own bodies, and the processes they undergo?

Analogies in seventeenth-century English explanations

The appeal of analogies and metaphors that draw on the familiarity of

human physiology were powerful not only in Greco-Roman Antiquity,
but in the Early Modern period as well. Ancient accounts of natural phe-
nomena existed alongside newly emerging methods of explanation; in a
number of fields, including geology and meteorology, metaphors derived
from physiology gained popularity. While a detailed examination of such
analogies and metaphors in early modern authors is not possible here,
even a brief look at some English-language writings gives a sense of their
continued use and appeal; a consideration of early modern authors writ-
ing in other languages would likely uncover further material worthy
of study.
As an example, just as Aristotle had used images of an ‘internal’ wind,59
so too did a number of seventeenth-century authors writing in English.

56 Schrijvers, “Seeing the Invisible” 271 notes that the microcosm image is applied, in
the strict sense, to humans beings (as a smaller version of the cosmos) only once by Lucre-
tius (at 3.487–509).
57 Schrijvers, “Seeing the Invisible” 276.
58 Althoff J., “Vom Schicksal einer Metapher: Die Erde als Organismus in Senecas
Naturales Quaestiones”, Antike Naturwissenschaft und ihre Rezeption (Trier: 1997), vol. 7,
95–110.
59 See, for example, Arist. Mete. 366b14–22, 368a6–11.
 physiological analogies and metaphors 59

The analogies invoked are not ‘new’, but seem to be a repetition of what
we have seen before, in ancient Greek and Roman authors. In some cases,
analogies and metaphors persist, through early modern authors con-
sciously relating to ancient ideas, for example, in quotations from and
references to earlier works. In other instances, it is not clear whether early
modern authors realised that similar analogies and metaphors had been
used in Greco-Roman Antiquity.
As an example in which the author makes deliberate reference to
ancient ideas, as part of his review of accounts of earthquakes found in
the writings of ancient natural philosophers, as well as the Bible, Thomas
Doolittle, in Earthquakes Explained and Practically Improved (London:
1693), cited Aristotle directly:
Aristotle Book. 2. Meteorology proves that Exhalations are the cause of the
Earthquake.
1. From a similitude taken from Mens Bodies, in which there are sometimes
such Convulsions, Shakings and Tremblings, that many Men can scarce
hold such a one, the cause whereof are Spirits hot and dry. In like man-
ner, when the vast Body of the Earth is moved, it is to be referred to
Exhalations, which are hot and dry.
Aristotle is only one of a number of Greek and Roman philosophical
authors, including Posidonius and Seneca, whose ideas are discussed.
However, Doolittle also reports the views of some of his own contem-
poraries. For example, a few pages later, he adds that an earthquake ‘is
commonly described’ as ‘a Meteor arising from abundant Exhalations shut
up in the bowels of the Earth, “which while they seek a passage out that
they may ascend, but cannot find it, cause the Earth to shake” ’. Here,
Doolittle appears to be speaking of current views, and not only those of
the ancients, for earlier in this section he refers to the ideas of Jacques
Rohault (1618–1672), as discussed in his treatise on physics. Intriguingly,
Doolittle notes that not all uses of terminology relating to earthquakes
refer to geological events: some accounts of ‘earthquakes’ are metaphori-
cal, describing great changes in ‘states, kingdoms and church’.60

60 Doolittle T. Earthquakes Explained and Practically Improved (London, John Salusbury:

1693) 55 (Aristotle quoted); 53 (citing Rohault); 57–58 (further discussion of earthquakes);
28–31 (on metaphorical uses of terms related to ‘earthquake’). Some authors use the
word ‘bowels’ without making an explicit analogy to digestive anatomy or processes, for
example Woodward J., The Natural History of the Earth (London, Richard Wilkin: 1695).
On some late seventeenth-century ideas concerning earthquakes, see Willmoth F., “John
Flamsteed’s Letter Concerning the Natural Causes of Earthquakes”, Annals of Science 44
(1987) 23–70, especially 32–67.
60 liba taub

The vivid use of analogy is evident in other descriptions of the Earth,

as well as of meteorological or geological phenomena; while digestive
and nutritive organs and processes were often invoked, other body parts
and even illness were also referred to. So, for example, C. H[allywell], in
A Philosophical Discourse of Earthquakes (London: 1693), describes the
earth as having ‘infinite Burrows and Cavities [. . .] like the Ramifications
of Veins, and Nerves, and Arteries in the Humane Body’.61 In 1694 ‘R.B’.
[Robert Burton, pseudonym of Nathaniel Crouch] explained that during
‘these two or three years past’, when there were a number of earthquakes
felt in Europe as well as America, ‘some have been of the opinion that the
Earth was a great Animal, and that the shivering of some Ague Fit was the
Cause of his trembling’.62
These analogies are very brief, and are not elaborated into metaphors,
as they were by Lucretius. In some instances they appear to be taken
explicitly from ancient authors, notably Aristotle himself, and possibly
also Seneca, who in his Natural Questions discusses a number of analogies
between the earth and the body, including those offered by other natural
philosophers in their own explanations.63

Conclusion

The analogies drawn by the early modern authors cited here are famil-
iar and, as in Lucretius, human.64 (This may assume some consensus on
human physiology, and that the reader is aware of or agrees with explana-
tions offered, or insinuated.) Analogies may serve a number of functions,
including illustrative, pedagogical and/or explanatory; individual authors
and readers may well have intended and understood the seemingly same
analogy differently.

61 H[allywell] C. A Philosophical Discourse of Earthquakes (London, printed for Walter

Kettilby, at the Bishop’s Head in St. Paul’s Church-Yard: 1693) 3.
62 R.B. [Burton Robert, pseud. for Nathaniel Crouch] A General History of Earthquakes
[. . .] (London, Nath. Crouch: 1694) 163. R.B. goes on to explain that there are two natural
causes of earthquakes (subterranean fires and winds, and water under the Earth under-
mining the foundations of subterranean vaults). On 4, he had described ‘the great Caves
and Dens of the Earth being always full of Air’.
63 For example, Seneca, Naturales Quaestiones 6.14.1–2; see also Althoff, ‘Vom Schicksal
einer Metapher’ and Taub, Ancient Meteorology 150–152.
64 The analogy between the earth and living bodies may rely on superficial or acci-
dental similarities, rather than similarity of cause; that does not deny the usefulness of
the analogy.
 physiological analogies and metaphors 61

For the philosophical authors considered here, the Earth was not a
living thing, and the analogies and metaphors invoking the human body
suggest certain potential problems and misunderstandings. We might
even ask the question, how far does analogical and metaphorical thinking
‘contaminate’ understanding of a phenomenon in its own right? Is there
too great a danger of literal readings, or of wrong conclusions reached,
for instance that the Earth is itself animate? With this in mind, it is worth
noting that a number of ancient authors, including Plutarch, Cicero and
Quintilian, specifically pointed to the power of metaphors that link the
inanimate to the animate, going so far as to use analogy and personi-
fication.65 The analogies and metaphors used by our authors indicate
that a consideration of living bodies, human and otherwise, could aid in
understanding and explaining other natural, but inanimate, phenomena.
That the Earth was not a living being may have made the analogies and
metaphors invoking physiological processes even more compelling; their
power was achieved simultaneously through both novelty as well as inti-
mate familiarity.

65 Innes D., “Metaphor, Simile, and Allegory as Ornaments of Style”, in Boys-Stones G.

(ed.), Metaphor, Allegory, and the Classical Tradition. Ancient Thought and Modern Revi-
sions (Oxford: 2003) 16 on the relationship between the animate and inanimate as an
important type of metaphor, discussed by Philodemus, Plutarch, Cicero and Quintilian.
See also Schenkeveld D.M., Studies in Demetrius On Style (Amsterdam: 1964) 90, cited by
Innes.
62 liba taub

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10.83–117, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: 1925), vol. 2, 612–643.
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den einzelnen Wissenschaften und Künsten (Amsterdam: 1978).
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Garani M., Empedocles redivivus. Poetry and Analogy in Lucretius (London: 2007).
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 THE RECEPTION OF THE HIPPOCRATIC TREATISE ON GLANDS

Elizabeth Craik

Summary*

Authorship, date and milieu are first considered. It is noted that ancient medical
knowledge of glands and the lymphatic system depends on comparative anatomy;
culinary use and sacrificial practice are significant. The approach of early modern
editors such as Foesius and Zwinger to the work and the citations of doctor-philolo-
gists such as Caius are discussed. In reactions to the discoveries of Aselli and others,
many Hippocratic works were cited, but rarely On Glands, despite its relevance to
debates on the nature, routes and contents of bodily ducts, as well as to debates on
teleology and to debates on the value of comparative anatomy. General and more
particular explanations for this neglect are suggested. The work of van der Linden,
van Horne and others is discussed. It appears from the selective nature of citation
that familiarity was restricted to certain parts of On Glands while its overall visionary
character went unnoticed.

Introduction

According to a recent medical judgment of the Hippocratic treatise On

Glands:
The modern scientist stands amazed before the innovative concepts
expounded in this ancient medical document. Indeed, the functional anat-
omy of the lymphatic system and lymph nodes emerges with impressive
precision [. . .] an absolutely modern interpretation of their physiopathologi-
cal significance.1
The seventeen sections of this short treatise can be summarised as fol-
lows: the general character of glands in nature and appearance is

* I am much indebted to Professor Manfred Horstmanshoff, Professor Vivian Nutton

and Dr. Thomas Rütten for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. For edi-
tion, with introduction, translation and commentary of the treatise, see Craik E.M., The
Hippocratic Treatise On Glands, Edited and Translated with Introduction and Commentary
(Leiden: 2009); this paper extends and amplifies section III of the introduction.
1 Crivellato E. – Travan L. – Ribatti D., “The Hippocratic Treatise ‘On Glands’: The First
Document on Lymphoid Tissue and Lymph Nodes”, Leukemia 21 (2007) 591–592.
66 elizabeth craik

outlined (1); the nature and cause of maladies affecting them is described (2);
their distribution and function is indicated (3); an association of glands,
moisture and hair is postulated (4); it is allowed that hair is absent from
some places where glands are present (5). Particular glandular areas are
discussed: the kidneys (6); the neck (7); the armpits and groin (8); the
intestines (9); the head, specifically the brain (10). It is stated that the head
may send an excess of moisture in flux to the ears, the eyes, the nose, the
throat, the oesophagus, the spine or the hip joint (11); and that the brain
itself may be affected if this flux goes wrong (12). The relatively minor
hazards of fluxes to the eyes, nose and ears are outlined (13); flux via the
oesophagus (to the belly) and via the trachea (to the lungs) and the dan-
gers of flux to the hips are described (14). It is noted that the brain may
suffer other dangerous maladies, affecting the rest of the body also (15).
Finally, a glandular difference – breasts – between men and women is
discussed (16–17).
The Hippocratic writer makes a serious and wide-ranging attempt to
observe the broad anatomy, to understand the underlying physiology, and
to account for the general pathology of glands. The opening words of the
treatise are programmatic: ‘On glands as a whole, this is the situation’; that
is, the system is discussed. The perception that distant and apparently
disparate parts of the body, which can be described and identified, have
an underlying connection and similar function demonstrates a fundamen-
tal insight in both anatomical and physiological terms. The pathological
content is similarly impressive in its recognition of systemic disease. The
author’s remarkable achievement in addressing and accomplishing such
an ambitious enterprise defies the inherent complexity of the topic, and
prefigures the long gradual process of discovery, observation and deduc-
tion which underlies present day knowledge of glands and the lymphatic
system. To some extent, the modern process of discovery, beginning in
the seventeenth century AD, is parallel to the ancient, of the fourth cen-
tury BC. This paper outlines some parallels and suggests reasons for the
apparent failure in the Early Modern period to recognise the insights con-
tained in On Glands. The author’s all-embracing approach, with its recog-
nition that glandular parts belong to an integrated system, is his greatest
achievement and yet paradoxically may be the main reason for neglect
of his work by later authors, who were concerned for the most part with
limited parts of that system. But there are other reasons also, related to
early modern approaches to Hippocratic texts and preconceptions about
their content.
 the reception of the hippocratic treatise on glands 67

It is evident that there is an initial problem of definition. Our author

has two main criteria in identifying glands: firstly, they are alike in anat-
omy with regard both to appearance (spongy, fatty and white) and to
location (in bodily ‘joints’ and ‘cavities’); and secondly, they are alike in
pathology (fever, pustules and scrofulous swellings): the supposed com-
mon physiology (bodily drainage), on which much stress is laid, is appar-
ently a theoretical adjunct. The particular glandular areas noted – areas
believed either to be glands or to have glands – are these: the kidneys; the
neck (tonsils); the armpits; the groin; the intestines; the head, specifically
the brain; and, in women, the breasts. In reality, glands vary widely in
nature and size, and lymph nodes too are diverse: it is difficult to find a
simple description equally apt to all. Description and definition are still
problematical. Although there is a broad consensus on the general tex-
ture and appearance of glands and lymph nodes it is noticeable that even
in modern textbooks the term ‘gland’ is often accompanied or replaced
by more vague expressions such as ‘glandular tissue’. Expressions such as
‘gland-like’, ‘glandular’; ‘flesh-like’, ‘fleshy’; ‘sponge-like’, ‘spongy’; ‘fat-like’,
‘fatty’, recurrent in ancient attempts at description, are not without paral-
lels in modern medical literature.

Authorship, date and milieu

Who is the author? Questions of date and intertextuality, always problem-

atical with regard to the Hippocratic Corpus, are here acute.2 Discussion
of authorship has been much influenced by the disparaging and dismissive
judgment of Galen that On Glands falls far short of true Hippocratic writings
in ‘expression and thought’ and is the work of ‘one of the later Hippocratics’.
Galen made these pronouncements in commenting on a passage of the Hip-
pocratic work Articulations where the author states his intent to write ‘on
glands as a whole’. As this replicates the opening sentence of On Glands the
possibility of common authorship arises, and has been much discussed.3 It is
true that some elements suggest affinities with Articulations (and the related
treatise Fractures); further, some elements suggest affinities with Places in
Man. But these are scarcely indicative of common authorship.

2 See Craik E.M., “[Hippocrates] On Glands”, forthcoming in Proceedings of Colloque

International Hippocratique XIII.
3 Galenus, In Hippocratis de articulis librum commentarii 45 (18A.379 K.).
68 elizabeth craik

Rather, on the basis of cumulative evidence in both content and

expression, it appears that the author of On Glands is the author also of
Generation-Nature of the Child (on matters of conception and embryology)
and Diseases IV (on topics in physiology and nosology), as well as of a
large body of material in the gynaecological texts transmitted in the Hip-
pocratic Corpus, including the short piece Diseases of Girls. An important
implication is that there was considerable awareness of glandular anat-
omy, physiology and pathology among Hippocratic doctors, especially
among those with an interest in the female body: the vast and sprawling
gynaecological works are not just an amalgam of old wives’ tales and reci-
pes, but are in parts highly sophisticated in content. On the basis of this
unexpected and unexpectedly early grouping, On Glands may plausibly be
dated to the early decades of the fourth century. The author responsible
for this substantial fraction of the ‘Hippocratic’ writings is an important
and original thinker, who occupies a pivotal place between the thought
of the ‘Presocratics’ and the researches of the Academy (Plato) and the
Lyceum (Aristotle).4
The author might be viewed as a doctor with a scientific bent (interested
in botany and zoology) or as a scientist with medical interests (concerned
with human as well as animal function); but in truth any such categorisa-
tion is anachronistic. In fifth- and fourth-century terms he belongs among
the iatrotechnai or intellectual ‘doctor-scientists’ parodied by Aristophanes
in Clouds of which the first version was produced in 423 BC. The most per-
vasive underlying presence is that of Democritus. Although Democritus is
not generally viewed as a ‘doctor’, it is remarkable that many of his works
have titles the same as, or similar to, several which are transmitted in the
Hippocratic Corpus: it seems he wrote on the nature of man or on flesh;
on humours; and on dietetics. In addition, tradition records a treatise on
fever and chronic cough, suggesting an interest in consumptive illnesses,
shared with our author. Speculation on the formation of the body and of its
different components was a topic of general interest; but it is notable that
Democritus gives a similar account of the formation of horn to that essayed
in On Glands on the formation of hair. There is a vivid vignette contained

4 To assess more precisely the extent of his oeuvre it would be necessary to reconsider
the extent of Grensemann’s postulated Schicht C; see Grensemann H., Knidische Medizin,
Teil I. Die Testimonien zur ältesten Knidischen Lehre und Analysen Knidischer Schriften im
Corpus Hippocraticum (Berlin-New York: 1975) and Hippokratische Gynäkologie. Die gynä-
kologischen Texte des Autors C nach den pseudohippokratischen Schriften De muliebribus I,
II und De sterilibus (Wiesbaden: 1982).
 the reception of the hippocratic treatise on glands 69

in the Hippocratic letters: Democritus is presented as cutting up many ani-

mals, scrutinising their ‘innards’ in order to assess the ‘nature and place of
bile’ (Letters 17 [9.352 L.]), an excess of which is said to cause illness. Simi-
larly, in a Democritean account of the body, bile is said to be destructive if
it ‘overflows’ (Letters 23 [9.392 L.]): these concepts are similar to those of On
Glands. In addition, Democritus wrote on topics in embryology, explaining
multiple births in such animals as dogs and pigs, a topic covered in similar
terms in Nature of the Child.

Ancient anatomical knowledge

Ancient anatomical knowledge, including knowledge of glands and the

lymphatic system, undoubtedly depended on comparative anatomy. Aris-
totle was familiar with glands in such animals as cat, dog, pig, sheep and
ox: his account of glands includes descriptions of tonsils, breasts (udders),
genitals, axilla, throat, groin and mesenterion and is couched in terms
rather similar to those used in the Hippocratic treatise. Other animals he
is known to have dissected include the hare, deer, mouse, hyena, ass, leop-
ard and weasel; also the seal and ox. In On Regimen, the main Hippocratic
account of the relative values and qualities (hot, cold, wet, dry) of differ-
ent kinds of meat, more attention is paid to different animal species than
to different cuts; but from lists of animals recommended as foodstuffs, it
is evident that cooks would have been familiar with the carcasses of the
ox, goat, piglet and pig, lamb and sheep, ass, puppy and dog, wild boar,
deer, hare, fox and hedgehog – as well as a wide range of birds and fishes.
The culinary importance of ‘glands’ – which we might recognise rather as
‘offal’ – is evident also from many passages quoted in Athenaeus. Sow’s
udder was a glandular delicacy and stuffed spleen seems to have been par-
ticularly prized; also liver, fried and wrapped in a ‘caul’ (epiploon).5 In one
Hippocratic case-history, prescribing a light diet for an invalid, sweetbreads
and testicles are recommended: after the regular pulse soups, the invalid is
to eat ‘boiled puppy’, then graduate to sweet soft glandular foods (Epidemics
7.62 (5.428 L.)).
Galen is well aware that there are many glands in the body. In his view,
they are not all equally necessary or useful, but there is a relative need

5 This resembles many types of sausage; also the haggis of Scotland, properly contain-
ing sheep’s innards encased in a sheep’s stomach.
70 elizabeth craik

for those which provide saliva, milk or semen and those which furnish
‘phlegm-like moisture’ in the mesenterion and elsewhere. There is some
hesitation over detail and definition; some glands may be regarded rather
as ‘glandular bodies’, these being more fine and more spongy than other
glands, and this somewhat strange phrase is recurrent. Galen’s lack of pre-
cision can be accounted for by the complexity of the subject, or perhaps
simply because anatomical detail is not here the main thrust of his account.
As to the physiology of glands, Galen concurs with the Hippocratic author
that their function is to monitor bodily moisture, and remove any surplus.
Glands have as their function ‘to accommodate excess’ and ‘to receive
flux’.6 As to the pathology of glands, Galen is again at one with the Hip-
pocratic writer. Hard swellings in the groin or armpits are described by the
Hippocratic term ‘scrofula’. In short, no great advance is evident between
the classical and the Galenic understanding.
Galen’s most extended account of glands is in the section ‘on glands’ in a
long account of foodstuffs; the culinary importance of glands is here corrobo-
rated. In Galen’s account, it is implied that, whereas most people know only
large glands, such as the tonsils, he is familiar with many small ones; those
of the mesentery are specified. Galen includes the thymus gland, which is
especially large in the neck or breast of young animals. This clearly refers to
‘sweetbreads’ as they are now called, two distinct white fatty glands taken
from calves or lambs, one lying immediately below the throat and the other
(rounder in shape and more priced by connoisseurs) lying nearer the heart.
Galen remarks that all glands in common are sweet and ‘tender’ to eat.
As in the kitchen, there were regular opportunities to view animal car-
casses in temples: animal sacrifice – of different animals, such as bulls,
sheep, pigs and goats dedicated to different gods – played an important part
in cult practice; butchers as well as priests must have been present. The
liver was peculiarly important and examination especially of bile played a
crucial part in haruspicy, interpretation of omens. One Euripidean descrip-
tion of inauspicious omens refers in correct anatomical detail to the ‘lobe’
(projecting part) of ox liver, to the ‘gates’ (indentations where vessels con-
nect with it) and to the neighbouring ‘bile ducts’; an Aeschylean passage
refers in more general terms to the colour and texture of the organs and

6 Alongside this very traditional view of peccant matter coursing from the brain and
arriving at bodily orifices there is a quite sophisticated awareness of the presence and
importance of the pineal gland in the brain, ‘in actuality a gland, but in appearance very
like a cone’ (hence its name, konarion), serving, in conjunction with other glands, as ‘a sort
of custodian and monitor’ in important bodily functions.
 the reception of the hippocratic treatise on glands 71

the divinely approved good appearance of bile and lobe (Euripides, Electra
827–829; Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound 494–495). Ancient doctors evidently
had regular access to ox bile as this was a common gynaecological specific,
used as an emollient along with fat (frequently from geese) and bone mar-
row (frequently from deer).7 In the Hellenistic period, at sacrifices on Kos,
where the epigraphical evidence is particularly informative, different cuts
were allocated to different groups in the community, including ‘doctors’. A
particularly important festival involved sacrifice of a bull to Zeus Polieus.
(It is just possible that the thoracic duct was visible in large bovines, when
killed by slitting the throat. Rudbeck claimed to have seen this duct when
a calf was being slaughtered; but of course he knew just where and how
to look.)

Early editors and doctor philologists

We turn to the Early Modern period. On Glands has a place in the transla-
tion of Marcus Fabius Calvus (1525) and in all the early complete collec-
tions of Hippocratic texts, those of Janus Cornarius (1538) and Anutius
Foesius (1595; cf. Oeconomia, 1588) being particularly influential, and it is
included in the important though limited (twenty-two works) selection
of Theodor Zwinger (1579). This reflects Zwinger’s interest in physiology,
seen in his pioneering Physiologica medica (1588; published posthumously
1610). Doctor-philologists looked to the newly revived medicine of Hippo-
crates for insights relevant to current medical theory and practice.
In this intellectual climate, John Caius (earlier a friend of Andreas Vesa-
lius at Padua; in later life influential in the renewal of Caius – previously
Gonville – College, Cambridge, where Harvey became a student in 1593)
made remarkable use of On Glands. He included it in a conjectural recon-
struction of a putative lost Hippocratic work on anatomy: ‘much (as we
believe) scattered; now (but by our conjecture) reconstituted’8 Caius’ the-
ory was that the works On Anatomy, On Bones, On the Heart and On Glands

7 Thyroid gland extract and pituitary extract from the posterior lobe of the pituitary
body of the sheep as well as ox-gall from bullocks have all been used in modern attempts
at therapy of deficiency diseases. It may be that empirical observation led ancient doctors
to make use of bile.
8 Caius John, De libris propriis / de libris suis (London, Seresius: 1570) 90–93 valde (ut
nos putamus) dissipatum, jam (sed conjectura nostra) restitutum. I am grateful for this refer-
ence to Professor Vivian Nutton.
72 elizabeth craik

ought to be read consecutively as a single work with a common overarching

title On Anatomy. He placed much emphasis on an apparently transitional
expression at the end of On the Heart (‘let such be said on the heart’) and
an apparently recapitulating expression at the beginning of On Glands (‘on
glands as a whole this is the situation’). This argument on the basis of com-
mon content and expression is impressively ahead of its time, though here
surely misapplied.
The work was clearly available, and medical writers familiar with Hippo-
cratic texts came to cite it, along with others. However, the passages most
commonly cited relate neither to the general anatomy and physiology of
glands nor to the nature of lymphatic fluid, but rather to the question of
bodily flux and in particular the part attributed to the brain in this. The
fundamental Hippocratic theory that disease arose as the result of a flux
of noxious matter (commonly phlegm and commonly believed to originate
in rising digestive residues) which rose to the head and then flowed from
the head to various points in the body – for instance, to eyes, ears, nose,
chest, belly, back, hips – was expressed in many works as well as On Glands,
which gives an account very close to that in Places in Man. This theory was
the subject of many Renaissance works, commonly entitled ‘on downward
flux’ or ‘on downward fluxes’ De catarrho or De catarrhis. In a lively ongoing
debate, belief in flux from the head, with a corollary belief in the value
of head-purgation, was upheld by some, primarily on the basis of ancient
authority, and contested by others, primarily on the basis of anatomical
impossibility.
Theories of the nature and motion of fluids in the body, both in health
and in illness, had exercised the doctors of Antiquity. Humoral theory
began with the Hippocratics, though it was less important and less con-
sistent than has frequently been thought: more importance was attached
to supposed directions of bodily flux than to postulated content. The pos-
sibility that the Hippocratics, who certainly knew something of the pulse
and who expressed ideas of bodily circularity, knew and understood the
circulation of the blood has been aired and, even quite recently, has had
some advocates. The certainty that they knew and understood the lym-
phatic system has been overlooked. The difference between circulation in
the blood vessels (a closed system of veins and arteries containing blood
pumped by the heart) and flow in the lymph vessels (a system partially
open, containing fluid moved in the main by muscular contraction) is
enormous, but early modern discovery and understanding of the two sys-
tems followed somewhat parallel lines.
 the reception of the hippocratic treatise on glands 73

Discoveries of Aselli and others

Alongside William Harvey’s great work on the circulation of the blood

(1628) stands the work of Gaspare Aselli (born Cremona, died Milan;
1581–1625), published posthumously in 1627. Aselli described whitish ves-
sels covering the intestine and mesentery of a dog he was dissecting: the
lymphatic vessels in the mesentery (the lacteals) are most visible after
a fatty meal when fat is transported as an emulsion to the liver and is
white in colour (chyle). The progress of discovery in Antiquity was prob-
ably similar: as we have seen, the Hippocratic letters describe Democri-
tean experiments on animals to ascertain the ‘nature and place of bile’,
and Democritean thought underlies On Glands. The two animal species
said to have been utilised by Democritus, dog and pig, were utilised also
by early modern researchers. At that time, as in classical Antiquity, doc-
tors were biological scientists. Aselli says nothing of Democritus or of On
Glands though he does quote passages from Hippocrates, Aristotle and,
especially, Galen (in his chapter 4). The Hippocratic passages cited are
from Diseases 4 (though he questions whether this is truly Hippocratic;
I have argued that it is by the same author as On Glands); also On Flesh,
Nutriment, Places in Man and Aphorisms.
Others tried to replicate the experiments of Aselli and further discover-
ies followed: Jean Pecquet (born Dieppe, died Paris; 1622–1674) observed
and described the thoracic duct and its orifice in the subclavian vein, a
fundamental contribution to understanding the interconnections between
lymph drainage and the circulation of the blood; the title given by Pec-
quet to his work, mentioning blood and chyle together, aptly encapsulates
the significance of his discovery. Pecquet (in his exercitatio III) considers
the route taken by chyle and attempts to relate this to the production
of breast milk. In this he cites passages from Hippocrates and Aristotle.
The Hippocratic passages cited include some from Nature of the Child and
Diseases of Women (both regarded by me as by the author of On Glands);
also from Aphorisms and Epidemics. Similarly, discussing ducts for lacta-
tion in his work of 1655, Anton Deusing (1612–1666) cites parallel passages
of these same Hippocratic works.

Interaction between philologists and scientists

The interaction between philologists and scientists is well illustrated by

the activities of Johannes van Horne (1621–1670) and Johannes Antonides
74 elizabeth craik

van der Linden (1609–1664), colleagues, collaborators and distinguished

doctor-editors working in Leiden, a great international centre for ana-
tomical research and scientific exchange. It was van Horne who first con-
firmed the presence of the thoracic duct in humans. Both van Horne and
van der Linden knew the Hippocratic work On Glands, and both were
familiar with contemporary research and discovery, but neither discussed
the peculiar relevance of the former to the latter. On Glands had been
noted in the significant work of Leonardo Botallo, meticulously edited
with the addition of marginal summaries and an index capitum by van
Horne.9 Botallo quotes On Glands in an early expression of scepticism on
the subject of flux theory: ‘since the fluxes, in turning to some part below the
neck, are not sent down from the brain, as most people believe’.10 In his note
van Horne finds On Glands opaque and wonders ‘in what fashion that work
is to be understood’,11 but confines his discussion to the question of flux.
A magnificent variorum collection edited by van der Linden and pub-
lished by Blaeu of Amsterdam comprises the seminal treatises of Aselli
and of Harvey (third printing of Aselli’s, fifth of Harvey’s); also the brief
but important letters of Walaeus (Jan de Wale, 1604–1649) in response to
these; and in addition all the works of Spigelius (Adriaan van der Spie-
gel, 1578–1625), the longest being an anatomical study of the human body
in ten books. In this van der Linden demonstrates a comprehensive and
far-sighted recognition of the significance of contemporary discoveries.
In addition to collecting and disseminating these works, van der Linden
prepared a complete Hippocratic edition, brought out posthumously by
his son in 1665. He was also a distinguished teacher and with his students
did much to make the new science known and understood.12
Throughout van der Linden’s publications, Hippocratic texts are quoted
reverentially and extensively.13 However, he rarely cited On Glands and was

9 Botallo Leonardo, De catarrho (Paris, Aldine: 1564), ed. Horne Johannes van, Opera
omnia medica et chirurgica Botalli (Leiden, Gaasbeeck: 1660).
10 Horne Johannes van, Novus ductus chyliferus. Nunc primum descriptus et eruditorum
examini expositus (Leiden, Hackius: 1652) 431 ‘quod fluxiones, qua partem aliquam infra cervi-
cem torquent, a cerebro non demittantur, ut plerique censent’.
11 Van Horne, Novus ductus chyliferus 370 (ch. V), n. 1 ‘qua ratione ista tractio sit intel-
ligenda’.
12 The adverse judgment of Sarton, alleging that van der Linden was hostile and unrecep-
tive to Harvey and others, is cogently contested and rebutted by Preiser: see Sarton G., “Johan-
nes Antonides van der Linden (1609–1664)” in Underwood E.A. (ed.), Science, Medicine and
History (Oxford: 1953) 14–20; Preiser G., “Zur Hippokratesauffassung des Johannes Antonides
van der Linden”, Medizinhistorisches Journal 4 (1969) 305–315.
13 Rothschuh K.E., “Ein quantitatives Hilfsverfahren zur Charakterisierung medizinhistor-
ischer Quellen (Autorenzitate)”, Sudhoffs Archiv 50 (1966) 259–266, surveys statistically the
citation of ancient authors, including Hippocrates, in van der Linden (and others).
 the reception of the hippocratic treatise on glands 75

apparently unaware of the full significance of the work. Thus, in his ambi-
tiously wide-ranging study of the body medicina physiologica he struggles
with the section on intestinal glands, wondering whether the ‘copious mois-
ture present there’ may refer to ‘dropsy’;14 however, in his edition he makes
no mention of this diagnosis and translates blandly, ‘the intestines have
rather large glands at the omentum’.15 At the same time, the entries in his
index under the heading glandulae are remarkably full and it is significant
that there are several subheadings on the role of glands in flux; evidently,
like his colleague van Horne and others, he placed emphasis on this limited
aspect of the Hippocratic work. Similarly, Spigelius had treated glands in
a section on the activity of the brain, regarding their universal function as
devoted to the ‘elimination of serous moisture’.16
Flux theory was most extensively contested in related works of 1660 and
1664 by Conrad Victor Schneider (1614–1680), with a battery of arguments
based on his own demonstration that, although in skeletons the cribiform
plate was perforated by numerous fine passages, in corpses its entire surface
was covered by an impervious dura: thus, the concept of flux from the brain
and with it the notion of treatment by purgation of the head was vitiated
as ‘all the routes of downward flux which Hippocrates invented are false’.17
Discussion of flux theory was commonly allied with discussion of affections
of the brain, such as apoplexia and melancholia. These play a significant
part in On Glands also.

Comparative anatomy and further discoveries

Through scrutiny of internal parts of animals and intensive study of com-

parative anatomy Olof Rudbeck (from Sweden, working in Padua; 1630–
1702) and Thomas Bartholin (from Denmark, working in Leiden, Padua
and Basel; 1616–1680) almost simultaneously succeeded in distinguishing
the lymph vessels from the lacteals. Rudbeck’s approach was primarily

14 Linden Johannes Antonides van der, Medicina physiologica (Amsterdam, Ravestein:

1653) 60–61 ‘intestinae copioso humore abundant’.
15 Linden Johannes Antonides van der, Magni Hippocratis Coi opera omnia (Leiden,
Gaasbeeck: 1665) ad loc.: ‘intestina [. . .] habent [. . .] glandulas in omentum maiores’.
16 Linden Johannes Antonides van der, Aselli, Harvey, Spigelius, Walaeus. Opera quae extant
omnia ex recensione (Amsterdam, Blaeu: 1645); Spigelius, ch. VIII ‘De actione et usu cerebri’
296 ‘serosum humorem expurgationi’.
17 Schneider Conrad Victor, De catarrhis (Wittenberg, Henckel: 1660 and 1664) 487
‘omnes quas catarrhorum vias finxit Hippocrates sunt falsae’; Lower Richard, De catarrhis
(London: 1672) made similar observations on the subject of nasal flux.
76 elizabeth craik

anatomical and Bartholin’s more physiological in emphasis. Bartholin’s

title of the work published in 1652 De lacteis thoracis in homine brutisque
nuperrime observatis (‘On vessels very recently observed in man and
beasts’) shows clearly that he studied human anatomy in conjunction
with that of other animals. Rudbeck’s own account of his work records
experiments on almost four hundred animals of different kinds: dogs,
cats, calves, sheep, goats, wolves and foxes. In detailed notes, he keeps
a meticulous record of the differences between these specimens and
advises others how to use them. The illustrations appended to his work
are of a dog’s stomach. As noted above, Hippocratic writers were aware
of the close resemblance between human and canine intestines, evidently
through cutting up bodies; Democritus studied the reproductive system of
dogs and pigs; Aristotle too conducted research on many animals. Con-
servative medical critics, foremost among them Jean Riolan the Younger
(of Paris; 1577/1580–1657), argued against the downgrading of Hippocratic
and Galenic views and tried to reconcile them with the new discoveries.
Riolan was not a crank, but engaged in serious debate, conducting and
communicating his own counter-experiments. Riolan advocated careful
dissection and scrutiny of human cadavers and wrote with disparagement
and irony of the ‘canicides’ for which Pecquet and others were responsible.18
A powerful advocate of comparative anatomy was Severinus (Marco
Aurelio Severino, of Naples; 1580–1656): in an important work of 1645
which resembles On Glands in its view of the unity of nature he argued
cogently for the structural and functional unity of all plant and animal life
and gave detailed accounts of the different yet comparable internal organ-
isation of many different species of mammals, including dogs, cats, sheep,
pigs, hares and hedgehogs. Severinus suggested, perhaps heretically, that
Hippocrates was in certain respects a pupil of Democritus, whose impor-
tance he fully appreciated: ‘Hippocrates, as if taught by Democritus’.19 But
Severinus knew his Hippocratic texts: he refers to the comparative anatomy
seen in The Sacred Disease (brain of ox) and On Bones (intestines of dog).

18 See Mani N., “Jean Riolan II (1580–1657) and Medical Research”, Bulletin of the History
of Medicine 42 (1968) 121–144.
19 Severinus Marcus Aurelius, Zootomia Democritaea (Nuremberg: 1645) 162 Hippocrates
quasi a Democrito edoctus. See Schmitt C.B. – Webster C., “Harvey and M.A. Severino: A
Neglected Medical Relationship”, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 45 (1971) 49–75; also
“Marco Aurelio Severino and his Relationship to William Harvey: some Preliminary Con-
siderations” in Debus A.G. (ed.), Science, Medicine and Society in the Renaissance (New
York: 1972) on the relationship between Severinus and his contemporaries, especially
Harvey.
 the reception of the hippocratic treatise on glands 77

Guerner (Werner) Rolfinck (1599–1673) is almost a lone voice in relating

On Glands to the new findings. In a work of 1652, he quotes the description
of the head and accepts its role in disease-inducing flux, including especially
melancholia. Though he writes about flux, he nevertheless relates the chan-
nels postulated in On Glands to the newly discovered lymphatic vessels:
‘now indeed the manner in which flux is generated is much clearer, since
the discovery of new lymphatic vessels by Bartholin’.20 Similarly, Johann
Peyer (1653–1712) writing in a work of 1681 on the intestinal glands is unusual
in declaring that these ‘did not escape the notice of Hippocrates, and I am
not the first [. . .] the glands of the intestines were quite familiar to ancient
anatomists’.21 In England, the colleagues Thomas Wharton (1614–1673) and
Francis Glisson (1597–1677) – through scrutiny of many different animals,
including cats, dogs, rabbits, hares, mice and deer – greatly advanced under-
standing of the place of the glands in bodily function. In his study of the
liver, Glisson made many pertinent observations based on his understand-
ing of recent research on blood circulation and lymphatic function. He
made suggestions about the function of bile (that old Democritean ques-
tion), about the relation between chyle and blood (which he thought had
no organic difference), about the composition of bile (defined as containing
‘sulphur, salt, water, earth’ and as being partly ‘watery or phlegmatic’); he
offered brief explanations of the causes of such diseases as paralysis, phthi-
sis and scrofula; he theorised about the composition of seminal fluid and
about the relations between cerebral and spinal fluid. Glisson distinguished
many different glands, and suggested that they fell into three types, for three
purposes.22 Although many of Glisson’s topics mesh with those of the Hip-
pocratic work, he makes no mention of it. He must, however, have known
it, as Wharton undoubtedly did.
Wharton’s title Adenographia is itself immediately suggestive of the Hip-
pocratic model; and his ordering of topics follows it in outline, for instance
concluding with the breasts. He explicitly cites On Glands, especially the

20 Rolfinck Guerner, Methodus cognoscendi et curandi adfectus capitis particulares

( Jena, Nisius: 1653) 14–15 ‘nunc vero modus generationis catarrhi multo evidentior est,
inventis a Bartholino vasis lymphaticis novis’.
21 Peyer Johann Conrad, Parerga anatomica et medica (Geneva-Amsterdam: 1681) 83
‘(exercitatio II) non latuerunt Hippocratem nec primus ego sum [. . .] priscis anatomicis
glandulas intestinorum omnino innotuisse’.
22 Glisson Francis, Anatomia hepatis. Cui praemittuntur quaedam ad rem anatomicam
universe spectantia. Et ad calcem operis subjiciuntur nonnulla de lymphae-ductibus nuper
repertis (London, du-Gardianisu: 1654) 198, 311, 343, 413, 424; also 438 composition of bile
‘spiritus, sulphur, sal, aqua, terra,’ being partly ‘aquea seu phlegmatica’; tripartite purpose
of glands ‘ad excretionem, ad reductionem, ad nutritionem’.
78 elizabeth craik

passages relating to the brain, reaching the conclusion that the brain does
not belong to the ‘family’ of glands; also the passage relating to the glands
of the omentum, which he believes relates to the pancreas (not as Riolan
thought to the intestines).23 These two passages (on brain and on intes-
tines) are cited in Wharton’s ‘list of chapters’ (elenchus capitum). He further
takes issue with Riolan, combating Riolan’s acceptance of the Hippocratic
statement that glands and hair have the same place and purpose: Wharton
argues that as there are glands, but not hair, at elbows and knees there is
no necessary association of the two.24 Throughout, the views of Bartholin,
Pecquet, van Horne and others are contested or refined; but there is most
disagreement with Riolan. Thus, Wharton tacitly accepts the idiosyncratic
account presented in On Glands of the function of the tonsils (that they are
first to receive influxes of moisture from the brain) but rejects Riolan’s view
(that this occurs ‘lest they descend to the lung’) in favour of his own version
in terms of producing saliva and enhancing taste.25 In short, Wharton does
engage with the Hippocratic text but he does so selectively and without
appreciation of its overall significance.

Neglect of the ancient work. Possible explanations

It seems that the main contentions of On Glands are neglected despite

its vision and its clear relevance to the current discoveries relating to the
lymphatic system. Other aspects of the work, highly relevant to ongoing
debates, are similarly overlooked: it is fundamentally concerned with the
nature, routes and contents (chyle, blood, milk) of all bodily ducts; it is
based upon comparative anatomy; it raises questions of teleology or usus.
In addition, the systemic diseases – markedly syphilis and consumption –
rampant in the seventeenth century are similar to those familiar to the
doctor of On Glands. Severinus himself in a work of 1632 had described
the abscesses in syphilis, a systemic and glandular disease; Wharton was a
physician in London at the time of the bubonic plague, 1665.
Some general reasons may be suggested for this neglect. Doctors read
Hippocratic works primarily with a view to quarrying them for useful

23 Wharton Thomas, Adenographia (London, Wharton: 1656), ch. III, especially at 10

(brain not in glandularum familia) and 65.
24 Wharton, Adenographia 189.
25 Wharton, Adenographia, ch. XXII, especially at 140 ‘cerebri humiditates [. . .] ne
decurrant in pulmone’.
 the reception of the hippocratic treatise on glands 79

practical nuggets. On Glands, not being practically useful, is readily dis-

regarded. The work is short and so easily overlooked; it is in places dif-
ficult; it lacks quotable quotes. The author’s terminology of ‘glands’ and
‘moisture’ is on the one hand peculiar yet on the other hand general and
so liable to go unrecognised. Its overarching approach might have been
unappreciated in an era of increasing specialisation, when researchers
tended to concentrate on the lung, the liver, the brain or other parts and
so on the structure and function of particular glands, to the exclusion
of the lymphatic system as a whole.26 In addition, much debate on bile
and chyle centred on the Galenic view of the liver, to which Hippocratic
texts were not so relevant. Further, views of ‘Hippocratic’ (superior) and
‘Democritean’ (inferior) input may have militated against the work’s being
taken seriously.
Some more particular reasons may be suggested also. The absence of
humoral theory, which was increasingly being accepted, and the pres-
ence of flux theory, which was increasingly being questioned, might have
occasioned scepticism. (Paradoxically, flux theory at times conflicts in the
treatise with the more sophisticated theory of glands – it may have been
incorporated in the work through the author’s loyalty to his early train-
ing.) The key section on intestinal glands is particularly compressed and
difficult. It seems then that, though the work was known, this familiarity
was restricted to the parts relating to flux from the head, and the related
discussion of the brain: citation is selective. Although On Glands is incor-
porated by the Edinburgh physician Sir Thomas Burnet (1638–1704) in a
medical thesaurus or compendium (thesaurus medicinae) published in
1685, in reality the Hippocratic résumé is very partial, confined to a sum-
mary of the section on the brain and the seven fluxes.
It seems probable that seventeenth-century writers were reliant on
such second-hand reports, citations or summaries; that is, on the deriva-
tive compilations of others rather than on their own independent scru-
tiny of ancient texts. Paradoxically, the main thrust of On Glands was
better appreciated in the sixteenth century, many years before the early

26 In 1642, John Georg Wirsung discovered the pancreatic duct; in 1655 and 1660, Thomas
Wharton discovered the ducts of the submaxillary gland and of the parotid; in 1662, Nico-
las Steno discovered the ducts of the lachrymal gland and other glands of the mouth and
nose. See Introduction to this volume, 6–7. On later debate between Herman Boerhaave
(1668–1738) and Frederick Ruysch (1638–1731) on the nature of glandular function see
Knoeff R., “Chemistry, Mechanics and the Making of Anatomical Knowledge: Boerhaave vs
Ruysch on the Nature of the Glands”, Ambix 53 (2006) 201–219.
80 elizabeth craik

modern discoveries were made. Foesius’ notes, appended to his edition

of the treatise, are disproportionately copious to its brevity and in addi-
tion he explicates many words from it in his Oeconomia. Among Foesius’
percipient observations are these: the work ‘has reference to the composi-
tion and structure of the body’ and so ought to be included in Erotian’s
category ‘works on bodily nature’ (φυσικά); the word ‘whole’ (οὐλομελίης)
at the beginning refers to the ‘the complete and all-embracing charac-
ter of glands’;27 in addition, Foesius demonstrates awareness of parallels in
content to the Hippocratic works Generation and Nature of the Child, and he
cross-references Galen’s work On Seed.
It is salutary to recall the slow speed of progress in this complex field.
The functions of many glands remained unknown long after their ana-
tomical structures were understood. In this slow progress, the Hippocratic
On Glands, an important and visionary work, has been little cited and,
when cited, not fully understood.

27 Foesius Anutius, Magni Hippocratis [. . .] opera omnia (Frankfurt, Wechel: 1595), ad
loc.: ‘ad corporis compositionem et structuram spectat’ and ‘integra et absoluta glandulorum
natura’.
 the reception of the hippocratic treatise on glands 81

Selective bibliography

Aselli Gaspare, De lactibus sive lacteis venis [. . .] dissertatio (Milan, Bidellius: 1627).
Bartholin Thomas, De lacteis thoracis in homine brutisque nuperrime observatis (Copen-
hagen, Martzan: 1652).
——, Defensio vasorum lacteorum et lymphaticorum adversus Joannem Riolanum (Copen-
hagen, Holst: 1655).
——, Vasa lymphatica nuper in animantibus inventa et hepatis exsequiae (Copenhagen,
Hakius: 1653).
Botallo Leonardo, De catarrho (Paris, Aldine: 1564); see Horne Johannes van.
Burnet Thomas, Hippocrates contractus (Edinburgh, Reidi: 1685).
Caius John, De libris propriis / de libris suis (London, Seresius: 1570); ed. Roberts E.S.
Calvus Marcus Fabius, Hippocratis Coi [. . .] octoginta volumina (Rome, Minitius: 1525).
Cornarius Janus, Hippocratis Coi medici [. . .] libri omnes (Basel, Froben: 1538).
Craik E.M., Hippocrates Places in Man (Oxford: 1998).
——, “[Hippocrates] On Glands”, forthcoming in Proceedings of Colloque International Hip-
pocratique XIII (held at Austin TX, 2008).
——, The Hippocratic Treatise On Glands, Edited and Translated with Introduction and
Commentary (Leiden: 2009).
Crivellato E. – Travan L. – Ribatti D., “The Hippocratic Treatise ‘On Glands’: The First
Document on Lymphoid Tissue and Lymph Nodes”, Leukemia 21 (2007) 591–592.
Deusingius Antonius, De motu cordis et sanguinis itemque de lacte (Groningen, Bronck-
horst: 1655).
Ermerins F.Z., Hippocratis et aliorum medicorum veterum reliquiae (Utrecht: 1859–1864).
Foesius Anutius, Magni Hippocratis [. . .] opera omnia (Frankfurt, Wechel: 1595).
——, Oeconomia Hippocratis (Frankfurt, Wechel: 1588).
Glisson Francis, Anatomia hepatis. Cui praemittuntur quaedam ad rem anatomicam uni-
verse spectantia. Et ad calcem operis subjiciuntur nonnulla de lymphae-ductibus nuper
repertis (London, du-Gardianisu: 1654).
——, Tractatus de ventriculo et intestinis (Amsterdam-London, van Waesberge: 1677).
Grensemann H., Hippokratische Gynäkologie. Die gynäkologischen Texte des Autors C nach
den pseudohippokratischen Schriften de muliebribus I, II und de sterilibus (Wiesbaden:
1982).
——, Knidische Medizin, Teil I. Die Testimonien zur ältesten Knidischen Lehre und Analysen
Knidischer Schriften im Corpus Hippocraticum, Ars Medica Abt. 2, Gr.-Lat. Med. Bd. 4
(Berlin-New York: 1975).
Harvey William, De motu cordis et circulatione sanguinis (Frankfurt, Fitzer: 1628).
Horne Johannes van, Novus ductus chyliferus. Nunc primum descriptus et eruditorum
examini expositus (Leiden, Hackius: 1652).
——, Opera omnia medica et chirurgica Botalli (Leiden, Gaasbeeck: 1660).
Keynes g., The Life of William Harvey (Oxford: 1966).
Knoeff R., “Chemistry, Mechanics and the Making of Anatomical Knowledge: Boerhaave
vs Ruysch on the Nature of the Glands”, Ambix 53 (2006) 201–219.
Linden Johannes Antonides van der, Aselli, Harvey, Spigelius, Walaeus. Opera quae
extant omnia ex recensione (Amsterdam, Blaeu: 1645).
——, Magni Hippocratis Coi opera omnia (Leiden, Gaasbeeck: 1665).
——, Medicina physiologica (Amsterdam, Ravestein: 1653).
Littré E. Oeuvres complètes d’Hippocrate (Paris: 1839–1861).
Lower Richard, De catarrhis (London: 1672).
Mani N., “Jean Riolan II (1580–1657) and Medical Research”, Bulletin of the History of Medi-
cine 42 (1968) 121–144.
Nielsen A.E., “A Translation of Olof Rudbeck’s Nova Exercitatio Anatomica announcing
the Discovery of the Lymphatics (1653)”, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 11 (1942)
304–339.
82 elizabeth craik

Pecquet Jean, Experimenta nova anatomica [. . .]. Dissertatio anatomica de circulatione

sanguinis et chyli motu (Paris, Cramoisy: 1651).
Peyer Johann Conrad, Parerga anatomica et medica (Geneva-Amsterdam: 1681).
Preiser G., “Zur Hippokratesauffassung des Johannes Antonides van der Linden”, Medizin­
historisches Journal 4 (1969) 305–315.
Riolan Jean, Opuscula nova anatomica (Paris, Meturas: 1653).
Rolfinck Guerner, Methodus cognoscendi et curandi adfectus capitis particulares (Jena,
Nisius: 1653).
Rothschuh K.E., “Ein quantitatives Hilfsverfahren zur Charakterisierung medizinhisto-
rischer Quellen (Autorenzitate)”, Sudhoffs Archiv 50 (1966) 259–266.
Rudbeck Olof, Nova exercitatio anatomica, exhibens ductus hepaticos aquasos et vasa
glandularum serosa (Uppsala: 1653); see Nielsen A.E.
Sarton G., “Johannes Antonides van der Linden (1609–1664)” in Underwood E.A. (ed.),
Science, Medicine and History (Oxford: 1953) 14–20.
Schmitt C.B. – Webster C., “Harvey and M.A. Severino: A Neglected Medical Relation-
ship”, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 45 (1971) 49–75.
——, “Marco Aurelio Severino and his Relationship to William Harvey: some Preliminary
Considerations” in Debus A.G. (ed.), Science, Medicine and Society in the Renaissance
(New York: 1972).
Schneider Conrad Victor, De catarrhis (Wittenberg, Henckel: 1660 and 1664).
Severinus Marcus Aurelius, Zootomia Democritaea (Nuremberg: 1645).
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Wharton Thomas, Adenographia (London, Wharton: 1656).
Willis Thomas, Cerebri anatome (London, Roycroft: 1664).
Zwinger Theodor, Hippocratis Coi [. . .] viginti duo commentarii tabulis illustrata (Basel,
Episcopius: 1579).
——, Physiologia medica (Basel, ca. 1588; published posthumously Basel, Zwinger: 1610).
 BETWEEN ATOMS AND HUMOURS.
LUCRETIUS’ DIDACTIC POETRY AS A MODEL OF INTEGRATED AND
BIFOCAL PHYSIOLOGY

Fabio Tutrone

Summary*

Lucretius has often been regarded as one of the fathers of modern science, and
also in recent years several studies have explored his influence far beyond a
merely literary perspective. In this paper I analyse specifically the importance of
the poet’s ‘eclectic’ attitude in physiology from the point of view of his Fortleben
in early modern thought. I suggest that the typical eclectic combination of phys-
ics and biology, atomism and macroscopy, which the De rerum natura shows in
its didactic structure both through its images and even more through its con-
scious scientific reflection, built an attractive basis for attempts in the modern
period at harmonising corpuscularian theories and qualitative doctrines. In order
to appreciate this dialectic relationship I open with a discussion of Lucretius’
own versatile use of vitalism and biology – referring especially to the Peripatetic
tradition – and then go on to consider the influence of such a powerful model,
which for the sake of argument is called bifocal and integrative, on sixteenth- and
seventeenth-century authors like Fracastoro, Telesio and Bruno.

A Latin ancestor for a modern revolution

In the common imagery of our age, the so-called scientific revolution

which took place in the Renaissance often coincides with a general rejec-
tion of ancient naturalistic notions. Aristotelianism and Ptolemaism were
to be neglected and a properly modern scientific thought was to develop.
This comfortable, simplistic pattern overshadows the basic fact that some
ancient texts played a decisive role in the reflections of many Renaissance
scientists. Their arguments frequently made appeal to Greek and Latin
sources, since they regarded Antiquity as a stimulating collection of antag-
onistic models. It has been rightly pointed out, from a general perspective,

* I am very grateful to the Fondation Hardt pour l’Étude de l’Antiquité Classique
(Geneva) for the precious research scholarship it granted to me during the preparation
of this article.
84 fabio tutrone

that each age used the classical cultures in a selective way, reinventing
Antiquity for its own ideological purposes,1 and a similar process can
also be observed for early modern scientific debate. The case of Lucretius
that I shall be discussing here can make a very significant contribution
to our understanding of these problems. Here I will not dwell on Lucre-
tius’ importance in modern thought and his widespread glorification as a
forerunner of recent scientific ideas. Several studies have recently focused
on this theme, and it would be enough to read Albert Einstein’s Geleit-
wort in Diels’ edition to appreciate the kind of fascination this obscure
figure could convey to refined scientific personalities.2 Here, instead, I
shall deliberately concentrate my attention on the problem of Lucretius’
role in the acceptance of atomistic theories in sixteenth- and seventeenth-
century physiology. What I would like to point out, in particular, is the
relevance of Lucretian concepts and images in the modern elaboration
of physiological models where mechanism and vitalism, biology and cor-
puscularianism, seem to be eclectically merged. I suggest that this sort of
eclecticism, which is so typical of early modern atomistic ideas, could be
also connected to the use of Lucretius’ own versatile physiology.3
In his essay on the rise of atomism in the early seventeenth century
Christoph Meinel listed the De rerum natura and its convincing imagery
among the three main reasons for the success of modern corpuscular-
ian theories.4 The impact of the poem’s didactic arguments on the sci-
entific debate of this age is in fact huge and impressive. Sometimes even

1 See the extensive discussion in Picone G. (ed.), L’antichità dopo la modernità

(Palermo: 1999), and especially the paper by Romano E., “Fine di un mondo antico: Costru-
zione, ascesa e declino di un’invenzione moderna”, in Picone (ed.), L’antichità 9–31.
2 Cf. Einstein A. in Diels H. (ed.), T. Lucretius Carus. De rerum natura. Lateinisch und
Deutsch (Berlin: 1924), vol. 2, VIa – VIb. On Lucretius’ Fortleben in modern scientific thought
see, for instance, the recent works by Beretta M., “Gli scienziati e l’edizione del De rerum
natura”, in Beretta M. – Citti F. (eds.), Lucrezio, la natura e la scienza (Florence: 2008)
177–224, and Johnson M. – Wilson C., “Lucretius and the History of Science” in Gillespie
S. – Hardie Ph. (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Lucretius (Cambridge: 2007) 131–148. Of
course, I will quote and use other essays related to the same topic in this chapter.
3 Although I am conscious of the fact that the term ‘eclecticism’ could sound ambigu-
ous or generic in the discussion of specific scientific issues, I chose to employ it in this
paper because of its intrinsic etymological meaning: I use it simply to refer to the inclina-
tion to combine different views or items in the framework of an organic theory.
4 Meinel Ch., “Early Seventeenth-Century Atomism: Theory, Epistemology, and the
Insufficiency of Experiment”, Isis 79 (1988) 103, who discusses the diffusion of corpuscu-
larianism ‘despite the obvious lack of experimental support’ and gives much importance
to ‘the persuasive appeal of the pictorial scheme supplied by Lucretius’s poetic imagery,
which offered an immediately convincing way of picturing material processes on the basis
of everyday experience within the visible world’.
 between atoms and humours – lucretius’ didactic poetry 85

empirical remarks that are apparently drawn from direct observation,

or are presented without any reference to sources, can be clearly traced
back to Lucretius’ poetry.5 We can of course explain this practice as a
typical expression of mannerist culture, as a way of arguing which still
puts authorities and models in first place. But, as a model, Lucretius had
probably much more to offer than his attractive imagery. It was not only
a matter of poetry, rhetoric and persuasive appeal. There was also a keen
physiological paradigm behind the lines of the poem, behind that picture
of the world Western readers would continue to admire in the centuries
to come. I believe the De rerum natura is a rare masterpiece of physi-
ological synthesis. In its didactic structure we – like seventeenth-century
scholars – can find a balanced mixture of physics and biology, macroscopy
and microscopy. It is often said that Epicureanism founded a ‘biological
atomism’,6 but it has recently been correctly pointed out that this kind
of eclectic orientation belongs instead to Lucretius’ careful exposition.
A short survey of some relevant scholarly reconstructions proposed in
the last decades can perhaps help us in this field.

A poet at the borderline. Lucretius between physics and biology

In 1974 Pierre Grimal noticed a basic difference in the poem’s scientific

vocabulary, which would reflect a sort of ‘double-levelled physiology’: at
an initial level Lucretius seems to analyse atoms and their movements,
using the Latin terms primordia, corpora and elementa for these funda-
mental ‘bricks’ of nature; at a second level, however, the poet talks about
principia, i.e. simple atomic aggregates which can be perceived and which
compose, as natural elements, the visible objects of reality.7 Thus between

5 Some useful examples in Meinel, “Early Seventeenth-Century Atomism” 76–77, who

deals with the ‘arguments based upon extrapolations from macroscopic bodies’ and states
that ‘the empirical facts referred to were topoi of the scholarly literature. Their aim was
to appeal to the reader’s erudition and imagination, rather than to his critical or experi-
mental abilities. They belong to a literary tradition of figurative rhetoric, aimed at creating
astonishment and, by means of astonishment, assent and persuasion’.
6 See e.g. Beretta, “Gli scienziati e l’edizione” 218, who refers to J.A. Rochoux’s apprecia-
tion for Epicureanism in the nineteenth century and to his attempt at taking back modern
discoveries to ‘Epicurus’ and Lucretius’ biological atomism’.
7 See Grimal P., “Elementa, primordia, principia dans le poème de Lucrèce”, in Mélanges
de philosophie, de littérature et d’histoire ancienne offerts à Pierre Boyancé (Rome: 1974)
357–366. Of course, it is primarily compelling metrical reasons that influence the poet’s
choices, but it would be a mistake to think that this excludes any ideological background.
86 fabio tutrone

atoms and things there would be an intermediate stage comparable with

the elements of Empedocles and Aristotle, the stage of principia.8 That is
the first point. Indeed, the history of ancient physiology has often been
characterised by scholars in the context of a long struggle between two
main orientations: the supporters of a continuous, alterable theory of mat-
ter, based on the study of biology and macroscopy, and the followers of
corpuscularian doctrines. Jackie Pigeaud labelled these two trends with
the names of ‘vitalisme’ and ‘mécanisme’.9 However, David Furley used the
more direct terms of Aristotelians and Atomists (unifying under the first
group ‘Plato and Aristotle and their adherents’).10 And, more interestingly,
Galen’s treatise On the Natural Faculties clearly confirms this simplifying
bipartition:
Now, speaking generally, there have been arisen the following two sects in
medicine and philosophy among those who have made any definite pro-
nouncement regarding Nature [. . .]. What, then, are these sects, and what
are the logical consequences of their hypotheses? The one class supposes
that all substance which is subject to genesis and destruction is at once

So, even if the lexical surface of the text sometimes seems generic, several specific pas-
sages (such as the ones Grimal analyses) reveal the conscious construction of a distinctive
terminology.
8 In this paper I will selectively focus on the problem of Aristotle’s influence on Lucre-
tius’ biological culture from the point of view of the Fortleben of the poem. Therefore, I
will not specifically discuss the question of Empedocles’ relevance in De rerum natura,
variously interpreted by the scholarly literature (see e.g. Furley D.J., “Variations on Themes
from Empedocles in Lucretius’ Proem”, in id., Cosmic Problems. Essays on Greek and Roman
Philosophy of Nature (Cambridge: 1989) 172–182, or D.N. Sedley’s claims about Empedo-
cles’ ‘poetical’ influence on Lucretius in Lucretius and the Transformation of Greek Wisdom
(Cambridge: 1998) 1–34). Nevertheless, it is important to recognise that Empedocles’ natu-
ral philosophy and his wide biological reflection played a determinant role in many Lucre-
tian passages dealing with biology. In a certain sense, his thought functioned as a model
and a filter, even when refuted or not cited. See now M. Garani, Empedocles Redivivus.
Poetry and Analogy in Lucretius (New York-Abingdon: 2007), on the presence of Empedo-
clean echoes in Lucretius’ method and vocabulary. Garani also highlights the atomistic
assimilation of Empedocles’ four elements theory in the poem: Lucretius ‘seems to suggest
that while Empedocles’ roots are not different in substance from any other mortal atomic
combination, still they could be thought of as constituting the first stage in the creation of
the world, from the microcosm upwards. In this spirit, Lucretius’ poem is imbued with the
Empedoclean fourfold division of the world in several of his descriptions’ (14).
9 Pigeaud J., “La physiologie de Lucrèce”, Revue des Études Latines 58 (1980) 177. In this
article I will use the English terms mechanism and vitalism giving them the same meaning
Pigeaud gave to the corresponding French words.
10 See Furley D.J., “Lucretius and the Stoics”, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies
of the University of London 13 (1966) 31–32, who usefully sums up the gaps between the
two traditions. Furley’s collection of studies Cosmic Problems is extensively inspired by
this division as well.
 between atoms and humours – lucretius’ didactic poetry 87

continuous and susceptible of alteration. The other school assumes sub-

stance to be unchangeable, unalterable, und subdivided into fine particles,
which are separated from one another by empty spaces.11
Starting from this Galenic passage and recalling Grimal’s observations,
Pigeaud has carefully analysed Lucretius’ position in such a context.12 Seen
as a whole, it is clear that our poet is a fervent adherent of mechanism:
as an Epicurean, he considers matter unalterable, divided into atoms
and interrupted by void. But, as Grimal noticed through his lexical study,
this is only the first level of Lucretius’ physiological perspective. Mate-
rial principles of biological interest are necessarily involved in the con-
stitution of objects and living beings, pure mechanism seeming unfit to
describe the varied complexity of visible nature. That is why, in his analy-
sis of the poem’s physiological eclecticism, Pigeaud spoke about ‘une phy-
sique à deux temps’, supporting his thesis with precise notes on Lucretius’
nutritional theory.13 And before we move forward to the final step in our
survey of scholarship, we can usefully appreciate this bifocal attitude to
natural science by looking directly at Lucretius’ psychological doctrine.
In the third book of the De rerum natura (231–322) he explains the ori-
gin of different emotions and character in living beings through a physi-
ological theory which neatly combines atomic materialism and humoral
biology. According to Lucretius, four elementary substances, which are of
course composed by atoms, regulate the psychic life of men and animals
as animalia. They are heat (calor or vapor), wind (ventus or aura), air (aer)
and a fourth unnamed element (nominis expers); they are all in any case

11 Galenus, De facultatibus naturalibus 1.12 (2.27 K.) ‘Καὶ αὗται δύο γεγόνασιν αἱρέσεις κατὰ
γένος ἐν ἰατρικῇ τε καὶ φιλοσοφίᾳ τῶν ἀποφηναμένων τι περὶ φύσεως ἀνδρῶν [. . .]. Τίνες οὖν αἱ
δύο αἱρέσεις αὗται καὶ τίς ἡ τῶν ἐν αὐταῖς ὑποθέσεων ἀκολουθία; τὴν ὑποβεβλημένην οὐσίαν
γενέσει καὶ φθορᾷ πᾶσαν ἡνωμένην θ’ ἅμα καὶ ἀλλοιοῦσθαι δυναμένην ὑπέθετο θάτερον γένος
τῆς αἱρέσεως, ἀμετάβλητον δὲ καὶ ἀναλλοίωτον καὶ κατατετμημένην εἰς λεπτὰ καὶ κεναῖς ταῖς
μεταξὺ χώραις διειλημμένην ἡ λοιπή’.
12 See Pigeaud, “La physiologie”; thorough remarks also in ibidem, La maladie de l’âme.
Étude sur la relation de l’âme et du corps dans la tradition médico-philosophique antique
(Paris: 1981) 196–211.
13 Cf. Pigeaud, “La physiologie” 199, ‘Être éclectique en physiologie, à l’époque de
Lucrèce, ne signifie pas choisir, au gré du hasard et des gouts, telle ou telle étiologie ou
description médicale. L’évolution de la physiologie, et notamment avec Asclépiade, paraît
obliger un atomiste à un certain type de physiologie, disons anti-vitaliste ou mécaniste. La
problématique est devenue plus nette, plus contraignante. L’on se trouve place devant cer-
taines exigences théoriques. Être éclectique signifie adopter des solutions de deux types,
combiner le vitalisme au mécanisme. Cela peut impliquer un refus de choisir, à propos
d’un même problème, en faisant coexister le deux types d’explication’.
88 fabio tutrone

principia made by primordia, biological principles of a corpuscular nature.14

The temporary predominance of each element gives rise to the different
feelings of individuals: anger is produced by heat, fear by wind, peace by
air, while the fourth substance has a coordinating function, allowing sen-
sory perception. In a similar way, the usual prevalence of one of the first
three elements is the origin of what we call temperaments or character:
irascibility, fearfulness, placidness. It is quite evident that here Lucretius’
doctrine gives some long-lasting vitalistic concepts an atomistic basis. The
well-known Hippocratic theory of humours, as well as the Empedoclean-
Aristotelian view of elements, can be clearly identified in the poet’s scien-
tific background. One can question, of course, how much of this doctrine
dates back to historical Epicurean sources and how much, instead, has
a more recent or even Lucretian origin, although several texts seem to
confirm a genuine Epicurean ancestry.15 Certainly an eclectic attitude
towards physiology was already typical of Epicurus himself; many stud-
ies have rightly remarked on his ideological dialogue with the Peripatetic
tradition.16 Looking at Lucretius’ synthesis and its importance for mod-
ern science, it is clear that this kind of eclecticism took a further relevant
step with the De rerum natura and its didactic arrangement. And, more

14 See especially 3.262–265, where the expression primordia principiorum (262), which
cannot be explained with metrical arguments alone, openly highlights this gradual view.
Cf. Grimal, “Elementa, primordia, principia” 357–358 ‘nous sommes en présence de trois
ordres: les atomes, invisibles, extrêmement petits, durs, insécables, puis des substances
“élémentaires”, une sorte de vent (aura), de la chaleur (vapor), de l’air (aer) et la “qua-
trième nature”, enfin, l’ensemble ainsi constitué est, par lui-même une “natura”, un être
particulier’.
15 Cf. Epicurus, Epistulae 2.63; Plutarchus, Adversus Colotem 1118D–E; Aëtius, Placita
4.3.11; Macrobius, Commentarium in somnium Scipionis 1.14.20. See Usener H., Epicurea
(Leipzig: 1887) 218. The commentary by Ernout A. – Robin L., Lucrèce, De rerum natura.
Commentaire exégétique et critique (Paris: 1925–1928), vol. 2, 41–51 annotates verses 282–
306 as follows: ‘il y a dans ce passage un effort curieux pour déterminer, par la proportion
des éléments dans le mélange constitutif de l’âme, non seulement les caractères humains,
mais même le “comportement” psychologique de tout être vivant. C’est une transposi-
tion et une extension de la vieille théorie hippocratique des quatre humeurs, qui se ratta-
chait elle-même aux idées d’Alcméon et des Pythagoriciens sur l’harmonie des contraires
comme base d’une vie corporelle normale. Mais, tandis que le caractère est ainsi l’effet du
“tempérament” du corps (cf. Pl. Ti. 86e f.), pour l’Épicurisme il résulte du “tempérament”
de l’âme, matérielle comme le corps’ (48). This part of the passage will be discussed in
detail shortly.
16 A rich survey of the extensive scholarly literature dealing with this problematic
relationship has been undertaken by Gigante M., Kepos e Peripatos. Contributo alla storia
dell’aristotelismo antico (Naples: 1999) esp. 33–56. See also the works by Diano C., Scritti
Epicurei (Florence: 1974) 129–280 and Mansfeld J., “Epicurus Peripateticus”, in Alberti A.
(ed.), Realtà e ragione. Studi di filosofia antica (Florence: 1994) 29–47, referring back to
Gigante for other bibliographical items.
 between atoms and humours – lucretius’ didactic poetry 89

generally, when the seventeenth-century readers thought of Epicurean-

ism, they saw Lucretius as their main source, together with Diogenes Laer-
tius, focusing more on concrete information than on the history of the
school. So we should analyse more fully which sort of Naturwissenschaft
early modern scientists regarded as Epicurean, and imitated as such.17 The
exposition of Epicurus’ psychophysiological theory, traces of which can
already be seen in the Epistle to Herodotus,18 acquires vivid biological evi-
dence with Lucretius, since in the poem some lively zoological exempla
are used to confirm this theory. None of the texts listed by Usener on
the same matter of doctrine share such a striking wealth of naturalistic
images.19 But let us see how the poet describes the stable presence of dif-
ferent character in animals according to this view of the soul:
[. . .] the mind possesses that heat too, which it dons when it boils with rage,
and the fire flashes more keenly from the eyes. Much cold breath too it has,
which goes along with fear, and starts a shuddering in the limbs and stirs
the whole frame. And it has too that condition of peaceful air which comes
to pass when the breast is calm and the face unruffled. But those creatures
have more of heat, whose fiery heart and passionate mind easily boil up in
anger. Foremost in this class is the fierce force of lions, who often as they
groan break their hearts with roaring, and cannot contain in their breast the
billows of their wrath. But the cold heart of deer is more full of wind, and
more quickly it rouses the chilly breath in its flesh, which makes a shudder-
ing motion start in the limbs. But the nature of oxen draws its life rather
from calm air, nor ever is the smoking torch of anger set to it to rouse it
overmuch, suffusing in it the shadow of murky mist, nor is it pierced and
frozen by the chill shafts of fear: it has its place midway between the two,
the deer and the raging lions. So is it with the race of men.20

17 We need only recall Pierre Gassendi’s extensive use of Lucretius in the Animad-
versiones (1649) and the Syntagma philosophicum (1658): in these monumental works
almost all the poem features as a pure testimony to Epicurean philosophy. See Wolff E.,
“L’utilisation du texte de Lucrèce par Gassendi dans le Philosophiae Epicuri Syntagma, in
Poignault R. (ed.), Présence de Lucrèce. Actes du colloque tenu a Tours (3–5 décembre 1998)
(Tours: 1999) 327–336 and Beretta, “Gli scienziati e l’edizione” 192–196. Beretta maintains
that in Gassendi ‘la lettura di Lucrezio era comunque strumentale alla piena compren-
sione e riabilitazione della filosofia di Epicuro ed è per questa ragione che Gassendi decise
di smembrare i versi del De rerum natura adattandoli alla tripartizione epicurea della filo-
sofia in canonica, fisica ed etica. Quello che è sfuggito agli studiosi è che nella sua meti-
colosa ed eruditissima opera di ricostruzione, Gassendi di fatto utilizzò quasi tutto il De
rerum natura e che la Vita del 1649 e, in misura leggermente inferiore, la versione ampliata
e modificata del 1658, possono essere considerate delle vere e proprie edizioni critiche del
poema lucreziano’ (193).
18 See above, n. 15.
19 Cf. Usener, Epicurea 216–219.
20 Lucretius, De rerum natura 3.288–307 ‘Est etiam calor ille animo, quem sumit, in ira |
cum fervescit et ex oculis micat acrius ardor.| Est et frigida multa comes formidinis aura | quae
90 fabio tutrone

Epicurus had surely glanced at humoral theories when he conceived his

materialistic psychology.21 But it has been noted that, in its commonly
accepted reconstruction, Epicurus’ treatise On Nature shows no trace of
biological interest.22 In terms of the theme of the present chapter, this
is of course intriguing, since according to David Sedley’s thesis Lucretius
closely followed his master’s work as ‘his sole philosophical source and
inspiration’.23 Indeed, in the passage from De rerum natura cited above,
Epicurus’ fruitful dialogue with the Peripatetic tradition seems to be
improved through the conscious integration of ethological material. It is
well-known that ethology was a relevant part of Peripatetic biology, and so
it is no accident that Piet Schrijvers identified in an unembellished passage
of Aristotle’s History of Animals the original source of this Lucretian argu-
ment.24 Here, as well as in other parts of the poem,25 Lucretius refers to what
Schrijvers defines as ‘un texte de base sur le caractères des animaux’, a rich

ciet horrorem membris et concitat artus. | Est etiam quoque pacati status aeris ille, | pectore
tranquillo qui fit vultuque sereno. | Sed calidi plus est illis quibus acria corda | iracundaque
mens facile effervescit in ira. | Quo genere in primis vis est violenta leonum, | pectora qui
fremitu rumpunt plerumque gementes | nec capere irarum fluctus in pectore possunt. | At
ventosa magis cervorum frigida mens est | et gelidas citius per viscera concitat auras | quae
tremulum faciunt membris exsistere motum. | At natura boum placido magis aere vivit, | nec
nimis irai fax umquam subdita percit | fumida, suffundens caecae caliginis umbra, | nec geli-
dis torpet telis perfixa pavoris: | interutrasque sitast, cervos saevosque leones. | Sic hominum
genus est’.
21 See especially Diano, Scritti Epicurei 129–280, who highlights Epicurus’ dependence
on Aristotle.
22 See Schrijvers P.H., Lucrèce et les sciences de la vie (Leiden-Boston-Cologne: 1999)
46, ‘notre impression provisoire selon laquelle le grand nombre de thèmes et de concepts
biologiques dans le DRN est plutôt une contribution personnelle et originale par Lucrèce
à l’élaboration de la doctrine de son Maître, est renforcée par l’absence totale de thèmes
biologiques dans la reconstruction du Peri phuseôs d’Epicure, telle qu’elle a été propose par
D. Sedley et généralement reprise par M. Erler dans le grand volume Die Philosophie der
Antike 4, Die hellenistische Philosophie 1’. (Cf. Erler M., “Epikur” in Flashar H. (ed.), Grun-
driss der Geschichte der Philosophie (begr. v. F. Überweg), Die Philosophie der Antike 4, Die
Hellenistische Philosophie 1 (Basel: 1994) 94–103). Epicurus’ On Nature is notoriously very
fragmentary at present, so should be used with caution. Scholarship of the last few decades
has nevertheless given us a clearer view of this treatise.
23 See Sedley, Lucretius 93 (this argument is extensively supported at 134–165).
24 See Schrijvers, Lucrèce et les sciences 51–54. Here I will discuss some connections
between Lucretius and Peripatetic thought from the point of view of biological knowledge.
Of course, this complex relationship concerns a much wider range of scientific themes
and has been explored by other specific studies. See especially Furley, “Lucretius and the
Stoics”, who pays particular attention to Lucretius’ attacks on Peripatetic cosmology, and
Sedley, Lucretius 166–185, who acutely identifies Theophrastus’ imprint in the De rerum
natura.
25 Cf. Lucr. 3.741–753 and 5.855–867.
 between atoms and humours – lucretius’ didactic poetry 91

zoological repertory which could have been known by Hellenistic and

Roman writers both in direct and indirect forms:26
Now here are the sorts of ways in which animals differ from each other in
regard to disposition. Some are gentle, and sluggish, and not inclined to be
aggressive, e.g., the ox; others are ferocious, aggressive and stubborn, e.g., the
wild boar; some are intelligent and timid, e.g., the deer and the hare; oth-
ers are mean and scheming, e.g., serpents; others are noble and brave and
high-bred, e.g., the lion; others are thorough-bred, wild and scheming, e.g.,
the wolf [. . .]. The only animal which is deliberative is man. Many animals
have the power of memory and can be trained; but the only one which can
recall past events at will is man.27
Aristotle’s long but lapidary catalogue – or its doxographical transposition –
offered a wide range of animal ethê. Lucretius, conscious that he cannot
deal with each temperament,28 chooses from among them and revitalises
his models through a wise poetic operation. The original anthropocentric

26 Compendia, résumés and excerpta of Peripatetic biological works must have been
quite common in the Hellenistic-Roman age. Theophrastus took excerpts from Aristotle’s
writings related to this topic, and Aristophanes of Byzantium wrote a very successful epit-
ome of them; it is likely that this practice continued in the following centuries, since the
use of Peripatetic biology made by Roman authors in their works often shows a selective,
doxographic character (see Düring I., “Notes on the history of the transmission of Aristo-
tle’s writings”, Acta Universitatis Gotoburgensis 56, 3 (1950) 35–70 and Barnes J., “Roman
Aristotle”, in Griffin M. – Barnes J. (eds.), Philosophia togata II. Plato and Aristotle at Rome
(Oxford: 1999) 1–69). Nonetheless, the original text of treatises like the Historia was prob-
ably still available in that period, although practical and intellectual reasons make fre-
quent use of it unlikely. I specifically dealt with this problem in my two papers “Lucrezio
e la biologia di Aristotele: riflessioni sulla presenza dell’opera aristotelica nel De rerum
natura e nella cultura greco-latina del I secolo a. C.”, Bollettino della Fondazione Nazionale
“Vito Fazio Allmayer” 35, 1–2 (2006) 65–104; “Libraries and Intellectual Debates in the Late
Republic: The Case of the Aristotelian Corpus”, in König J. – Oikonomopoulou K. – Woolf G.
(eds.), Ancient Libraries (Cambridge University Press: forthcoming).
27 Aristoteles, Historia animalium 1.1, 488b12–27 (my emphasis) ‘Διαφέρουσι δὲ καὶ ταῖς
τοιαῖσδε διαφοραῖς κατὰ τὸ ἦθος. Τὰ μὲν γάρ ἐστι πρᾶα καὶ δύσθυμα καὶ οὐκ ἐνστατικά, οἷον
βοῦς, τὰ δὲ θυμώδη καὶ ἐνστατικὰ καὶ ἀμαθῆ, οἷον ὗς ἄγριος, τὰ δὲ φρόνιμα καὶ δειλά, οἷον
ἔλαφος, δασύπους, τὰ δ’ ἀνελεύθερα καὶ ἐπίβουλα, οἷον οἱ ὄφεις, τὰ δ’ ἐλευθέρια καὶ ἀνδρεῖα καὶ
εὐγενῆ, οἷον λέων, τὰ δὲ γενναῖα καὶ ἄγρια καὶ ἐπίβουλα, οἷον λύκος· [. . .] Βουλευτικὸν δὲ μόνον
ἄνθρωπός ἐστι τῶν ζῴων. Καὶ μνήμης μὲν καὶ διδαχῆς πολλὰ κοινωνεῖ, ἀναμιμνήσκεσθαι δ’ οὐδὲν
ἄλλο δύναται πλὴν ἄνθρωπος’.
28 Cf. Lucr. 3.314–318 ‘inque aliis rebus multis differre necessest | naturas hominum
varias moresque sequaces; | quorum ego nunc nequeo caecas exponere causas | nec
reperire figurarum tot nomina quot sunt | principiis, unde haec oritur variantia rerum.’
Nonetheless, as I said (see n. 25), the poet recalls other examples of the same zoological
catalogue in other circumstances. Moreover, in this specific passage he employs again the
technical term principiis (318) according to the physiological bipartition discussed above.
92 fabio tutrone

perspective of the Peripatetic text29 is also revised from a materialistic-

Epicurean point of view, since the privilege of human memory is no
longer remarked on in the poem’s adaptation, where we find instead a
simple equalisation of men and animals (sic hominum genus est, 307).30
In the following lines (307–322) Lucretius merely highlights the fact that,
despite the influence of their underlying natural disposition, which educa-
tion cannot remove, men are able to live a life worthy of the gods, thanks
to their capacity to reason. In a very Epicurean way, the power of nature
is reaffirmed against any idea of physical-cosmological privilege and Epi-
curus’ word is praised as a concrete possibility of elevation for human
rationality.
What we can observe in this textual example is, I think, a valuable
example of physiological eclecticism: visible and invisible phenomena,
physics and biology, atomism and ethology, are carefully combined in
order to construct a balanced model of integrated and bifocal physiology.
An Aristotelian-flavoured imagery, which is more generally connected to
the ancient tradition of physiognomy, is used to explain the corpuscular-
ian truths Epicureanism has disclosed. Consequently Lucretius, the main
source for modern age corpuscularianism, appears to be at the crossroads
between two determinant orientations of scientific history. Moreover, the
kind of intellectual operation we noticed here in the third book of the
De rerum natura is not an isolated case. A further example among many
other possibilities31 would be from the fourth book of Lucretius’ didactic
work, where the poet expounds Epicurus’ view on dreams and their physi-
ological origin.32 From a cognitive perspective, dreams are said to be the

29 Aristotle’s anthropocentrism in natural philosophy is discussed intensively in schol-

arly literature. While it is my opinion that passages like this from the Historia betray
an intimate anthropocentric attitude in Aristotle’s biology, I cannot deal here with the
details of such a complicated problem. Johnson M.R., Aristotle on Teleology (Oxford: 2005)
argued against any interpretation of Aristotle’s teleology in terms of anthropocentrism, but
Vegetti M., Il coltello e lo stilo (Milan: 1996³) showed that even the concepts of natural end
and intrinsic potentiality draw a ‘pyramid-shaped’, anthropocentric picture of the natural
world in Aristotle’s science. Regardless of any refusal of providential schemes, ‘normo-
types’ – and especially one human ‘normotype’ – remain at the centre of the Aristotelian
account for physical reality.
30 Schrijvers, Lucrèce et les sciences 53, says that ‘la notice sur l’homme (βουλευτικὸν δὲ
μόνον ἄνθρωπός ἐστι τῶν ζῴων) a été tournée en une affirmation finale d’ordre éthique et
protreptique, conformément à a la tendance générale du De rerum natura’. However, I also
see a subtle ideological shift in the transition from Aristotle to the Latin poet.
31 A wider list of parallels between Lucretian and Peripatetic texts concerning biology
can be found in my “Lucrezio e la biologia di Aristotele” 70–71.
32 Lucr. 4.962–1036.
 between atoms and humours – lucretius’ didactic poetry 93

result of persisting stimulations of the atoms during the night, so that each
individual – both men and animals as animalia, beings endowed with a
soul – re-experiences their usual daily activities while sleeping. According
to this theory, the perceptive particles (simulacra) which real objects emit
by day and address to the sensory organs continue to influence the body’s
cognitive life, producing those illusory visions we call dreams. Epicurus, as
far as we can see, had developed his explanation with a particular polemic
reference to oneirocriticism and its religious background.33 Lucretius, of
course, assimilates this perspective, but supports his atomic argument
with lively biological examples. Indeed, a whole gallery of dream types is
displayed in the poem’s section on this topic, and the most interesting part
of it is perhaps condensed in the lines dealing with animals’ dreams:
So exceeding great is the import of zeal and pleasure, and the tasks wherein
not only men are wont to spend their efforts, but even every living animal.
In truth you will see strong horses, when their limbs are lain to rest, yet
sweat in their sleep, and pant for ever, and strain every nerve as though for
victory, or else as though the barriers were opened (struggle to start). And
hunters’ dogs often in their soft sleep yet suddenly toss their legs, and all at
once give tongue, and again and again snuff the air with their nostrils, as
if they had found and were following the tracks of wild beasts; yea, roused
from slumber they often pursue empty images of stags, as though they saw
them in eager flight, until they shake off the delusion and return to them-
selves. But the fawning brood of pups brought up in the house, in a moment
shake their body and lift it from the ground, just as if they beheld unknown
forms and faces. And the wilder any breed may be, the more must it needs
rage in its sleep. But the diverse tribes of birds fly off, and on a sudden in
the night time trouble the peace of the groves of the gods with the whirr of
wings, if in their gentle sleep they have seen hawks, flying in pursuit, offer
fight and battle.34

33 See esp. Epicur. Sent. Vat. 24. Other testimonies on the Epicurean reflections about
sleep and dreams are collected in Usener, Epicurea 224–225. It is evident, however, that an
enormous distance divides Lucretius’ vivid account from these prosaic remains.
34 Lucr. 4.984–1010 ‘Usque adeo magni refert studium atque voluptas, | et quibus in rebus
consuerint esse operati | non homines solum sed vero animalia cuncta. | Quippe videbis
equos fortis, cum membra iacebunt, | in somnis sudare tamen spirareque semper | et quasi
de palma summas contendere viris | aut quasi carceribus patefactis †saepe quiete† | venan-
tumque canes in molli saepe quiete | iactant crura tamen subito vocesque repente | mittunt
et crebro redducunt naribus auras, | ut vestigia si teneant inventa ferarum, | expergefactique
sequuntur inania saepe | cervorum simulacra, fugae quasi dedita cernant, | donec discussis
redeant erroribus ad se. | At consueta domi catulorum blanda propago | discutere et corpus de
terra corripere instant | proinde quasi ignotas facies atque ora tuantur. | Et quo quaeque magis
sunt aspera seminiorum, | tam magis in somnis eadem saevire necessust. | At variae fugiunt
volucres pinnisque repente | sollicitant divum nocturno tempore lucos, | accipitres somno in
leni si proelia pugnas | edere sunt persectantes visaeque volantes’.
94 fabio tutrone

The poet’s interest in ethology, and particularly in zoopsychology, comes

out very clearly from this passage.35 Epicurus’ mechanistic approach to
the physiology of dreams lies firmly behind Lucretius’ teaching; but all
the probative poetic material we find here seems to be derived from a
secondary plane of integration. It could make sense to put this down to
the author’s careful observations, but from a cultural-historical point of
view things are actually more complicated. Indeed, as in the text of the
third book we have already examined, a highly educated background can
be suggested for this zoological account. In particular, Aristotle’s History
of Animals (or some doxographical adaptation of it)36 is a relevant point
of reference for our passage. In his descriptive work Aristotle had specifi-
cally remarked on the fact that some animals dream:
Sleeping and waking in animals. All animals that are footed and blooded
sleep and wake: this is plain to observation. Thus, all animals that have eye-
lids close them when they go to sleep. Furthermore, it appears that not only
men, but horses, dogs and oxen, dream, indeed sheep too, and goats and
the whole group of viviparous quadrupeds. Dogs betray the fact by barking
while asleep. As for the Ovipara, it is not clear whether they dream, but it is
obvious that they sleep.37
This is an important source for Roman zoological knowledge. Pliny the
Elder translated it faithfully in his monumental treatise.38 Lucretius seems
to extend Aristotle’s observations more widely. Some details, therefore,
are rearranged, for example the demonstrative wording ‘not only men but
[. . .]’ or the reference to dogs’ barking as well as to horses, while in general
the Epicurean poet draws an original picture of ethological brilliance. It is
particularly interesting to point out that Lucretius’ argument concerning
bird dreams (1007–1010) openly goes further than Aristotle’s scepticism

35 On the interest shown by the Epicurean school, and especially by Lucretius and
Philodemus, in zoopsychology see Dierauer U., Tier und Mensch im Denken der Antike
(Amsterdam: 1977) 194–198.
36 See above n. 26.
37 Arist. HA 4.10, 536b24–32 (my emphasis). ‘Περὶ δ’ ὕπνου καὶ ἐγρηγόρσεως τῶν ζῴων,
ὅτι μὲν ὅσα πεζὰ καὶ ἔναιμα πάντα καθεύδει καὶ ἐγρήγορεν, φανερὸν ποιοῦσι κατὰ τὴν αἴσθησιν.
Πάντα γὰρ ὅσα ἔχει βλεφαρίδας, μύοντα ποιεῖται τὸν ὕπνον. Ἔτι δ’ ἐνυπνιάζειν φαίνονται οὐ
μόνον ἄνθρωποι, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἵπποι καὶ κύνες καὶ βόες, ἔτι δὲ πρόβατα καὶ αἶγες καὶ πᾶν τὸ τῶν
ζῳοτόκων καὶ τετραπόδων γένος· δηλοῦσι δ’ οἱ κύνες τῷ ὑλαγμῷ. Περὶ δὲ τῶν ᾠοτοκούντων τοῦτο
μὲν ἄδηλον, ὅτι δὲ καθεύδουσι, φανερόν’.
38 Cf. Plinius, Naturalis Historia 10.98.212. On this topic see Schrijvers, Lucrèce et les sci-
ences 159–160, who highlighted the link between Lucretius and Aristotle in this regard, and
Goguey D., Les animaux dans la mentalité romaine (Brussels: 2003) 92–94.
 between atoms and humours – lucretius’ didactic poetry 95

about ovipara.39 Moreover, in terms of our present specific interest, it is

evident that the Latin poem contains a careful combination of physical
gnoseology and biological analysis. The Peripatetic disposition towards
macroscopy, ethology and taxonomic framing joins the Epicurean reflec-
tion on corpuscles and physiological mechanisms. We could perhaps say
that Lucretius, despite his strictly orthodox adherence to Epicurus’ words,
manages to adjust the rigidity of atomism with an alluring appeal to natu-
ralistic evidence, to vitalistic immediacy. This is undoubtedly a matter of
method, not merely of poetry and rhetoric. Over the years several scholars
have rightly stressed the importance of Lucretius’ analogical model as a
development of Epicurus’ empiristic approach to science.40 Such a skilled
development, with all its theoretical implications, went on to play a deci-
sive role for the success of modern age corpuscularianism. Here I would
like to emphasise that the influence of Lucretius on early modern scien-
tists, on the so-called scientific revolution, cannot be fully appreciated if
we do not consider this particular bifocal attitude shown by the poet in
his naturalistic culture. In other words, it was remarkably easy to integrate
Lucretius’ propositions to form eclectic scientific models which combined
atomism and macroscopy, since an effort of methodological integration
had already been made by Lucretius himself.

39 Pliny, of course, in his paraphrastic transposition simply reproduced Aristotle’s

uncertainty. Cf. Goguey, Les animaux 93.
40 See Asmis E., Epicurus’ Scientific Method (Ithaca-London: 1984), who discusses the
kind of evolution Epicurus’ method experienced during the history of Epicureanism: ‘in
the second and first centuries BC, some followers of Epicurus, as attested by Philodemus,
defended the coherence of Epicurus’ method of inquiry by interpreting the method as a
whole as an inductive method, arguing that all valid scientific inferences are ultimately
inductions [. . .]. Lucretius’ use of induction suggests that he knew of the current contro-
versy on induction and was a staunch defender of it, and that he may even have agreed
that all of Epicurus’ doctrines may be formulated as inductions. In general, however,
Lucretius’ choice of proof seems to reflect Epicurus’ own preferences: counterwitness-
ing predominates in Lucretius’ presentation of the fundamental theories, and induction
becomes important in the more specialized theories’ (336). On this peculiar use of induc-
tive analogies in the poem’s didactic technique see also Schrijvers P.H., “Le regard sur
l’invisible: Étude sur l’emploi de l’analogie dans l’oeuvre de Lucrèce”, in Gigon O. (ed.),
Lucrèce. XXIV Entretiens Hardt sur l’Antiquité Classique (Geneva: 1978) 77–121, who remarks
on the importance of biological knowledge in this kind of argument, and Schiesaro A.,
Simulacrum et imago. Gli argomenti analogici nel De rerum natura (Pisa: 1990), who points
out many relevant epistemological items; now also Garani, Empedocles Redivivus, high-
lighting Lucretius’ dependence on Empedocles.
96 fabio tutrone

The discrete charm of eclecticism. Lucretius and early modern physiology

It is clear that the first revivals of corpuscularianism in the sixteenth

and seventeenth centuries, cautious or hybrid as they were, frequently
involved a strong dose of eclecticism. Aristotelianism was still an influ-
ential authority in every field of cosmological knowledge; while corpus-
cular views of nature, traced back to Democritus, Leucippus or Epicurus,
quickly spread over Europe, it still made more sense to adapt and reshape
the new trends in accordance with pre-existing physical and metaphysical
concepts. We can observe such a harmonising attitude in many famous
naturalists of this period. In his treatise On the Sympathy and Antipathy
of Things (1545), for instance, the Veronese humanist and physician Giro-
lamo Fracastoro openly evoked Democritus, Epicurus and Lucretius as
reliable sources to understand magnetism:
The Ancients, such as Democritus and Epicurus, who were followed among
our authors by Lucretius, thought that the origin of that attraction lay in
the effusions of bodies they called atoms; and these effusions, as we will
show in a while, cannot be denied, although the way ancient philosophers
described them was quite rough and inept. Since this description is refuted
in a sufficiently open way by Alexander of Aphrodisias and Galen, I will omit
it. Nonetheless, once we accepted the doctrine of the effusion of atoms, it
seems to me we can describe another way in which the attraction of similar
substances occurs: but it is necessary to remember what I said above about
the harmony and the movement of parts in a whole.41
The Epicurean theory of eidola or simulacra we encountered in Lucretius’
account of the origin of dreams – a theory which was used by the Epi-
cureans in order to explain every kind of interaction at distance between
objects and substances, including sensory perception and magnetic attrac-
tion – was prudently recovered by Fracastoro here, but at the same time its
actual application was critically rearranged and a diplomatic conciliation

41 Fracastoro G., De sympathia et antipathia rerum, ch. 5 (my translation; original text
with German translation in the collection by Stückelberger A. (ed.), Antike Atomphysik.
Texte zur antiken Atomlehre und zu ihrer Wiederaufnahme in der Neuzeit (Munich: 1979)
248–251). ‘Antiqui quidem, ut Democritus et Epicurus, quos e nostris Lucretius secutus est,
effluxiones corporum, quas Athomos appellabant, principium eius attractionis ponebant;
quae quidem effluxiones ne negandae quidem sunt, ut mox ostendemus, modus autem,
quem ipsi tradebant, sat rudis et ineptus erat. Quem quoniam tum Alexander Aphro-
disiensis, tum et Galenus satis aperte reprobant, a nobis praetermittetur. Verumtamen
receptis Athomorum effluxionibus nos modum alium tradere posse videmur, quo attractio
similium fiat: meminisse autem oportet eorum quae supra dicta sunt de consensu et motu
partium in toto’.
 between atoms and humours – lucretius’ didactic poetry 97

attempted with Aristotle’s qualitative doctrine.42 Lucretius’ contents, their

basic reconnection of visible and invisible, enabled the careful integration
of an atomic effusional view within the framework of chemical research
and spiritual speculations.43 In the same work, in fact, Fracastoro seeks to
combine the traditional cognitive theory of Epicurus with his less mate-
rialistic concept of species spiritualis, a very thin emanation produced by
common objects to cause sensory perception: therefore, the two terms of
species and simulacrum are skilfully associated and the global result is a
general spiritualisation of Lucretius’ atomic world.44 It must be said, in
this regard, that the Epicurean-Lucretian doctrine concerning the soul,
perception and related corpuscular phenomena plays an impressive role in
modern reflection about matter and vital faculties. As mentioned earlier,
in many cases Lucretius’ use of biological evidence – sometimes returning
to Peripatetic notions – operates as a basis to support modern scientific
arguments, especially in contexts where Aristotle’s assumptions are con-
sciously revised. Thus, in a sort of mirror game, images and remarks deriv-
ing from the Aristotelian tradition, which had been adapted by Lucretius
to explain Epicurus’ physics, were revived in the eclectic debate of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This is, for example, what we can
observe in the reception of Lucretius’ psychological theory. In his third

42 See Stückelberger A., “Lucretius reviviscens: von der antiken zur neuzeitlichen
Atomphysik”, Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 54 (1972) 8–9. Goddard Ch., “Lucretius and
Lucretian Science in the Works of Fracastoro”, Res Publica Litterarum 16 (1993) 186–188,
points out, instead, Fracastoro’s inconsistent rejection of atomism in the following part
of the same De sympathia; she reconnects the intention of recovering corpuscularianism
shown in this passage to the subsequent discussion of ‘seminaria’ (seeds of disease) in De
contagione et contagiosis morbis, whose two volumes formally compose a joint three-book
work together with the De sympathia. On Fracastoro’s relationship with Lucretius see also
Johnson – Wilson, “Lucretius and the History of Science” 132–133; Haskell Y., “Religion
and Enlightenment in the Neo-Latin Reception of Lucretius”, in Gillespie S. – Hardie Ph.
(eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Lucretius 190–192; Citti F., “Pierio recubans Lucretius
in antro: Sulla fortuna umanistica di Lucrezio”, in Beretta – Citti (eds.), Lucrezio, la natura
e la scienza 132–135.
43 On Lucretius’ explanation of magnetism through the theory of atomic exhalations,
supported as usual by many empirical arguments, see Lucr. 6.906–1089. It is no accident
that the three examples Fracastoro ‘uses to illustrate the principle of attraction all appear
in De rerum natura to illustrate atomism: the attraction of the magnet, the attraction of
the human body towards sense-perception, and sexual attraction. Lucretius explains the
attraction in each case as an emanation of bodies from one object to another. In each case
Fracastoro applies his rather ambiguous species spiritualis, each time emphasizing that
the attraction could not be produced by atoms’ (cf. Goddard, “Lucretius and Lucretian
Science” 186): a very clear case of methodological eclecticism.
44 Cf. Gemelli B., Aspetti dell’atomismo classico nella filosofia di Francis Bacon e nel
Seicento (Florence: 1996) 64–66.
98 fabio tutrone

book, he had emphatically asserted the mortality of the soul, a proof being
the divisibility of the anima through the body’s limbs; the soul of both
animals and men is present in every part of their organism, so if a limb
of a living being were suddenly cut off it would keep its part of psychic
substance for a certain time. In order to demonstrate this materialistic
Epicurean assumption, Lucretius employs several gruesome arguments,
such as the image of a snake whose pieces still move on the ground after
it has been chopped up.45 It is very likely that the origin of this zoological
remark was Aristotelian, as in his treatise On the Soul Aristotle repeatedly
mentions the survival of some animals in such circumstances as evidence
for psychological conclusions.46 In one of these passages he also uses such
an argument framed as a polemical attack against Democritus and his
atomistic view of the soul.47 Lucretius, therefore, had shrewdly adapted
and reversed a Peripatetic observation in order to support his Epicurean
corpuscular theory.
Early modern naturalists, in this regard, were able to use the poem’s
account to refute Aristotle’s opinions. Bernardino Telesio, for instance,
opposes the Aristotelian theory of a soul located only in the heart, main-
taining instead, in accordance with Lucretius, that the spiritus generated
from the semen is diffused through the entire nervous system; he also
claims that Aristotle’s own remarks on the divisibility of animals lead to
this natural conclusion, which is, as far as we can see, very close to that of
Lucretius.48 Similar arguments about the soul can also be found in many
other modern thinkers, such as Agostino Doni, Sebastian Basso and Fran-
cis Bacon.49 More generally, the Lucretian appeal to biological proofs in
support of atomic views seems to have been a highly successful point in
early modern debates. The bridge from corpuscular to organic, from vis-
ible to invisible, which Lucretius had created in his didactic work, is often
rebuilt by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century physiologists in order to
uphold their eclectic theories. Early modern supporters of atomism often
mention the reference in Book 4 to small animals, whose ‘third part’ and
internal organs cannot be seen, yet such parts nonetheless exist.50 Gior-
dano Bruno, for example, takes up this specific example in his On the

45 Cf. Lucr. 3.634–669.

46 Aristoteles, De anima 1.4, 409a7–10; 1.5, 411b.19–22; 2.2, 413b16–21.
47 Arist. De An. 1.4, 409a.
48 Telesio Bernardino, De rerum natura iuxta propria principia 5,27.
49 Cf. Gemelli, Aspetti dell’atomismo classico 106–108.
50 Cf. Lucr. 4.110–122.
 between atoms and humours – lucretius’ didactic poetry 99

Threefold Minimum and the Measure (1591), openly recalling Lucretius,51

and the same image is borrowed by Daniel Sennert and Sebastian Bas-
so.52 Bruno was deeply influenced by the poem’s materialistic cosmology
and by its concept of infinity, although he merged Epicurus’ natural phi-
losophy into his personal pantheistic, animistic convictions.53 However,
from the perspective we have adopted in this paper, it is no accident that
a Lucretius-oriented philosopher like Bruno managed to build a model
of ‘vitalistic atomism’, as it has been defined,54 using so many images
and ideas drawn from the De rerum natura. Lucretius was a malleable
reservoir of physical principles based on biology and Bruno’s passionate
vein creatively reshaped them. He did it in such an intense way that he
‘was explicitly questioned about his attraction to Lucretius at his trial for
heresy’.55 But in the same period more conventional, less provocative
men of science were also attracted by Lucretius and used his physiologi-
cal doctrines. Indeed, in a chapter of her study of Lucretius’ and Epicurus’
Nachleben in the Italian Renaissance, Susanna Gambino Longo pointed
out that in this age even some interpreters and commentators of Aristotle
refer to the De rerum natura in order to eclectically correct traditional
Aristotelian views on physics and philosophy.56 A particularly relevant

51 Bruno Giordano, De triplici minimo et mensura 1,9,1–15 (original text with German
translation in Stückelberger (ed.), Antike Atomphysik 250–252) ‘subsistens minimum ex
quo sunt composta, quod unum | in fine attingunt, quanta haec, quaecumque creantur, |
ne credas modico seiungier intervallo | a minimo nostris obiecto sensibus, altam | accip-
ito docti rationem mente Lucreti: | indicat ut tenui natura constet imago, | inquit enim
rerum primordia corpora prima | tanto infra nostros sensus tantoque minora, | ut mire ad
oculos minimae longo ordine partes | linquantur. Siquidem et animacula tanta videmus,
| tertia pars quorum nulla virtute notari | possit. Quantum ergo cerebrum ventremque
putandum? | Quantuli oculi? Quantum cor, nervus, viscera, quae sunt | partibus inde aliis
certam quoque nacta figuram, | et pariter variis consistunt undique membris’?
52 See Stückelberger, “Lucretius reviviscens” 10–18.
53 On Bruno’s relationship with Lucretius, who was one of his main models for style
and ideology, see Haskell Y., “The Masculine Muse: Form and Content in the Latin Didac-
tic Poetry of Palingenius and Bruno”, in Atherton C. (ed.), Form and Content in Didactic
Poetry (Bari: 1998) 117–144, esp. 127–138, Ead., “Religion and Enlightenment” 192–195, and
Johnson – Wilson, “Lucretius and the history of science” 133–134. See also Salvatore M.,
“Giordano Bruno, Lucrezio e l’entusiasmo per la vita infinita”, Studi rinascimentali 1 (2003)
113–120, and eadem, “Immagini lucreziane nel De immenso di Giordano Bruno”, Vichiana
5 (2003) 123–134.
54 See e.g. Johnson – Wilson, “Lucretius and the history of science” 133.
55 Cf. Haskell, “Religion and Enlightenment” 195.
56 See Gambino Longo S., Savoir de la nature et poésie des choses. Lucrèce et Épicure à
la Renaissance italienne (Paris: 2004) 121–177. Prosperi V., Di soavi licor gli orli del vaso. La
fortuna di Lucrezio dall’Umanesimo alla Controriforma (Turin: 2004) focuses more on liter-
ary matters than on scientific ones.
100 fabio tutrone

case here is the acceptance of quantitative approaches in the description

of matter in Aristotelian, traditionally qualitative, systems. Lucretius suc-
ceeds in combining primordia and principia, the basic concept of atom
with the biological idea of principle, which is comparable to Empedocles’
and Aristotle’s notion of ‘element’. In this respect, modern Aristotelians
are sometimes inclined to widen the Empedoclean-Peripatetic theory of
the four elements, regarding the atoms of Democritus and Epicurus as
just a possible enlargement of their ‘elemental’ conception. Aristotle had
assumed that sublunary nature is composed of four elements, but to his
Renaissance followers this number appears as a starting-point, subject to
revision: and atomism occurs as a non-conflicting, integrable proposal.
Francesco Vimercato, for example, who published a commentary on Aris-
totle’s Physics in 1550, plainly quoted Lucretius and gave an informed
account of ancient atomic theories: he saw corpuscularianism not as a
danger for his doctrine, but as a chance to enrich it.57 After all, Lucretius’
poem was the main source for every attempt to recover classical atomism
or simply to understand it. It is therefore very likely that its eclectic atti-
tude towards the study of nature built an attractive basis for early mod-
ern versatility in corpuscular physiology. Imitated as a paradigm of poetry
and science, condemned for his materialistic heresies or cleansed through
conciliative undertakings, Lucretius was in any case a catalyzing ancestor:
the voice of a world one could not ignore.

57 Cf. Gambino Longo, Savoir de la nature 146–147.

 between atoms and humours – lucretius’ didactic poetry 101

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——, “Variations on Themes from Empedocles in Lucretius’ Proem”, in ibidem, Cosmic
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Litterarum 16 (1993) 185–192.
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philosophie, de littérature et d’histoire ancienne offerts à Pierre Boyancé (Rome: 1974)
357–366.
Haskell Y., “Religion and Enlightenment in the Neo-Latin Reception of Lucretius”, in
Gillespie S. – Hardie Ph. (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Lucretius (Cambridge:
2007) 185–201.
——, “The Masculine Muse: Form and Content in the Latin Didactic Poetry of Palinge-
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117–144.
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Ph. (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Lucretius (Cambridge: 2007) 131–148.
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Johnson M.R., Aristotle on Teleology (Oxford: 2005).

Lucretius, De rerum natura: tr./ed. Bailey C. (1963), Oxford.
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antica (Florence: 1994) 29–47.
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ficiency of Experiment”, Isis 79 (1988) 68–103.
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Pigeaud J., La maladie de l’âme. Étude sur la relation de l’âme et du corps dans la tradition
médico-philosophique antique (Paris: 1981).
——, “La physiologie de Lucrèce”, Revue des Études Latines 58 (1980) 176–200.
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cimentali 1 (2003) 113–120.
——, “Immagini lucreziane nel De immenso di Giordano Bruno”, Vichiana 5 (2003) 123–134.
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1990).
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(Geneva: 1978) 77–121.
——, Lucrèce et les sciences de la vie (Leiden-Boston-Cologne: 1999).
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deraufnahme in der Neuzeit (Munich: 1979).
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Kulturgeschichte 54 (1972) 1–25.
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1974).
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décembre 1998) (Tours: 1999) 327–336.
 LOSING GROUND:
THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ATTRACTION FROM THE KIDNEYS

Michael R. McVaugh

Summary

The classical understanding of the kidney’s action, worked out by Galen, held that
an attractive force in the organ drew the urine to it, admixed with blood, and
that the urine was then filtered away from the thicker blood by the undifferenti-
ated substance of the kidney. Galen rejected the possibility of a purely mechani-
cal propulsion and separation of the urine, not least because mechanism could
not explain why different organs filtered off different materials. This attraction/
filtration model continued to be accepted by anatomists well into the seven-
teenth century, though their growing knowledge of renal structure led them to
conclude (mistakenly) that the filtration occurred, not in the kidney as a whole,
but at the newly discovered renal papillae. Subsequently, Harveian circulation
eliminated the need for an attractive force in the kidney, and the growing vogue
of mechanism then encouraged Malpighi to interpret the microscopic canals he
saw within the organ as functioning like individual sieves rather than like filters,
mechanically sorting particles of urine from other larger particles in the blood.
While his new model was widely accepted, some contemporaries continued to
feel that it could not completely explain the selectivity of the kidney.

The first research paper that ever had my name attached to it appeared
forty-nine years ago, and it dealt with the physiology of the kidney,1 which
is why the history of kidney function appealed to me when this conference
was announced. I know much more about urine and its production, there-
fore, than I do about blood, sweat, or tears, and for the purposes of this
paper a brief preliminary summary of the anatomy and physiology of that
organ may be useful for the general reader. If you cut open a human kid-
ney, you will see a rather undifferentiated reddish mass, somewhat greyer
at the outside (the cortex), redder inside (the medulla). [Fig. 1] You cannot
discern that it is composed of about a million units called nephrons. Each
unit consists of a tiny arterial capillary linked to a vein at a spot called the
glomerulus, where the blood vessels are surrounded by the beginnings of

1 Sullivan L.P. – McVaugh M.R., “Effect of Rapid and Transitory Changes in Blood and
Urine pH on NH4 Excretion”, American Journal of Physiology 204 (1963) 1077–1085. On the
context of this research, see Malvin R. L. – Sullivan L.P., “Stop-flow Technique: A Brief Epi-
sode in the History of Renal Physiology”, News in Physiological Sciences 5 (1990) 180–182.
104 michael r. mcvaugh

Fig. 1. Human kidney. Drawing Lauren Keswick.

 the disappearance of attraction from the kidneys 105

a separate tubule. Blood flows into the kidney through the renal artery
and arrives at these tiny capillaries in the glomeruli, which are up in the
cortex. Part of the blood, the plasma, passes out of the glomerulus into
the tubule, which winds back and forth through cortex and medulla and
finally empties through sites called papillae into the renal pelvis, a reser-
voir that fills much of the central indentation in the kidney, a cavity called
the renal sinus; the urine collected here passes out through the ureter into
the bladder and then out of the body.
Historians of physiology always start the modern history of the kidney
from Malpighi in 1666, writing in the wake of Harveian circulation, but
our concerns here are less with discovery or innovation than with method
and orientation and explanatory principles: did ancient writers look at
the kidney differently from medieval and early modern authors? I want
to suggest that changes were already occurring in the perception of that
organ well before Malpighi wrote, indeed before Harvey’s proclamation
of the circulation in 1628. The changes can be seen quite clearly, in fact,
in the writings of one of Harvey’s most famous critics, Jean Riolan the
Younger. But I will also suggest that there is a certain amount of continu-
ity of approach as well.

The Galenic understanding

About the general picture there has been little serious disagreement for
2300 years. Aristotle already distinguished three anatomical-physiological
phases in On the Parts of Animals III.9: the movement of blood to the kid-
ney; the production of urine in the kidney (as he says, ‘by the filtration of
blood through the solid substance of the organ’); and the movement of
urine out of the body.2 This is still a perfectly reasonable overall account
of renal physiology and anatomy.3

2 Aristoteles, De partibus animalium 3.9, 671b3–24 ‘In the centre of the kidney is a cavity
of variable size [. . .]. The duct which runs to the kidney from the great vessel [the renal
vein from the vena cava] does not terminate in the central cavity, but is expended on the
substance of the organ [. . .]. A pair of stout ducts, void of blood, run, one from the cavity
of each kidney, to the bladder [. . .] and other ducts, strong and continuous, lead into the
kidneys from the aorta. The purpose of this arrangement is to allow the superfluous fluid
to pass from the blood-vessel into the kidney, and the resulting renal excretion to collect,
by the percolation of the fluid through the solid substance of the organ, in its centre [. . .].
From the central cavity the fluid is discharged into the bladder by the ducts that have
been mentioned’.
3 And see Marandola P. – Musitelli S. – Jallous H. – Speroni A. – Bastiani T. de, “The
Aristotelian Kidney”, American Journal of Nephrology 14 (1994) 302–306.
106 michael r. mcvaugh

Five hundred years later, Galen thought much more systematically

about the kidney, its structure and its function.4 In fact, his analysis of its
physiology is in some respects more thoughtful and more profound than
anyone else’s down to, and including, Malpighi. To be sure, his overall
treatment of the organ in On the Use of the Parts is little different from
Aristotle’s, only more succinct: ‘urine’, he says, ‘is secreted from the blood
by the kidneys and passes thence through the ureters to the bladder’.5
However, the different stages in the process are examined in a little more
detail. Blood, says Galen, comes to the kidneys through both the renal
artery and renal vein, admixed with yellow bile, and it does so by attrac-
tion. Within the kidney, blood saturates the organ and becomes its nutri-
ment, while the watery portion of the blood and the bile ‘escape’ from
the kidney through its tubes to the bladder; the blood itself is prevented
from escaping because of the density of the kidney, which allows only
the thinner part to pass through, ‘without elaborating, concocting, and
transforming it’.6 The principal non-Aristotelian element in this account
is the idea that an attractive power is what originally brings the blood to
the kidneys.
Galen had already developed the idea of attraction as a physiological
agent, distinct from mechanical impulse, in On the Natural Faculties, and
indeed had exemplified it there by appealing to the activity of the kidneys;
his discussion there provides us with a particularly detailed account of
what happens in the first of Aristotle’s three phases. He is quite clear-
headed about the alternatives: either a mechanical propulsion brings the
blood to the kidney, there to be purified of its watery portion, or the kid-
neys themselves attract what is to be discarded. But if a mechanical force
brought the blood there, all the blood would have to be filtered through
the kidneys to be purified, and that cannot happen since the kidneys lie
on either side of the vena cava and aorta and most of the blood would be
forced straight on down those vessels by gravity; under the mechanical
hypothesis, therefore, only a part of the blood can be purified.7 Moreover,
if that were the case, and the watery portion were to be strained away,
the thick blood left behind would prevent the arrival of further impure
blood, unless it could somehow run back to the vena cava against the

4 A useful account is given by Shank M.H., “From Galen’s Ureters to Harvey’s Veins”,
Journal of the History of Biology 18 (1985) 331–355, esp. 332–336.
5 Galenus, De usu partium 5.5 (1.256 May; 3.363 K.).
6 Galen, De usu part. 5.7 (1.261 May; 3.373 K.).
7 Galenus, De facultatibus naturalibus 1.15, 1.16 (93, 101 Brock; 2.59; 2.65 K.).
 the disappearance of attraction from the kidneys 107

pressure of the incoming blood.8 It can thus only be a selective attractive

principle that brings all the watery material to the kidney to be evacuated.
Presumably (though the point is not made here, as it is in On the Use of
the Parts) at the same time some pure blood is drawn to the kidney for its
nourishment. In either case, there is no longer any need to worry about
a mechanically opposing flow impeding kidney function. We may note
that Galen is attacking mechanism as an explanation of this first phase
of kidney function not a priori – he certainly believes in the power of
mechanistic reasoning – but because in this phase a mechanistic explana-
tion of kidney function can be shown to be internally inconsistent with
what one observes.
And what happens in the second phase? Here Galen may seem some-
what confusing and inconsistent. We have seen that, in his view, it is
attraction that ensures that all the serous part of the blood will be brought
to the kidney. To explain what happens after it has arrived there, however,
he seems to prefer a mechanistic explanation. In On the Use of the Parts,
he says that to the extent that an attracting organ ends in tiny openings,
the fluid that is attracted to it will be pure: therefore, because the outlets
of the kidneys are narrow, they allow only serum and a little bile to pass,
while the thicker part of the blood is retained by the dense substance
of the kidney.9 In On the Natural Faculties, indeed, he actually says that
blood passes through the kidneys, in Brock’s translation, ‘as if through a
sieve’.10 He does not say, as he perfectly well could, that attraction brings
the serum but not the blood to the kidney’s outlets. It is apparently physi-
cal size, not an attractive faculty, that he believes is responsible for the
selective excretion.
The device to which Galen here seems prepared to compare the kidney,
at least tentatively, is a strainer, êthmos. The term was applied to a basket
woven from flexible plant material, like reeds, used to filter off the juice
from pressed grapes or olives, and to a pierced metal tray designed to filter
wine as it was served at meals. In either case the term denoted an instru-
ment for separating liquid from solid. To translate êthmos as ‘sieve’, as in
the passage above, is misleading, since that term would better represent

8 Galen, De fac. nat. 1.16 (101–103 Brock; 2.65–66 K.). The account by R.E. Siegel (Galen’s
System of Physiology and Medicine [Basel-New York: 1968] 128) is misleading; the back-flow
of thick blood is not what Galen thinks obtains and needs to be explained, but a counter-
factual that he thinks cannot obtain.
9 Galen, De usu part. 5.6 (1.260 May; 3.371–373 K.).
10 Galen, De fac. nat. 1.16 (101 Brock; 2.65 K.).
108 michael r. mcvaugh

kostikon, the woven tray used to separate differently-sized solid materials,

for example in sifting and purifying flour.11 Like a strainer, Galen seems to
be saying, the kidney holds back the thick sludge of the blood and allows
the far thinner serum to pass through into the ureters.
And yet, Galen continues, if one thinks about it more carefully, there
is one inescapable reason why this apparently plausible mechanical fil-
tration cannot explain the production of urine and the body’s other dis-
tinct excretions. Consider the bile, which is drawn off from the blood by
the bile duct just as serum is drawn off by the kidney. If it were merely
the physical aperture of the duct that allowed bile to pass while holding
back the blood, then the thinnest part of the blood, the serum, would run
through the bile duct even faster:
if the yellow bile adjusts itself to the narrower vessels and stomata, and
the blood to the wider ones, for no other reason than that blood is thicker
and bile thinner, and the stomata of the veins are wider and those of the
bile-ducts narrower, then it is clear that this watery and serous superflu-
ity [urine], too, will run out into the bile-ducts quicker than does the bile,
exactly in proportion as it is thinner than the bile [. . .]. Thus every hypoth-
esis of channels (porôn) as an explanation of natural functioning is perfect
nonsense.12
Here I think Galen is conceiving of the kidney (and bile duct) as a sieve,
in order to visualise its comparative action not on fluids vs. solids, but on
solid particles that are different in kind but of comparable size. If excre-
tory organs like the bile ducts or the kidney were supposed to act passively
and mechanically, like a sieve, on the differently-figured constituents of
the blood, we could not explain their differential action; we could not
explain why the smallest or thinnest material in the blood – the watery
serum that constitutes the urine – should not be excreted by every such
organ rather than by the kidney alone, as is in fact the case. The apparent
inconsistency in Galen’s discussion, his willingness to adopt a mechanistic
explanation for the separation of urine from the remainder of the blood
contrasted with his insistence that mechanism is logically inconsistent
with his observations of the selectivity of bodily function, is, I suggest,
because he is considering the kidney sometimes as strainer and some-
times as sieve. He has no difficulty imagining the body’s organs as physi-

11 On these terms, see Daremberg C. – Saglio E., Dictionnaire des antiquités grecques et
romaines (Paris: 1875–1919) 1,1331–1333 (colum) and 1,1568 (cribrum).
12 Galen, De fac. nat. 2.2 (123–125 Brock; 2.78–79 K.), 2.3 (127 Brock; 2.80 K.) and see
Siegel, Galen’s System 129.
 the disappearance of attraction from the kidneys 109

cal strainers, separating thin sera from gross blood, but when he has to
visualise them as sieves, each separating a particular kind of solid particle
and rejecting all others, he has to recognise that at this point mechani-
cal explanations are impossible. Mechanism can often provide general
explanatory principles: but specific action and discrimination among pos-
sible outcomes require a different kind of agent. Is the kidney a physical
strainer, a filter? I am not at all sure what Galen would say if you asked
him that directly: yes and no, perhaps.
In phase three of kidney function, as it happens, Galen has no diffi-
culty in accepting a purely mechanical flow of urine through the ureters
into the bladder and out through the urethra; it seems he feels no need
to imagine, say, an attractive faculty in the bladder that would draw the
urine to it. On the Natural Faculties contains a famous description of an
experimental demonstration of this flow: if in a living animal the ureters
are tied, they will be seen to become full and distended above the liga-
ture; and ‘on removing the ligature from them, one then plainly sees the
bladder becoming filled with urine’. In turn, if the urethra is ligatured and
the full bladder compressed, one finds that it is impossible to force urine
back up through the ureters.13 Here I only summarise Galen’s account, but
it is clear that he imagines this to be a closed system where gravity and
hydrostatic pressure are the only agents that we need to posit to account
for this last phase of kidney function. He assumes, I think, that where
we have fluids in a closed system we can have confidence in mechanical
principles to explain what is happening.
Galen left significant remarks about renal physiology in one other
work, De locis affectis (known to the Middle Ages as De interioribus). Here
he says again that the kidneys attract the watery substance, implying that
it is separated from the blood in the veins by the attractive power (and
thus that the two do not move together); the context of these remarks was
a discussion of how a great quantity of ingested fluid can move immedi-
ately to the kidney, without dragging along with it a correspondingly large
amount of blood. And he is also explicit here that the bladder does not
attract the urine; instead, the kidneys send it to the bladder through the
ureters.14
As regards the kidney and urinary excretion, therefore, Galen appears
to think mechanically up to the point where he has to conclude that

13 Galen, De fac. nat. 1.13 (59 Brock; 2.36–37 K.); 1.13 (61 Brock; 2.36–37 K.).
14 Galenus, De locis affectis 6.3 (Siegel 175–176; 8.396, 398 K.).
110 michael r. mcvaugh

mechanical explanation will no longer work, at which point he turns to

attraction as an explanatory principle. And I wonder whether this may
not be in keeping with a remark that he makes early on in On the Natural
Faculties, when he explains what he means by a ‘faculty’. A faculty, he
says – like the attractive power of the kidney, for example – is an explana-
tory principle for a specific natural function, yet it is not an absolute, it
itself can be explained; but ‘so long as we are ignorant of the true essence
of the cause which is operating, we call it a faculty’.15 Attraction is a real
power, of course, and a basic explanatory principle in nature, but it acts
on materials which can also move mechanically. In a sense, by identifying
the aspects of kidney function that are mechanical, and setting them to
the side, we can narrow down the locus of that attraction. Once we set
aside venous transport to the kidney and uretal flow from the kidney, we
are left with the substance of the kidney itself as the implied source of an
attractive faculty.

The “Mondino Kidney”: Membranes and strainers

Latin translations of these three Galenic works were available to the

European academic world of the early fourteenth century, as it began
to construct its own understanding of human physiology. De iuvamentis
membrorum, based on an Arabic adaptation of On the Use of the Parts,
gives the kidneys an active role in ‘distinguishing’ the urine by attracting it
away from the blood.16 The Latin version of On the Natural Faculties (enti-
tled De virtutibus naturalibus) accurately rendered Galen’s rejection of a
filtration-like separation.17 And the basic Galenic principle that inherent
attractive forces exist in the body had been reinforced by developments
in Arabic medicine that were passed on to Europe: the treatise of Avi-
cenna on cardiac medicines, in particular, used the example of magnets
to illustrate how bodies could generate properties derived from their own
unique substance that had to be determined empirically and could not be

15 Galen, De fac. nat. 1.4 (17 Brock; 2.9 K.).

16 Galenus, De iuvamentis membrorum 6.3, vol. 1 fol. [23] vb ‘Superfluum residuum sub-
tile quod remansit in sanguine scilicet urina distinguitur a sanguine per duas renes et sunt
positi prope epar [. . .] ad attrahendum aquositatem a sanguine fortius [. . .]. Ista ergo est
dispositio urine in distinctione eius a sanguine per renes’.
17 Galenus, De virtutibus naturalibus 1.15 vol. 1 fol. [38] rb ‘Non igitur ut ythimi [= ἠθμοί]
id est colatoria transcolant, mittente quidem illa, ipsi vero nullam neque contingentem
inferentes virtutem, sed trahunt et ducunt’.
 the disappearance of attraction from the kidneys 111

predicted.18 It was easy for Latin authors to identify the attractive faculty
possessed by the kidney with an Avicennan proprietas, a property derived
from the organ’s substantial nature.
There were some European writings on anatomy and an associated
physiology in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, but the real
revival of European attention to the subject began in the later thirteenth
century: first with the emergence of a would-be learned surgical tradi-
tion, one that drew first on Greek and Arabic sources for its accounts of
the human body, and then on the beginnings of anatomical demonstra-
tions by medical masters at Bologna and elsewhere, who juxtaposed their
observations with the recovered Galenic texts. In one such demonstration,
performed in 1316, Mondino dei Liuzzi took a new step towards a study
of the kidney. As far as the evidence goes, Galen never tried to describe
the organ’s structure in any detail, in effect treating it simply as a link
between blood vessels and ureters, but Mondino tried to narrow down
just where that link was, where the change from blood to urine occurred.
After referring to the two Galenic works discussed above to prove that the
kidneys attracted both aquositas and sanguis, he went on as follows:
Let us cut the kidney lengthwise on the convex side down to its sinus; then
you will immediately see a certain membrane or thin covering, which is
the wall of the vena emulgens [renal vein], thinned so as to make a kind of
strainer (colatorii), and by its porosities urine may pass but not blood. Thus
the urine is filtered (collatur) and drips downward from the opening to the
ureters that are united with it, which descends further to the bladder [. . .].
Blood remains in the kidney and is attracted into its substance, and thus it
is nourished.19

18 McVaugh M., “The ‘Experience-Based Medicine’ of the Thirteenth Century”, Early Sci-
ence and Medicine 14 (2009) 115–117.
19 Mondino dei Liuzzi, Anatomia (Pavia, de Carcano: 1478), repr. in Wickersheimer
E., Anatomies de Mondino dei Luzzi et de Guido de Vigevano (Geneva: 1977) 23a ‘Si urina
ad renes pervenit cum sanguine mixta, et ad vesicam depurata et separata a sanguine,
oportet quod in renibus depuretur et colletur. Collatur autem quia ad concavitatem per-
venit renum, quam videre [ed.: nidere] debes. Scindemus renem in parte gibosa eius non
concava et per longum protrahere usque ad concavitatem videas; tunc statim apparet tibi
quidam panniculus sive pannus rarus, et ista est vena emulgens rara, facta ad modum
collatorii, et per porrositates has potest urina transire, sanguis autem non, et ideo collatur
urina et distilletur inferius ad orificium cui continuatur porrus uritides qui descendit infe-
rius usque ad visicam [. . .]. Sanguis remanet in rene et attrahittur ad substantiam eius et
nutrit renem’. My English translation slightly modifies that provided in Ketham Joannes,
The Fasciculo di medicina, Venice, 1493, ed. Singer C. (Florence: 1925) 2,23.
112 michael r. mcvaugh

Mondino here did what no one before him in the Middle Ages had done,
perhaps no one in Antiquity, and tried to use his observation of kidney
structure to help localise where the emission of urine took place, con-
ceived of still as passing through a filter (colatorium), not a sieve (cri-
brum). Galen had treated the kidney as an undifferentiated solid mass
from which the serum somehow emerged; Mondino thought he could see
a structure within the renal sinus whose pores gave passage to the urine
but not the blood.
Yet it is important to be very careful here, and to recognise that Mon-
dino’s kidney (and perforce Galen’s) is not our own. Our modern kidney
is typically depicted as a dull red bean-like entity with a hollow space
at its core (the renal sinus) containing three sharply distinguished ves-
sels: a vein, an artery, and the renal pelvis that turns into the ureter. But
these detailed structures are not simple ‘givens’; they had to be learned by
anatomists in tandem with a growing knowledge of their function. Mon-
dino, cutting through the kidney, did not see three different vessels filling
an open space in a semicircular kidney; he saw, I suspect, three vessels
penetrating into what amounted to a hollow or cavity (a sinus, in Latin)
in a closed kidney, sealed off from the rest of the body. The confusion of
tissues packed together in that space would not have been easy for him to
disentangle, and he evidently concluded that they amounted to a kind of
strainer wall that divided the renal vessels from the ureters so that there,
in that cavity, the urine was filtered out from the blood – blood which was
then drawn into the rest of the kidney to nourish it. Our kidney is com-
posed simply of medulla and cortex; Mondino’s kidney was not divided
into those two parts, and it was not sharply demarcated from the tissues
around it and within it.
Mondino’s Anatomia remained a foundational text for the teaching of
anatomy well after 1500, and that certainly helped ensure that Renaissance
anatomists continued to see the ‘Mondino kidney’, but in any case it was
difficult for them, too, to master the content and structure of the kidney
and its sinus. Andreas Vesalius, for example, in his Fabrica of 1543, seems
almost perverse in the carelessness of his description of that organ. The
standard narrative of the discovery of the circulation tends to begin with
Vesalius and with his supposed scepticism about the Galenic pores pass-
ing through the intra-ventricular septum of the heart. Some historians of
nephrology would like to present him as a watershed figure in their sub-
ject too, but in fact Vesalius’s account of the kidney and of its function is
surprisingly superficial – as well as ignorant of important developments in
his own day, as we will see. His self-promoting dismissal of ‘all [modern]
 the disappearance of attraction from the kidneys 113

authorities’ as regards renal anatomy has been blindly repeated by histo-

rians, who take him at his word when he attributes to his contemporaries
the universal conviction that
there are two sinuses lying lengthwise along the kidneys, one on top and
one underneath, and that there is a transverse membrane dividing these
[. . .], that the vein and artery of the kidney end in the upper one, into which
they pour serous blood, and that the membrane dividing the two sinuses is
pierced with such tiny and narrow holes that it allows the thin and aqueous
residue to pass through along with the bile, whereas the blood is too thick
to penetrate it.20
Vesalius even went to the trouble of incorporating a plate for this sup-
posed renal model into the Fabrica [Fig. 2], illustrating a hollow kidney
divided into two halves by a porous plate that he labelled mockingly the
beatum et nugacissimum colatorium, seu membrana cribri modo pervia21 –
the mockery lies not only in the teasing adjectives, but in implying that
it was ridiculous to suppose that a filter (of fluids) could be imagined as
nothing more than a membrane pierced with holes.
Modern historians have taken Vesalius at his word, believing that this
was the common view of Renaissance anatomists, but if we actually read
the writings of his contemporaries we find that their accounts are far less
precise than this, not much changed in fact from Mondino’s. Vesalius’s
parody was simply a self-promoting simplification of the Mondino kidney.
One author who might be said to describe a two-sinus kidney is Guinter
d’Andernach, Vesalius’s teacher at Paris, but Guinter was almost certainly
trying to describe the structure of the cavity surrounded by the organ,
not that of the organ itself. Guinter’s language is not entirely clear, but
he seems to have posited a demonstration: one can isolate the renal vein
and divide it down to a space, a sinus, where it broadens out and subdi-
vides into many branches; here one sees the membrane through which

20 Vesalius Andreas, De humani corporis fabrica V.10 (Basel, Oporinus: 1543; repr. Brussels:
1964) 515 ‘Adeo sane ut nunc omnibus recepta probataque sit opinio, duos in renibus esse
sinus, secundum visceris longitudinem sitos, elatiorem scilicet unum, demissiorem alterum,
qui transversa quadam membrana interdividantur, superior dico ab inferiori. In superiorem
renis venam arteriamque finire, easque serosum sanguinem in illum infundere, deinde mem-
branam sinus intercipientem, tam arctis angustisque foraminulis perviam esse, ut et aqueum
illud ac tenue recrementum et bilem quoque transmittat, sanguine interim propter sui cras-
sitiem non penetrante’. The translation is found in idem, On the Fabric of the Human Body.
Book V, The Organs of Nutrition and Generation (Novato, CA: 2007) 132.
21 Vesalius, Fabrica 515. Hayman J.M. Jr., “Malpighi’s ‘Concerning the Structure of the
Kidneys’: A Translation and Introduction”, Annals of Medical History 7 (1925) 242, mistak-
enly interprets this account of kidney structure as one that Vesalius himself accepted.
 114
michael r. mcvaugh

Fig. 2. Hollow kidney divided into two halves; Andreas Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica (Basel, Oporinus: 1543).
 the disappearance of attraction from the kidneys 115

the urine seeps (distillat) into another lesser sinus (presumably the renal
pelvis) that is drained by the ureters. The renal vein and the renal pelvis
are of course distinct anatomically, but he may have thought that their
two contiguous coats were one, very much as Mondino apparently did.22
Thus while Guinter did indeed speak of two sinuses separated by a mem-
brane, he did not locate them within a hollow kidney, and he certainly did
not describe the membrane as pierced with holes like a sieve.
In fact, Vesalius’s own description is not all that different from his
teacher’s, for he too described two sinuses in the kidney: one is ‘a hol-
low and membranous body’ formed by the confluence of the renal vein
and renal artery, which is always full of blood and which then branches
out into all parts of the kidney (very much like Guinter’s first sinus), and
lying within these branches there is a second renal sinus filled with fat
out of which the urinary channel arises. And how did he relate form to
function? He represented contemporary authorities as believing that ‘the
urinary channel grows out from the lower sinus and receives the now fil-
tered urine. But in fact the Creator of the world in his wisdom did not
assign so important a task to one little membrane perforated like a sieve
[uni membranulae cribri modo perforatae; again we recognise the Vesal-
ian mockery]’; it is instead ‘the substance of the kidneys, by virtue of a
faculty innate within itself and in conjunction with its own finely adjusted
warmth, [that] strains out (excolat) the serous residue [. . .] and then pours

22 Guinter Johannes, Institutionum anatomicarum secundum Galeni sententiam libri

quatuor (Paris, Colin: 1536), fols. 30 recto-31 recto ‘Carne constant densa, solidaque, facul-
tatibus praedita, quibus aquosam humiditatem primum ad se alliceant, deinde alienum
a familiari separent: postea id per meatum, ab urina dictum ouretera, ad vesicam expel-
lent: idque diversis vasorum oris, ut aliae attractioni, aliae expulsioni serviant. Insuper
bilis etiam flavae multum attrahit, et fere id eius universum, quod utique arterias eius
et venas habere contigerit. Item non parum sanguinis, quod scilicet eius est humidius,
et subtilius. Verum biliosum excrementum, quodcunque non fuerit admodum cras-
sum, cum urinis egreditur, unde urinae flavescunt. Ne autem sanguis, ita per meatum
urinarum excidat, quod aliquando in renum profluvio contingit, densa firmaque facta
est ipsorum caro, in quam ille regurgitat, exundatque, et hinc iam paulatim vaporis
modo in totam ipsam disseminatur, apponitur, adnascitur, verum denique nutrimen-
tum efficitur. Sinus in utroque existit, corpore quodam membraneo circundatus, quem
ut videas, alterum e duobus renibus (dextrum autem potius sinistri vasis seminarii gra-
tia) adipe membranosa [1538 membrana adiposa] ipsi obhaerescente denutato: ac ubi
venam, qua [1538 et arteriam quae] sanguinem defert [1538 deferunt], funiculo inter-
ceperis, per gibbam eius partem in longum dividito, usque cum scalpro ad sinum eius
perveneris: in quo vasa plures in ramos diffundi cernes, ac membranam, qua urina
distillat in alium sinum minorem, quem excipit meatus oblongus, quem ouretera nomi-
navimus’. Essentially the same text is given in the edition of Venice, Bernardinus: 1538,
fols. 28 recto-verso.
116 michael r. mcvaugh

it into the sinus that receives the urinary channel’.23 His argument with
his contemporaries, I believe, is implicitly over what causes the separation
to take place, and this is what has led him into parodying their views on
anatomy, because function has to accord with form. The Vesalian model
is designed to undercut the idea that the separation of urine from blood
might be merely a mechanical sieving of differently-sized particles by the
pores. If there is no sieve-like entity to be seen, it must then be the sub-
stance of the kidneys, possessed of a separative faculty or property, that
brings about a filtration of urine from blood, which then merely passes
out through pores into the ureters.24

The Renaissance kidney: From membranes to papillae

I have suggested that the Mondino kidney was in part a natural product of
the kind of gross longitudinal dissection described by Mondino and illus-
trated in Vesalius’s parodic woodcut, which effectively treated the organ
as a whole. I would also suggest that new sixteenth-century techniques
of analysis which focused on understanding the kidney as a collection of
parts were decisive in bringing about a different picture of the organ, and
they too can in a sense be traced back to Mondino’s account. In 1502 Anto-
nio Zerbi produced a commentary on Mondino in which he declared that
the urine is separated from the blood at the fine openings at the ends of
the emulgent veins where they enter the renal substance.25 When in 1521
Berengario da Carpi in turn published a commentary on Mondino’s work,
he addressed the same question – where does blood change to urine? –
but he used a mixture of experimental and anatomical investigation to
pursue it, as we might say, physiologically. Does the change really take

23 Vesalius, On the Fabric 132; idem, Fabrica 516. Cf. Fabrica 517 ‘manifestum [. . .] renum
substantiam [. . .] aqueum illum humorem colare’.
24 The same image – a filter (colatorium) as a solid rather than perforate body – is
attributed by Vesalius to other anatomists a little later on: ‘quibusdam accurate sectionem
aggredientibus ita imposuit, ut hunc adipem urinarii meatus operculum quoddam esse,
et urinae in renibus excretioni seu colationi praefici, et quoddam velut colatorium esse,
scriptum reliquerunt’ (Fabrica 516). Vesalius describes this idea as a delusion, but because
its adherents have misunderstood the anatomy of the kidney, not because urine could not
filter through the renal fat.
25 He says of the resultant structure that it is ‘in similitudinem colatorii, sive cribri ut
communiter dicitur’ [my italics]; De Santo N.G. – Bisaccia C. – De Santo R.M. – Touwaide A.,
“The Pre-Vesalian Kidney: Gabriele Zerbi, 1445–1505”, American Journal of Nephrology 22
(2002) 164–171, esp. 169–171.
 the disappearance of attraction from the kidneys 117

place at the terminus of the renal veins, as Zerbi said? Berengario used a
syringe to push warm water through the vein into the kidney; the kidney
swelled, but nothing emerged from the ureter. Then, dissecting the ure-
ter, he discovered that it opened into a large space (lacuna) up against
the wall of the kidney itself, which was marked with fleshy swellings like
nipples (papillae), and that urine seemed to be coming out there (circa
illas), perhaps ‘sweated out like milk from the breast’; we still know these
structures by the name Berengario gave them.26 Then, tracing the course
of the renal vein in the sinus as well as he could, he saw that it continued
to branch out in the direction of these swellings. First by forcing water
into the vein, then by tracing the ureter back into a kidney, Berengario
had shown how those two exterior vessels were continuous with specific
structures inside an open centre in the organ: he described a somewhat
different organ from the one Mondino saw, one that was now sharply
marked off from the vessels that enter its sinus.
Seeing the kidney afresh necessarily called back into question how the
separation of urine from blood took place. The urine is no longer pro-
duced at a juncture between vein and ureter, it originates instead within
the dense, solid body of this new kidney: is it attracted away from the
blood by the kidney’s substantial nature, or physically drawn off by some
kind of filter within the organ? Berengario expressly set down his hope
that, with more observations, ‘I may decide with more assurance whether
such a filter exists in nature or not,’27 and eventually, in a work published
after his death, in 1535, he concluded that Galen had been right. ‘There
is no net, as some think, no tissue in the kidney that acts like a strainer
(colatorium panniculare); the kidneys are simply organs which attract [the
blood] through some of their openings and give off a subtle watery super-
fluity through others’, he wrote, although he seems to have endorsed the
further Galenic suggestion that the density of the kidney is a complemen-
tary factor that helps retain the blood and allows the subtle urine to pass

26 Berengario da Carpi, Commentaria Mundini (Bologna, H. de Benedictis: 1521) fols.

178 verso-179 recto. I have consulted the text as reproduced in De Santo N.G. – De Santo
L.S. – De Santo R.M. – Di Leo V.A. – Papalia T. – Cirillo M. – Touwaide A., “Berengario da
Carpi”, American Journal of Nephrology 19 (1999) 211.
27 De Santo et alii, “Berengario da Carpi” 210 ‘Certificabor de maiori resolutione talis
colatorii, an sit in natura vel ne’. The authors write that ‘he [Berengario] has a negative
opinion about the existence of a sieve (colatorium)’, but the language of this passage does
not bear this out. Nor is it true, as they say, that ‘he demonstrates that urine is not formed
through a milk-like exudation process’; instead, he was again non-committal. He had
indeed wondered at first whether it might be true, but after studying the question said
simply ‘hoc non potui videre’ (ibidem 211).
118 michael r. mcvaugh

through.28 He certainly made no reference to the ‘sieve-like’ membrane

that Vesalius said ‘all modern anatomists’ believed in.
Indeed, Vesalius seems unaccountably to have been oblivious to other
aspects of Berengario’s work on renal anatomy; neither his parody in the
Fabrica nor his own model of the organ makes any reference to the papil-
lae that had been described more than twenty years before. But Beren-
gario’s discovery was not lost on other great anatomists at mid-century:
both Falloppio (1561) and Eustachio (1563), for example, acknowledged
the existence of Berengario’s renal papillae and incorporated them into
their conceptions of kidney function. For these men, as for Berengario,
blood was attracted to the kidney through the renal vein and artery, and
serum was expelled through the papillae – but what happened in the
kidney, and how, remained mysterious. Eustachio, indeed, cut sections
across the kidney, through the breast-like swellings, and thought he saw
hair-thin grooves running across the organ, across which he supposed the
urine was somehow strained; yet he too, like Berengario before him, tried
to force liquid through the kidney from both the renal vein and the ureter,
and again found it impossible to demonstrate any connection between
the two.29 So the kidney remained a kind of ‘black box’ at the beginning of
the seventeenth century, with blood drawn into it through the veins, urine
dripping out from its papillae, and its dense undifferentiated substance,
the ground of its attractive powers, in between.
This is indeed the picture presented by the two great anatomical sur-
veys of the day, Caspar Bauhin’s Institutiones anatomicae (1604) and André
DuLaurens’ Historia anatomica (1600). Bauhin’s brief account mentioned
both the kidney’s density and the narrow openings of the papillae as fac-
tors explaining why the organ retained blood but allowed urine and yellow

28 Berengario da Carpi, Anatomia Carpi (Venice, Bern. de Vitalibus: 1535) fol. 16 verso
‘Trahit spiritum et nutrimentum et superfluitates aquosas totius corporis colere mixtas;
haec omnia mixta per totam Renis substantiam licet solidam transeunt, quia sunt sub-
tilia. Sanguis enim non transiret solus ad minimas partes Renum, quia solidi sunt, nisi
esset aquositati et colere mixtus [. . .]. Hic sanguis multe aquositati mixtus solus retinetur
a Renibus pro suo nutrimento, et aqua cum colera simul a sanguine desecata transit ad
certam vacuitatem notabilem existentem in centro Renis, tanquam ad lacunam [. . .]. Et
in Rene non est Rete nec aliud colatorium panniculare ut putant aliqui, sed Renes facti
sunt organa concava, orificiis aliis quidem attrahentia, aliis autem emittentia subtilem
aquosam superfluitatem’.
29 Much of Eustachio’s text is reproduced in Grondona F., “Strutturistica renale da
Galeno al Highmore”, Physis 5 (1963) 185–189; in these passages Eustachio never speaks of
the kidney as either a colatorium or a cribrum, but he does repeatedly use the verb perco-
lari to describe the passage of urine through the organ.
 the disappearance of attraction from the kidneys 119

bile too to filter out,30 and suggested in passing that the organ’s attractive
power or ‘proprietas’ might arise from its heat.31 DuLaurens had a little
more to say about the organ, taking pride in having looked more closely
at its internal structure than even Falloppio and Eustachio, but by that he
really meant the structures visible in the sinus. The kidney proper he sim-
ply describes as ‘of a unitary substance’, assigning it an undoubted power
to draw the serum to it through the renal vein and artery (though other
forces, like heat, might also be at work to convey it there): he seems to be
echoing On the Natural Faculties in his rhetorical question, ‘Why should
the serum pass into the kidneys rather than some other member if there
were not a special attractive power located there?’32 Once, he declares,
he agreed with the common view (and here we hear the echo of Vesalius)
that a membrane divided two spaces in the sinus, one supplied with blood
which seeps through to become urine in the other, but he now knows bet-
ter: his observations have shown him the renal vein and artery branching
more and more finely as they move deeper into the central hollow of the
organ, and he believes that they must eventually connect directly to the
carunculae (‘papillae’), and in those hair-like connections the serum filters
through (transcolatur) and drips out into the pelvis and ureters as urine,
while the blood left behind proceeds on to nourish the kidney.33 DuLau-
rens thus seems to have thought that the kidney attracted the mixture of
blood and serum by virtue of its substantial nature, retained the blood for
its own purposes, and left the urine to drain off through tiny apertures.
It was on Bauhin’s text that William Harvey based himself when he
began to prepare his anatomical Lumleian lectures, about 1616, and he

30 Bauhin Caspar, Institutiones anatomicae corporis virilis et muliebris historiam exhi-

bentes (s. l. [Lyons], Le Preux: 1604) 53–54 ‘Ventres duos habent: Exteriorem, in quem Vasa
feruntur: et Ureteres egrediuntur: hi in ipsis instar pedis anserini divisi, Carunculas ampl-
exantur, et hoc Colatorium dicitur: Interiorem vero, ne quid sanguis cum Urina elabatur,
quem membrana ad tutelam, ne cavitas occludatur, succingit: in hoc Carunculae subal-
bae, papillis similes, angustissime perforatae, ne sanguis, qui a Renibus pro nutritione et
quidem eorum quadam proprietate allectus, una cum sero effluat, hic enim Carni renum
aspergitur, inde paulatim vaporis modo in totum dispergitur, adhaerescit, atque demum
alimentum fit renibus. Renum enim usus, serosam superfluitatem a sanguinis tam venosi
quam arteriosi massa repurgatum, recipere, quamvis et bilis flavae multum attrahant, que
(at crassior pars), cum urinis permeat, unde et urinae flavescunt’.
31 Bauhin, Institutiones 52 ‘Carne densa, quo Calor inhaerens fortius attrahat, et expel-
lat, neve sanguis elabatur’.
32 Laurentius Andreas, Historia humani corporis (Paris, Mettayer and Ourry: 1600) 331
‘Cur enim in renes potius, quam in alias partes decumberet serum, nisi peculiaris adesset
renum tractus’?
33 Laurentius, Historia anatomica 327–332.
120 michael r. mcvaugh

also drew extensively on DuLaurens, which helps explain why his treat-
ment of the kidney in those lectures is quite traditional. Like his authori-
ties, Harvey showed little interest in the structure of the organ itself: he
dismissed it as simply a hard, compact substance very much like that of
the heart, of a dull reddish colour. He expressed relatively little interest in
the process by which urine is formed. Harvey accepted DuLaurens’ con-
clusion that a number of forces concur in its expulsion, including attrac-
tion, though there are hints that he would have liked to explain attraction
through ‘Natural Heat’ directed by nature. He commented on the branch-
ing of the renal vessels and on the renal pelvis as encompassing the papil-
lae but without reflecting on the process of filtration, merely wondering
to himself, as his abbreviated notes say, whether ‘the [papillae] void urine
as infants [take] milk; wherefore expulsion of urine rather by attraction
of these than of the kidneys; wherefore kidneys, just as breasts for the
infant, serve to receive the moisture, which must be sucked out through
the papillae’.34 This is so terse as to be something of a muddle, but Harvey
too still clearly located a principle of attraction in the kidney.35 Indeed,
he seems to have been thinking about localising the principle in the
papillae.
It perhaps scarcely needs to be emphasised that throughout the six-
teenth century both the language in which the kidney’s action is described
and the specific model that is assumed to embody its activity persist, with
almost no change. For all our authors, the kidney is an entity that sepa-
rates a thin fluid – the serum or urine – from a thicker one – the blood –
by filtering (colare, excolare) it off. They almost universally speak of the
organ as itself being a filter, a colatorium. No obvious filter could be seen
there, aside from the dense substance of the kidney, and one or two

34 Harvey William, Lectures on the Whole of Anatomy. An Annotated Translation of

Prelectiones anatomiae universalis (Berkeley: 1961) 122. Harvey’s original Latin is given in
The Anatomical Lectures of William Harvey, ed. Whitteridge G. (Edinburgh-London: 1964)
170 ‘Emingunt urinam ut infans lac, unde urinam expulsam potius attractione horum quam
renum; unde renes tanquam ubera infanti inserviunt ad accipendum humidum quod per
papillas exugendum’. I have chosen not to use Whitteridge’s freer translation: ‘The calyces
suck out [she emended the manuscript’s emingunt to emulgent] urine as an infant does
milk for which reason it could be said that the urine is driven out by the attraction of the
ureters rather than of the kidneys and that the kidneys serve like paps to the babe, collect-
ing the liquid which is to be sucked out through the papillae’ (171).
35 Earlier Harvey, perhaps elaborating on Bauhin’s suggestion, wrote: ‘As to whether
[the urine] moves by attraction or expulsion etc., the answer in one word is that the origi-
nator of everything in the body is innate heat [. . .]. Innate heat as it concocts both attracts
and expels (‘calidum nativum ut concoquit attrahit expellit’)’; Harvey, Anatomical Lectures
162/163. See also Shank, “From Galen’s Ureters” 341–342.
 the disappearance of attraction from the kidneys 121

authors (like Berengario) thus rejected the noun, but even they could not
resist the verb. In any case, it is clear that no one conceived of the kidney
as a sieve (cribrum), a sorter-out of particles – quite the contrary; that was
an image that non-professionals might loosely use (Zerbi) or that might
be employed to lampoon ignorant colleagues (Vesalius), but that made
no intellectual sense at all to any of the sixteenth-century writers we have
found trying to account for renal physiology.

The seventeenth century: Riolan and the unit kidney

This can serve as an introduction to my unlikely protagonist, Jean Riolan

the Younger. Trained in part by his father, Riolan was appointed to a new
chair of anatomy at the University of Paris (and to a chair of medicine
at the Collège Royale) in the first years of the seventeenth century – at
exactly the moment, in fact, when André DuLaurens, towards the end
of his life, came to Paris as royal physician. Riolan inherited his father’s
hostility to the new chemical medicine of the day and wrote vigorously
against it, and as an anatomist too was committed to ancient medicine
and to Galenism; in this respect he is very much like DuLaurens. But he
was a much better anatomist than DuLaurens, and in trying to under-
stand the newly emerging anatomical detail he trusted his own scrupu-
lous observations; he kept up with modern discoveries all his life (he died
in the same year as Harvey, 1657), accepting many of them, those at least
which he could integrate with Galenic theories, and to some extent devel-
oped a reputation as a trustworthy arbiter in these matters, which made
his criticism of the circulation in the 1640s more than a trivial matter.36
Riolan wrote a general survey of human anatomy, his Anthropographia,
in 1618, when he had just turned forty. A new edition (one that Harvey knew
and drew on in revising his Lumleian notes) appeared in 1626, enhanced
by a great many new references to classical and modern authorities, but
its core description of the kidney and its function was almost exactly as it
had been eight years before.37 It is naturally a generally Galenic account

36 A thoughtful and convincing assessment of Riolan’s position is given by Mani N.,
“Jean Riolan II (1580–1657) and Medical Research”, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 42
(1968) 121–144.
37 Riolan Jean, Ioannis Riolani filii [. . .] Anthropographia (Paris, Perier: 1618); idem,
Anthropographia et osteologia (Paris, Moreau: 1626). The second of these versions was
translated into French by Pierre Constant and published in vol. I of Riolan’s Œuvres
122 michael r. mcvaugh

of how the body works, and with respect to the function of the kidney in
particular Riolan offers no challenges at all to Galen’s explanations. And
yet his account of renal physiology feels somehow different from Bauhin’s
or DuLaurens’. Something has been happening in the years around 1600,
and I suggest that it centred on three things. The first was an acceleration
of anatomical knowledge, not just clarifying Galenic descriptions but add-
ing new features, often at a much finer level of detail, forcing scientists to
make sense of these new smaller features, somehow, in terms of the pre-
vailing explanatory models. As regards the kidney, the tradition had been
to posit attraction as a property of its undifferentiated substance; but as
the kidney was observed more closely, and as more of its structure was
appreciated, the possible ground or locus of its attractive power became
smaller and smaller. The other two of my changes are already prefigured
in Galen’s own physiology: an appeal in the first instance to commonplace
concrete models as analogies to bodily structures, and the use of experi-
ment to test or confirm such models. I make no claim to be saying any-
thing particularly new, because all these things are well-known features of
Harvey’s investigation of the heart; but it is worth pointing out that they
are all also features of the way Riolan is now looking at the kidney. Let me
take them up individually.
(1) It is clear from Riolan’s account that he is closely familiar with the
structures of the renal sinus, especially the pelvis. He has read about them
in Berengario da Carpi, he says, but he has examined them for himself: he
describes opening the ureter, carrying his exploration up into the renal
pelvis, and following it up its branches to see, at their ends, nine or ten
fleshy points – extremitates carneas acuminatas – where the blood is ‘sep-
arated from the serum’.38 These of course are the renal papillae (indeed,
he refers to them as carunculae papillares). Riolan was not alone in com-
menting upon them and wanting to find a function for them; we know
that DuLaurens had over-hastily concluded that they were the actual
loci where blood vessels were connected to the ureters. An increasingly
refined anatomical knowledge of the post-Mondino kidney was creating
pressure for more detailed physiological explanations – and obviously this
was the case in the pre-history of the circulation too, when for example

anatomiques (Paris, Moreau: 1628–1629), but this translation is often very free. In my notes
below I give the page reference to the 1618 edition, sometimes adding a reference to the
1626 edition in parentheses).
38 Quoted below, n. 43.
 the disappearance of attraction from the kidneys 123

the discovery of the venous valves immediately forced their interpretation

in Galenic terms.
However, from some other source – certainly not Berengario, conceiv-
ably his own explorations, though I have not pressed the search for pre-
decessors – Riolan is now aware that the outer part of the kidney is dark
in colour, while the inner part is a lighter red, and he thinks it important
to say so.39 That is to say, the kidney is not just a single unexamined ‘sub-
stance’ any longer for Riolan, as it still was even for Harvey, for example.
I take this to be a recognition of real importance. Riolan is clearly dis-
tinguishing between cortex and medulla, and even more importantly he
concludes from what he sees that the medulla is composed of ‘glands’
(claiming the authority of Hippocrates’ On Glands), which are like indi-
vidual kidneys.40 The importance of these ‘glandular’ structures evidently
grew on him between 1618 and 1626, because to the later edition he added
citations from Arataeus and Hippocrates to reinforce and even extend his
account. They are independent in babies, he says, but they grow together
to combine into a single organ in an adult. He seems to be talking now not
just of the carunculae papillares that drip urine into the pelvis but of the
medullary pyramids behind them – there are between 8 and 18 of them
in the human kidney, each packed with nephrons that collectively drain,
indeed, into the pelvis through a renal papilla.
This is taking renal anatomy a long step further, and naturally it forces
Riolan to come up with a physiological explanation of these findings. He
concludes that it must be these glands – not the generalised substance
of the kidneys any longer, not DuLaurens’ hypothetical hair-like links
between veins and papillae, not (as in Harvey’s speculations) the papillae
themselves – that are the agents ‘in attracting and separating the serosi-
ties’. And Riolan even proposes a kind of physical law to explain how the
individual glands combine their actions to create kidney function:
Since, as everyone knows, every action depends on contact, the more agents
are involved in bringing about a change, the easier that change will be, and
the faster the action will take place. And this is why the serum, as it were
distributed among so many kidneys, is so quickly separated.41

39 Riolan, Anthropographia 248–249 (ed. 1626: 237) ‘Propterea in dissecto per dorsum
rene, carnem sublividam corpus renis ambientem observabis; alteram internam rubicun-
diorem ex glandulis illis simul unitis concretam’.
40 He would already have been familiar with Aristotle’s statement in PA 3.9 that the
human kidney is made up of numerous small kidneys.
41 Riolan, Anthropographia 248–249 (ed. 1626: 237) ‘Glandulae autem intus collocatae
fuerunt, ut serosa excrementa facilius traherent et secernerent. Quum enim actio contactu
124 michael r. mcvaugh

Riolan is consciously reducing action to these individual glands, to what

we might call a unit kidney, where ‘attraction or separation’ actually takes
place – and the activity is really constrained spatially. The substance
of the kidney is losing ground: the ‘black box’ of renal action is getting
smaller and smaller, and the physical gap or discontinuity between where
the blood stops and the urine begins is also shrinking.
(2) Next I want to emphasise the concreteness of Riolan’s approach
to understanding, his almost automatic appeal to analogies that will
allow him to visualise what is going on – and he does not fall back on
the traditional image of the colatorium or filter. Perhaps it was seeing the
inner surface of the kidney pierced by the apertures of the papillae that
led him to conceive of it instead as a sieve, an incerniculum seu cribrum.
In 1626 he added quotations from Aretaeus and Rufus of Ephesus to this
passage in order explicitly to support this picture of a sieve – ‘there are
little membranes in the hollow parts of the kidneys, pierced with little
pores in the manner of a sieve” – apparently insensitive to the fact that the
Greek texts of both authors (which Riolan supplied) presented the classi-
cal image of filtration instead, êthmoeidôs!42 Yet curiously Riolan makes
no appeal whatever to the distinctive function of a sieve – to separate
different kinds of particles – to help explain urinary production. Instead,
he accounts for the passage of urine out through the papillae and into the
ureters with two other models: ‘the serum comes out of the papillae’, he
says, ‘almost in the same way as milk comes out of the nipple, and drips
into the branches of the ureter just as lye (lixivium) seeps with difficulty
through the reed inserted into the neck of its jug’.43 The second analogy

perficiatur, quo plures erunt partes ad immutationem alicuius rei, eo facilius eiusdem rei
fiet immutatio, atque tota actio celerius absolvetur. Quare serosus sanguis in plures veluti
renes distributus [. . .] segregatur’. The French translation is somewhat freer: ‘puis que c’est
une verité cognuë d’un chacun, que l’action se faict par l’attouchement reciproque des
choses agissantes, il demeure pour constant, que plus il y aura de parties ioinctes ensemble
en l’alteration et changement de quelque chose: plus le changement en sera soudain, et
l’action plustost achevee. Et par ainsi les serositez etans distribuees par les caruncules,
comme par autant de petits roignons, sont bien plustost digerees, separees et renuoyees’;
Riolan, Œuvres anatomiques 1,352–353.
42 Riolan, Anthropographia (1626) 236 ‘Cavis renum partibus membranulae sunt, instar
cribri foraminulis plurimis pertusae’. The italics are mine.
43 Riolan, Anthropographia 248 ‘ Videbis carunculas sive extremitates acuminatas, in
quibus fit secretio sanguinis a sero, quod ab eis veluti lac e papilla exudat, et in ramulos
novem ureteris destillat, eo modo quo lixivium per angustiam dolii foramen stipula obtu-
ratum’ (the 1626 version is slightly expanded at 236). Again, the French translation is freer:
‘les serositez tombent à travers la substance de mamellons presque en la mesme sorte
que le laict jaillit hors les mammelles, ou bien en la mesme façon que la lescive tombe
 the disappearance of attraction from the kidneys 125

is purely mechanical, depending on open if tortuous passages that permit

the flow of liquid, however slowly, but the first is not: Riolan certainly
does not think of the breast as a mere filtration device, but as an organ
which itself generates milk out of blood. It is tempting to wonder, in fact,
whether Harvey’s analogy between breast milk and urine was derived
from reading Riolan’s book, though the comparison was also sketched out
by Berengario da Carpi. Which model fits the kidney better, the biological
or the mechanical?
(3) This leads to my final point, Riolan’s use of experiment to decide
between his models. The blood arrives at the kidney through the renal
vein and artery. Are there anastomoses, hollow channels, between these
entrance vessels and the papillae, pelvis, and ureters, where the purified
urine emerges as if through a straw plug in a bottle; or is the kidney – the
unit kidney, now – solid, acting through some inherent faculty to gener-
ate the urine, like milk? Anastomoses in the kidney would imply a simple
physical flow; a solid kidney implies action by the ‘substance’ of the organ.
Riolan puts this to a test, a test that was already there in Berengario,
except that Berengario had tried to push fluid through from renal vessels
to ureters, as the blood would normally move, whereas Riolan wants to
see whether fluid can be pushed back through the kidney:
You can test this by injecting a little water into the ureter, or by blowing
air into it; this spreads through the substance of the kidney without in any
way flowing on into the veins. Thus you will see that the urine must filter
through (percolari) the very flesh of the kidneys.44
That is, though fluid can be forced back into the kidney, there are no
channels, no anastomoses, that link the ureters and veins directly and
permit easy passage from one to the other; instead, the substance of the
kidney is impermeable to a purely mechanical flow.45

hors son tonneau par les entr’ouvertures d’un bouchon de paille que l’estouppe’; Œuvres
anatomiques 1,351.
44 Riolan, Anthropographia 249–250 (ed. 1626: 238) ‘Deinde animadvertes venam et arte-
riam cum ramis fistulosis nov<e>m [1626 novem aut decem] ureteris non coalescere, quod
explorabis aqua per ureterem iniecta, aut spiritu insufflato, quae per renis substantiam dif-
fundi, nec ullo modo in vasa refluere videbis. Inde cognosces urinam per renis carnem’ [1626
add. et carunculas] percolari. Once more the French is perhaps over-free: Riolan, Œuvres
anatomiques 1,355 ‘l’experience en est aysee en versant un peu d’eau chaude dans l’uretere,
laquelle se va soudain respandre par la substance du rein, sans qu’il en enctre la moindre
goutte dans les vaisseaux. On esprouve encoure la mesme chose en soufflant dans l’uretere:
d’où on cognoit que l’urine passe à travers la substance des reins et des caruncles’.
45 Here two changes made in the text of the Anthropographia between 1618 and
1626 may be significant: Riolan, Anthropographia 248 (ed. 1626: 237) ‘Eleganter scripsit
126 michael r. mcvaugh

This kind of appeal to fluid pressure in a closed system as a demonstra-

tive technique is not unique to Riolan either: it is a commonplace in De
motu cordis, where it is used for example to confirm the solidity of the
cardiac septum, and (by blowing into a glove) to show the equality of fluid
pressure throughout an interconnected system. But I would suggest that
Riolan’s particular experiment was suggested by Galen. In On the Natural
Faculties Galen had sealed off the urethra, filled the bladder, and tried
to force fluid back into the ureters so as to test a one-way flow. That is
precisely what Riolan is doing, and he argues the way Galen did: since it
is impossible to force fluid back through the system, there is obviously no
open and unimpeded communication within it. Galen showed that the
insertion of the ureters into the bladder seals off the vessels at that point;
Riolan looked a little higher up to show that the substance of the kidney
seals them off in exactly the same way. But both authors were offering
the results of an experimental test of a restricted mechanical model to
confirm their conclusions.46

Bellini, Malpighi, and the microscope

With the best will in the world, I cannot say that Riolan revolutionised
the study of the kidney: that revolution depended on later developments

Hippocrates lib. de ossium nat. per renes [1618 add.: tanquam per quallam] aquam perco-
lari; quia spongiforme est eorum corpus, [1626 add.: et li. de glandulis notat renes habere
glandulas, quoniam multa humiditate replentur; maiores vero hac in parte sunt, quam
alie glandulae]’. It would seem, that is, that in 1618 Riolan may have been thinking of the
substance of the kidney as in some sense a mechanically open structure (qualla denotes a
wicker basket) but had dropped this image by 1626 in favor of the ‘glandular’ model and
a less permeable kidney.
46 Other historians have commented separately on these three traits’ presence in
Riolan’s physiology, particularly as manifested in his account of the heart’s action.
(1) Regarding his responsiveness to new anatomical discoveries: Walter Pagel has pointed
out that in the 1618 Anthropographia Riolan was already drawing on recent observations
by Volcher Coiter (1573), as well as his own, to insist (independently of Harvey) on the
incorrectness of Realdo Colombo’s views and to point out that instead the heart beats in
systole and that it is at that moment that the arteries dilate; Pagel W., William Harvey’s Bio-
logical Ideas (New York: 1957) 216–218. (2) With regard to his wider use of analogies: again
in the Anthropographia, Riolan likened the motion of the heart in diastole and systole to
a bellows, ‘Cor instar follis distendi et comprimi’ (ibidem 212 n. 11, where Pagel quotes the
phrase from the Anthropographia in its 1626 edition; I have not been able to confirm that
the simile was already present in the 1618 edition). (3) On Riolan’s attitudes towards physi-
ological experimentation (well after the publication of the Anthropographia, however), see
Mani, “Jean Riolan II” 139–142.
 the disappearance of attraction from the kidneys 127

that he observed but could never appreciate. One was Harvey’s account
of the circulation of the blood, which required investigators to rethink
how blood came to (and left) the body’s various organs. Another was the
growth of mechanism more generally, of a predilection for explanations
of natural phenomena that were based solely on matter and motion, and
increasingly couched in corpuscularian terms. And a third, just beginning
to gain importance at the time of Riolan’s death in 1657, was the use of the
microscope in scientific investigation. In a sense, the man who launched
a revolution in the study of the kidney was Giovanni Borelli, who by the
1650s was deeply committed to a search for mechanistic explanations in
physiology and was able to appreciate the potential of the microscope, so
that he encouraged a young protégé, Lorenzo Bellini, to apply the micro-
scope to the investigation of renal anatomy. As a result, Bellini was able
to see that the kidney was in fact made up of a mass of ‘fibres’ which,
when compressed, emitted a salty fluid – as he reported in his Exercitatio
anatomica de structura et usu renum (1662) – and he recognised that these
were probably the channels by which urine passed out of the organ.
As for the mechanism of urine production, however, after reviewing
the theories proposed by earlier authors, Bellini deferentially reported
his master’s views. Not surprisingly, Borelli approached the problem as a
mechanistic-corpuscular one, and tried to devise a renal mechanism for
discriminating between particles of blood and particles of serum or urine:
in effect, therefore, he was from the outset postulating a sieve (though he
never uses the word) and not the traditional filter. Borelli was a Harveian,
and accepted that blood came to the kidney through the renal artery and
left through the renal vein; but how and where was the urine removed?
He proposed that since ink forced into both the renal artery and the renal
vein could be seen exuding from the kidney’s cortex (once the organ’s
surrounding capsule was removed), both artery and vein must terminate
there in fine vessels, and he supposed that they meet Bellini’s fibers there
in what we might imagine as a number of Y-joints.47 Blood would be
pumped in through the artery, and at the Y the serum would pass out
through the fibers while the remainder of the blood would continue on

47 Borelli’s account is summarised in Bertoloni Meli D., “The Collaboration between

Anatomists and Mathematicians in the mid-Seventeenth Century with a Study of Images
as Experiments and Galileo’s Role in Steno’s Myology”, Early Science and Medicine
13 (2008) 682–684. I have consulted the text of Bellini’s work as given in Grondona F.,
“L’esercitazione anatomica di Lorenzo Bellini sulla struttura e funzione dei reni”, Physis
5 (1963) 423–463.
128 michael r. mcvaugh

into the vein. But how could the specific separation be explained without
appealing to a specific attracting force? Borelli offered a two-phase expla-
nation. First, the blood could be drawn into the tiny veins and the serum
into the fibres by an action like that evident in the capillary tubes that
were then an object of European study; second, by positing, not different
sizes, but different configurations for the two kinds of channels, one could
explain the organ’s discrimination between the two fluids.
This second aspect of Borelli’s solution was not improbably meant to
evade the objection first raised by Galen in On the Natural Faculties, that
differences in channel size could not possibly account for separation of
particles because the smallest particles would pass through large and
small channels alike. Indeed, without mentioning Galen, Borelli conceded
this point when he denied that the veins and the fibers can be differenti-
ated functionally by the size of their openings and offered new examples
that were in fact an extension of Galen’s position:
For it can be demonstrated by many experiments that very narrow apertures
will not allow subtle substances to pass through, even though thicker ones
do; and further that subtle things cannot enter lax and yielding apertures,
although less subtle ones do so. Thus: how narrow must the pores in gold
be! they escape the senses entirely, and some maintain that they are not to
be found – yet mercury can pass into those pores, which neither water nor
air nor other things much finer than mercury can enter. Further: of what
[tiny] breadth must the pores in bladders and skins be! Even so, while water
sweats through them, they do not permit the passage of the thinner air.48
These facts show that channel size cannot be depended on to determine
what particles do and do not pass through them, but they do not help us
understand what does determine it.
Borelli’s answer is perhaps less fully worked out than it might have been.
It must be, he concludes briefly, that the particles of blood and serum are
shaped differently and exactly fit, respectively, the shapes of the openings
of the veins and fibers, and are thus sorted apart without any need for
principles of attraction or familiarity – but he does not try to pursue the

48 Grondona, “L’esercitazione” 461 ‘Nam plurimis experimentis comprobari posset, poros

angustissimos a rebus subtilioribus non penetrari, licet ipsos crassiora pervadant; rursusque,
a poris satis patientibus et laxis subtilia non admitti, quamvis minus tenuia introducantur.
Sic quantae sunt angustiae auri porositates? adeo illae sensum effugiunt, ut prorsus non
reperiri aliqui contenderint; et tamen mercurius poros illos penetrat, quos non aqua, non
aer, nec ulla hydrargiro subtiliora possunt pervadere. Rursus, quantae sunt amplitudinis
pori vesicarum, et pellium? Ab his tamen exsudat aqua, licet exitum aeri tenuiori nun-
quam concedant’.
 the disappearance of attraction from the kidneys 129

implications of this model under the mechanical hypothesis. For example,

it would seem to presume a corollary assumption that he does not state,
that the various kinds of particles are all roughly comparable in size, since
if the particles of air were truly ‘much finer’ than those of mercury they
should be able to slip through the apertures in gold whatever their shape.
In any case, Borelli has thus made of the configured ‘Y-joints’ the kind of
sieves he was looking for, inasmuch as they are separating particles from
particles and not liquids from solids.
By this same time glands had become an increasingly interesting focus
of attention in the seventeenth century, especially to the mechanistically
inclined. The Hippocratic On glands, though included in Zwinger’s collec-
tion of Hippocrates’ writings (1579), was for a long time very little cited
by Latin authors, perhaps because it was a rather difficult text, perhaps
because it had little relevance for medical practice.49 It directed atten-
tion to a number of distinct spongy entities distributed through the body,
which it supposed were designed to attract or drain off moisture from
the body. It called particular attention to the glands in the axillae and
tonsils, but it recognised that glands were to be found associated with the
kidneys, among other organs:
The kidneys, too, have glands, since they also are saturated with much mois-
ture. The glands there are larger than the other glands for the moisture that
flows in is not soaked up by the kidneys, but flows through them down to
the bladder, so that whatever the glands acquire from the pipes they draw
to themselves.50
The language of the text is not particularly specific. There is no obvious
reason today to identify Hippocrates’ renal glands with any particular
modern anatomical entity, whether (for example) the adrenal glands
(located on top of the kidneys) or the aortic lymph nodes.51 Its vagueness
had made it easy, as we have seen, for Riolan to assume that Hippocrates
had been referring to the pyramidal entities Riolan had seen within the
kidneys, and thus to claim classical authority for these new features.
Hippocrates’ suggestion of the glands’ role in collecting moisture, rein-
forced by their evident vascular connections, encouraged the thought that
they might be the body’s principal agents in the mechanical distribution

49 See the paper by Elizabeth Craik in this volume.

50 Hippocrates, De glandulis 6 (113 Potter; 8.560 L.).
51 Crivellato E. – Travan T. – Ribatti R., “The Hippocratic Treatise ‘On Glands’: The First
Document on Lymphoid Tissue and Lymph Nodes”, Leukemia 21 (2007) 591.
130 michael r. mcvaugh

and segregation of humours or fluids. The assumption of the body as

glandular machine guided Marcello Malpighi’s own microscopical investi-
gations in the early 1660s and led him to proclaim that glands were to be
found in many of the chief organs of the body – liver, kidney, brain, and
spleen – though he could say little about their structure or operation.52
The tendency among historians today is to see Malpighi as becoming less
committed to mechanical explanations in his later life, but certainly in
1666, when his De renibus appeared, the machine served him as an a priori
model. To say, as Guido Giglioni has, that for Malpighi ‘the a priori dimen-
sion of knowledge never supersedes the decisive role of the observation’,53
is difficult if not impossible to reconcile with his original account of the
operation of the kidney.
The De renibus (part of Malpighi’s wider De viscerum structura) is a
deservedly famous work, arguably standing to the kidney as Harvey’s De
motu cordis does to the heart; and in part it follows naturally from the
Harveian circulation, which Malpighi too accepts: once blood is under-
stood as pumped in to the kidneys through the renal arteries and brought
out through the renal veins, Aristotle’s first phase has been automatically
mechanised, and no longer needs attraction to be explained. But the
second phase, the separation of urine from blood, had become an inde-
pendent problem in the Renaissance, and Malpighi’s investigation of that
problem is shaped by the same three explanatory factors already visible
in Riolan: an increasing knowledge of the detailed structure of the kidney;
an appeal to concrete analogies that carry with them functional implica-
tions; and the experimental testing of those implications through their
consequences. Again, let us look at them one at a time.
(1) An increased knowledge of kidney structure was the most dramatic
contribution made by Malpighi, who had been looking at anatomical fea-
tures with the new microscope since the 1650s. Riolan’s naked-eye obser-
vations, remember, revealed the cortex and medulla, and postulated the
pyramids as centres of action. Malpighi was now able to see and describe
‘little canals’ in the cortex that were continuous with the bigger blood ves-
sels, as he could demonstrate by injections of ink. He could see excretory

52 Bertoloni Meli D., “The New Anatomy of Marcello Malpighi”, in Bertoloni Meli D.
(ed.), Marcello Malpighi. Anatomist and Physician (Florence: 1997) 45–51; and Giglioni G.,
“The Machines of the Body and the Operations of the Soul in Marcello Malpighi’s Anat-
omy”, in Bertoloni Meli D. (ed.), Marcello Malpighi. Anatomist and Physician (Florence:
1997) 152–153.
53 Giglioni, “Machines” 158.
 the disappearance of attraction from the kidneys 131

canals running up from the centre of the kidney, and tiny glands attached
like apples to the little canals, ‘the latter swollen with the black liquid and
stretched out into the form of a beautiful tree’:54 these were the glomeruli.
The kidney would never be undifferentiated substance again.
(2) My second feature, the spontaneous appeal to analogies to embody
observations, is already apparent in Malpighi’s apples, his little canals,
his beautiful tree. Yet he was curiously cautious about proposing a model
to explain how urine was excreted. I think the image of the mechanical
sieve must have seemed inescapable to him, because he takes for granted
that earlier writers had espoused it and never recognises that until Borelli
they had been thinking instead of the kidney as a filter; yet he himself
resists using the term. It was always others who spoke that way: it was the
‘ancients’, he writes at the beginning of his work, who imagined the kid-
ney to be a cribri species;55 later he says ‘it is absolutely true that the urine
is not separated by the papillae, as by a sieve’ (that had been DuLaurens’
view).56 And so forth. The impression that Malpighi thinks this may be
too crude a model is confirmed when he turns to reflect on the possible
function of the tiny glands that he has discovered linking blood vessels
and canals:
It is obvious that this mechanism (hanc machinam) accomplishes the work
of separation of the urine by its internal arrangement. But whether this
arrangement is similar to those devices which we make use of here and
there for human needs, and in imitation of which we build rough contriv-
ances, is doubtful. For although similar sponge-like bodies, structures with
sieve-like fistulae (incerniculi fistularum cribrorumque structurae), may be
encountered, it is difficult to determine to which of these the structure of
the kidneys is similar in all respects. And since the manifestation of Nature’s
working is most varied, we may discover mechanisms (machinae) which are
unknown to us and whose operations we cannot understand.57
We cannot help admiring the thoughtfulness of these reflections, but in
fact Malpighi does not live up to his call for caution and almost imme-
diately returns to the simplicity of the traditional model. He agrees that
foreign particles of different sizes and shapes can sometimes be found
passed in the urine, which is perhaps his way of conceding that pore-size

54 Hayman, “Malpighi’s ‘Concerning the Structure of the Kidneys’ ” 251.

55 Hayman, “Malpighi’s ‘Concerning the Structure of the Kidneys’ ” 245.
56 Hayman, “Malpighi’s ‘Concerning the Structure of the Kidneys’ ” 256 Verum absolute
sit urinam nequaquam papillari corpore, ut cribro, separari a vasis sanguineis.
57 Hayman, “Malpighi’s ‘Concerning the Structure of the Kidneys’ ” 259–260.
132 michael r. mcvaugh

cannot explain the differential secretory power of different glands – and

yet, he goes on, ‘as I think, Nature has made the structure of these glands
very small and most simple, so that we cannot doubt that [. . .] whatever
is of larger size or of different shape does not enter the little pores and
small spaces of the excreting body, and is not excreted’.58 He still resists
using the word itself, but the model of the sieve is irresistible, whatever
difficulties it may entail.
(3) Finally, like Riolan, like Galen, Malpighi wants to put his model to
the test, and the test is the same: can the anastomoses, the connections
(now narrowed down to the tiny glomeruli), be experimentally demon-
strated? He tried perfusing ink into the arteries, and it coloured the glands
but went no further; he tried perfusing it into the ureter, and could not
even get it to colour the canals. Apparently ink could not go from one
side to the other, in either direction. Hence Malpighi tried to verify his
model with a different experiment, by putting pressure on the kidney as
a closed system. He tied off the renal vein, and the ureter as well, but he
left the artery open to keep pumping in blood; he hoped in this way to
force fluid across the filter he supposed was present in the glands. It was
essentially the same experiment as Riolan’s, or Galen’s experiment with
the sealed-off bladder. If we put pressure on a fluid in a container, and it
does not escape, it demonstrates that the system is watertight; both Galen
and Riolan accepted this mechanistic argument as proving that there was
no channel for urine through the kidney. Malpighi, on the contrary, hoped
to show that the system was open, that the glands would allow passage of
fluid under high pressure. After having thus forced more and more blood
into the kidney, he opened the organ and looked at his glands, where
‘I seemed to see a certain connection and continuation, but not such as
satisfied the senses in all particulars’. All his experiments, in fact, had con-
firmed Riolan’s conclusion, the imperviousness of the kidney.59
Yet Malpighi did not despair. ‘Reason can bring assistance’, he went
on soothingly, for if the material of the urine is derived from the arteries,
and the arteries end in the glands, and the canals start there and drain
urine into the pelvis, ‘there must of necessity be granted a continuity and
communication between them’.60 The model was now so powerful that
it outweighed the experimental evidence itself. Like Riolan, like Galen,

58 Hayman, “Malpighi’s ‘Concerning the Structure of the Kidneys’ ” 260.

59 Hayman, “Malpighi’s ‘Concerning the Structure of the Kidneys’ ” 252–253.
60 Hayman, “Malpighi’s ‘Concerning the Structure of the Kidneys’ ” 253.
 the disappearance of attraction from the kidneys 133

Malpighi used experiment and mechanical reasoning to test his model,

but he no longer felt bound by the outcome of the test. Reason, applied to
these anatomical structures, was more powerful, and I think this may be
because the microscope had reduced the ground or locus for the creation
of urine, in effect, to a point – or to a huge number of points. Now there
are thousands and thousands of unit kidneys at work producing urine, not
just a dozen or so as in Riolan, and each of them is terribly insubstantial. It
was evidently easier for Malpighi to imagine each one as a sieving device
than as a centre of physical attraction, as a point of active separation and
transport across an otherwise impenetrable barrier – no matter what his
experiment seemed to show.
While it is no part of this paper to consider Malpighi’s later thinking
about the kidney and about his subsequent exchanges with Borelli on the
subject,61 it is certainly appropriate to compare the ways in which the two
were attempting to model the kidney’s action in the early and mid-1660s.
Both approached it with mechanistic preconceptions, both found the
image of the sieve virtually inescapable, and both used experiment to test
and hopefully to confirm those preconceptions by injecting fluids into the
organ through its artery and vein: Borelli inferring from the fluids’ appear-
ance at the kidney’s periphery that the vessels must be connected there,
Malpighi observing that connection through the microscope and attempt-
ing unsuccessfully to force fluid from one side to another. His failure to do
so did not weaken his a priori commitment to a mechanistic explanation
of kidney function; this Malpighi of 1666 is the one recognisable in Theo-
dore M. Brown’s seminal 1968 dissertation, however much historians now
believe he may have moderated and nuanced his views in later life.62
Equally, however, I think that both iatromechanists were still uneasy
about their answer to the old Galenic objection based on the fact of selec-
tive excretion. Borelli had tried to explain it by particle shape, without
acknowledging that particle size still had to be taken into account. Mal-
pighi seems to have recognised this omission when he proposed that the
corpuscles of the materials to be excreted must somehow assemble into
a larger corpuscle (in unam quasi coire molem) of exactly the shape and
size to fit the urinary tubules.63 Both these explanations require unspoken

61 Bertoloni Meli D., “The Posthumous Dispute between Borelli and Malpighi”, in
Bertoloni Meli (ed.), Marcello Malpighi 247–275, esp. 253, 259–261.
62 See Brown T.M., “Reflections on a Changing Field”, in Bertoloni Meli (ed.), Marcello
Malpighi 7.
63 Hayman, “Malpighi’s ‘Concerning the Structure of the Kidneys’ ” 260.
134 michael r. mcvaugh

assumptions or principles of action that cannot be obviously derived from

a mechanistic hypothesis, and if Borelli and Malpighi recognised that fact,
it would surely have left them uncomfortable. Indeed, Malpighi’s appeal to
fermentation as possibly playing a role in the preparation of the excreted
bodies strikes me as little more than ‘hand-waving’ designed to paper over
gaps that he recognised still existed in his explanation.64
Certainly other contemporaries recognised that this selectivity repre-
sented an obstacle to a mechanistic explanation of the excretion of urine,
and not only physicians. Isaac Newton is one figure who seems to have
found in it an insuperable objection to the kidney-as-sieve hypothesis.
Archibald Pitcairne’s record of his discussions with Newton in March 1692
about the implication of acidity for the structure of matter describes the
power of mercury to penetrate the pores in gold, and explains that ‘differ-
ence of shape in pores makes no difference because the pores are much
wider than the particles of liquid entering them’; indeed, one might won-
der whether the two might actually have been talking about Borelli’s own
argument drawn from Bellini’s discovery, especially because in the same
connection Pitcairne also recorded Newton’s conviction that ‘Urine is
secreted through small passages in the kidneys (tubulos renales) because
it is attracted to these passages and has affinity with them’.65 Still, New-
ton’s privately expressed view was not that of the medical world, which
for the most part found a generally mechanistic interpretation of kidney
function to be satisfactory.66
And that is how the principle of selective separation of the blood’s
components, as produced by differential attraction, disappeared from
renal physiology, and a process of mechanical sieving came to dominate
explanations. Or did it? What does happen in a kidney, anyway? If there
is anything like a sieve there, it would be the cell walls in the glomerulus.

64 Hayman, “Malpighi’s ‘Concerning the Structure of the Kidneys’ ” 260–261. As Bertoloni

Meli puts it, somewhat more positively (“Posthumous Dispute” 274): ‘A tool repeatedly
used by Malpighi to bridge the gap between the mechanico-philosophical programme and
the outcome of specific investigations was the notion of fermentation’ (and cf. 253, 260).
65 Newton Isaac, Correspondence: ed. Turnbull H.W. (Cambridge: 1961), vol. 3, 211:
nos. [8], [14], [12].
66 Cf. Siegel, Galen’s System 132. Guerrini A., “The Varieties of Mechanical Medicine:
Borelli, Malpighi, Bellini, and Pitcairne”, in Bertoloni Meli (ed.), Marcello Malpighi 125–127,
discusses Pitcairne’s own views on urinary excretion as they stood in the 1690s: ‘he ignored
the anatomical evidence Malpighi and others had used to substantiate the “strainer” theory
of secretion, arguing from mathematics and logic rather than experimentation’, but in the
end adopted a version of the model – originating with Borelli – that made the specificity
of excretion dependent on the configuration of the tubule.
 the disappearance of attraction from the kidneys 135

Water can always pass across these walls, and under pressure it will,
carrying small molecules and ions but leaving big proteins behind –
filtering the blood, one could certainly say. But as this fluid passes into the
renal tubule, it is subject to forces other than hydrostatic: active transport
carries these solutes back into the blood, and water follows with them; it is
the body’s way of regulating glucose and ions, especially sodium, so as to
maintain a constant internal environment: that is, there are selective pro-
cesses (I hesitate to say mechanisms) ensuring that some chemicals are
eliminated and others not, for reasons distinct from particle size. That was
the theme of the paper that my name appeared on so long ago: we were
able to show where, specifically, ammonium ions are singled out for active
transport back into the blood. The kidneys sieve out the plasma more or
less mechanically, passively, but then by active processes they draw many
of its components, including water itself, back into the blood. Taking the
long view, in fact, one could argue that Galen was more perceptive than
Malpighi: the kidney is not a pure machine, rather, it combines mechani-
cal with actively attractive processes as it produces urine out of blood. But
I hardly imagine that I will be able to convince renal physiologists that
Galen and not Malpighi is the founder of their subject.
136 michael r. mcvaugh

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——, “The Posthumous Dispute between Borelli and Malpighi”, in Bertoloni Meli D. (ed.),
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THE ART OF THE DISTILLATION OF ‘SPIRITS’ AS A TECHNOLOGICAL
MODEL FOR HUMAN PHYSIOLOGY.
THE CASES OF MARSILIO FICINO, JOSEPH DUCHESNE
AND FRANCIS BACON

Sergius Kodera

Summary

This article concerns the role of the distillation apparatus for the production of
alcohol in early modern physiological discourses. Here, the still had an amazingly
powerful explanatory potential, and this is especially true for the elusive concept
of medical spiritus. My text investigates the function of the art of distillation in
different authors who were interested in the workings of human, and of celestial,
bodies. Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) used the still as an explanatory foil for his
Neoplatonist metaphysics, which entailed important and highly influential modi-
fications of Aristotelian natural philosophy. In contrast to Ficino’s predominantly
theoretical approach, Joseph Duchesne (1546–1609), a French Paracelsian, gives
a highly detailed description of the practical aspects of the art of distillation of
liquors, which relates to his concept of human physiology. Francis Bacon (1561–
1626) uses a modification of the still to quantify the medical spiritus but also to
further elaborate the Paracelsian and the Neoplatonic concepts of physiology.

The distillation of ‘spirits’ seems to have been invented at some point dur-
ing the twelfth or thirteenth centuries;1 the Florentine Taddeo Alderotti
(ca. 1223–1292) called the products generated by the new technology aqua
ardens.2 In fourteenth-century Nuremberg, Hausbrand, a kind of brandy
made from grapes, was sold cheaply by apothecaries, while distillation

1 On the following, see Multhauf R.P., “Distillation” in Strayer J.R. (ed.), Dictionary of
the Middle Ages (New York: 1984), vol. 4, 219–220, who also discusses the (rather improb-
able) older origins of the art. Holmyard E.J., Alchemy (Harmondsworth: 1957) 51 mentions
a certain Salernitanus († 1167) as the inventor.
2 Ficino uses this term in Ficino Marsilio, De vita libri tres, eds./trs. Kaske C.-V. – Clark
J.R. (Binghamton, NY: 1989) Book I, 6: 120/1 and Book III, 1: 247. The word ‘alcohol’ was
perhaps introduced by Paracelsus to denote pure wine spirit, but actually refers to the
Arabic word for ‘black eye-paint’; cf. Holmyard, Alchemy 168. Yet Paracelsus also retains
the original meaning of the word, as a signifier for ‘fine powder’; cf. Pagel W., Paracelsus.
An Introduction to Philosophical Medicine in the Era of the Renaissance (Basel-New York:
1958) 155–156, n. 82.
140 sergius kodera

from beer and grain spirits commenced around the year 1400.3 The pro-
cess of distillation of liquors is quite a sophisticated art, which in all prob-
ability significantly changed the ways of life of both men and women in
late medieval Europe. The must to be distilled, contained in the cucurbit
or gourd-shaped vessel, is surmounted by a beak-shaped head or alem-
bic that conveys the vaporous product to a water-cooled device, where
the vapours condense and are subsequently led to a receiving vessel. This
water-cooled still, which seems to have been a European invention, is
a prerequisite for the production of alcohol; the older alembics, known
since classical Antiquity, lacked this cooling device.4 Following the inven-
tion of printing, tracts with numerous and detailed illustrations of the
new instrument in its amazing varieties ranked amongst the more popu-
lar books streaming from early modern European printing presses; apart
from producing brandy, and from supplying ingredients for new medi-
cines and tinctures, the novel technique was also praised as a means of
extracting the alchemist’s elixir, a substance that was again closely related
to, or even identified with, the celestial aether, the substance of which
stars are made.5
The technology was, therefore, perceived as being capable of purifying
virtually any organic substance from a state of decomposition into a clear
and transparent liquor that still preserved recognisable traits of the origi-
nal material. The alembic was obviously an instrument by means of which
one could extract the most characteristic property of a given substance,
its essence.6 As we shall see, this particular perception of the capacities
of the still had important consequences for some basic tenets in natural

3 On the spread of the use of ‘Brantwein’ in Germany, see Eckstein F., “Brantwein”, in
Bächtold-Stäubli H. – Hoffmann-Krayer E. (eds.), Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglau-
bens (Berlin-Leipzig: 1927–1942), vol. 1, col. 1497–1507, with many references.
4 For early illustrations and discussion of the principles of the so-called ‘Moor’s head’
and the ‘Rose-hat’ see Forbes R.-J., Short History of the Art of Distillation from the Begin-
nings up to the Death of Cellier Blumenthal (Leiden: 1948) 83–86; cf. also Holmyard, Alchemy
50–51, with illustrations.
5 On the medical use of aqua ardens in alchemical literature, see Pereira M., “Medicina in
the Alchemical Writings attributed to Raimond Lull (14th–17th centuries)”, in Rattansi P. –
Lericuzio A. (eds.), Alchemy and Chemistry in the 16th and 17th centuries (Dordrecht-
Boston-London: 1994) 1–16, esp. 8–9. For a concise introduction to the genre of aqua ardens
literature, see Debus A.G., The Chemical Philosophy (New York: 1977) 20–25.
6 On this issue, see the interesting remarks in Colnort-Bodet S., “Eau-de vie logique
et ‘Banqueroutiers du Saint-Esprit’ ” in Morazé Ch. – Aron R.C.F. (eds.), Culture science et
développement. Mélanges en l’honneur de Charles Morazé (Paris: 1979) 310–311.
 the distillation of ‘spirits’ 141

philosophy as well as in medicine;7 in tandem with such ideas, distillation

also served as an explanatory model for various physiological processes
that were otherwise difficult to observe. The spectacular effects of high-
percentage alcohol on human bodies (and minds alike) provided outstand-
ing evidence of the existence of so-called medical spirits, a traditional
and very common explanatory system for physiological phenomena.8
As will become apparent below, the distillation of alcohol served to give
the concept of medical spirits a more prominent role in human physiol-
ogy. In so doing, this concept eventually eclipsed the importance accorded
to the traditional four bodily humours.
On the theoretical plane, these developments were supported and
accompanied by Renaissance Neoplatonism. In particular Marsilio Ficino
(1433–1499), the most important Hellenist of his day, contributed to the
development of a set of physical doctrines that provided an alternative
to the peripatetic approaches taught at the universities. Ficino’s primary
metaphysical concern was to describe the ascent (and its concomitant,
potentially dangerous descent) of human souls in the hierarchy of being.
This theurgic potential for the refinement of the individual soul (an idea
originating in the Neoplatonism of Iamblichus), was a movement that
could be predicated upon the entire cosmos. Indeed, according to Neo-
platonic theory, all beings were constantly moving up and down the lad-
der of being, their position being determined by the degree of refinement
they could achieve at any given moment in time. I will argue that the new
art of distillation of liquors provided an important material confirmation
of this idea; furthermore, I will show that Ficino was aware of this tech-
nology and that it served as an explanatory foil for his metaphysics as
well as for his ideas about the prolongation of life. Some of Ficino’s texts
were eagerly assimilated by influential sixteenth-century alchemists and
beyond. His books also became contested (but well-studied) sources for
Neapolitan natural philosophers of the sixteenth century, such as Gior-
dano Bruno, Tommaso Campanella or Giambattista della Porta. The latter’s
ideas about distillation will be briefly treated here as an example of the
approach taken by this Italian school of thinkers.

7 On the extraction of celestial essences by the virtue of fire in Paracelsian medi-
cine, see Hannaway O., The Chemists and the Word. The Didactic Origins of Chemistry
(Baltimore-London: 1975) 42.
8 On the relationship between distillation and spiritus in Renaissance medicine, see
Putscher M., Pneuma Spiritus Geist. Vorstellungen vom Lebensantrieb in ihren geschichtli-
chen Wandlungen (Wiesbaden: 1974) 62f.; Taylor F.S., “The Evolution of the Still”, Annals
of Science 5 (1945) 117–121; Hannaway, The Chemists 27–29.
142 sergius kodera

Quintessences, medical and alcoholic spirits

In a way, it is by no means surprising, and is indeed to be expected, that

distillation of alcohol became such a spectacular art: liquor is still called
aquavit[ae], or water of life, in many languages.9 When administered to
undernourished patients, alcoholic spirits have spectacular effects, so they
quickly became identified as a sort of general medical remedy that had
also the capacity to prolong life. This miraculous form of theriac is praised,
for instance, in Michele Savonarola’s Libellus de acqua ardenti (publ. 1484),
one of the many examples of popular treatises on alcohol or ‘burning
water’.10 Tommaso Garzoni’s rather ambiguous report on the ‘small brains
of the alchemists’ (cervellazzi alchimistici) in his Teatro de’ vari e diversi
cervelli mondani amply demonstrates how commonplace such ideas had
become by the late sixteenth century. When Garzoni says that the alche-
mists, who invented distillation, were the inventors of ‘l’acque vite’ and of
‘these essential spirits, these quintessences which, [. . .] as it were, resus-
citate the dead,’11 he is echoing ideas that had long since become topical
in very different fields of late medieval and early modern science, the arts
and various literary genres.12 And the opinion proved to be highly per-
sistent; for example, in the Historia vitae et mortis (1623), Francis Bacon
pronounces that, in order to wake people from cataleptic fits, or from
fainting, one administers ‘aquarum ex vino’ because these substances are
hot and go straight to the heart.13 While the ether or the quintessence was

9 On the medical use of a wide variety of different liquors in folk medicine see
Eckstein, col. 1503–1507, with many references. See ibidem coll. 1499–1500 for the idea that
the ghosts of the dead demand liquor as nourishment.
10 Savonarola Michele, I trattati in volgare. Della peste e dell’acqua ardente: ed. Belloni L.
(Milan: 1963) 46 ‘L’acqua de vita, de le medexine calide maestra e madre è chiamata, e
dicta de la humana sanitade optima conservatrice e de le substantie restauratrice. E in
seguitare de le sue laude, alcuni s’anno rescaldato, che non ànno dubitato de dire, che per
lo so uxo lo homo may infermare no se possere de infirmitade, de la qualle sanare non se
possesse. Volendo anchora e dicono, a conservare, a prolongare la vita, comodità, adiutorio
non puocho dare, sì che per lo so uxo la vita quasi perpetuare’.
11 Garzoni Tommaso, Il teatro de’ vari e diversi cervelli umani: ed. Cherchi P. (Ravenna:
1999) 222 (Discorso 49) [. . .] quelli spiriti essenziali, quelle quinte essenzie che [. . .] fanno
quasi suscitare i morti.
12 See, for instance, Savonarola, I trattati 47: [. . .] e dicto l’acqua de vita essere la quinta
essentia, e a l’à ne le soe operatione e vertù semegliata e comparata al ciello.
13 Bacon Francis, Historia vitae et mortis: in Bacon Francis, The Works of Francis Bacon,
Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, and Lord High Chancellor of England, eds. Spedding J. –
Ellis R.L. – Heath D.D., 14 vols. (London: 1858–1874) 209 (§ 33) ‘Ad resuscitandum eos qui
deliquia aut catalepses subitas patiunt, [. . .] haec sunt in usu: Exhibitio aquarum ex vino
distillatum (quas aquas vocamus calidas et cordiales)’.
 the distillation of ‘spirits’ 143

important for alchemists and followers of Paracelsus, to a certain extent

these ideas also formed part of Bacon’s physiology. Combustible alcohol
also obviously embodied the properties of fire, the most spiritual of all
elements; it was precisely this fiery quality that it shared with spiritus, that
finest and shining product of the human blood.14
The notion of medical spirits had been prominent from early Classi-
cal times well into the medicine of the seventeenth century. Therefore,
the alcoholic liquors dropping out of the alembics soon became associ-
ated with medical theories; they also formed an integral part of alchemi-
cal procedures, both arts being closely related, since the elixir was also
regarded as a substance that had the capacity to prolong life. Johannes
de Rupescissa (ca. 1300–ca. 1365), seems to have been the first alchemist
to identify aqua ardens with quintessence.15 Spiritus is, of course, a much
older medical concept, yet the distillation of alcohol increased its plausi-
bility, so that the workings of spiritus gradually eclipsed the doctrine of
the medical humours as an explanatory model for human physiology.

14 For what is still perhaps the best account of the intricate concept of spiritus, see
Walker D.-P., “The Astral Body in Renaissance Medicine”, Journal of the Warburg and
Court­auld Institutes 21 (1958) 120 ‘Medical spirits are very fine, hot vapour, deriving from
the blood and breathed air. They are corporeal. They are usually divided into three kinds;
natural, vital and animal [. . .]. The vital spirits are manufactured in the heart and con-
veyed by the arteries; their main function is to distribute innate or vital heat to all parts
of the body. Animal spirits are elaborated from these and are contained in the ventricles
of the brain, whence through the nervous system they are transmitted to sense-organs
and muscles; their functions are motor-activity, sense-perception, and, usually, such lower
psychological activities as the appetite, sensus communis, and imagination. They are the
first, direct instrument of the soul’. See ibidem for a good account for the main weakness
of the concept of spiritus, namely its ‘paucity of empirical evidence’. On the identification
of spiritus/pneuma with the alchemical quintessence, see Mothu A., “Le mythe de la dis-
tillation de l’âme au XVIIe siècle en France”, in Margolin J.-C. – Matton S. (eds.), Alchimie
et philosophie à la Renaissance (Paris: 1993) 436–437.
15 For instance, the anonymous De quinta essentia libri II (Strasbourg, Balthasar Beck:
1541) says that the elixir is extracted like alcohol from wine (6 recto) and that this spirit
is akin to the human medical spiritus (5 verso); for characteristic illustrations, see, for
instance, 13 verso and 14 recto. Cf. Pereira, “Medicina” 1–3 on the history of this concept,
which dates back to a highly influential pseudo-Lullian treatise, the Liber de secretis natu-
rae seu de quinta essentia, probably written during the first half of the fourteenth century.
On the connections between alchemical distillation, quintessence, Stoic pneuma doctrines
and Aristotelian aether, see: Pereira M., “Heavens on Earth: From the Tabula Smaragdina
to the Alchemical Fifth Essence”, Early Science and Medicine 5 (2000) 131–144. On Johannes
de Rupescissa (ca. 1300–ca. 1365), DeVun L., Prophecy, Alchemy, and the End of Time. John of
Rupescissa in the Late Middle Ages (New York: 2009) 70, and 105–109; Multhauf R.-P., “John
of Rupescissa and the Origin of Medical Chemistry”, Isis 45 (1954) 359–367 at 364–365; also
Colnort-Bodet, “Eau-de vie logique” 75.
144 sergius kodera

The technology of distillation provided material evidence for the theo-

retical underpinnings of a wide range of different arts. The process came
to be seen as an explanatory foil for both the invisible mechanisms that
govern not only the machina mundi and the physiological processes of
the human organism. Our bodies are conceived as microcosms that are
arranged in an order corresponding to the structure of the universe.16 In
the elliptical method of argumentation by analogy, characteristic for late
medieval and early modern science, distillation therefore accounted for
phenomena which were difficult or even impossible to observe, such as
the digestion of food, or the interaction of body and soul.17 This way of
using a novel technological apparatus that produces spectacular results
is, of course, not uncommon to other historical periods: more recently,
physiologists have taken computers as their models for the explanation
of cognition and its relationship to the human brain.
In the following I shall argue that distillation of alcohol – apparently a
European invention – brought an alternative (or at least a crucial altera-
tion) to the concoction paradigm which had served as Aristotle’s expla-
nation of physiological processes. In Aristotle’s thought, the cooking of
food provided a model accounting for physiological processes, such as
digestion, in which transformations of matter occurred.18 In this respect,
the alembic was not only a more sophisticated (and more mysterious)

16 Savonarola, I trattati 47 ‘[. . .] cossì l’acqua de vita in lo corpo humano, dicto mondo
piccolo, le membre composte dritamente dispone, conserva, e le infomità chaçia, e induxe
la sanitade, per lo so tenperato uxo, e tira lo mondo piçolo a queli anni, ai quali ne creatione
quello summo opifice ga donato segondo la soa complexione de podere pervenire’.
17 For the Paracelsian idea that alchemy contributes to making invisible things vis-
ible, see Bianchi M.L., “The Visible and the Invisible: From Alchemy to Paracelsus”, in
Rattansi P. – Clericuzio A. (eds.), Alchemy and Chemistry in the 16th and 17th centuries
(Dordrecht-Boston-London: 1994) 20.
18 The ancient Greek theory of the four humours perceived women as moist and cold,
and men as hot and dry. In fact, the dominance of form over matter was understood to be
a physiological process analogous to ‘concoction’. Aristotle used the term to describe the
digestion of food in the bodies of both humans and animals. He maintained that, during
this physiological process, heat successfully dominates the moisture of materia. Aristote-
les, Meteorologica 4.2, 379b33–380a9 ‘Concoction ensues whenever the matter, the mois-
ture, is mastered. For the matter is what is determined by the natural heat in the object,
and as long as the ratio between them exists in it, a thing maintains its nature. Hence
things like the liquid and solid excreta and waste-stuffs in general are signs of health, and
concoction is said to have taken place in them; for they show that the proper heat has
mastered the indeterminate matter. Things that undergo a process of concoction neces-
sarily become thicker and hotter; for the action of heat is to make things more compact,
thicker and drier. This is then the nature of concoction: but inconcoction is an unperfected
state due to lack of proper heat, that is, to cold. That of which the imperfect state is, is the
corresponding passive qualities which are the natural matter of anything’.
 the distillation of ‘spirits’ 145

instrument than the boiling pot; the apparatus was also capable of pro-
ducing a liquid with more spectacular properties than ordinary food.
Booze seemed to affect the human soul directly: you can feel the alcohol
rising to your head at much higher speed than, say, your lunch or even
less potent alcoholic drinks, such as beer or wine. The new technology
not only had the advantage of providing experiential evidence for the idea
that the vital spiritus was a product of the finest parts of the blood: distil-
lation could also be used as material evidence for the Aristotelian assump-
tion that sperm contains aether, the celestial substance from which the
sphere beyond the moon is composed. According to the Peripatetics, it
is this quintessence that embodies the principle of movement and of life,
which usually does not exist on earth, in the sublunary sphere; the notable
exception being sperm, which contains aether, albeit in a strictly limited
form.19 The art of distillation, which allegedly is capable of producing such
quintessences, therefore provides experiential evidence for the gradual
erosion of the Peripatetic tenet according to which an insurmountable
barrier separates the celestial and the terrestrial regions. According to this
argument, heat was a crucial factor: except in concoction theory, where
the substance in question became only thicker and hotter, the production
of liquor seemingly proves that the distilled substance could exist in more
refined and, hence, more effective states. The extracted essence would
gradually become akin to the celestial quintessences which were believed
to be endowed with life-giving, spermatic qualities. To corroborate this
set of claims, the so-called aqua ardens texts devoted much energy to
defending the (empirically true) observation that alcohol becomes stron-
ger when the mysterious process of rarefaction is repeated several times.20
Such ideas were not merely part of the lofty speculations of erudite
scholars: the popular readership was obviously aware of these semantic

19 Aristoteles, De generatione animalium 736b30–32; cf. also Nussbaum M.-C., Aristotle’s

De motu animalium (Princeton: 1978) 157–162. On sixteenth-century controversies over the
celestial as opposed to an elemental nature of this calidum innatum, and by extension
of spiritus, see Clericuzio A., “The Internal Laboratory: The Chemical Reinterpretation of
Medical Spirits in England (1650–1680)”, in Rattansi P. – Clericuzio A. (eds.), Alchemy and
Chemistry in the 16th and 17th centuries (Dordrecht-Boston-London: 1994) 51–85, at 52, with
nn. 7–9 for references. The female body is in no position to produce sperm, because it is
not hot enough, says Aristotle (GA 728a); for a concise exposition of these ideas, see Siraisi
N.G., Medieval and Renaissance Medicine (Chicago-London: 1990) 106.
20 Cf. Savonarola, I trattati 62–63 ‘E io penso che per al multiplicade distillatione la
dicta acqua molto più aprosimarse a la quinta essentia, perchè le multiplicate distilla-
tione continuamente più se sottilgia, e abandona e lassa molto più la elementare natura,
e chiussi in la soa complexione è più suave, imperò che più rara’.
146 sergius kodera

concatenations. It is no coincidence that Michele Savonarola states

that the true aqua ardens leaves the sweet smell of fresh human semen
throughout a room in which a bottle of it has been opened.21
For many late medieval and early modern authors it was also not unrea-
sonable to maintain that the more sophisticated water-cooled distillation
apparatus resembled the machina mundi in its entirety. The still could
thus not only be used as an explanatory foil for physiological processes in
the human body: it also explained those macrocosmic structures of which
human beings were believed to form an integral part.22 The apparatus
for the distillation of alcohol, therefore, opened up much wider scope for
what human art could achieve beyond the traditional method of distil-
lation. Yet the older model of the still had also been used as a model to
explain some physiological phenomena. Avicenna had already compared
the original form of the alembic – where the distilled liquids drip out of
the beak – to running noses; in this case, the still served to explain why
phlegm is emitted when we suffer from a cold. Avicenna was thus using
the alembic to back up the traditional pathological concept of catarrh as
the main cause of disease, with excessive vapours emitted by the stomach
attacking the brain, and the noxious heat condensing to mucus and falling
back ‘through the skull down to the nose, pharynx, lungs, joints, bones
and another organs’ into the body.23
According to Avicenna, the nose is therefore associated with the beak
of the still; much later, and in a distinctly Paracelsian environment, this

21 Savonarola, I trattati 48 ‘[. . .] se poy, averto el buxo de quello vasso, tuta la casa se
impe de odore suave, a lo qualle odore niuno a quello equperare e semigliare se possa,
como è la dolceçia che in la emissione del seme e sperma se sente, e sia questo odore
suavissimo da ogno persona guidicato, sì chome da la sublime e alta gloria discendesse,
non dubitare ch’è pervegnudo al la essentia quinta, a la qualle, como stimo, niuno medego
de la etade nostra è pervegnudo’.
22 On this topic, see also Bianchi, “The Visible and the Invisible” 22, who emphasises
that the concept of the extraction of spirits was also applied to the cosmic drama of divine
creation; the separation of the elements described in Genesis were to be understood as a
form of alchemical distillation. On the universal spirit of the world which the Paracelsians
tried to capture, see Clericuzio, “Internal laboratory” 54.
23 Pagel W., Paracelsus. An Introduction to Philosophical Medicine in the Era of the Renais-
sance (Basel-New York: 1958) 165. See Avicenna, Opera 1508 (Canon medicinae Book I.I,4,2;
Book II.II,576; De removendis nocumentis, vol. IV.15). But see also Hippocrates, De flatibus 8
(6.100–104 L.). Della Porta Giambattista, De distillationibus libri IX (Strasbourg, L. Zetzner:
1609), book 1, chapter 1, 2 sums up these doctrines neatly: ‘Avicenna, qui sexcentis ab hinc
annis vixit, de catharro loquens alembici, et distillationis meminit. Cum alimenti superflui-
tates in ventre non secernuntur, in vapores abeunt, qui in cerebrum impetu facto, caput
replent, hos suo rigore in humorem vertit, qui per nares deflit, velit? in alembico, et alevo
subjecto, in pileum vaporibus ascendentibus per vasis nares ad inferiora inferiora? fit defluxus’.
 the distillation of ‘spirits’ 147

way of visualising physiological processes appears in a different context.

In his Aurora thesaurusque philosophorum Paracelsi (Basel 1577), a text
that was incorporated into Huser’s edition of the works of Paracelsus, Ger-
hard Dorn shows an illustration of a special alembic in human from. It is
designed as an instrument for what the author calls ‘chemical uroscopy’,
that is, for analyses of urine by means of distillation; here again, what is
supposed to be the nose in the human figurine has the distinct shape of
the beak of a traditional alembic.24
Another traditional device that allowed for the continual distillation
of one and the same substance (cohobation) was the so-called pelican:
the upper and lower parts of this vessel are connected by three open-
ings, a large central one, and two smaller tubes which run in semicircles
to either side. The latter function as re-cooling devices for the vapours
that accumulate in the upper part of the vessel; these smaller ducts allow
for a continuous reflux of the distillate.25 Probably because of its shape,
which is vaguely reminiscent of the outlines of a human head and rump,
with the arms pressed to the thighs, the pelican also served as an illustra-
tion of the ways in which microcosm and macrocosm are interrelated.
Indeed, Heinrich Khunrath published a picture where the so-called Rebis,
the androgynous microcosm in the centre of the universe, is shaped like a
pelican, in which the elements are recycled on a continual basis.26
The idea that human art was capable of extracting the essences of
things was, of course, pure nonsense for traditional Peripatetic philoso-
phers. According to their physics, substantial forms cannot be perceived
by the senses; substantial forms manifest themselves to us only indirectly
by the change that constantly takes place in all sublunary bodies. Yet, by
the later sixteenth century (and as early as the mid-thirteenth century
among alchemists), the Aristotelian doctrine of hylemorphism had come
under attack from various sides.27 The art of distillation paved the way for

24 For a reproduction of the illustration, as well as an instructive introduction to this

form of uroscopy, see Pagel, Paracelsus 193 and 189–196; the illustration is also shown in
Debus, Chemical Philosophy 113.
25 See Holmyard, Alchemy 50, for an illustration.
26 Khunrath Heinrich, Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Verae Chrisitiano-Cabbalisticum [. . .].
(Hanover, Antonius: 1609). Reproduction in Pagel W., Das medizinische Weltbild des Para-
celsus. Seine Zusammenhänge mit Neuplatonismus und Gnosis (Wiesbaden: 1962) 140.
27 On this topic, see Copenhaver B.-P., “Scholastic Philosophy and Renaissance Magic in
the ‘De vita’ of Marsilio Ficino”, Renaissance Quarterly 37 (1984) 523–584, and with special
regard to alchemy and Avicenna, cf. the interesting discussion in Newman W., “Technol-
ogy and Alchemical Debate in the Late Middle Ages”, Isis 80 (1989) 423–445, 425–430,
435 and passim. Matton S., “L’influence de l’humanisme sur la tradition alchimique”,
148 sergius kodera

that characteristic shift in metaphysics and natural philosophy. Giambat-

tista della Porta is a case in point. This Neapolitan polymath and ‘doctor
of secrets’28 wrote that distillation is a means to make bodies spiritual,
for he maintained that the process purified the material substratum of
any substance.
Furthermore, what cunning [the magus] must have in the art of Distilla-
tion, which follows and resembles the showers and dew of Heaven, as the
daughter the mother; I think no man will doubt of it; for it yields daily very
strange inventions, and most witty devices, and shows how to find out many
things profitable for the use of man. As for example, to draw out of things
dewy vapours, unsavoury and gross scents or Spirits, clots, and gummy or
filmy Humours; and that intimate Essence which lurks in the inmost bowels
of things, to fetch it forth, and Sublimate it, that it may be of the greater
strength. And this he must learn to do, not after a rude and homely manner,
but with knowledge of the causes and reasons thereof.29
Della Porta also emphasises the importance and efficiency of distillation,
because the process imitates ‘celestial rain’ (dew), the substance tradi-
tionally thought to transmit those astrological influences which govern
the movements of terrestrial bodies.30 The author implies that the alem-
bic is the model for the macrocosmic condensation and rarefaction of all
substances, a process that implies upward or downward movements in
the universal hierarchy of being. The art of distillation here functions as
experiential evidence for the assertion that all bodies move constantly
between different states of aggregation, both of density and of refinement.
In contrast to this, Aristotle had focused on the abrupt transformation of
the elements and bodies in general, a process that – beneath the sphere
of the moon and on a horizontal basis, so to speak – brought about life
and death. The art of distillation thus purportedly provides sensual evi-
dence for the assumption that the elements undergo a vertical process of

Micrologus 3 (1995) 297–306, describes the more ambivalent attitude of the humanists to
the problem of substantial transmutation by human art.
28 See Eamon W., Science and the Secrets of Nature. Books of Secrets in Medieval and
Early Modern Culture (Princeton, N.J.: 1994).
29 Porta Giambattista della, Natural Magick (London, T. Young – S. Speed: 1658) 3
(bk I, ch. 3).
30 Porta Giambattista della, Della magia naturale libri XX (Naples, Carlino Vitale: 1611) 5
(bk I, ch. 3) ‘Ognuno debba chiarissimamente sapere quanto giovi saper l’arte del distillare,
imitatrice della celeste pioggia, e figlia, perche da quella son nati maravigliosi inventioni
[. . .]’. On the idea that dew serves as a universal medium of communication in the uni-
verse, see Vergilius, Georgica 2.324–326; Cicero, De natura deorum 2.25 (65); Lucretius, De
rerum natura (1.250ff.) 3.991–992.
 the distillation of ‘spirits’ 149

condensation and rarefaction. The technique thus eclipses the idea that
change in a substance comes about as an abrupt transformation: change
rather becomes manifest as a gradual process. Thus distillation provides
evidence for the claim that universal matter exists in many different
degrees of refinement.31 Obviously the art of alchemy, with its doctrine
of the rarefaction of base elements into precious metals, and its goal, the
extraction of the philosopher’s stone, was heavily dependent on this com-
plex of ideas.32

Ficino

Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499), the most important fifteenth-century transla-

tor of Plato, Plotinus, and other Neoplatonist sources from late Antiquity,
formulated his own highly influential system of Renaissance Neoplatonist
metaphysics. His synthesis provided an important theoretical unity for a
complex host of divergent ideas and made Ficino into an authority for
alchemists, natural philosophers, Paracelsians and theologians.33 Even
though he was probably not a practising alchemist, Ficino knew Rupe-
scissa, and seems to have been aware of the latter’s ideas about quintes-
sence and aqua ardens. Ficino also says that Arnaldo da Villanova and
Ramon Llull [Raymond Lull] were able to separate this fiery vital spirit
which is intrinsic to all things by means of ‘certis machinis’. This is a vague
expression conveying the sense of ‘employment of a special apparatus’, as

31 Porta Giambattista della, Della magia naturale libri XX (Naples, Carlino Vitale: 1611)
430 (bk. X, proemio) ‘Impara questa scienza cose mirabili, come i corpi, che son cosi gravi
divenghino spirituali, e sottili, e montino in alto fatto leggeri, e cosi spirituali, che di nuovo
diventino gravi, e corpolenti, e calino giù. L’essentie, overo virtù delle cose, che stanno
nascoste nella sua mole sotterrate, conculcate, e disperse, ne’suoi ripostigli, come nelle
sue camerette, ma pure, e sottigli quasi senza meschiamento di materia impura, cosi nelle
piante, come ne’ metalli, pietre, e gemme, e noi non contenti di quelle manifeste virtù,
che possedono, le vogliamo più nobili, e più gagliarde, e far le più sollimi, e quasi inalzarle
infin al cielo’.
32 On this kind of ‘medicina subtilitativa’ in the alchemical medicine of Arnaldo da
Villanova’s Speculum medicinae, see Calvet A., “Mutations de l’alchimie médicale au XVe
siècle: A propos des textes authentiques et apocryphes d’Arnaud der Villeneuve”, Micro-
logus 3 (1995) 194–195. In alchemy the term ‘vinum nostrum’, increasingly refers to the
quintessence of metals (spiritus in lapidibus) and especially to mercury, rather than to
branntwein; see Matton S., “Marsile Ficin et l’alchimie, sa position, son influence”, in
Margolin J.-C. – Matton S. (eds.), Alchimie et philosophie à la Renaissance (Paris: 1993)
170–172.
33 On this topic, see Matton, “Marsile Ficin et l’alchimie” 123–125 and passim, who
shows that Ficino was well aware of the alchemical tradition.
150 sergius kodera

well as ‘a certain procedure or scheme’.34 His writings suggest that Ficino

had a rather superficial experience of the actual business of distillation.35
Yet (perhaps because of this) he made the theoretical alchemical under-
pinnings of this art fit into his Neoplatonist metaphysical synthesis. In an
important move, Ficino identified the spiritus mundi, the vehicle of the
world-soul, with the quintessence of the alchemists.36 In this way, the art
of distillation acquired a genuinely cosmic importance, for it mirrored the
workings of the heavens, and at the same time accounted for the change
of all things in the sublunary sphere. The author’s commentary on Ploti-
nus gives us a good impression of how Ficino wished the transmutation of
the elements to be understood: they are to be seen as phenomena relat-
ing to condensation and rarefaction rather than to a genuine and abrupt
transformation.
And as air is something of its own before it is poured into earth, so earth is
something on its own, before it swallows air. And as air existed before in its
own refined state, before it is condensed into earth, and earth existed before
on its own, before it condenses air, which, when it is condensed by water,
it transforms into water.37
According to this passage, the composition of an actual object is therefore
determined by its more or less refined state rather than by its intrinsic and
tactile qualities, as in Aristotelian physics. In a similar vein, Ficino says in
the Theologia Platonica that one single matter hides under various shapes
or forms, and that this matter dresses itself in diverse garments, which
are determined by states of density or rarefaction: the finer a body, the

34 Ficino Marsilio, In Plotinum, Opera omnia 1603, see Matton, “Marsile Ficin et l’alchi-
mie” 149–151 for a presentation of the entire passage in context.
35 One of Ficino’s later critics, Nicolas Guibert, perhaps went too far when in 1603 he
scathingly remarked that Ficino had been ignorant of chemistry to such an extent that
he would hardly have been able to distil even rose water. See Matton, “Marsile Ficin et
l’alchimie” 192.
36 See Matton, “Marsile Ficin et l’alchimie” 145 and 166–168, and passim; Matton,
“L’influence de l’humanisme” 344–345 shows that Ficino’s idea was plagiarised by Agrippa
of Nettesheim and thus also became very influential in the tradition of sixteenth-century
natural magic and alchemy.
37 Ficino Marsilio, In Plotinum, Opera omnia 1600 (Ad Enn., II, 1, 6) ‘Rursus aer prius
in se aliquid est, quam infundatur in terram, terra similiter prius aliquid in se est, quam
hauriat aerem. Tum vero aer in raritate propria prius existit, quam condensetur in terram,
ac terra prius in se consistit, quam condenset aerem, qui si condensetur ab alio, scilicet
aqua, transibit in aquam’. On this passage, see also Matton, “Marsile Ficin et l’alchimie”
136–138.
 the distillation of ‘spirits’ 151

more elevated its position in the hierarchy of being.38 Just as clear and
powerful liquor condenses in the alembic, distilled from must, grain or
even sawdust, Ficino’s approach emphasises that matter may pass from a
crude state to a highly refined entity (and vice versa). Ficino thus aims at
a simplification of traditional physics in order to bring it into accordance
with Platonic metaphysics.39 This simplification is an important aspect
of in Ficino’s cosmology, for here it is varying degrees of refinement that
mark the differences between celestial and terrestrial elements. Accord-
ingly, Ficino maintains in his De vita that bodies ‘coalesce’ only at certain
times and in specific places.40 What is decisive for the quality of a body is,
therefore, the specific position it occupies in the hierarchy of being at any
given moment in time, as opposed to its intrinsic and immutable quali-
ties. Ficino employs two concepts to illustrate this scheme of elemental
interaction in the universe: he transfers the Platonic dialectics of light and
darkness on to matter and form, and he backs up this idea with the results
generated through the art of distillation. According to Ficino, this art pro-
vides evidence for the phenomena of condensation and rarefaction of one
and the same substance, universal prime matter.
As such, the experiences of Rupescissa and others with the technique of
distillation of alcohol form the conceptual backdrop to Ficino’s version of
Neoplatonic natural philosophy; emphasis on the phenomena of conden-
sation and rarefaction led to a perception of physical bodies that empha-
sised quantitative approaches (e.g. degrees of refinement) rather than the
traditional qualitative descriptors (e.g. hot, cold, moist, dry).41 The elements
could now be viewed as representations of universal intellectual forms which
spread throughout the entire creation; they are thus more akin to poten-
tially stable, non-contradictory metaphysical entities which may move up
or down the metaphysical scale of being, and cease to be the unstable com-
pounds of qualities that cause the erratic movement of sublunary bodies in

38 Ficino Marsilio, Théologie platonicienne de l’immortalité des âmes: ed./tr. Marcel R.

(Paris 1964–1970), vol. I, 178 (V, 4) ‘Itaque materia quae prius sub aquae frigore latuerat,
iam sub aeris calore eadem diletescit [. . .]. Vides materiam unam omnes vicissim indui
formas, dum et ascendit rarefactione et densitate descendit’.
39 Ficino’s discreet modifications bear on the core of Aristotle’s natural philosophy,
since he seems to be aiming to reduce the ten categories to two, namely quantity and
quality.
40 Ficino, De vita libri tres 302 (Book III, 12) ‘Sicut ergo certa passim corpora eorumque
formae certis et locis et temporibus coalescunt, atque servantur, sic, et proprie quaedam
actiones ex propriis quibusdam temporibus efficaciam nanciscuntur’.
41 On this issue and with regard to alchemy in general, see the interesting discussion in
Colnort-Bodet, “Eau-de vie logique” 310–311.
152 sergius kodera

Aristotelian physics. This analogy between the distillation of alcohol and

the medical spirits is pushed even further: according to Ficino, the human
brain contains a mixture of spiritus that is a temperate mixture of fire and
water – in short, aqua ardens. In this form, it has the best physical condi-
tions for the act of sensation.42 Likewise, Ficino holds that the human heart
functions as an alembic where the more refined blood condenses.43
Thus, the art of distillation and the theory of medical spirits back up
a circular argument: because of its fiery nature and its capacity to affect
mind and body, the extracted liquor proved to be a potent ‘spiritual’ sub-
stance, so distillation confirmed the existence and the workings of medi-
cal spirits in the human body. The technology in its turn was ennobled
because it became endowed with an explicit cosmological significance.
Importantly, this idea was not only applied to physical bodies. The dif-
ferent states of matter are paralleled in a moral hierarchy that forms the
most important part of Ficino’s metaphysics. Ficino assumes that, in the
process of purifying their souls, human beings also have the power to
refine their bodies. The technology of distillation is thus used to support
an argument for the original Platonic idea, so dear to Renaissance Pla-
tonists, namely that the human soul may purify its essence and activate
its daemonic, divine potential, thus realising an ascent of the individual
soul to the godhead.
Yet, as we have seen above, Ficino’s ideas were also transformed by med-
ical practitioners and in different directions. The idea of the refinement of
medical substances by means of distillation was common to Paracelsians
of all kinds, as well as to natural philosophers who were interested in
materialistic, but non-mechanist, explanations of the workings of nature.44
In the next section, I shall discuss one author who worked around the

42 Ficino Marsilio, In Theophrastum, Opera omnia 1821 (ch. 44) ‘Spiritus est vapor qui-
dam sanguinis, sic ipse ex quatuor componitur elementis, quamquam longe subtilioribus.
Spiritus in corde vitalis evidenter est igneus ex perpetuo cordis motu, efficaciaque, et ira
talis apparens, spiritus naturalis in iecore plurimum est aerius ita concoctioni generationi-
que prorsus accomodatus, spiritus animalis in cerebro igne et aqua est quasi pariter tem-
peratus sensib[ilia] sic expositus, [. . .] temperies illa quidem ex aere, atque aqua ad omnes
scilicet sensus accomodatissima est. Non tamen ubicunque est ibidem sensus omnes exi-
stunt, nisi et in hanc temperie sint formales omnes proprietates ad omnia sentiendo, et in
corpore sunt omnia sensuum instrumento’. Cf. also Ficino, Appendix in Timaeum, ch. 71;
in Opera omnia 1478; and ibidem ch. 80, 1479.
43 Ficino, De vita libri tres 223–225 (II, 18).
44 On the development of this topic later in the seventeenth century, and ‘psycho­
pyrists’ such as Francesco Maria Pompeo Colonna (1644–1726), see Mothu, “Le mythe de
la distillation” 440–443, 447 and passim with many references.
 the distillation of ‘spirits’ 153

turn of the sixteenth century, in whose texts the alembic serves as a model
or blueprint for physiological processes in the human body.

Joseph Duchesne

Duchesne, a French Calvinist who, after 1593, acted as physician to Henry

IV, ‘became a key figure in the Paracelsian-Galenist debate at Paris in the
first decade of the seventeenth century’ with his De vera medicina (1603).45
Even though his ideas were clearly Paracelsian, he did not consider him-
self to be an unconditional adept of the teachings of the master from
Hohenheim. Rather than agreeing with his master on all points, he ‘[. . .]
argued that the true chemical physician should appreciate the work of
Hippocrates and Galen while at the same time recognising that much had
been discovered since their time’.46
In spite of his ostensibly conciliatory attitude towards divergent medi-
cal doctrines, Duchesne’s own approach involved deep changes in the tra-
ditional system of natural philosophy. In accordance with the doctrine of
the three Paracelsian elements, the author introduces a system of three
rather than four humours, out of which he postulates that the elements
are secondary forms of matter, being the product of ‘chymical’ principles.
Duchesne accordingly redistributes the traditional elemental structure in
the following way: salt (earth/chyle), sulphur (fire/blood) and mercury
(water and air/spiritus).47 This arrangement is not only reminiscent of
Ficino’s Renaissance Neoplatonic account of the elements; it also has the
advantage of giving prominence to the phenomena of condensation and
rarefaction of vapours or spirits. This idea plays a key role in Duchesne’s
account of the distillation of spirits as well as in his outline of human
physiology, because here again the ‘perfection of concoction’ has a vital
function: it allows the observer to discriminate between matter in its
different states of refinement, and hence to distinguish between differ-
ent states of perfection. Equipped with this knowledge, we are now in a

45 Debus, Chemical Philosophy 148–149, on the author in general; on the Paris confron-
tation, ibidem 159–173. For a recent and very detailed study of Duchesne, see Kahn D.,
Alchimie et Paracelsisme en France (1567–1625) (Geneva: 2007) 233–251, on the De priscorum
philosophorum and the debates this work stirred, ibidem 363–373.
46 Debus, Chemical Philosophy 150. For Duchesne’s doctrine of palingenesis, see ibidem
102–103.
47 Cf. Debus, Chemical Philosophy 104 and 162–165. On the three elements in Paracelsian
medicine, see also Bianchi, “The Visible and the Invisible” 22.
154 sergius kodera

position to examine the following lengthy extract from Duchesne’s De

vera medicina:
From the refinement of wine we get to know the anatomy of our vital blood:
and from the same it becomes to be known what our inborn spirits are: ethe-
real, the same as our inborn heat, and as our radical heat. These two bodies
support our body, and protect our lives, and one is necessarily dependent
on the other: for this radical heat is the fuel and wick of the heat, and this
very heat persists with the help of this moisture. Therefore these two spirits
are ubiquitous, and as it were, joined together, and are infused into all bod-
ies. From the same example the difference between the vital, nourishing
and the useless, excremental humidity comes to be known [. . .]. For when
wine is made, the press first presses the bunches of grapes: and the skins
and the grapes are divided [from the juice], and cast away. Then the useless
dirt and the superfluities are repelled: partly by human industry, partly by
the wine’s own nature. The wine is filled into casks and barrels. In these,
the digestion is brought about, and at the same time during the fermenta-
tion [the wine] with its own power also separates and ejects the impurities
and coarser superfluities. After this the wine is almost ready to be used as
drink and as nourishment. This first artificial preparation of wine (which
consists in the separation and the pressing of the nourishing substances)
shows us in a certain way the preparation of the grain in which the wheat
is separated from the chaff, and the remaining is milled into flour, in order
to be more apt as a nourishment. And this is the first separation of the meat
from the bones in our mouth, and so forth. The pressing therefore happens
in the mouth with the teeth: then, the right way of chewing sinks the food
into the belly. And this is our first preparation of the nourishment that is
analogous to the first [preparation of] wine and grain: what is entrusted to
the stomach, corresponds to that wine which is poured into the casks, as
well as to already-threshed flour. The following operation in the stomach
is of a different nature: for that which the stomach contains, it digests, that
is, all kinds of food that are mixed together, just as the wine matures in its
cask (or any other kind of drink, be it from honey, fruits, barley, or water
containing various infusions). The stomach is therefore some sort of natural
cask; here [in the stomach] the matter which it has been entrusted with is
not so much cooked or digested, here rather the tartareous faeces – and
whatever excrement contained [in that matter] – is separated by means of
conduits which are naturally designed for this; and finally, after many puri-
fications, the blood becomes clear, the red source and the origin of our vital
spirit [. . .]. From this wine and by means of vasa circulatoria as they call [the
alembic], the fire of nature is extracted, which is accompanied by radical
moisture: in short aquavit, that is fiery and ethereal, and really quintessence,
and entirely spiritual and of a really incorruptible nature. In a similar way
the effects of the natural fire are generated in us by the circular course of
the heat in the heart and in the liver. This life-giving fire is pressed together
and kept warm by its own oily humour: and it is [generated] by the radi-
cal [heat] which is aquavit, and [it is] in truth and in similitude this life-
 the distillation of ‘spirits’ 155

giving nectar or quintessence, and generally by this ethereal spiritus, [may

be called] the incorruptible protector and defender of our lives. And this
happens in the process of the aforementioned activity of wine, and it is truly
worth mentioning and admirable, that only two or three pieces of glowing
charcoal placed under a very large vessel – which is called the cacabo (and
contains twenty or more hemias of wine) – heat this wine and elevate the
spirit of the wine so that it becomes distilled. This [happens] in spite of
the fact that from such an exiguous [quantity of] heat only a much smaller
quantity of water can hardly be made lukewarm. But what is admirable and
notable, is that while this wine-spirit passes through the colurina – as they
call them, that is trough oblong metal channels or pipes and retorts which
are suitable for this [kind of] distillation – it heats them to such an extent
that one can hardly touch [these pipes] with the hand; even though [the
pipes] run though a huge cask which is full of cold water and [even though
it is positioned] at an adequately removed [distance] from the fire. And this
is certainly to be attributed to the enormous heat which the wine-spirit – by
means of the aforementioned pipes – communicates to the cold water [in
the cask]. The [heat of the] wine spirit is thereby not totally extinguished,
[. . .] and you can perceive that its heat is only slowly being extinguished and
cooled in the cask. And this we have to keep in our minds, [. . .] that this
heat is certainly aroused in us from the incessant and perpetual circulation
of the life-giving spirit of our blood.48
In this quotation, which is reminiscent of a key passage in the Labyrinthus
of Paracelsus,49 Duchesne develops in great detail the analogy between dif-
ferent metabolisms inside the human body and the art of distillation: the
mouth is analogous to the winepress, the stomach to the barrel where the
fermentation takes place; the remaining digestive organs produce a kind
of ferment that is finally capable of bringing forth the ethereal spiritus,
the essence of life. The author seems to have had some hands-on experi-
ence of the process of the distillation of spirits. This becomes apparent
in Duchesne’s detailed description of the cooling device as well as in his
observation that much less energy is needed to bring alcohol to the boil
than for water. Even though the text probably exaggerates this difference,
it is based on genuine observation; the author also rightly acknowledges
the indispensable function of the cooling device in the distillation pro-
cess. He further points out that the intrinsic heat of the distilled vapours –
their calor – certainly could not have been received from the heat of a few

48 Duchesne Joseph, Liber de priscorum philosophorum verae medicinae materia (Paris,

Eustatius Vingon: 1603) 121–124 (My translation).
49 Cf. Hannaway, The Chemists 44–45, for a translation of and a comment on the rel-
evant passage.
156 sergius kodera

pieces of charcoal that heat the alembic alone. This idea enables him to
postulate the affinity, if not the shared identity, between distilled alcohol
and the spiritus vitalis. The still here is not merely being used as evidence
for the actual existence of the vital spirit in the human body. The special
heating qualities of the wine spirit are also conducive to a materialistic
explanation of physiological processes in general. Duchesne believes that
the genuine extraction of aquavit represents the three hypostatic princi-
ples of Paracelsian medicine in their full purity: mercurial liquor, sulphu-
ric flame, and the spirit of ammoniac salt. As a residue, a large quantity
of phlegm remains in the body, which itself originates from the mercu-
rial liquid.50 The author therefore observes that the metabolic distillation
process leaves yet further waste in our bodies. The lowest remnants of
this organic distillation are of a ‘tartareous nature’, that is, they consist of
‘sulphuric nitre’, a substance that contains many impurities and a great
deal of salt. Duchesne identifies these unclean substances with the stuff
that our eyes and our noses expel and he maintains that these bodily flu-
ids correspond to the waste that occurs in the process of the distillation
of wine-spirit.51
As a faithful Paracalsian, Duchesne goes on to explain that these fetid
residues cause dangerous blockages, and are the (smelly) origins of many
diseases in the higher as well as the lower parts of our boides. Here, they

50 On mercury and its distillation as the cause of sudden death according to Duchesne,
see Bianchi, “The Visible and the Invisible” 23.
51 Duchesne, Priscorum philosophorum liber 124–125 ‘Post extractionem verae ac genu-
inae aquae vitae, seu spiritus vini (qui est in tota illa puritas) trium principiorum hyposta-
ticorum cuius liquor mercurium, flamma (quam prompte concipit) naturam sulphuream,
acumen vero, et vis eximiae gustum feriens, spiritum salis armoniaci repraesentant: magna
restat copia phlegmatis, seu liquors mercurialis, qui continet quidem aliquid adhuc spiri-
tus vini. At quod reliquum est, nihil est aliud quam aqua inutilis, quae mox vapescat atque
corrumpatur simili quoque ratione potest extractionem aquae vitae, ac vere spiritualis
ex sanguine nostro residuus manet in corpore humidus, et humectans ille liquor, quem
partim alimentosum, partim excrementosum diximus. Restant ultimo, praeter praedicta,
foeces, seu residentiae tartareae, et nitro sulphureae, que in se multas foetidas [125] impu-
ritates, ut et magnum salis copiam continent. Impuritates oculis, et tetri foetores naribus
satis superque se produnt, dum diversa ex his olea vehementi igne extillantur, At ex foeci-
bus calcinatis sal elicitur, idemque fixum cum proprio phlegmatae, ut supra docuimus
in operatione eiusdem vegetabilis [. . .]. Similiter et in sanguine praeter spiritum illum
vitae, et liquorem mercurialem (quae duo re vera separari ab ipso sanguine, et ad oculum
ostendi, post digestiones convenientes, in calore Bal[nei] Mar[iae] qui fit analogus calori
naturae, ut melius et facilius constet, quomodo idem calor eademque natura in nobis
eadem faciat operationes et separationes) praeter illa duo, inquam, quaedam consisten-
tia mollis liquidi instar residebit in fundo, in qua mellita consistentia multas impuritates
invenies, quas oculis et naribus percipies, si ad ignem cinerum febrili analogum materia
praedicta exsiccetur’.
 the distillation of ‘spirits’ 157

happen to appear like the meteorites of the macrocosm.52 Later in his

book, Duchesne names a few of the diseases (among them, arthritis and
calculus, the stone) which are caused by the obstructions through tartarum,
the very same substance which remains in the alembic after the process
of distillaton is completed. Again, it is the art of producing wine-spirit
that serves as the material basis for the theory of these obstructions in
the body, which Duchesne calls meteora.53 He frequently compares these
stones to tar, in other words, to the unwanted by-products that come into
existence during the the distillation of vital spiritus in the human body.54
For scholars who are acquainted with Paracelsian medicine this detailed
account of distillation of grape-wine should not sound unfamiliar. First
and foremost, it is the explanation of what Paracelsus himself had termed
‘tartaric diseases’, that is, of infirmities that are caused by the obstruction
of the tubular systems, such as the bronchial tree when it ‘is obstructed by
inspissated and often calcifying material, for instance lung stones, known
to us as the product of tuberculosis infection’. Moreover, Paracelsus had
already emphasised the function of the stomach as the ‘alchemist within’
in the process of digestion, because it separates the poison contained in
the food by sublimation.55 This job is done by the remaining digestive
organs, such as the liver, the kidneys, the bladder and the guts. What
cannot be incorporated into the body during this metabolic process will
remain undigested, because this matter remains ‘what it has always been’ –
tartar – ‘an agent from outside rather than a product of the humours’.56

52 Duchesne, Priscorum philosophorum liber 125–126 ‘Quippe qui [. . .] nitrosulphureus

ille foetor manifeste in nobis causat meteora ignita tam superiori, quam inferiori corporis
parte, aliaque innumera symptomata parit, ut ostensum est supra. Sic ignis quoque vi,
(haud secus, ac ex vini) ita ex foecibus, et tartaro sanguinis, separari possunt sulphura
atque olea picis in modum crassa atque tenacia: adhaec tanto foetore abominanda, ut
ne praesens [126] quidem prae abominando illo odore subsitere queas: ex quibus multa
symptomata in corpore nostro suboriri posse quilibet facile colligere postest’.
53 For the analogy between the tartaric stones in our body and their macrocosmic
counterparts, the meteora (meteorites), as well as their connections to thunderstorms in
Paracelsus, see Pagel, Paracelsus 155.
54 Duchesne, Priscorum philosophorum liber 240 ‘Sed et in sanguine nostro, tamque puris-
simo, simili prorsus modo et ratione, ut de vino diximus; quemadmodum ars destillatoria
(etiamque ea quae per temperatissimum ignem fit) ostendit ac patefacit euismodi tartarum.
Si quoque Natura igne suo naturali efficere potest, et in dies efficit eiusmodi separationes tar-
tari, etiam per consumptionem partium humoralium corporis nostri: [. . .] Ex qua separatione
mirum quot morborum genera, obstructionum, seu oppilationum interventu procredentur’.
55 Christie J.-R.-R., “The Paracelsian Body”, in Grell O.P. (ed.), Paracelsus. The Man and
his Reputation, his Ideas and their Transformation (Leiden-Cologne: 1998) 282, with many
references.
56 Pagel, Paracelsus 153 and n. 78 for references in Paracelsus.
158 sergius kodera

The substance is produced by the activity of salt, and it coagulates mucoid

matter. For Paracelsus, these tartaric diseases are ‘the general principle of
medicine’, as they cause ‘disease by faulty digestion resulting in local as
against humoral changes’.57
Duchesne’s materialistic account of the production of vital spiritus in
the human body has the advantage of allowing for local explanations of
disease and, by extension, for the establishment of a concept of health
in which the tubes in the body remain free for the circulation of spiritus,
just like the tubes in the cooling device of a water-cooled alembic. The
author’s link between the distillation of ‘branntwein’, and tartaric diseases
can be attributed to Paracelsus, who says in his Opus paramirum that
these acrid residues in our organs often remain invisible because of their
volatility, and that they go ‘into these organs like a spirit that ascends and
descends and appears to be devoid of body. It is there, however, and even
if it is placed in a still (pelican) and circulates [is distilled] it has its tartar
in itself ’.58 Viewed in this way, disease ‘becomes a metabolic disorder, a
failure to separate pure from impure nourishment’.59
Duchesne concludes his exposition of the affinities between aquavit and
the spiritus vitalis with the remark that his account is the ‘true anatomy of
the blood, which is not given blindly, but from a manifest demonstration,
and, as it were, in an irrefutable autopsy we have given ocular proof that
the blood has a great analogy to the wine’.60 This remark again alerts us to
what was probably the most basic shortcoming of the spiritus theory: the
existence of the miraculous substance had always been difficult to prove.
The Paracelsians – with their distinct orientation towards spagyric expla-
nation – were willing to give their accounts of the workings of the human
body all the evidence they could get from their work at the furnace. Their
theory, which connected microcosm and macrocosm with a doctrine of
three chemical substances, was conducive to what was perhaps the most
explicit and detailed exposition of the distillation-analogy in human

57 Pagel, Paracelsus 154.

58 Paracelsus, Opus paramirum, lib. III, tract. 4. ed. Huser, vol. I, 59 quoted after Pagel,
Paracelsus 155. On the macrocosmic analogy to these stones, the meteorites and the causes
of thunderbolts, see ibidem.
59 Pagel, Paracelsus 155.
60 Duchesne, Priscorum philosophorum liber 126 ‘Atque haec est vera atque vitalis anato-
mia sanguinis, quem non temere, sed vere, et manifesta demonstratione, et quasi ad ocu-
lum ipsaque data autopsia innitenti ostendimus magnam habere cum vino analogiam’.
 the distillation of ‘spirits’ 159

physiology.61 Duchesne accordingly says that the true philospher knows

that both liquids – mercurial ones and wine-spirits – are nearly spiritus
vitae. Moreover, he knows that their effects and by-products are a mixed
blessing: for even the wine we drink contains a number of potentially
toxic residues, and the casks in which it was produced are full of tartar.
We therefore have to acknowledge that the products of the spirit of life in
our own bodies produce many such harmful residues.62

Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon was an author highly aware of the long tradition of spiritus
theorists: by maintaining that all tangible things contain an impercep-
tible, albeit material substance, Bacon adapts Ficino’s idea that the quin-
tessence is the spiritus of the world-soul.63 Spirit, in Bacon’s words, is ‘a
mysterious combination of a flameous and an aerial nature’.64 It is, I would
therefore conclude, akin to the no less mysterious properties the medieval
alchemists detected in aquavit. Central to Bacon’s characteristic adaption
of alchemical ideas65 is the concept that spirit is somehow imprisoned in
a substance, and that – like the human souls of the Neoplatonists – the
spirit wants to flee the material body by which it is held captive. Spiritus
seeks to escape either under its own steam (to use a literal metaphor), or
by exiting the body through a gradual assimilation of some of the coarse
matter it finds in its prison. When the object is eaten up, and left in a

61 On this topic in Paracelsianism in general, see Christie, “The Paracelsian Body” 278,
McKee F., “The Paracelsian Kitchen”, in Grell, O.P. (ed.), Paracelsus. The Man and his
Reputation, his Ideas and their Transformation (Leiden-Cologne: 1998) 294–295 with many
references.
62 Duchesne, Priscorum philosophorum liber 126 ‘[. . .] cum verus philsophus aeque ex
uno, atque ex alio (licet alterum maius artificium requirat) norit sapere aquas vitae peni-
tus spirituales, quae impetentia dicuntur; praeterea liquores mercuriales tam utiles, quam
noxios, quae humectantia: denique halitus et fulginosas exhalationes, quae efflentia appel-
lantur. Quod si igitur in vino, quo in dies utimur ad nutritionem corporis, eoque puro et
claro post separationem spiritus eius, videamus tot res heterogeneas, tamque impuras;
quanto quaeso, plure, solidioresque deprehendemus in tartaro vinorum doliis atque cadis
adhaerescente, atque ex foecibus et residentia vini eiusdem’?
63 For a brief outline of Bacon’s spiritus theory, see Rees G., “Matter Theory: A Unifying
Factor in Bacon’s Natural Philosophy?” Ambix 24 (1977) 111–113.
64 Bacon, Historia vitae 223–224.
65 On which see the classic study by Rossi P., Francis Bacon. From Magic to Science
(London: 1968) 13–17, 20–22.
160 sergius kodera

state where it is shrunk, spitted and corrugated,66 the spiritus is able to

leave its cell; it may then mingle with its cognate element, air, and enjoy
the rays of sunlight. Bacon distinguishes these kinds of spiritus from the
‘living spirits’ which inhabit inanimate objects. The latter dwell in and are
capable of developing plants, animals and human beings, into amazingly
complex structures.67 In order to keep these spirits in the body and thus
to prolong one’s life, one has to slow down the movement of the spirits,
for the animal spiritus, locked inside the organic body, is responsible for
shaping it. In order to prevent decay, we therefore have to take good care
not to arouse the spirit to such violent motions that it breaks and leaves
its cells. The cooling and soothing of the spiritus inside its vessel is there-
fore the necessary prerequisite for a long life and the proper functioning
of all human physiological processes.68
From this brief outline, it is apparent just how much Bacon’s account
of spiritus is modelled on his experiences with the distillation of alcohol.
Again, as in Ficino and in Duchesne, it is the evidence generated by the
still that serves as a guideline for understanding not only human physiol-
ogy, but the very workings of the universe in general. Just as the must in
the distillation apparatus has to be heated carefully for the wine spirit to
evaporate slowly, so the animal spirits have to be kept from leaving the
body prematurely. The close relationship between distillation of spirits
and Bacon’s ideas about human physiology also becomes obvious in an
experiment described in his Novum Organum.69 In order to find out in
which quantitative relationship the imperceptible spiritus stands to its
tangible body, Bacon constructs a device that is in fact a further develop-
ment on the distillation apparatus. Taking a small phial filled almost to
the brim with one ounce of wine-spirit (spiritus vini) – for this is the ‘rar-
est and contains least matter per unit volume’70 – he weighs the container
together with the liquid. Bacon then tightly seals the vessel with a bladder
that is capable of holding two pints, having previously squeezed out of the

66 Bacon Francis, The Instauratio Magna Part II: Novum Organum and Associated Texts:
eds./trs. (etc.) Rees G. – Wakely M. (Oxford: 2004) 348 (ch. 40).
67 Cf. Wallace K.R., Francis Bacon on the Nature of Man (Urbana-Chicago-London: 1967)
22–39 and Novum Organum, 348–350 (ch. 40), where Bacon writes that the prerequisites
for the development of an organic body are gentle heat (lenitas caloris) and the viscosity
of the body (lentor corporis).
68 Bacon, Historia vitae 269.
69 For a highly readable and interesting analysis of the passage from the Novum Orga-
num, ch. 40, 352–54, from the perspective of the theory of rhetoric, see Briggs J.C., Francis
Bacon and the Rhetoric of Nature (Cambridge, Mass.-London: 1989) 147–148.
70 Tr. Rees, in Bacon, Novum Organum 353.
 the distillation of ‘spirits’ 161

bladder all the remaining air. The apparatus is then gently heated until
what Bacon calls the ‘Vapour or Aura of the wine-spirit’ becomes ‘pneu-
matic’ and completely inflates the bladder. The apparatus is removed
from the fire, and, in order to prevent the pneumatic spiritus from re-
condensing into the phial, Bacon pierces a tiny hole into the top of the
balloon: he then compares the loss in weight of the remaining wine-spirit
and concludes that the pneumatic body is more than a hundred times
the size of the material one.71 It is important to note that the corollary
of this experiment consists in the assumption that heating a body brings
about what Bacon calls a ‘mutatio et versatio’, a conversion and a kind
of change to the object.72 Bacon’s pneumatic matter theory,73 together
with his experimental device, generated quantitative evidence for the
existence of spiritus.
In the texts I shall now consider, the Historia vitae et mortis (published
in 1623) and the Sylva sylvarum (1627), Bacon is not directly embracing
the distillation-spiritus analogy; even so, the still for the production of
alcohol serves for him as the tacit background for his theories on human
physiology. In the Historia vitae et mortis Bacon unites a wide array of dif-
ferent theories about the subject of longevity under his general explana-
tory model that death is caused by the exhaustion of the animal spirits;
consequently, this process has to be slowed down or retarded by cooling
the human body. Bacon’s definition of the spiritus vitalis is reminiscent of
alcohol, when he says that ‘the spiritus is a tenuous body, [. . .] however, it
has a definite place, is extended and real; yet this spiritus is not air ( just
as the juice of grapes is not water), but rather a tenuous body which is
akin to air, and yet very much different from it’.74 In human beings, this
vital spirit resides for the most part in the ventricles of the brain, that is
the highest part of the body, and it is inflammable. It has a fiery nature,
which, according to Bacon is due to what he calls the ‘aura’ (which prob-
ably in this case means the ‘vapour’) of the spiritus that is composed of

71 Bacon also toyed with the idea that his model of spiritus could not only account for
the bodily formation of the individual, but also for intellectual processes of all kinds. On
this see Deleule D., “Francis Bacon alchimiste de l’esprit humain”, Les études philosophi-
ques 3 (1985) 297–298, and Gemelli B., Aspetti dell atomismo nella filosofia di Francis Bacon
e nel seicento (Florence: 1996) 106–139, esp. 125–128.
72 Bacon, Novum Organum 354 Corpus istud ita versum et mutatum.
73 Rees, “Matter Theory” 118.
74 Bacon, Historia vitae 213 ‘(Explicatio) Spiritus [. . .] est [. . .] corpus tenue, invisibile;
attamen locatum, dimensum, reale: neque spiritus ille aer est (quemdamodum nec succus
uvae est aqua); sed corpus tenue, cognatum aeris, at multum ab eo diversum’.
162 sergius kodera

flame and air. It is gentler than the weakest flame of the spirit of wine and
other substances; and it is for the most part mixed with an airy substance,
which makes the spiritus vitalis a mystery of the natures of flame and air.75
This statement points to the extent to which the technological model of
aqua ardens provided Bacon with evidence for the existence of spirits.
Even though he maintains that the vital spirit is an exceptional natural
phenomenon – a substance which remains incomparable to any other
natural body – the descriptions of burning alcohol were certainly (and
more than with any other phenomenon) the most persuasive example
available that testified to the existence of vital spirits. In Bacon, the body
works like a conventional still that is unfit for distilling alcohol: it is hot-
ter in its upper parts and probably hottest in the ventricles of the brain,
where the finest vital spirits are located. This idea is corroborated by
Bacon’s observation that ‘sweat comes forth more out of the upper parts
of the body than the lower; the reason is, because those parts are more
replenished with spirits’.76 According to Bacon, air generates itself from
water, for both substances seek to enlarge their bodies; both are volatile
and hence constantly attempt to leave the bodies that hold them cap-
tive.77 For this reason, the combustible and volatile nature of the spiritus
has to be kept in check. This can be done by condensing, by cooling the
animate body (densatio) that would otherwise quickly perish.78 Bacon,
consequently, maintains that longevity is the result of the effective cool-
ing of the spiritus. Yet it is not the entire body that has to be kept refriger-
ated. Bacon says that the stomach has to be well heated, just as the vessel
which contains the fermented must to be put on burning coals in order
to achieve an effective process of distillation.79

75 Bacon, Historia vitae 215 ‘Spiritus vitalis nonnullam habeat incensionem, atque sit
tanquam aura composita ex flamma et aere; [. . .] at illa in ansio peculiares praebet motus
et facultates; etenimet fumus inflammabilis, etiam ante flammam conceptam, calidus est,
tenuis, mobilis; et tamen alia res est postquam facta sit flamma; at incenso spirituum vita-
lium multis partibus lenior est quam mollissima flamma ex spiritu vini, atque alias; atque
insuper mixta est, ex magna parte, cum substantia aerea; ut sit et flammae et aerea naturae
mysterium’. In ibidem 216 (Canon 7), Bacon maintains that the nature of the vital spirit is
more akin to the nature of the flame than to air.
76 Bacon Francis, Sylva sylvarum, opera, 566 (§708) see also ibidem 594 (§785).
77 Bacon, Historia vitae 216–217 (Canon 6).
78 Bacon, Historia vitae 217 (Canon 9) and ibidem 218 (Canon 11).
79 Bacon, Historia vitae 223 (Canon 28) ‘Refrigeratio quae non transit per stomachum
utilis ad longaevitatem. Explicatio. Ratio praesto est, quia cum refrigeratio non temperata,
sed potens, (praesertim sanguinis) ad vitam longam sit praecipue necessaria; omnino hoc
non fieri possit per intus, quantum opus est, absque destructione stomachi et viscerum’.
 the distillation of ‘spirits’ 163

Equipped with this theoretical background, we are now in a position

to understand Bacon’s ideas about aging. He outlines various methods to
promote longevity: his basic assumption consists in the traditional idea, to
be found in Plato, that the lungs function as a cooling device for the heat
generated by the heart, and that the aging body dies from overheating.80
Bacon accordingly maintains that old age dries the body out because the
spiritus, like a flame, consumes the organism’s vital energy.81 He compares
this quality of the human spiritus to distilled wine, which burns like desic-
cating fire in which one can fry eggs or toast bread.82 Due to this quali-
tative resemblance between alcohol and the spiritus vitae, Bacon argues
strongly against the use of aqua ardens as a means for the prolongation of
life. Rather, he wishes to see the use of mild (benignum) vapours, which
are nonetheless alive.83 And he is quick to name these substances: opiates
and nitrum or saltpeter, since he thinks that both substances cool the spir-
its and therefore lead to their preservation, thus prolonging the life of the
entire animal.84 Bacon says that opium is the most powerful substance
to make the spiritus condense; the drug is, therefore, not only a medicine
against the plague and other malignant diseases, but also commendable
for the prolongation of life in general.85 Tobacco serves the same purpose,
though to a lesser degree.86 For our purposes it is crucial to note the extent
to which the art of distillation informs Bacon’s account of physiological
processes: no matter whether human or from wine, the spirits have to be
kept in check by being cooled; and in organic bodies, the function of the

80 On the idea that the lungs are a cooling device for the heat generated by the blood
from the heart, cf. Plato, Timaeus 79d–e, a doctrine repeated in Aristoteles, De respiratione
16, 475b18–20, and ibidem 21, 478a15–25. Ficino, Appendix in Timaeum 1477 (ch. 64) Pulmo
aerem haurit, ad incendium coris refrigerandum. Cf. ibidem 1479/479 (ch. 81) and 1482/482
(ch. 93).
81 Bacon, Historia vitae 115 (§ 4) [spiritus . . .] qui corporis humorem exugit et una cum
ipso evolat’. cf. also 120; cf. the contribution by Daniel Schäfer in this volume, 260.
82 Bacon, Historia vitae 116 (§ 9) Spititus vini fortis in tantum desiccat instar ignis ut et
ablumen ovi immissum, et panem torreat.
83 Bacon, Historia vitae 157 (Monitum) Cum de iis jam sermo sit quae in dietam transferri
possint, aquae illi ardentiores, [. . .] rejicenda sint; et videndum quomodo componi possint
aquae ex praecedentibus; non [. . .] ardentes ex spiritu vini, sed magis temperatae, et nihilo-
minus vivae, et vaporem benignum spirantes.
84 On the cooling qualities of opium, see Galenus, De temperamentis I, 658–661, 94; 4.
3–94, 25.
85 Bacon, Historia vitae 163 (§ 21) Quicquid in cura morborum pestilentialium et mali-
gnorum foeliciter exhibetur, ut spiritus sistantur et fraenentur ne turbent et tumultuentur,
id optime transfertur ad prolongationem vitae; cum idem faciat ad utrumque; condensatio
videlicet spirituum. Id autem praestant ante omnia opiata.
86 Cf. Bacon, Historia vitae 164 (§ 27).
164 sergius kodera

cooling device in the still may be best assumed by opiates.87 One could
even say that the methods proposed here are like the technical innovation
of the cooling device that allowed for the production of alcohol in the first
place: for without artificial cooling, the spiritus would evaporate, just as in
the traditional alembics.
In light of these considerations, the recommendation to undergo a
yearly treatment with opiates early in the month of May in order to keep
the spirits cool, commencing in early adult life, does not come as a com-
plete surprise to the reader of the Historia vitae et mortis. Even so, Bacon
himself does not seem to be quite at ease with this consilium; for he also
maintains that a distillate of opiates might be less harmful and do the
same job.88 He also says that this cure is a genuinely safer method (absque
malignitate aliqua, aut qualitate inimica) to bring about the condensation
of spirits by the use of coldness itself, which can also be administered
moderately but on a daily basis.89 Bacon recommends breathing in cool,
unpolluted air, since under such circumstances the spiritus condenses; this
treatment works best on a dry hillside or in a windy but shadowy place
in the countryside.90 In a similar vein, Ficino (following Avicenna) had
already recommended fleeing the plague to mountainous areas, because
he deemed them to be close to the lofty spheres of clean air, where one
may breathe living air, akin to the spirit: ‘Whether walking or sleeping,
always breathe living air, air living with light’.91 Yet, if this kind of salubrious

87 Cf. Bacon, Historia vitae 164 (§ 31).

88 Cf. also Bacon, Historia vitae 164–165 (§ 32) ‘Sit itaque quotannis, a juventute adulta,
diaeta opiata. Usurpetur sub fine Maii, quia spiritus aestate maxime solvuntur et attenuatur,
et minor instat metus ab humoribus frigidis: sit vero opiatum aliquod magistrale debilius
quam ea quae in usus sunt, et quoad minorem quantitatem opii, et, quoad parciorem mixtu-
ram impense calidorum: sumatur mane inter somnos; victus sit simplicior et parcior, absque
vino, aut aromatibus, aut vaporosis: sumatur autem medicina alternis tantum diebus, et
continuetur diaeta ad quatuordecim dies’. For the version with distilled opiates, see ibidem
§ 34.
89 Bacon, Historia vitae 165–166 (§ 38) ‘Iam vero modo condensatonis spirituum, per
frigus, inquiremus; proprium enim frigus est densatio, atque perficitur absque maligni-
tate aliqua, aut qualitate inimica: ideoque tutior est operatio, quam per opiata: licet paulo
minus potens, si per vices tantum, quemadmodum opiata usurparetur. At rursus, quia
familiariter et in victu quotidiano moderate adhiberi potest, etiam longe potentior ad pro-
longationem vitae est quam per opiata’.
90 Bacon, Historia vitae 166 (§ 40) ‘Aer limpidus et purus, et nihil habens fuliginis, antequam
recipiatur in pulmones, et minus obnoxius radiis solis, spiritus optime densat. Talis invenitur
aut in iugis montium siccis, aut in campestribus perflatilibus et tamen umbrosis’.
91 Ficino, De vita libri tres 379f. (III, 24) ‘Spirate semper et vigilantes et dormientes aerem
vivum, aerem luce viventem’. Cf. Avicenna, Opera in luce redacta ac nuper cuantum ars niti
potuit per Canonicos emendata (s.l.: 1508). Anastatic reprint (Frankfurt: 1961) fol. 416rb (IV,
1, ch. 3) ‘In illa vero quae est cum sanos intentio est ut exiccet aere et fiat boni odoris et
 the distillation of ‘spirits’ 165

air is not available, and as in the case of opium which – both then and
now – was probably consumed as a temporary relief from stressful urban
life – one may also have recourse to other (perhaps less expensive) chemi-
cal substances, such as nitrum: Bacon argues that this ingredient of pulvis
pyrius, or gunpowder, abhors the flame92 and is therefore an appropriate
remedy to cool our organism, as it is used in artificial freezing processes.93
As a conclusion to these considerations, Bacon feels it expedient to reit-
erate the basic outline of his argument: the spirit of nitrum prolongs life
because it cools and condenses the human spiritus, and makes them more
immature and less vigorous, whereas distilled alcohol sets them ablaze
and therefore precipitates death.94 From this account it again becomes
evident how far Bacon models his account of physiological processes on
the distillation of alcohol: in order to stop the spirits from evaporating, as
in the still, and from becoming volatile alcohol that is quickly dissipated,
the human organism has to be kept as cool as possible. Only in this way
can the rarefaction of spirits be reversed and retained in the body which
they animate and shape; the condensed aqua ardens is thus returned to
the wine or even to the must it originally inhabited and hence was once
part of. The adverse and dangerous condition of the human spirit that
burns too quickly reads like a meticulous description of the immediate
and subjective sensory effects of high-percentage alcohol on the human
organism; the liquid is pungent in taste, warms or even heats, and thus
brings back energy, at least temporarily. This conceptualisation becomes
even more evident as Bacon says that opium and nitre have such percep-
tible effects on the human organism because they work as vapours and
are therefore much quicker to affect the vaporous spiritus than other sub-
stances that have to pass through the process of concoction or digestion

prohibeatur eius putrido cum quacumquae re sit et rectificetur cum xyloaloe crudo et
ama et tura [. . .]’. Ficino Marsilio, Consiglio contro la pestilenza: ed. E. Musacchio (Bolo-
gna: 1983) 61 (ch. 4) Bisogna ancora, l’altre cose, cuocerle o corregere con odori buoni &
[. . .] maxime quando la peste nasce dopo tremoti. & è più utile usare cose di luoghi arioli,
odoriferi, montuosi, che altre cose; & abitare s’monti & in palco.
92 Bacon, Historia vitae 166–167 (§ 47) ‘Manifestissimum est nitrum in pulvere pyrio
magnopere exhorrere flammam; unde fit ad mirabilis illa ventositas ex exsufflatio’?
93 Bacon, Historia vitae 166 (§ 44) ‘In congelatione et conglaciatione liquorum, quae
nuper coepit essere in usu, per nivem et glaciem ad exteriora vasis appositas, immiscetur
nitrum [. . .]’.
94 Bacon, Historia vitae 167 (§ 51) ‘Ex his patet spiritus humanos per spiritum nitri posse
frigidari et densari, et fieri magis crudos et minus acres: quemadmodum igitur vina fortia
et aromata et similia spiritus incendunt, et vitam abbreviant; ita et nitrum e converso illos
componit et comprimit, et facit ad longaevitatem’.
166 sergius kodera

in the stomach before they can be assimilated by the blood, the vehicle
of the spiritus.95 Again, I take this to refer to the spectacular effects of
alcoholic spirits on the human mind, apparently bypassing the process of
digestion and being felt as they go straight to the head, thus unhealthily
heating the spiritus.96 Unlike Paracelsus, Bacon assigns to the stomach a
central role in the process of digestion: in order to fulfill its function prop-
erly, this organ has to be hot, yet in a temperate way.97 In the Sylva sylva-
rum Bacon gives very instructive examples which allow us to understand
his method of keeping the heat inside the body. This procedure becomes
a general techique of changing elements by the effects of fire, since Bacon
compares the effects of the distillation of simple substances, such as wood
or water, in hermetically-sealed vessels to the transformations that occur
in the maternal womb.98 In many other instances in the Sylva sylvarum,
Bacon explains physiological reactions or processes as the result of the
dilation or contraction of spiritus in specific parts of the human body.99

95 Bacon, Historia vitae 168 (§ 57) ‘Quemdamodum condensatio spiritus per subordinata
ad opum fit aliquatenus per odores; similiter et illae, quae fit per subordinata ad nitrum [. . .].
Ibidem § 59 Dubium non est, quin refrigeratio et attemperatio sanguinis per frigida, qualia
sunt endivia, chicorea, hepatica [. . .]. per consequens infrigidet quoque spiritus; sed hoc fit per
circuitum; at vapores operantur immediate’. On the efficiency of vapours in revitalising and
restoring the body, since they directly attack the spiritus, see also ibidem 222 (Canon 25).
96 Bacon, Historia vitae 169 (§ 64), accordingly states that the beneficial quality of opium
and of herbs with analogous effects (for instance, euphorbium, pyrethrum and castoreum)
consists also in the fact that they are asssimilated through the slow process of digestion; they
warm the stomach rather than the spiritus, in sharp contrast to the effect of wine-spirits, for
the former are not ‘acria, nec mordent linguam; sed sunt paulum amara, et odoris potentis,
et produnt demum caliditatem suam in stomacho et operationibus sequentibus’.
97 Bacon, Historia vitae 186–187 (§ 4) ‘Stomachus (qui, ut aiunt, est paterfamilias, et
cuius robur ad reliquos concoctione est fundamentale) ita unire decet et confirmare, ut
sit absque temperie calidus [. . .]’.
98 Bacon, Sylva sylvarum 383 (§ 99) ‘But of all the admirable effects of this distillation
close (for so we will call it) which is like the wombs and matrices of living creatures, where
nothing expireth nor separateth, we will speak fully in the due place; not that we aim at
the making of Paracelsus’ pygmies, or any such prodigious follies; but that we know the
effects of heat will be such as will scarce fall under the conceit of man, if the force of it
be kept altogether in’.
99 See, for instance Bacon, Sylva sylvarum 570 (§ 721), where Bacon maintains that
‘Laughing causeth a dilatation of the mouth and the lips, a continued expulsion of the
breath, with the loud noise [. . .]. . the cause of laughing is but a light touch of the spirits,
and not so deep an impression as in other passions. And therefore, [. . .] it is moved, and
that in great vehemency, only by tickling some parts of the body: and we see that men
even in a grieved state of mind, yet cannot sometimes forbear laughing [. . .]. the dilatation
of the mouth and lips, continued expulsion of the breath and voice, and shaking of the
breast . . . they proceed (all) from the dilatation of the spirits, especially being sudden. So
likewise, the running of the eyes and water [. . .] is an effect of dilatation of the spirits’. For
other examples, see ibidem § 722 (the effects of lust directing the spiritus to the affected
 the distillation of ‘spirits’ 167

Bacon applies the same idea to all kinds of drinks, though with a less
sophisticated cooling system, for here it is sufficient to hang closely-
stoppered bottles in ‘a deep well somewhat above the water for some fort-
night’s space, [. . .] for the cold does not cause any exhaling of the spirits
at all; as heat does, though it rarefies the rest that remain; but cold makes
the spirits vigorous’.100 Bacon thus indirectly acknowledges the formative
role of the technological process for his ideas about human (and, indeed,
all other) physiologies. This again testifies to the deep structural similarity
between the two different kinds of spiritus that Bacon had postulated, as
well as to his willingness to acknowledge the materiality of this stop-gap
in medical physiology and physics in general. Such a tendency becomes
even more obvious in a passage where Bacon maintains that those spaces
in living substances which are the seats of the spiritus vitalis become filled
with air, which in turn streams into the body after it has lost its vitality.
Air makes the lifeless body fragile, for it does not admit ‘great diversity of
hot, cold, active, dull etc., anymore’. Under the influence of dry air, the
object therefore becomes ‘insipid and without any extimulation’.101

Conclusion

I hope here to have shown the extent to which the evidence produced
by the art of distillation – the condensation and rarefaction of matter or
of the principle intrinsic to it – informed Ficino’s metaphysics and how,
in different ways, his Neoplatonic outlook influenced Bacon’s and Duch-
esne’s ideas of human physiology. For Ficino, the actual apparatus and
the practical arts of the distillers seem to have been only of marginal

parts of the body); ibidem § 724 (the animal spirits are oppressed by the spirits of wine,
which causes the typical symptoms of drunkenness); see also ibidem 576 (§ 735); 586–587
(§ 766), where Bacon maintains that a tickling in the soles of the feet and in other parts
of the body ‘is a light motion of the spirits, which the thinness of the skin, and sudden-
ness of and rareness of touch, do further: for we see a feather [. . .] drawn along the lip or
cheek, doth tickle; whereas a thing more obtuse, or a touch more hard doth not’. Bacon
also adapts the traditional doctrine that a kind of spiritus vitalis is emitted by the eye as a
visual ray: he therefore maintains that ‘We see more exquisitely with one eye shut, than
with both open. The cause is, for that the spirits visual unite themselves more, and so
become stronger: For you may see by looking in a glass, that when you shut one eye, the
pupil of the other eye that is open dilateth’ (§ 868).
100 Bacon, Sylva sylvarum 446 (§ 315). See also ibidem 454 (§ 341) ‘[. . .] and this (sc.
cold) worketh by the detention of the spirits’.
101 Bacon, Sylva sylvarum 616 (§ 842).
168 sergius kodera

importance. Perhaps it was precisely this very distance from hands-on

experience that allowed Ficino to endow the art with the cosmic sig-
nificance that became so important for later generations of doctors and
natural philosophers alike. In Duchesne, we encountered a passage that
testifies to his close acquaintance with contemporary stills and his willing-
ness to relate his practical experience to Paracelsian metaphysics. Fran-
cis Bacon constructs a still of his own invention, in order to quantify the
universal spirit, and links his experimental results to the Paracelsian and
alchemical traditions. Common to all these thinkers is the fact that the
results of the technology of wine-distillation provided an explanatory foil
to account for a great variety of phenomena. It explained aging of the
human body, and introduced a model for health and disease that became
an alternative to the equilibrium of the four humours; although contested
by various authors,102 the distillation of alcohol simplified the doctrine of
vital spirits, reducing them from three to one; the apparatus necessary for
distillation as well as its product, combustible alcohol, contributed to the
feasibility of materialist explanations for all kinds of physiological phe-
nomena, as for many authors the aquavit credibly became a substance
that was endowed with life, motion and sensibility. Yet, on the side of
the practitioners, the tide was already turning; in Oswald Crollius’ Basilica
chymica (1609), ‘the emphasis on distillation techniques characteristic of
medieval alchemists and still dominant in the work of Paracelsus had dis-
appeared’. For that author was ‘one of the first chemical writers to empha-
sise the real chemical product of a reaction – rather than the distillate or
the quintessence as the desired substances to be collected’.103

102 Edward O’Meara is a case in point: for this late seventeenth-century Galenic physi-
cian and his attacks on the Paracelsian Thomas Willis, see Clericuzio, “Internal Laboratory”
61 and 68 with n. 113. On the criticisms of Robert Boyle, ibidem 64.
103 Debus, Chemical Philosophy 123–124; on Crollius see ibidem 117–126.
 the distillation of ‘spirits’ 169

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 The Body is a Battlefield. Conflict and Control in
Seventeenth-Century Physiology and Political Thought

Sabine Kalff

Summary*

In many different ways, early modern political thinkers concerned themselves

with physiology and adopted physiological concepts of motion to explain political
dynamics. This article will examine the mutual inspiration between physiological
and political concepts of motion, based on the example of Tommaso Campan-
ella and Francis Bacon, as these political philosophers displayed such a strong
interest in physiology that they themselves even wrote on it extensively. Both of
them were medical laymen and conceived of physiology as a speculative science
concerned with investigating the principles that were at work in the whole of
nature, not only in living beings. It will be argued that physiological processes,
such as the generation of motion and heat, its regulation or self-regulation, and
the interaction between the bodily organs, came to provide a heuristic model
for the analysis of dynamics in the political sphere. The frequent references to
physiology will be understood as an important contribution to the process of
medicalisation of governmental techniques and political analysis.

While studies of the body politic generally agree that anatomy provided
an important model for political thought as far as the analysis of the struc-
tural organisation of a state and the distribution of power is concerned,
physiology is rarely supposed to have exerted any noteworthy influence
on political thought.1 As other papers in this collection have demon-
strated, the modern distinction between anatomy and physiology was
alien to early modern medicine. Early modern physiology was only partly
concerned with what the modern branch of medicine focuses on – the
analysis of the function of bodily parts and organs – and it covered equally
the study of elements, temperaments, humours, spirits and faculties, as

* I am particularly grateful to Alan Suter for revising the English of my text, to Vivian
Nutton for allowing me a preview of his article in this volume (27–40), and to the three
anonymous readers for their helpful comments.
1 See for instance Hale D.G., The Body Politic. A Political Metaphor in Renaissance Eng-
lish Literature (The Hague-Paris: 1971).
172 sabine kalff

well as anatomical structures of the organs.2 Thus, in the first paper of

this volume, Vivian Nutton argues that anatomical and physiological stud-
ies in the Early Modern period overlapped to the extent that the titles of
treatises referring either to anatomy or to physiology were interchange-
able, although ‘physiology’ had the advantage of gaining some fashion-
able appeal after Jean Fernel famously applied it to a part of his Medicina
(1554).3 Obviously, this ‘physiological trend’ not only appealed strongly
to medical writers, but also to political philosophers who proved equally
inclined to regard the dynamics of bodily humours, nerves, muscles and
spirits as heuristic models for the understanding of political processes,
particularly with regard to their regulation and self-regulation.
Although numerous physiological treatises were published at the begin-
ning of the seventeenth century, their influence on political thought has
not yet been studied very much – with the remarkable exception of Wil-
liam Harvey. The relevance of his model of a closed-circuit blood circula-
tion to the reflection of political dynamics has been analysed thoroughly,
and has perhaps even been over-emphasised.4 But most political philoso-
phers have still not been considered in this context, although some of
them displayed such a strong concern for physiology that they themselves
even wrote on it extensively.
This particularly holds true for two medical laymen, Tommaso Cam-
panella and Francis Bacon, who were not only both acclaimed authors of
utopian treatises, but also put forward physiological theories which were
closely connected with their political thought – and activity. To speak
explicitly of physiological theories despite the lack of a clearly delineated
dichotomy between the branches of anatomy and physiology seems jus-
tified in the first place by the fact that neither Campanella nor Bacon
ever seems to have written much on anatomy. Moreover, their almost
exclusive commitment to physiology resulted from the early modern
concept of physiology, which since Greek Antiquity was conceived rather
as a general study of nature and of the principles underlying all natural
phenomena than as a specific branch of medicine.5 Hence, the specific
proceedings in human beings were thought to be explicable in terms

2 Bylebyl J.J., “Disputation and Description in the Renaissance Pulse Controversy”, in

Wear A. – French R.K. – Lonie I.M. (eds.), The Medical Renaissance of the Sixteenth Century
(Cambridge: 1985) 224.
3 Cf. Nutton V., “Physiologia: From Galen to Jacob Bording”, this volume 35.
4 Cf. Hill C., “William Harvey and the Idea of Monarchy”, Past and Present 27 (1964)
54–72. See also Cohen B.I., “Harrington and Harvey: A Theory of the State based on the
New Physiology”, Journal of the History of Ideas 55, 2 (1994) 187–210.
5 Cf. Nutton, “Physiologia” 28.
 the body is a battlefield 173

of more general principles that controlled not only human beings, but
also the whole universe. From this perspective, physiology was the most
speculative and general of the medical disciplines6 and, as such, appealed
strongly to the medical laymen Campanella and Bacon, both of whom
lacked experience with practical anatomical studies but were certainly
adept in natural philosophy.

Political Fever and Cosmic Conflict in Tommaso Campanella

The Calabrian theologian and philosopher Tommaso Campanella, best

known for his utopian treatise La Città del Sole (1623),7 not only wrote on
political theory, natural philosophy and astrology but was also the author
of two lengthy medical treatises, the Medicinalium iuxta propria principia
libri septem (1635) and the Epilogo magno or Fisiologia italiana (1623).8
The redaction process of the Fisiologia italiana was complicated, but Cam-
panella called the book Physiologia from the first version onwards, which
dated back to 1592.9 In the ancient Greek sense of physiologia, understood
as a thorough investigation into the physis of a thing,10 Campanella’s phys-
iology indeed discussed a wide range of natural phenomena, of which the
physiology of the human body formed only a part.11 Campanella’s second

6 Cf. Bylebyl, “Disputation and Description” 226.

7 All dates refer to the first printed editions. The manuscript was written much earlier,
about 1602. Cf. Firpo L., “Introduzione”, in Campanella Tommaso, La Città del Sole, ed.
Firpo L. (Rome-Bari: 1997) xxxi.
8 The final Latin version of the treatise was composed between 1604 and 1609. Cf. Mön-
nich M.W., Tommaso Campanella. Sein Beitrag zur Medizin und Pharmazie der Renaissance
(Stuttgart: 1990) 35. The Italian manuscript remained unpublished until 1939. See Otta-
viano C., “Prefazione”, in Campanella Tommaso, Epilogo magno (Fisiologia italiana), ed.
Ottaviano C. (Rome: 1939) 19. The most comprehensive study of Campanella’s medical
theories remains the one by Mönnich. On the philosophical premises of Campanella’s
medical thought Couzinet M.-D., “Notes sur les Medicinalia de Tommaso Campanella”,
Nuncius 13 (1998) 39–67; Giglioni G., “La Medicina di Tommaso Campanella tra metafisica
e cultura popolare”, in Ernst G. – Fiorani C. (eds.), Laboratorio Campanella. Biografia –
Contesti – Iniziative in Corso. Atti del Convegno della Fondazione Camillo Caetani. Roma,
19–20 ottobre 2006 (Rome: 2007) 177–195; Giglioni G., “Healing and Belief in Tommaso
Campanella’s Philosophy”, Intellectual History Review 17 (2007) 225–238. On Campanella’s
theory of conception Giglioni G., “Immaginazione, spiriti e generazione. La teoria del con-
cepimento nella Philosophia sensibus demonstrata di Campanella”, Bruniana & Campanel-
liana 4 (1998) 37–57.
9 Cf. Ottaviano, “Prefazione” 19.
10 Cf. Nutton, “Physiologia” 30.
11 Book I is on cosmology and astronomy, book II on meteorology and geophysics,
book III on minerals, book IV on botanics, book V on animals and humans, including genera-
tion, embryonic development, anatomy and physiology. The physiological part treats both
174 sabine kalff

important medical treatise, the Medicinalia, was devoted exclusively to

medical issues, but anatomical and physiological questions were treated
mainly in the opening book. These 34 pages constitute only 5% of the
whole treatise, but anatomical and physiological topics are also touched
on elsewhere, as for instance with regard to pathology, which is discussed
at length in the sixth book.12
After having presented a pathology based on a topological classification –
a pathologia secundum partes corporis humani – in the sixth book, Cam-
panella dedicated the seventh book of the Medicinalia entirely to fevers,
which were conceived as a class of diseases affecting not only parts, but
the whole of the human body,13 as he asserted in the Epilogo magno: ‘every
fever manifests itself in the whole body’.14 Finally, Campanella put forward
such an appreciative theory of fever that one rather starts looking forward
to becoming affected by a fever as soon as possible. According to Campan-
ella, fever constituted no menace to physical health, but was rather a bodily
device of defence against illness. He held that fever was ‘not a disease, but a
war against disease, undertaken by means of a powerful force possessed by
spirit’.15 The imagery of warfare was not entirely unfamiliar to theories of
fever. Generally, it made its appearance within the context of crisis. Fever
theory implied that a final crisis, perceived as the decisive phase of an ill-
ness, was to occur in all acute, but not in chronic, forms of fever. In this
context, crisis was either understood in juridical terms as a final judgment
by which the fate of a patient was to be decided, or in military terms, as a
decisive battle between nature and disease. The latter concept came to be
promoted by Avicenna and, from that time onwards, exerted a strong influ-
ence on medical thought. Although the imagery of a battle between health
and disease had an established tradition in pathology, particularly with

anatomy and physiology, discussing the components of the human body (humores, partes
solidae, bones), and physiological processes in the modern sense, such as digestion, blood
movement and reproduction, and the functioning of heart and lungs. The sixth book covers
psychological, ethical and pathological issues. Cf. Campanella, Epilogo magno 573–577.
12 Cf. Campanella Tommaso, Medicinalium iuxta propria principia libri septem (Lyons,
Pillehotte for Caffin and Plignard: 1635).
13 This twofold classification of pathology may be traced back to medieval Arabic medi-
cine. Cf. Dell’Anna G., Dies critici. La teoria della ciclicità delle patologie nel XIV secolo (Dies
et crises) (Lecce: 1999) vol. 1, 174.
14 ‘Ogni febbre si fa in tutto il corpo’. Campanella, Epilogo magno 540. Translations from
the Italian by the author.
15 Cf. Campanella, Medicinalia 603–609. Campanella on fever will be cited here in the
English translation of book VII, ch. II, article I, contained in Rather L.J. – Frerichs J.B., “On
the Use of the Military Metaphor in Western Medical Literature: The Bellum Contra Mor-
borum of Thomas Campanella (1568–1639)”, Clio Medica 7 (1972) 202.
 the body is a battlefield 175

regard to the concept of crisis, Campanella put it forward in a way that

was different and original. First of all, fever had changed sides – it was no
longer conceived as an expression of illness, but as a powerful instrument
of a positive internal bodily force, the healing force of nature, or vis naturae
medicatrix.16 Hence, fever was a part of nature, ‘desiring to do battle and to
produce a crisis, so that fever is obviously no evil, but a remedy against evil,
to be applied when and where there is need’.17 Thus, Campanella depicted
the human body affected by fever as a battleground where two powerful
combatants encountered each other: fever as a means of the vis naturae
medicatrix and disease as an inimical force.
As a consequence, contrary to the tradition derived from Avicenna,
fever was not perceived as a form of extraneous heat invading the human
body, but as an intrinsic bodily force defending health against an inimical
intruder, which came to be identified with disease. According to Campan-
ella, fever was not at all preternatural, but only ‘natural heat converted
into fiery heat’.18 Although the Hippocratic tradition also approved of nat-
ural heat as an important physiological device, it did not appreciate bodily
heat to any degree. Campanella, on the other hand, instead advocated the
principle ‘the more the better’ with regard to temperature, and declared:
Just in this way is the issue decided between nature and disease, when the
disease had arrived at its greatest development – especially when one most
forceful febrile paroxysm comes on the heels of others.19
As the philosopher equated the intensity of heat to the intensity of war-
fare, he came to regard fever as indicative of a strong military engage-
ment. From this belligerent point of view, the presence of fever was by
far preferable to its absence, as the absence was supposed to signify the
surrender of the body to illness. And the more the temperature increased,
the more warfare was supposed to be under way. Admittedly, fever some-
times looked like disorder, causing interruptions and confusions of the
normal physiological functioning. In Campanella’s view, this was nothing
to worry about, but only a temporary suspension of the normal functions,
comparable to the state of emergency in political life:
Thus when a state is fighting against an enemy public works, agriculture
and festivals are held up; but fever does not occur in order that matters be

16 For the history of the medical idea of the healing force of nature, see Neuburger M.,
Die Lehre von der Heilkraft der Natur im Wandel der Zeiten (Stuttgart: 1926).
17 Campanella, Medicinalia, tr. Rather – Frerichs 203.
18 Campanella, Medicinalia 204.
19 Campanella, Medicinalia 202.
176 sabine kalff

impeded, but to the end that an enemy may be removed and thus the spirit,
now safe, may peaceably return to its functions.20
In short, fever led to the suspension of the normal physiological functions
of the human body in the same way as the state of war led to a temporary
cessation of civil proceedings in a political entity. As this self-defensive
warfare only occurred ‘when and where there is need,’ external regula-
tion was not required at the level of physiology. Campanella’s hypothesis
of the self-regulatory character of fever was a rather visionary insight, as
it is still shared by today’s physiology. Fever – in contrast to hypothermia
which constitutes an unregulated rise due to internal or external heat – is
regarded as a regulated rise in body temperature and is in fact supposed
to be self-regulatory.21 Furthermore, Campanella’s definition of fever as
a self-defensive reaction was soon endorsed by Jan Baptist van Helmont,
and later proved particularly influential to the military scenario of inflam-
mation, as it was developed by nineteenth-century bacteriology.22
Campanella not only accepted the physiological state of emergency
due to warfare as a kind of necessary evil, but approved explicitly of the
violent dynamics caused by fever: ‘Nor is it preternatural to have a fever,
unless it is preternatural to wage war when necessary, to attack an injuri-
ous enemy, to repel force by force’.23 While rejecting Avicenna’s notion of
fever as a preternatural physiological state, Campanella further suggested
that the feverish bodily warfare, besides being natural, was also legitimate –
or, in other words, it constituted a just war. The question whether the
conflict between nature and disease was to be regarded as a just or unjust
war, and whether the use of violence was allowed when serving the aim
of self-defence, necessary for survival, was somewhat new to pathology.
Campanella derived his fever theory from a more general physiological
speculation, conceived as an investigation into the nature of things. Fur-
thermore, the antagonistic and self-regulatory scenario underlying his
notion of fever was strongly related to the author’s political ideas and
activity which resulted in his confinement for twenty-seven years.
Before giving literary expression to his social and political visions in
La Città del Sole, Campanella had tried first to realise this new form of

20 Campanella, Medicinalia 205.

21 Cf. Leon L.R., “Cytokine Regulation of Fever: Studies Using Gene Knockout Mice”,
Journal of Applied Physiology 92, 6 (2002) 2648.
22 This is the central argument of the article by Rather and Frerichs. Cf. Rather –
­Frerichs, “On the Use of the Military Metaphor” 201.
23 Campanella, Medicinalia 204.
 the body is a battlefield 177

g­ overnment and society in this world, as the intellectual leader of the

Calabrian conspiracy of 1599. Sent back by the heads of the Dominican
order in 1598 to his native countryside, where it was hoped that the
rebellious monk would find less of an audience for his unorthodox philo-
sophical views, Campanella started to predict the advent of an imminent
universal crisis, due in the year 1600. His central argument for the ‘criti-
cal’ character of the year 1600 was based on a numerical observation –
its being composed of seven and nine, two fatal numbers, according to
Pythagoras. He thus held that ‘as the year 1600 is composed of seven hun-
dred and nine hundred, it is obvious that it is critical and decisive to the
crucial changes of terrestrial affairs’.24 This speculation was a creative and
conscious variation of medical concepts of crisis,25 particularly the theory
of critical days as put forward by the Hippocratic tradition, but which was
equally based on the relevance of Pythagorean numbers. But towards the
end of the sixteenth century, it was not absolutely necessary to practise
numerical speculation, to listen to the voice of God or to decipher stellar
messages in the sky in order to predict a crisis in southern Italy, as there
were many indicators closer at hand. As a part of the Kingdom of Naples,
from 1517 onwards Calabria was under Spanish rule and saw a process of
re-­feudalisation in the second half of the sixteenth century. The collabo-
ration of the Spanish administration with the local aristocracy26 brought
about severe conflicts on jurisdiction with the Italian communes and the
clergy. The absence of any central force able to enforce laws countrywide
led to a state of utter lawlessness27 and a high tide of banditry.28 In this
political climate, Campanella did not limit himself to preaching about the
advent of a new political order but also strongly recommended lending
a hand in its creation.29 By the summer of 1599, a network of conspira-
tors from almost all social strata had emerged, intending to overthrow
the Spanish rule with the military support of the powerful local bandits
and the Turkish fleet. Although the conspiracy failed before any concrete

24 Campanella Tommaso, Secondo schema delle difese di Fra Tommaso Campanella.

Articoli profetali da inserire nelle difese di Campanella, in Firpo L. (ed.), Il supplizio di Tom-
maso Campanella. Narrazioni – Documenti – Verbali delle torture (Rome: 1985) 169.
25 Campanella, Secondo schema delle difese 167.
26 Villari R., The Revolt of Naples (Cambridge etc.: 1993) 105.
27 ‘[. . .] the lawlessness that normally prevailed had reached epic proportions by the
last decade of the sixteenth century’. Headley J.M., Tommaso Campanella and the Trans-
formation of the World (Princeton, NJ: 1997) 32.
28 Cf. Villari, The Revolt of Naples 34.
29 Cf. Amabile L., Fra Tommaso Campanella. La sua congiura, i suoi processi e la sua
pazzia (Naples: 1882), vol. 1, 150.
178 sabine kalff

plan was put into action, the attempt to initiate a ‘just war’ against the
Spanish monarchy made it clear that Campanella meant to ‘repel force by
force’ at a very real political level. His concrete political action obviously
concurred with his advocating aggression as a legitimate expression of
self-defence with regard to fever, as he declared: ‘I believe that all fever
is a state of wrath, I mean an arousal of spirit for defence, that is, for
slaughter and extrusion of an inimical cause’.30 In other words, Campan-
ella’s description of fever as a means of self-defence against an inimical
intruder, and his reference to the medical concept of crisis, may also be
read against the background of the Spanish rule over south Italy where it
functions as a medical justification of political resistance and opposition
against an ‘unjust’ rule. Medical arguments and those derived from natu-
ral philosophy here seemingly provided an alternative to the well-known
legal legitimations of political resistance.
Campanella also made explicit that spirits were the vehicle of the natu-
ral force of healing for warfare and self-defence. Here, the early modern
theory of spiritus came into play, which relied heavily on ancient physio-
logical thought, particularly of Galenic provenance. Campanella and other
early modern advocates of a theory of spirits, like Jean Fernel, conceived
of spiritus as a kind of vitalising principle of a subtle, volatile substance
which also required a more solid means of transportation throughout the
body, which came to be identified as blood. Spirits, of course, were held
responsible not only for fever but also for a wide range of bodily functions,
such as perception, motion, and the renewal of innate heat. After being
inspired by Bernardino Telesio’s theory of sensus, Campanella related spir-
itus closely to sensus, a kind of animate principle inherent in all matter
endowing it with a kind of basic sensory perception which enabled it to
take notice and to interact.31 But as spirits were supposed to be consumed
while fulfilling their manifold physiological duties, continuous regenera-
tion was required in order to maintain vitality. Campanella assumed
that the process of generation of spirit was thoroughly dependent on the
equally incessant process of producing blood. As blood was supposed to
be the end product of digestion, spirits were thought to emerge in the
same way: through the ingestion of food which was gradually transformed
and refined on its way through the three principal organs, liver, heart, and

30 Campanella, Medicinalia 203.

31 Cf. Campanella Tommaso, Del senso delle cose e della magia, ed. Ernst G. (Rome-Bari:
2007) 13.
 the body is a battlefield 179

brain. En route through the very hierarchical human body, the travelling
spirits underwent processes of concoction and division which brought
about significant changes in their material quality.
According to Campanella, the process of transformation and refine-
ment reached its culmination in the brain; more precisely, in the retiform
plexus. Here, rather than refinement through concoction, a multiplication
of spirits by means of division took place, as Campanella pointed out in the
Epilogo magno: ‘The retiform plexus is made for chopping the blood into
pieces and thus to create immediately many spirits’.32 Although Campan-
ella generally took into account the traditional distinction between three
species of spiritus – spiritus naturalis, spiritus vitalis, and spiritus animalis –
in his discussion of fever, he made no reference to any specific kind of
spiritus. Campanella only referred very generically to the spirits engaged
in warfare, and tended to treat them as a homogeneous species. So it was
spirits in general who were supposed to gather for military recruitment
when they received the musical signal given by the rhythmical beat of
the pulse: ‘Therefore this sort of an increase of pulsations indicates that
need has decided that many spirits are recruited to come into the place, in
the war’.33 Although it is frequently supposed that physiological theories
assumed a kind of composite of decentralised sub-systems lacking coher-
ence and unity before Harvey’s theory of a closed-circuit blood circula-
tion postulated blood as a homogeneous substance,34 Campanella’s fever
theory displayed traits of homogenisation as far as spirits were concerned.
Besides this generalised concept of spirits, Campanella also emphasised
the value of their mere quantity – no matter what their quality may be,
suffice that they were many. As a large number of spirits and a high inten-
sity of body motion and heat guaranteed a strong military engagement
in the battle, the heightened physiological activity due to fever appeared
almost as a heightened state of health. These tendencies to generalise
spirits, to appreciate multiplication and acceleration, further indicated a
slight shift towards the simplification and quantification of the traditional
theory of medical spirits.

32 Campanella, Epilogo magno 362.

33 Campanella, Medicinalia 203. For Campanella’s insistence on the music’s impact on
the motion of the spirits see Ernst G., Tommaso Campanella. Il libro e il corpo della natura
(Rome-Bari: 2002) 186.
34 See for instance Klier with regard to Jean Fernel. Klier G., Die drei Geister des Menschen.
Die sogenannte Spirituslehre in der Physiologie der Frühen Neuzeit (Stuttgart: 2002) 54.
180 sabine kalff

Campanella’s approval of the powerful motion of spirits and other bodily

fluids, such as blood, was based on more general physiological principles
which were thought to underlie nature as a whole. Thus, the author con-
cluded that perpetual motion was the ‘natural’ state of all things, animate
as well as inanimate. As a consequence, Campanella was more concerned
with the encouragement of motion than with its decrease or regulation.
The antagonistic principle that brought about conflict was also used to
explain the formation and preservation of Creation, as it came into being
right at the beginning of the world:
God ordained that from this mass of tangible matter two intangible artifi-
cers should emerge who could not remain without a body. And hence the
Warmth and the Cold were born, as active principles, albeit with an expan-
sive tendency. Immediately they became adversaries, since both of them
wanted to occupy the whole of the material space: therefore they began to
fight against each other, since God had ordained that this discord should be
the source of much benefit.35
As the antagonistic principle was derived from physiological specula-
tion, it was obviously thought to apply not only to living beings, but also
to all sorts of natural phenomena occurring in all spheres. As a conse-
quence, conflict and antagonism could not possibly be adverse to nature,
but worked for her benefit and expansion from the very beginning. The
antagonistic structure at the basis of Campanella’s fever theory served not
only to explain the preservation of motion at the level of physiology but
was also extended to the political and societal sphere. By ennobling con-
flict as a generative principle, Campanella moved surprisingly close to one
of his opponents in the sphere of political thought, Niccolò Machiavelli.
In the Discourses on the first decade of Titus Livius (1531), Machiavelli put
forward the question by which means the preservation of a state could be
ensured. With this concern, the famous Florentine distinguished between
two types of states: on the one hand, static republics such as Sparta, which
aimed at maintaining a well-established constitution, and on the other,
expansionist states such as the Roman republic, whose constitution under-
went considerable changes over time. While the Spartan republic owed its
stability to its foundation on an ideal constitution, the perfect mixture
of the Roman republic was supposed to result from discord and conflict.
Thus, the status mixtus of the Roman republic, its ideal composition of
elements of the three pure forms of government – monarchy, aristocracy

35 Campanella, Epilogo magno 194f.

 the body is a battlefield 181

and democracy – evolved from a basic antagonism underlying Machia-

velli’s famous dynamic principle:
But let us come to Rome. Notwithstanding that it did not have a Lycurgus
to order it in the beginning in a mode that would enable it to live free a
long time, nonetheless so many accidents arose in it through the disunion
between the plebs and the Senate, that what an orderer had not done,
chance did.36
The stability of the Roman republic was hence supposed to result from
the constructive collision of two antagonistic interests. Moreover, con-
flicts generally appeared to be beneficial to political life, as Machiavelli
declared: ‘in every republic there are two diverse humours, that of the
people and that of the great; and all the laws that are made in favour of
freedom arise from their disunion’.37 Machiavelli, just like Campanella,
saw no necessity to control or regulate these dynamics for the benefit of
politics, but rather feared their slowing down. Therefore, he scrutinised
the possibilities of maintaining and renewing the motion of political bod-
ies in order to retain their vitality: ‘And it is a thing clearer than light that
these bodies do not last if they do not renew themselves. The mode of
renewing them is, as was said, to lead them back to their beginnings’.38
Motion seemed not only to be the ‘natural’ state of affairs, both in nature
and politics, but was also advocated as an important means of preserving
a state.
State preservation became an important political objective to be pur-
sued by governmental techniques in the debate on the ‘reason of state’
which developed later in the sixteenth century. Giovanni Botero, the
author of the first treatise on reason of state, Della ragion di stato (1589),
famously declared: ‘State is a stable rule over peoples, and Reason of
State is the knowledge of the means by which such a dominion may be
founded, preserved and expanded’.39 The concern for preservation of
states, considered by Botero to be by far the most important task, in fact
permeated the whole discussion of reason of state. Moreover, it very prob-
ably emerged from the medical discourse on epidemics, as Colin Jones has
argued: ‘Thus, the language of ‘preservation,’ which originates in the medi-
cal script and is oriented around the individual, spreads to the political

36 Machiavelli Niccolò, Discourses on Livy I, 2 (Chicago-London: 1996) 14.

37 Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy I, 4, 16.
38 Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy III, 1, 209.
39 Botero Giovanni, Della ragion di stato. Con tre libri delle cause della grandezza delle
città, due aggiunte e un discorso sulla popolazione di Roma, ed. Firpo L. (Turin: 1948) 3.
182 sabine kalff

script, where the preservation of the whole community is at issue’.40 Two

factors were crucial here – on the one hand, the experience of epidemics
in which the political community indeed was at stake, and on the other
hand the availability of a medical concept which helped to structure and
shape a new aspect of political analysis.
Hence, Machiavelli and Campanella similarly advocated a kind of
dynamic equilibrium of forces which, according to Michel Foucault, was
not theorised until the treaties of Münster and Osnabrück, the basis for the
Peace of Westphalia, were signed in 1648. In Security, Territory, Population,
he argued for the existence of two species of theorists on reason of state.
While the first category aimed at the maintenance of ‘status’ and the state,
the second group, identified with ‘practitioners’ of reason of state, strove for
expansion and the preservation of a dynamic equilibrium at the level of for-
eign relations.41 The analysis of political dynamics undertaken by the ‘prac-
titioners’ of reason of state was further supposed to be based on a ‘modern’
science, namely the physics of motion, as put forward by Leibniz:
So the dynamics of politics and the dynamics of physics are more or less
contemporaneous. And we should see how all of this is connected through
Leibniz, who is the general theorist of force as much from the historical-
political point of view as from the point of view of physical science.42
But this classification ignored the existence of those theorists, like Machi-
avelli and Campanella, who advocated dynamic processes in domestic
policies much earlier and evidently rejected the idea that motion was some-
thing noxious to the political sphere.43 Both authors agreed that political
dynamics were not only unavoidable, but also beneficial. Moreover, they
believed that no governmental intervention was required to regulate or
to balance these dynamics. Despite their mutual interest in the study of
political motion, their analysis owed much less to the Leibnizian physics of
motion than to physiological speculation about the nature of dynamics and
conflict. Equally, Francesco Guicciardini, while rejecting outright Machia-
velli’s optimistic view of the constructive outcome of conflicting political
constellations, did not refer to legal or physical arguments, but to medical

40 Jones C., “Plague and Its Metaphors in Early Modern France”, Representations 53
(1996) 112.
41 Cf. Foucault M., Security, Territory, Population. Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977–
78 (New York etc.: 2007) 289.
42 Cf. Foucault, Security, Territory, Population 295.
43 The contrary opinion was held, for instance, by the Neapolitan lawyer Antonio
Palazzo, another author on reason of state (Discorso del governo e della ragion vera di stato,
1606) discussed by Foucault.
 the body is a battlefield 183

ones. Machiavelli’s praise of the beneficial effects of the antagonistic struc-

ture of the Roman republic was to him comparable to the appreciation of a
disease thanks to the excellence of the remedy applied.44

Controlled Dynamics. Francis Bacon’s ‘Royal and Political Motion’

The interrelation between physiological and political concepts is notice-

able not only in the works of Campanella, but also in those of his con-
temporary, the philosopher and statesman Francis Bacon. His essay Of
Seditions and Troubles (1625), in particular, discussed political struggle
and disharmony in terms of physiological dynamics.45 Moreover, the Lord
Chancellor’s analysis of upheaval, conceived as extreme political dynamics,
became consciously linked to his physiological ideas as put forward in his
treatise on the physiology of aging, the History of Life and Death (Historia
vitae et mortis, 1623). The History of Life and Death focused on the preserva-
tion and extension of human life, while the manifold measures proposed
were mostly based on a theory of spirits. Similar topics were addressed in
the earlier treatise De vijs mortis (1611), which was a stepping-stone to the
natural philosophy implied in History of Life and Death.46 Like Campanella,
Bacon apparently had very little medical knowledge based on personal
experience.47 No wonder that physiology, as a ‘speculative science which
derives its conclusions from rational contemplation’,48 strongly appealed
to Bacon. Apparently, strictly anatomical issues remained absent from the

44 Guicciardini Francesco, Considerazioni intorno ai discorsi del Machiavelli sopra la

prima deca di Tito Livio, in Guicciardini Francesco, Opere inedite, ed. Guicciardini P. –
Guicciardini L. (Florence: 1857), vol. 1, 13.
45 The essay already appeared in a manuscript written between 1607 and 1612, but was
not included in the print edition of 1612. The edition of 1625 contained a substantially
enlarged version. Cf. Spedding J. – Ellis R.L. – Heath D.D., “Edition of 1612”, in Bacon Fran-
cis, The Works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, and Lord High Chan-
cellor of England, eds. Spedding J. – Ellis R.L. – Heath D.D. (London: 1858–1874), vol. VI, 1
(Hereafter cited as Works) 536.
46 The manuscript of this treatise was only published in 1984. Cf. Rees G., “Introduc-
tion”, in Bacon Francis, The Oxford Francis Bacon, ed. Rees G. (Oxford etc.: 2003), vol. VI
(Hereafter cited as OFB) xxxi; Rees G. (assisted by Upton C.), Francis Bacon’s Natural Phi-
losophy. A New Source (Chalfont St. Giles: 1984).
47 Practices of self-experimentation are difficult to assess, but they apparently existed,
as Bacon nonchalantly reports a weird experiment by a ‘certain gentleman who, in playful
mood and out of curiosity, wanting to know what people suffered when they were hanged,
hanged himself’. The gentleman would have experienced death itself, had it not been for a
friend who helped him back onto the stool from which he had jumped. Bacon Francis, His-
tory of Life and Death in Bacon Francis, OFB, ed. Rees G. (Oxford etc.: 2007), vol. XII, 341.
48 Bylebyl, “Disputation and Description” 226.
184 sabine kalff

medical writings of Bacon. An investigation into the ­interrelation between

Bacon’s political and medical thought also requires a closer look at the
Lord Chancellor’s physiological speculation itself, which is a part of his
natural philosophy.49
His essay Of Seditions and Troubles is primarily concerned with the
political techniques aimed at the preservation of states. Botero’s distinc-
tion between means of extension and means of preservation of states –
the latter being considered the most important – seems to be implicit
here, as Bacon discussed the aspect of expansion elsewhere in the
Essays, namely in On the True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates (1625).50
Although Bacon repudiated the optimistic view on self-regulation as put
forward by Machiavelli and Campanella, he concurred with the idea that
motion was as natural in states as it was in nature itself. Hence, its mere
existence could not possibly endanger the persistence of states. As motion
was again seen as resulting from a fundamental antagonistic pattern char-
acterising political structures, Bacon explicitly approved of conflictual
states in nature and equally agreed with Machiavelli on its constructive
character in the political sphere. It was not discord that was regarded as
the utmost evil in political life, but concord, or the unification of interests
between antagonistic social and political factions, as this constituted a
serious threat for any ruler:
When one of these is Discontent, the danger is not great, For Common Peo-
ple, are of slow Motion, if they be not excited, by the Greater Sort; And the
Greater Sort are of small strength [. . .]. Then is the danger, when the Greater
Sort doe but wait for the Troubling of the Water, amongst the Meaner, that
then they may declare themselves.51
This was mostly a variation of a commonplace derived from the literature
on reason of state, which maintained that the stability of the government
could be enhanced by fostering disunity amongst the subjects. But the
passage also revealed that Bacon, like Machiavelli, approved of the tense

49 Rees, “Introduction” (see footnote 47) is a comprehensive account of the author’s

extensive research on Bacon’s natural philosophy. See also Rees G., “Matter Theory: A Uni-
fying Factor in Bacon’s Natural Philosophy?”, Ambix 24, 2 (1977) 110–125. For Bacon’s theory
of spirits Rees G., “Francis Bacon and Spiritus Vitalis”, in Fattori M. – Bianchi M. (eds.),
Spiritus. IV° Colloquio Internazionale. Roma, 7–9 gennaio 1983 (Rome: 1984) 265–281.
50 Similarly to Of Seditions and Troubles, a first version of the essay existed already in 1612
and was printed under the title Of the True Greatness of the Kingdom of Britain. The version
from 1625 is twice as long as the earlier draft. See Peltonen M., “Politics and Science: Francis
Bacon and the True Greatness of States”, The Historical Journal 35, 2 (1992) 284.
51 Bacon Francis, “Of Seditions and Troubles”, in Bacon, Works, vol. VI, 1, 411.
 the body is a battlefield 185

equilibrium of political forces in the sphere of domestic policies. Thus, in

order to preserve a political equilibrium based on divergent interests, the
ruler should not take sides:
Also, as Macciavel noteth well; when Princes, that ought to be Common
parents, make themselves as a Party, and leane to a side, it is as a Boat that
is overthrown, by uneven weight, on the one Side.52
This implied that the ruler had no part in the antagonistic pattern, but
rather constituted a third party with a different, coordinative and regula-
tory function. By the introduction of a third party, Bacon challenged the
Machiavellian and Campanellian concept of a dualistic and self-­regulating
dynamism. This new element functioned as a balance, evidently not
between two static weights, but between two forces strongly opposed to
each other. The standstill was only apparent because it was caused by
the maximal resistance of two forces, as Bacon illustrated: ‘if someone is
pinned to the ground in a wrestling bout, and bound hand and foot, or
held down otherwise, and yet with all his strength still struggles to get up,
his resistance is no less because it gets him nowhere’.53
With regard to politics, Bacon approved of both motion and heat, but in
contrast to Campanella, he insisted on their moderate application. Bacon
equated political upheaval to the physiological state of feverish heat and
considered them both dangerous: ‘As for Discontentments, they are in the
Politique Body, like to Humours in the Naturall, which are apt to gather a
preternaturall Heat, and to Enflame’.54 Clearly echoing Avicenna’s hypoth-
esis that fever was a kind of extraneous heat, Bacon pointed out the neces-
sity of applying temperature regulation to the political sphere. Otherwise,
the whole state ran the risk of burning down. Hence the Baconian warn-
ing to prevent reasons for upheaval, such as discontentment and wide-
spread poverty, from emerging: ‘For if there be the Fuell prepared, it is
hard to tell, whence the Spark shall come, that shall set it on Fire’.55 Bacon
described seditions and civil wars quite consistently in terms of pathologi-
cal states of heightened temperature and sharply distinguished this from
healthy forms of excessive temperature, like those resulting from exer-
cise. The healthy exercise Bacon had in mind was warfare against foreign

52 Bacon, Works, vol. VI, 1, 408.

53 Bacon Francis, Novum Organum, in Bacon Francis, OFB, ed. Rees G. (Oxford etc.:
2004), vol. XI, 417.
54 Bacon, Works, vol. VI, 1, 409.
55 Bacon, Works, vol. VI, 1, 408.
186 sabine kalff

countries, as he asserted: ‘No Body can be healthful without exercise, neither

naturall body, nor politic [. . .]. A civil War indeed is like the heat of a
fever; but a foreign war, is like the heat of exercise, and serveth to keep the
body in health’.56 Here, the Baconian speculations on bodily heat serve to
justify an imperialist policy.
Obviously, with regard to fever, body temperature was not conceived as
self-regulatory, at least not in political bodies. And this proclaimed neces-
sity of temperature regulation derived directly from Bacon’s physiological
notions. In History of Life and Death, Bacon made explicit that fever was
an extraneous form of heat which posed a threat to the calor innatus, or
innate heat:
If the spirit endures an insult from another heat far stronger than its own
it is dissipated and destroyed [. . .]. We see this in burning fevers where the
heat of the putrefied humours surpasses the native heat to the point of
extinguishing or dissipating it.57
It further became obvious that the generation of innate heat was sup-
posed to be the task of the spirits, which were expected to perform the
same functions in the physiological sphere as the ruler was to accomplish
in the political arena. The theory of spirits put forward by Francis Bacon
was not concerned only with the working of the spirits in living bodies, but
equally with their relevance for cosmological, meteorological, mechanical
and hydrodynamic phenomena. His undertaking therefore may be rightly
called ‘physiology’ in the early modern sense, i.e. an investigation into the
physis or nature of all things. The theory of spirits put forward by Francis
Bacon diverged from the usual distinction into three kinds of spirits, as it
asserted the existence of only two species, namely the spiritus mortualis
and spiritus vitalis. While the first was inanimate and resided in all things
in the cosmos, the second, animate, spirit was only found in living things.
The spiritus vitalis provided animate bodies with two important qualities:
as a kind of kinetic substance it endowed the body with the faculty of
motion, and as a coordinative element it regulated motion and enabled
interaction.
The vital spirits were held responsible for all dynamic processes in
the living body, as Bacon pointed out: ‘The spirits are the craftsmen and

56 Bacon Francis, “Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates”, in Bacon, Works
VI, 1, 411.
57 Bacon, History of Life and Death, OFB, vol. XII, 333.
 the body is a battlefield 187

­ orkers who do everything that happens in the body’.58 This meant that
w
they not should work like maniacs, but rather should maintain a steady
rhythm at work – ‘not twitchy or uneven in their motion’.59 Rapid motion
was to be avoided because it was supposed to be accompanied by an
increase in body temperature which was explicitly thought to be noxious,
as heat transformed diligent spirits into voracious beasts which consumed
the body’s resources at a fast pace: ‘For these give the spirits heat which
is not workmanlike but rapacious’.60 After all, fever was perceived as an
irregular form of increase in body temperature with damaging conse-
quences for physiological dynamics.
Spirits were further supposed to act as a prime mover in the sphere of
human physiology, giving a strong initial impetus which was conveyed
successively throughout the body: ‘The nature of the spirits is as it were
the chief cog which keeps all the other cogs in the human body turning’.61
Exactly the same idea was voiced by Bacon with regard to the political
sphere – here, the strongest impetus had to emanate from the ruler and
should not be surpassed by the motion of any other person in the state:
For the Motions of the greatest persons, in a Government, ought to be, as
the Motion of the Planets, under Primum Mobile; [. . .] which is, That Every
of them, is carried swiftly, by the Highest Motion, and softly by their own
Motion.62
In order to demonstrate the necessity of a hierarchical sequence of motions
in the political sphere, Bacon introduced an astronomical theory derived
from Alpetragius, an Arabic Aristotelian from the twelfth century. Alpe-
tragius had explained celestial motion as a result of the powerful initial
impetus of the prime mover which was passed on from planetary sphere
to sphere, a process which was accompanied by a gradual decrease of
speed. This led to the assumption of a proportional ratio between position
in space and respective speed, or, in other words, the lower the sphere
and planet, the slower its periodic motion. As the theory was strongly
opposed to astronomical observation and the longstanding knowledge of
planetary cycles, by the early seventeenth century it was not taken seri-
ously by anyone but Francis Bacon. Although Bacon’s fame was rooted

58 Bacon, History of Life and Death, OFB, vol. XII, 245.

59 Bacon, History of Life and Death, OFB, vol. XII, 247.
60 Bacon, History of Life and Death, OFB, vol. XII, 259.
61 Bacon, History of Life and Death, OFB, vol. XII, 365.
62 Bacon, Works, vol. VI, 1, 408.
188 sabine kalff

in his proposal of a full programme and method for the constitution of

a new body of scientific knowledge, as put forward in The Advancement
of Learning (1605) and Novum Organum (1620), he remained opposed to
many important contributions to the sciences during his lifetime, such as
Copernican astronomy63 or Harveian physiology. The latter is even more
striking if one takes into account that Bacon could have obtained infor-
mation at first hand from William Harvey, who from 1618 onwards also
ministered to Bacon as a physician.
The Alpetragian astronomy held that motion was distributed among the
planets hierarchically. Bacon applied this top-down model to the political
order and concluded that an over-proportional activity by any politician
would result in utter confusion, and asserted: ‘And therefore, when great
Ones, in their owne particular Motion, move violently, [. . .] it is a Signe, the
Orbs are out of Frame’.64 Evidently, Bacon did not advocate a static state,
but a dynamic one, as long as it were in due proportion to its position in a
highly ordered cosmic and political hierarchy. In contrast to Campanella,
Bacon tended to analyse the political scenery from a bird’s eye view. His
identification with the ruler’s perspective very likely had to do with his
own elevated political rank. His career as a member of parliament, which
had originally progressed slowly, began to prosper notably with the suc-
cession of James I to the crown in 1603 and culminated in his appointment
to the position of Lord Chancellor in 1618. Although Bacon later fell into
disgrace when he was charged with corruption, he never relinquished his
claims to the highest political ranks.65 Some of his other political writings
also displayed the tendency to view politics from the ruler’s perspective.66
Two apologetic texts dealt with Bacon’s role in real seditions and troubles,
namely with Bacon’s responsibility as legal counsellor of Elizabeth I in
the lawsuit against his former patron and political ally, Robert Devereux,
Earl of Essex, who was accused of high treason and was executed in 1601.
A Declaration of the Practises and Treasons Attempted and Committed by
Robert, late Earl of Essex and his Complices (1601) functioned as a defence
against the public accusation of disloyalty. In Sir Francis Bacon His Apol-

63 Cf. Rees, “Introduction” xl.

64 Bacon, Works, vol. VI, 1, 408.
65 Peltonen M., “Bacon’s Political Philosophy”, in Peltonen M. (ed.) The Cambridge
Companion to Bacon (Cambridge etc.: 1996) 283.
66 Most notably The History of the Reign of King Henry the Seventh (1622).
 the body is a battlefield 189

ogy, in Certain Imputations ­Concerning the Late Earl of Essex (1604),67 a

similar strategy was adopted, thus maintaining that what might look like
disloyalty and ingratitude towards Bacon’s former supporter, could, when
seen from a different angle, take on the appearance of loyalty towards
royal interests, and therefore to the state. With regard to the initiation of
motion, the emphasis that Bacon placed on the highest political sphere
perfectly agreed with his physiological speculations which encompassed
the working of the spirits at all levels of nature. Spirits, both vital and
mortal, constituted the unifying element, as their activity brought about
the dynamic principle that permeated all spheres.
From this perspective, the ruler’s activity came to be regarded as the
central or universal motion that subsequently affected all parts of the
state. This centralised force had its equivalent in the working of the vital
spirits at the physiological level. Hence, Bacon’s physiology and political
reflection, like Campanella’s, displayed a generalising tendency in binding
together the bewildering multitude of forces, faculties and virtues that
were supposed to be at work in bodily processes. Despite this universalis-
ing tendency, the ruler was not expected to be the sole dynamic part, as
his motion concurred with the feebler local motion of other statesmen. In
fact, Bacon did not expect the whole state to remain motionless except
for the monarch, but took the local motion into account, as long as this
motion remained within limits. This therefore led to the second impor-
tant function of the ruler, which was to regulate and coordinate motions
performed by other political players. This regulative function, as evoked
in Bacon’s suggestion that the ruler should avoid taking sides and should
instead try to balance existing tensions, equally corresponded to the activ-
ity of the spirits in the realm of physiology. In fact, the vital spirits also
provided a kind of central motion, which sometimes encountered the
opposition of a weaker local motion from the organs. The idea of local
motion, both with regard to physics and physiology, had a longstanding
tradition that went back at least as far as Aristotle.
Bacon further introduced political thought into this physiological rea-
soning, as he came to analogise the relationship between local and central
motion, and the political distinction between public and private matters.
Central motion performed by the vital spirits should prevail over local

67 Both texts adopted the genre of letters to two noble allies of the Essex party, but they
were clearly meant to circulate beyond their official addressees. They failed completely
in their intention, as the rumours concerning Bacon’s ambiguous role in the Essex trial
persisted.
190 sabine kalff

ones, like public interests prevail over private needs: ‘appetites which act
for private interest seldom prevail over more public ones, except where
small quantities are involved; which is not the case, alas, in civil affairs’.68
The existence of different kinds of motion, diverging with regard to their
intensity, seemed to necessitate a coordinative device which Bacon sup-
posed to be indispensable for the most basic physiological functions, such
as digestion and assimilation which were attributed primarily to the work-
ing of the spirits. They seemed ‘to act by perceptio, mere reactions to local
stimuli, but these reactions [were] co-ordinated by the vital spirit’.69 As a
consequence, the vital spirits performed a supervising function over the
most essential and persistent physiological processes, which, like temper-
ature regulation, were not thought to work autonomously. Bacon further-
more explicitly identified this important function that he saw at work in
physiological processes as a governmental technique. After all, the coordi-
native function figured prominently under the title of the ‘Royal or Politi-
cal Motion’ in the Baconian classification of nineteen simple motions, as
listed in the Novum Organum.70 It was defined as a universal force,
by which the parts governing or maintaining in ascendancy in any body
curb, tame, suppress, and order the other parts, and compel them to unite,
separate, stand still, move, and assemble, not according to their own desires
but to the well-being of the governing part, and that the ruling part exercises
a kind of Government or Political Power over the subject parts.71
The performance of this kind of motion was primarily the task of the vital
spirits and was conceived as an excellent skill which characterised only
the most refined substances: ‘Nor is this motion a property of spirits alone,
though in most bodies the spirits have the upper hand on account of their
swift and penetrating motion’.72 From this naturalisation of Bacon’s politi-
cal ideas it may be deduced that he identified the ruler’s task with the coor-
dination, organisation and also the suppression of the subjected forces; a
task which, according to him, served the common good. At the political
level, rulers were doubtlessly endowed with coordinative ­faculties, but

68 Bacon, Novum Organum, OFB, vol. XI, 409. The ‘appetites’ seem reminiscent of
Machiavelli’s diction.
69 Rees, “Introduction” lviii.
70 Cf. Bacon, Novum Organum, OFB XI, 384–417. We would rather call them forces or
faculties. Like Aristotle, Bacon abstained from a definition of motion as a single change in
spatial position but included many processes which implied significant changes in mate-
rial quality.
71 Bacon, Novum Organum, OFB, vol. XI, 409.
72 Bacon, Novum Organum, OFB, vol. XI, 409.
 the body is a battlefield 191

Bacon nonetheless suggested that it was wiser to rely on auxiliary mili-

tary support: ‘let Princes, against all Events, not be without some great
Person, one, or rather more, of Military Valour neere unto them, for the
Repression of Seditions, in their beginnings’.73 By ascribing governmental
practices of control and regulation to the vital spirit, Bacon contextualised
the assumed activity of the vital spirit in natural bodies with the execu-
tion of governmental techniques by the ruler in the political sphere. In
other words, the ruler was supposed to act on the political ground in the
same way as the vital spirit in the sphere of physiology.
Bacon was not only well acquainted with the political thought of
Machiavelli and reason of state, but as a statesman was also familiar with
its practice.74 Therefore, he surely merits inclusion into the category of
‘practitioners’ of reason of state as proposed by Foucault. But neither the
Baconian reflection on dynamics and forces, nor the ideas of Campan-
ella, owed as much to the physics of Leibniz or the Leibnizian field of
forces as Foucault suggested. It seems that the interrelation between the
theorisation of political and mechanical dynamics preceded Leibnizian
physics and the Peace of Westphalia, and that Foucault’s hypothesis of
the relationship therefore needs to be historicised. Both Campanella and
Bacon, instead of relying on the physics of motion, seem to have derived
their ideas on political dynamics primarily from physiological concepts of
motion which were thought to apply to a multitude of natural phenomena
and were not restricted to living bodies. Physiological processes, such as
the generation of body motion and heat and the communication between
bodily parts, obviously provided an important model for the description
of dynamics and interaction in the political sphere – and vice versa. Both
authors seem to use physiological concepts in a consistent way, which
is most obvious in their discussion of fever. Bacon’s subtle distinction
between innate heat, preternatural heat and bodily heat resulting from
exercise in the debate concerning seditions indicates that this is evoking
not an everyday notion of fever, but a medically consistent one. Hence,
medical language contributed in structuring the debate on seditions and
other forms of political unrest and in providing the conceptual frame
within which newly emerging topics, like that of state preservation, could
begin to be discussed. In this sense, the frequent reference to physiology

73 Bacon, Works, vol. VI, 1, 412.

74 For Bacon’s indebtedness to Machiavelli see Peltonen, “Politics and Science: Francis
Bacon and the True Greatness of States” 279.
192 sabine kalff

in early modern political thought may be understood as an important con-

tribution to the process of the medicalisation of governmental techniques,
a process by which medical practices such as physiology, diagnostics and
therapy came to be regarded as valuable instruments of political analysis
and governmental action. The application of medical practices to politi-
cal analysis further constitutes an early attempt to establish a science of
politics on the basis of a natural science; namely, medicine.
 the body is a battlefield 193

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——, Novum Organum, in Bacon Francis, The Oxford Francis Bacon, ed. Rees G., 15 vols.
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——, “Of Seditions and Troubles”, in Bacon Francis, The Works of Francis Bacon, Baron of
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Campanella Tommaso, Del senso delle cose e della magia, ed. Ernst G. (Rome-Bari:
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——, Medicinalium iuxta propria principia libri septem (Lyons, Pillehotte for Caffin and
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 HERMAN BOERHAAVE’S NEUROLOGY AND THE UNCHANGING
NATURE OF PHYSIOLOGY

Rina Knoeff

Summary

In the early eighteenth century Herman Boerhaave was one of the most important
medical teachers. It has been argued that his success was largely due to the fact
that he managed to incorporate modern discoveries into the Hippocratic medi-
cine taught at the university. The synthesis of ancient ideas and modern discover-
ies is clearly visible in Boerhaave’s physiology of the brain and nerves. This essay
argues that (1) in Boerhaave’s physiology of the brain and nerves the ancients
and early-moderns were not opposed but offered complementary explanations,
whereby it must be remarked that ancient concepts (for example, the sensorium
commune) often received new meanings; and (2) that Boerhaave’s neurological
ideas ideally fitted the old, and essentially philosophical, discipline of physiology
and that, for this reason, we cannot in the case of Boerhaave’s neurology speak of
a ‘changing concept of physiology’ in the Early Modern period.

In order to teach his pupils about the business of physiology, the Dutch
medical teacher Herman Boerhaave (1668–1738) illustrated his lectures
with a case study. He told his students the story of the youngest daughter
of a Dutchman living in America. The girl seemingly died from an epi-
demic fever. A slave, originally from Angola, knew how to ‘restore the dear
soul to life’. He chewed upon some very strong plants and spat them into
the nose of the girl while simultaneously opening her mouth. Boerhaave
stated that in so doing the slave agitated the sensorium commune in order
to ‘excite them [the nerves] to motion, make the heart contract, and pro-
pel forward its blood’. After repeating the action several times, the girl was
brought back to life and ‘recovered’ (although even Boerhaave wondered
what kind of life remained as the girl seemed ‘to be in a sort of limbo
between life and death’).1

1 Boerhaave Herman, Dr. Boerhaave’s Academical Lectures on the Theory of Physic. Being
a Genuine Translation of His Institutes and Explanatory Comment (London, W. Innys: 1751),
vol. I, 91–92.
196 rina knoeff

In this curious story about a miraculous recovery to life, Boerhaave

explicitly linked physiology – which he defined as ‘the sum or aggregate
of all the actions performed in the living body’ – to the working of the
nervous system.2 It is not surprising, therefore, that Boerhaave mentioned
not the heart, but the brain, as the central organ of the body. Boerhaave
was particularly interested in the sensorium commune or ‘that which
moves the nerves’ as the central organ causing the body’s life and motion.
After all, in the case of the ‘dead’ girl, the juices of the plant agitated the
sensorium commune and the nerves even before the heart and lungs were
affected. Also, Boerhaave’s insistence on the brain as the most potent
organ of the body, which he borrowed from the Hippocratic writings, such
as the treatise On the Sacred Disease, seamlessly fitted the new Harveian
physiology of circulation.
In this essay I argue firstly that, in Boerhaave’s physiology of the brain
and nerves, the ancients and early-moderns were not opposed but offered
complementary explanations; and secondly that Boerhaave’s neurological
ideas perfectly fitted the ancient discipline of physiology and that, for this
reason, at least in the case of Boerhaave’s neurology, we cannot speak of
a ‘changing concept of physiology’ in the Early Modern period. But before
arguing these points I first discuss how Boerhaave’s neurology was embed-
ded in early modern physiology.

Old physiology and Boerhaave’s neurology

Andrew Cunningham has recently argued that the ‘old physiology’ cru-
cially depended on natural philosophy:
The fundamental meaning of ‘physiology’ within medicine depended directly
on its wider basic meaning as the inquiry into the natures of things in gen-
eral. That is to say, the medics’ physiology dealt with the nature of a particu-
lar natural thing, the human (or animal) body. Physiology discussed how it
is, how it works, and why [. . .] physiology was a changing and controversial
discipline over the years because it was constantly affected by the applica-
tion to it of innovations in thinking in the discipline of natural philosophy,
of which it was a subsidiary part. When explanations in natural philosophy
changed, so explanation in physiology also changed.3

2 Boerhaave, Academical Lectures, vol. I, 90–91. My italics.

3 Cunningham A., “The Pen and the Sword: Recovering the Disciplinary Identity of
Physiology and Anatomy before 1800 I: Old Physiology – The Pen”, Studies in History and
 herman boerhaave’s neurology 197

By stressing that the old physiology was a philosophical discipline, Cun-

ningham firmly denies that physiology was an experimental science in the
modern sense of the word. In Cunningham’s view the old physiology (as
opposed to the new scientific discipline of experimental physiology intro-
duced by Claude Bernard in the early nineteenth century) had very little to
do with experimental practice. It was a ‘thinking and talking discipline –
a discourse’, which meant that ‘it dealt in reasoning, not in empirical
phenomena. It sought causes: “whys?” not just “whats?” and “hows?” ’. Its
object was the nature of the healthy body and it depended on conceptual
reasoning (i.e. not on empirical or visual demonstration).
This is not to deny that early modern natural philosophers were busy
experimenting. Yet, whatever they were doing, they were not performing
physiological experiments – for physiology was a ‘theoretical knowledge’,
rather than an ‘experimental’ discipline. Again I follow the argument of
Andrew Cunningham in stating that experiments made on living and dead
animal bodies were anatomical and that until the period around 1800 it
was anatomy (and not physiology) which was considered the senior dis-
cipline in the investigation of the phenomena of life. Thus, for the early
moderns, anatomy was always ‘the primary discipline, not in the sense
that it had been created first, but because physiology usually took its sen-
sory information from anatomy, including its experimental evidence’.4
Anatomical experiments did not ask ‘why’ questions (as was usual in
physiology and natural philosophy) but they asked ‘what?’, ‘how?’, and
‘whether?’ This goes for the experiments of Dutch natural philosophers
like Jan Swammerdam and Reinier de Graaf as well as for the experiments
of William Harvey and the so called ‘Oxford physiologists’.5 Although of
course their discoveries had important physiological implications, their
experiments were anatomical. They were mainly interested in the struc-
ture and action of the human or animal body. They were, however, far less
interested in physiological speculation about final causality. After all, this

Philosophy of Science Part C. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical
Sciences 33 (2002) 641. See also Cunningham A, The Anatomist Anatomis’d. An Experimen-
tal Discipline in Enlightenment Europe (Aldershot: 2010).
4 Cunningham A., “The Pen and the Sword: Recovering the Disciplinary Identity of
Physiology and Anatomy before 1800 II: Old Anatomy – The Sword”, Studies in History and
Philosophy of Science Part C. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical
Sciences 34 (2003) 52.
5 The term ‘Oxford physiologists’ was introduced by Robert Frank in his Harvey and the
Oxford Physiologists. A Study of Scientific Ideas (Berkeley: 1980).
198 rina knoeff

was the domain of the physiologists, and removed from their anatomical
practices.
Boerhaave, unlike Swammerdam, de Graaf and Harvey, was no anat-
omist. Even more, contrary to what historians of medicine have always
argued, medical practices were not Boerhaave’s thing.6 He did not do ana-
tomical experiments himself – Albrecht von Haller states that he hardly
ever turned up when a public anatomical demonstration took place – and,
except in the final years of his academic career, he hardly ever did any
bedside teaching.7 In Boerhaave’s time the beds in the Caecilia hospital
assigned to the collegium medico-practicum were empty most of the time.8
Indeed, Boerhaave mainly gave medical advice to patients in his extended
private correspondence, but it is obvious that these paper patients had
little to do with clinical instruction. It is doubtful whether students often
observed Boerhaave treating patients. Even the lectures on nervous dis-
eases, for which Boerhaave took his students to the hospital, did not con-
tain discussions of individual patients. Boerhaave’s clinical lectures were
clearly directed at a theoretical understanding of the physiology of the
nervous system and its diseases much more than at the treatment of con-
crete medical cases. Boerhaave revealed his aversion to practical medicine
in a letter to his friend Joannes Baptista Bassand where he wrote that he
hated his ‘tiresome’ medical practice.9 To the chagrin of some of his col-
leagues, Boerhaave’s medicine – including his iatrochemical experiments –
was ‘armchair medicine’. It depended on conceptual reasoning; it was a

6 For accounts praising Boerhaave’s clinical efforts see for instance: Lindeboom G.A.,
Herman Boerhaave. The Man and his Work (Leiden: 1968) 283–297; Risse G.B., “Clinical
Instruction in Hospitals: The Boerhaavian Tradition in Leyden, Edinburgh, Vienna and
Pavia”, Clinical Teaching Past and Present. Clio Medica 21 (1987–1988) 1–19.
7 For Haller commenting on Boerhaave’s attendance at public anatomical demonstra-
tions see: Lindeboom G.A., (ed.) Haller in Holland. Het Dagboek van Albrecht von Haller van
zijn Verblijf in Holland 1725–1727 (Delft: 1958) 61.
8 Harm Beukers has looked at hospital admissions in Boerhaave’s time. See his “Clinical
Teaching in Leiden from its Beginning until the End of the Eighteenth Century”, Clinical
Teaching Past and Present. Clio Medica 21 (1987–1988) 139–152. See also Knoeff R., “Boer-
haave at Leiden: Communis Europae praeceptor”, in Arrizabalaga J. – Cunningham A. –
Grell O.P. (eds.), Centres of Medical Excellence? Medical Travel and Education in Europe,
1500–1789 (Aldershot: 2010) 269–286. Other historians of medicine have also cast doubt
on the hero-story. See for instance: Daremberg C., Histoire des Sciences Médicinales (Paris:
1870), vol. 2, 890; Ultee M., “The Politics of Professional Appointment at Leiden, 1709”,
­Journal for the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 9 (1990) 167–194; Cook H.J., “Boer-
haave and the Flight from Reason in Medicine”, Bulletin for the History of Medicine 74
(2000) 221–240.
9 Boerhaave to Bassand, 6 May 1723 in Lindeboom G.A. (ed.), Boerhaave’s Correspon-
dence (Leiden: 1964), vol. 2, 199.
 herman boerhaave’s neurology 199

medical system which had little to do with the discussion and treatment
of individual cases.10 Boerhaave, in other words, was a classic example of
an ‘old physiologist’, taking the results of anatomical experiments (with-
out doing them himself ) for the purpose of physiological speculation.
The philosophical nature of Boerhaave’s medicine is immediately vis-
ible in his description of physiology, which he defined as the first general
branch of physic aimed at
[. . .] demonstrating the several parts of the human body, with their mecha-
nism and actions; together with the doctrine of life, health, and their several
effects, which result from the mechanism and actions of the parts. The objects
of this branch have usually been denominated ‘Res naturales’, things natural
or according to nature.11
In his writings, Boerhaave made a clear distinction between the ‘theoreti-
cal’ nature of physiology and anatomy. Whenever Boerhaave spoke about
anatomy, he talked about the mechanisms and actions of the parts (or the
‘whats?’ and the ‘hows?’) and he argued that ‘there is no room to doubt
in anatomy, so far as it regards the structure, situation, and connexion, of
the several parts’. Yet he considered anatomy (as well as the experimental
disciplines of chemistry and mechanics) only the beginning of physic, for
after establishing the anatomical ‘facts’ a physician ‘ought to furnish him-
self with and reason from, such things as are demonstrated to be true in
anatomy, chemistry and mechanics, with natural and experimental phi-
losophy, provided he confines his reasoning within the bounds of truth
and simple experiment’.12 Boerhaave’s physiology, in other words, was not
experimentation. It was based on proper reasoning or ‘a strict consider-
ation of latent causes concealed from the senses’.13
Neurology, I argue, was a crucial part of Boerhaave’s physiology. With-
out understanding Boerhaave’s interest in nervous diseases it is impos-
sible to understand the nature of Boerhaave’s physiology taught in the
last decades of his medical career.14 Even though neurology did not play
an important part in the Institutiones medicae of 1708, Boerhaave already

10 Frederik Ruysch was particularly annoyed about Boerhaave’s armchair medicine. See
Knoeff R., “Chemistry, Mechanics and the Making of Anatomical Knowledge: Boerhaave
vs. Ruysch on the Nature of the Glands”, Ambix 53 (2006) 201–219.
11 Boerhaave, Academical Lectures, vol. I, 77. My italics.
12 Boerhaave, Academical Lectures, vol. I, 74.
13 Boerhaave, Academical Lectures, vol. I, 57.
14 In Boerhaave’s medical career he adopted at least three different approaches. For a
very short time, at the beginning of his career he adopted a Cartesian mechanism, after
which he was very much attracted to Newtonianism. At the end of his career, however, he
200 rina knoeff

argued as part of his definition of physiology that ‘life’ depends on the ‘con-
dition of the several fluid and solid parts of the body, which is absolutely
necessary to maintain the mutual commerce between that and the mind’.15
Boerhaave’s physiology, in other words, was ultimately about neurology,
as a healthy functioning of the nervous system would sustain the ‘com-
merce’ between the mind and the body. When his Institutiones medicae
went to press, Boerhaave had already become sceptical of adopting the
mechanical method in medicine (even though he had fervently defended
this point in his 1703 oration on the use of the mechanical method in
medicine).16 Boerhaave became convinced that mechanics alone could
not account for the nature of change – specifically, it could not explain
the hidden causes and effects of motion that govern the body. Instead of
formulating mechanical laws, Boerhaave started emphasising the struc-
ture and working of the smallest particles of matter and the powers pecu-
liar to every part of the body.
Boerhaave’s interest in the nervous system increased after 1709, and
was a logical consequence of his new concern for the physiological pro-
cesses in the smallest vessels of the body. At this time Boerhaave moved
away from the traditional attention to the nature of the relatively large
globules of the blood, and instead began investigating the smallest vessels
and fluids of the nervous system. He considered the nervous system of
the utmost importance in the explanation of motion and nutrition. With
respect to nutrition, he argued that it chiefly happens in the smallest ves-
sels of the nerves, with the nervous juice, which is the most subtle humour
prepared from the serum of the blood, feeding the solid parts. In his 1715
oration on the achievement of certainty in physics (in which he paradoxi-
cally concluded that it is impossible ever to achieve certainty!), Boerhaave
argued that we cannot even understand the nature of a single hair, if we
know nothing about the disposition of the nerve.17 During the last years of
his teaching, from 1730 until 1735, Boerhaave lectured almost exclusively

devoted more and more attention to the individual powers of ‘living things’. See Knoeff R.,
Herman Boerhaave (1668–1738). Calvinist Chemist and Physician (Amsterdam: 2002), ch. 4.
15 Boerhaave, Academical Lectures, vol. I, 90–91.
16 Boerhaave promoted the mechanical method in medicine in his 1703 oration De usu
ratiocinii mechanici in medicina. Historians of medicine have often represented this early
oration as the credo of Boerhaave’s medicine, which led them away from Boerhaave’s later
medicine, which was totally different.
17 Boerhaave Herman, Sermo academicus de comparando certo in physicis (Leiden: 1715),
translated in Kegel-Brinkgreve E. – Luyendijk-Elshout A., Boerhaave’s Orations (Leiden:
1983) 172.
 herman boerhaave’s neurology 201

on nervous diseases.18 In his last oration, delivered in 1731 upon resigning

his post as Rector Magnificus, he emphasised the importance of under-
standing the nervous system. He stated:
The Philosopher proclaims that the heart is the most important part of the
body, and credulous popular opinion does not hesitate to echo this authori-
tative statement. As if the heart’s power did not depend upon the nerves,
upon the great arteries, and on the veins entering it!19
Boerhaave considered the topic so important that he even took his stu-
dents to the hospital in order to illustrate his lectures on nervous diseases.
And, as I have argued above, the fact that he undertook clinical instruc-
tion was truly exceptional.20
Boerhaave’s neurology was a combination of classical (particularly
Hippocratic) learning and the new natural philosophy. When starting his
lectures, Boerhaave stated that hardly any medical teacher would con-
sider the nervous diseases. In nevertheless tackling this extremely difficult
topic, Boerhaave rhetorically presented himself as a new Hippocrates; he
considered Hippocrates’ views on the brain and nerves (and particularly
the Hippocratic treatise On the Sacred Disease) as the basis of early mod-
ern neurology. Similarly, Boerhaave’s ideas on sensation and motion laid
the basis of later theories of sensibility and irritability. Furthermore, not
only were both the treatises of Hippocrates and the lectures of Boerhaave
pioneering works, but Boerhaave also followed the Hippocratic insistence
on the brain as the seat of reason, sensation and motion – which he
most likely borrowed from On the Sacred Disease – rather than the heart
or diaphragm, as was argued in Aristotelian philosophy.21 Hippocrates
maintained that ‘the diseases which attack the brain are the most acute,
most serious and most fatal, and the hardest problem in diagnosis for the
unskilled physician’.22 Boerhaave likewise believed that the physiology
of the nerves and brain was about the nature and working of the most

18 Boerhaave’s lectures on the nervous diseases have been translated and edited by
B.P.M. Schulte in his Herman Boerhaave praelectiones de morbis nervorum 1730–1735
(Leiden: 1959).
19 Boerhaave Herman, De honore medici, servitute (Leiden: 1731), translated in Kegel-
Brinkgreve E. – Luyendijk-Elshout A., Boerhaave’s Orations 251. The Philosopher men-
tioned was of course Aristotle.
20 As pointed out before, the clinical lectures were directed towards understanding the
physiology of the nervous system rather than the treatment of concrete medical cases.
21 Hippocrates, The Sacred Disease: tr. Lloyd G.E.R., Hippocratic Writings (Harmonds-
worth: 1983) 250.
22 Hippocrates in Lloyd, Hippocratic Writings 251.
202 rina knoeff

­ idden parts of the body and therefore about the most hidden causes of
h
sensation and motion in the body. For this reason he considered the ner-
vous system not only one of the most difficult areas of research but also
one of the most momentous, because it touched upon the immaterial and
divine origin of life.
But Boerhaave’s neurology was also rooted in new anatomical discov-
eries. He argued, after Malpighi, that the encephalon and spinal medulla
are the first organs formed in the embryo, from which all other organs
originate, so that ‘we may believe that almost the whole mass of the solid
parts in the body are complicated and made up with nervous filaments’.23
Taking on board Harvey’s ideas on circulation, Boerhaave further argued
that life originates and is preserved because the nervous juices, excreted
by the brain, circulate (like the blood and lymph) throughout the whole
body. Its particles are so tiny that they reach ‘every individual point or
solid particle throughout the whole body’.24 Boerhaave’s student, Albrecht
von Haller, later elaborated on this argument. He maintained that a physi-
ologist must begin by explaining the forces ‘through which the forms of
things received by the senses are presented to the soul; through which the
muscles, which are governed by the commands of the mind, in turn have
strength’. Physiology, in von Haller’s view, was about the ‘movements by
which the animated machine is activated’. Physiology, he said, is Anato-
mia animata.25

Sensorium commune

In his series of lectures on nervous diseases Boerhaave treated the dis-

eases of the brain and nerves as extremely serious medical conditions and
therefore most worthy of medical attention. He argued that nervous dis-
eases, like no other disease, affected the wellbeing of man as a whole – it
was, after all, commonly known that a disease of the brain usually affected
all the parts of the body. The most serious of the serious nervous diseases,
Boerhaave stated, were the diseases which affected the sensorium com-
mune, such as apoplexy, vertigo and epilepsy. Not surprisingly, he devoted

23 Boerhaave, Academical Lectures, vol. II, 345.

24 Boerhaave, Academical Lectures, vol. II, 313.
25 Roe S.A., “Anatomia animata: The Newtonian Physiology of Albrecht von Haller”,
in Mendelsohn E. (ed.), Transformation and Tradition in the Sciences. Essays in Honor of I.
Bernard Cohen (Cambridge: 1984) 276.
 herman boerhaave’s neurology 203

much attention to the sensorium commune and the serious ailments

caused by its malfunctioning. For our purpose, Boerhaave’s neurology lec-
tures are particularly interesting because they clearly reveal the nature of
Boerhaave’s physiology as a theoretical philosophical discipline.
In Boerhaave’s time the concept of sensorium commune was extremely
vague. It had no basis in anatomy and it was also denied that it was rooted
in the soul.26 It was generally believed to be a junction in the brain where
the nerves from the five senses come together and pool their impressions.
According to Jessica Riskin, it was axiomatic to physiologists up until the
nineteenth century.27 Furthermore, with the emergence of theories on
irritability and sensibility, the working of the sensorium commune was
widely discussed. Above all, the sensorium commune was a speculative
philosophical idea and changed along with the ‘big’ changes in physiology.
In the case of Boerhaave, William Harvey’s theory of the blood circula-
tion proved crucially important for his understanding of the sensorium
commune.
Originally the idea of sensorium commune was based on Aristotle, who
in his De anima and Parva naturalia devoted much attention to the fac-
ulties of sense perception. He localised the koinon aisthêtêrion, or the
sensorium commune, in the heart. He defined it as a central organ where
all sense perceptions are integrated and where the objects of sensation
are linked to the sensations itself. In other words, through the working
of the sensorium commune we can see and hear at the same time and
the sensorium commune links a sound to the sensation of hearing. Under
the influence of Hippocrates and Galen the sensorium commune was no
longer placed in the heart, but localised in the foremost part of the ven-
tricles in the brain. A narrow understanding of the sensorium commune,
as a place where sensory perceptions were integrated to form a unified
perception, changed under the influence of the new natural philosophy.
Particularly in the eighteenth century, as a result of experiments on irri-
tability, the sensorium commune was more explicitly linked than before to
the working of the body. The sensorium commune now became seen as the

26 A modern definition of sensorium commune is ‘the part of the cerebral cortex that
receives and coordinates all the impulses sent to individual nerve centers. Includes audi-
tory, gustatory, olfactory, somatosensory and visual centers’. See: http://medical-­dictionary
.thefreedictionary.com/sensorium­+commune. Last accessed in December 2009.
27 Riskin J., Science in the Age of Sensibility. The Sentimental Empiricists of the French
Enlightenment (Chicago: 2002) 25. Among the physiologists Riskin mentions Herman Boer-
haave, Albrecht von Haller, Charles Bonnet, Georges Buffon and ultimately P.J.G. Cabanis,
J.B. Lamarck and Georges Cuvier.
204 rina knoeff

most important organ for the transmission of sensory impressions from

the sensorial nerves to the motor nerves. It was believed that this process
took place irrespective of the animal being conscious or not. Moreover,
conscious involuntary motions such as sneezing, coughing and vomiting
were considered the result of the working of the sensorium commune.
Conscious actions were also thought to be mediated by the sensorium
commune, although it was argued that they were directed and moder-
ated by the mind. As the sensorium commune became more important in
the explanation of the functioning of the body, it was no longer confined
only to the mind’s perception and localised in the lateral ventricles of the
brain, but was extended to the medulla oblongata, crura cerebri, cerebella,
part of the thalami optici and the whole spinal marrow.28
Boerhaave’s physiology of the sensorium commune, and particularly
his later views, reflect the eighteenth-century move away from the clas-
sical explanation of the sensorium commune solely in terms of synthesis-
ing perceptions, towards a focus on the translation of sense perceptions
into bodily action. At the beginning of his career, and in pursuit of Hip-
pocrates and Galen, Boerhaave localised the sensorium commune in the
brain. However, some decades later, in the lectures on nervous diseases he
linked the sensorium commune to the concept of hormê (the moving force,
preserving life and transmitting the impulses of the mind to the body)
and he situated both in the endless number of points in the brain and
spinal cord where sensorial nerve fibres enter and motor nerves depart.29
Boerhaave stated:
And therefore there is from the instrument of perception towards almost all
solid parts of the body, a system or junction, which is one and the same for
the whole body, and consists only of the observing and the moving nervous
machine, the machina nervosa. If you take everything else away, man would
consist of nerves only.30

28 Bennett M.R. – Hacker P.M.S., History of Cognitive Neuroscience (Oxford: 2008) 220–
222.
29 In his commentary on Boerhaave’s lectures, Schulte characterises Boerhaave’s under-
standing of hormê as Hippocratic (See Schulte, Praelectiones 387). However, ὁρμῆ does not
occur in the Hippocratic Corpus in the required sense. I cannot argue the point here in
detail, but it is likely that Boerhaave’s concept of hormê stemmed from Stoicism, perhaps
mediated through Galen.
30 Boerhaave in Schulte, Praelectiones, prae. 77. Boerhaave here uses the word ‘instru-
ment’ in the same way as it was used in eighteenth-century chemistry, i.e. in order to
denote a set of problems regarding the action and mechanisms of certain (chemical)
operations rather than the agents by which operations are initiated and accomplished.
See Powers J.C., “Chemistry without Principles: Herman Boerhaave on Instruments and
 herman boerhaave’s neurology 205

In other words, the sensorium commune was central to Boerhaave’s image

of the body as a machine working according to the laws of nature. He con-
sidered it to be the place where sense perceptions entered to be translated
into actions, which means that, for instance, when someone decides to
walk from Leiden to Amsterdam and back the body will automatically do
so. The sensorium commune was the closest Boerhaave came to explaining
the mutual influence of the body upon the mind and vice versa. Although
historians of medicine have discussed Boerhaave’s ideas on the mind and
the body in terms of Cartesian or occasionalist philosophy, Boerhaave
himself always remained extremely elusive about the connection between
the mind and the body.31 He maintained that the physician should restrict
himself to the observable bodily effects of the relation between them.
Historians have also used Boerhaave’s definition of the sensorium com-
mune in order to argue that, for Boerhaave, the sensorium commune was
the ‘central switch centre’ of the nervous machine. B.P.M. Schulte, for
instance, named Boerhaave (rather than Descartes) as one of the first
‘supporters of the theory of reflexes’.32 However, we should not under-
stand Boerhaave’s sensorium commune as a forerunner of modern theories
of the reflexes, but rather in the context of the theory of circulation which
at the time was a central reference in almost all physiology.
After the publication of Harvey’s De Motu Cordis in 1628 the whole of
physiology needed to be reformulated and, as Roger French has argued,
physicians in Holland were particularly busy discussing and implement-
ing the new theory.33 Boerhaave was no exception. He argued:
Concerning physiology, which is called oeconomia hominis, theoria medica,
or the doctrine of the use of the parts, good authors are lacking, because
everything stated before 1628 was wrong, Harvey’s theory on the circulation
of the fluids being unknown, even though this is the only cause of all action;

Elements”, in Principe L. (ed.), New Narratives in Eighteenth-Century Chemistry (Dordrecht:

2007) 45–61.
31 Schulte and Wright have discussed Boerhaave’s ideas in Cartesian terms, while
­Luyendijk-Elshout has suggested that his views are in line with occasionalism. For a dis-
cussion of the historians’ viewpoints see also: Thomson A., Bodies of Thought. Science, Reli-
gion and the Soul in the Early Enlightenment (Oxford: 2008) 178–179.
32 Schulte, Praelectiones 391. See also Schulte B.P.M., “The Concepts of Boerhaave on
Psychic Function and Psychopathology”, in Lindeboom G.A., Boerhaave and his Time.
Papers read at the International Symposium in Commemoration of the Tercentenary of Boer-
haave’s Birth (Leiden: 1970) 100.
33 French R., “Harvey in Holland: Circulation and the Calvinists”, in French R. – Wear A.
(ed.), The Medical Revolution of the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: 1989) 47.
206 rina knoeff

consequently, everything that has been written before is not only useless
but also pernicious.34
‘Action’ instead of ‘function’ became the key to Boerhaave’s medicine and,
in his physiology of action, the circulation of fluids through the body was
of crucial importance.35 In his lectures on nervous diseases, Boerhaave
assigned a special place to the sensorium commune. He argued that as
the heart propels the blood through the body, so the sensorium commune
gives an impulse to the nervous fluids so that they keep circulating. This
is not to say that Boerhaave argued for the primacy of either the heart
or the sensorium commune, for he maintained that the blood system and
the nervous system depended on one another for a healthy functioning
of the body. Thus, although the functioning of the heart depended on the
cerebellum and nerves stimulating the muscles into action, yet at the same
time the power of the nervous system depended on the blood from the
aorta pulsed towards the brain from the heart.36
In Boerhaave’s view, nervous diseases were almost always a problem of
obstructed circulation of nervous fluids. For instance, Boerhaave ascribed
the cause of apoplexy (comparable to a stroke) to an obstruction in the
nerves so that the nervous fluids would be unable to return and pass
through the sensorium commune. So instead of circulating to the limbs
and other organs, the fluids from the brain remain in the heart and so
cause paralysis.37
The most serious diseases were caused by a disturbance in the senso-
rium commune itself. For instance, Boerhaave ascribed the cause of cata-
lepsy – a rare disease in which the patient suddenly is unable to move
and is left void of any feeling, remaining in the position he was in at the
moment the disease struck – to a malfunctioning of the sensorium com-
mune. Ultimately Boerhaave attributed the cause of the disease to a fault
in the circulation of the nervous fluids. He argued that the sensorium com-

34 Boerhaave in Luyendijk-Elshout A.M., “The Anatomical Illustrations in the London

Edition (1741) of Part I of Herman Boerhaave’s Institutiones medicae”, in Lindeboom G.A.
(ed.), Boerhaave and His Time. Papers Read at the International Symposium in Commemora-
tion of the Tercentenary of Boerhaave’s Birth (Leiden: 1970) 86. My italics.
35 Luyendijk-Elshout, “The Anatomical Illustrations” 86.
36 Boerhaave in Kegel-Brinkgreve – Luyendijk-Elshout, Boerhaave’s Orations 255.
37 Boerhaave Herman, Boerhaave’s Aphorisms. Concerning the Knowledge and Cure of
Diseases (Leiden: 1715) 264–265.
 herman boerhaave’s neurology 207

mune ‘sends forth its supply of Spirits only to these nerves that were in
action at the time of the disease’s first invasion’.38
Boerhaave situated the cause of many mental aberrations in the circu-
latory power of the sensorium commune, maintaining that an obstruction
of the circulation of nervous fluids could result in an impairment of the
operations of the mind and will.39 In this way, so Boerhaave believed, a
nervous disorder could disclose itself per consensum in another place in
the body. For instance, he attached great value to the opinion that a men-
tal disorder could show itself in the stomach. He believed that a delirium
accompanying a pneumonia could be understood as a disease of the brain
caused per consensum by a malfunctioning of the lungs. I would argue that
Boerhaave could only propose this because he believed in the circulation
of nervous fluids and the sensorium commune as its central cause. Thus, in
Boerhaave’s physiology, a person is calm and cheerful as long as the circu-
lation of nervous fluid is secure. As soon as the transformation of nervous
fluid from the sensory nerve fibres to the motor nerves is disturbed, delu-
sions, mania, insanity, delirium and so on arise.
Boerhaave’s treatment of mental disorders is, in almost all cases, directed
at the sensorium commune. For the treatment to be successful it had to be
radical. For instance, in the case of severe dizziness he advised the use of
a swivel chair, in which the patient was turned around very swiftly until
he was unconscious. In the case of insanity he recommended prolonged
immersion in water until a state of apparent death was reached. Ulti-
mately, he aimed at a kind of ‘shock therapy’ on the sensorium commune.
He told his students about a nobleman from Brabant who had drowned
but was brought back to life (his respiration, sense and faculties of life
were restored) because ‘a person skill’d in nature’ ordered air to be blown
up the man’s anus using a pair of bellows.40 It was precisely this kind of
shock therapy that the South-American slave administered to the ‘dead’
girl because, in Boerhaave’s reading of the episode, the slave shocked
the sensorium commune into life in order to ‘excite them [the nerves] to
motion, make the heart contract, and propel forward its blood’.

38 Boerhaave, Aphorisms 274–275.

39 Wright J.P., “Boerhaave on Minds, Human Beings, and Mental Disorders”, Studies in
Eighteenth-Century Culture 20 (1990) 296.
40 Boerhaave, Academical Lectures, vol. I, 90–91.
208 rina knoeff

Hippocrates

How did Boerhaave merge his ‘Harveian’ physiology of the nerves with
the Hippocratic medicine he taught at Leiden University? It is well known
that he was an ardent supporter of Hippocrates.41 He started and ended
his academic career with orations on Hippocrates. He thought it particu-
larly necessary to speak about the ‘Father of Medicine’, because he had
noticed that the Moderns, in pursuit of Bacon, ‘went further than Sir Fran-
cis himself in their wholesale rejection of classical wisdom and did not
make an exception for Hippocrates when they proclaimed the necessity
of turning away from ancient authority’.42 Boerhaave stated that
[. . .] nowadays indifference and arrogance prevail in medical studies to
such an extent that the memorable writings of Hippocrates are scorned,
neglected, and considered to be almost worthless.43
Boerhaave had noticed many errors in the Hippocratic writings, but
warned against throwing out the baby with the bath water. Supporting
Hippocrates, he argued that the post-Hippocratic writings from Plato,
Aristotle and Galen right down to Paracelsus contained even more seri-
ous errors. He believed that after a thorough cleansing of medicine ‘only
a few points that had already been stated by Hippocrates’ would remain.
He saw the projects and discoveries of the Moderns, if based on observing
and understanding nature, as essentially a continuation of Hippocratic
medicine. In other words, he used the history of medicine in order to
preach that all medical writers ‘owed to Hippocrates everything that was
good in their work’, urging them to study the works of Hippocrates ‘night
and day’.44

41 Of course Boerhaave’s Hippocratic system was Hippocratic after a fashion. As histori-
ans have already noted before, the Hippocrates that Boerhaave represented was essentially
a Boerhaavian interpretation. See: Smith W.D., The Hippocratic Tradition (Ithaca: 1979) 27;
Cunningham A., “Medicine to Calm the Mind: Boerhaave’s Medical System and why it was
adopted in Edinburgh”, in Cunningham A. – French R. (eds.), The Medical Enlightenment
of the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: 1990) 49. For Boerhaave’s Hippocratic medicine see
also Knoeff R., “Practising Chemistry ‘after the Hippocratical Manner’: Hippocrates and the
Importance of Chemistry for Boerhaave’s Medicine”, in Principe L. (ed.), New Narratives
in Eighteenth-Century Chemistry (Dordrecht: 2007); Powers J.C., Herman Boerhaave and the
Pedagogical Reform of Eighteenth-Century Chemistry (unpublished PhD. dissertation Indi-
ana University: 2001).
42 Kegel-Brinkgreve – Luyendijk-Elshout, Boerhaave’s Orations 56.
43 Boerhaave Herman, De commendando studio Hippocratico (Leiden: 1701). Translated
in Kegel-Brinkgreve – Luyendijk-Elshout, Boerhaave’s Orations 65–66.
44 Boerhaave Herman, Commentariolus XII. See Lindeboom, Herman Boerhaave 381.
 herman boerhaave’s neurology 209

Recent scholarship on the Hippocratic tradition starts from the assump-

tion that ‘Hippocrates is not so much a real person, as a malleable cultural
artifact, constantly moulded and remoulded according to need’.45 Particu-
larly from the sixteenth century onwards Hippocrates was considered an
alternative to Galenic medicine and there was a Hippocratic revival at
medical centres across Europe.46 Boerhaave likewise used Hippocrates for
his own ends. It has been argued that he mainly adopted Hippocrates as a
handy leg-up in the medical faculty, which was oriented towards Hippo-
cratic teaching.47 However, Boerhaave’s exuberant praise of Hippocrates
until the end of his medical career indicates more than just political and
pragmatic reasons. Boerhaave saw the right method for studying nature
as paradigmatically expounded in Hippocrates. What he appreciated most
in Hippocrates was the latter’s insistence on the appearance of diseases
in a plurality of forms asking for a plurality of cures, as well as Hippo-
crates’ emphasis on observation as a method to reach true knowledge. It
naturally followed, according to Boerhaave, that students, before advis-
ing patients and administering cures, had to understand the nature of the
body and its diseases. He urged them to follow nature as their only guide
(as Hippocrates had done before them) and never to rely on ‘idle’ specula-
tions and preconceived doctrines. As a result, Boerhaave’s medical works
did not list remedies for particular diseases, but consisted of Hippocratic
statements of wisdom, such as ‘desperate cases need the most desperate
remedies’ (Hippocrates), or ‘the most simple diseases can be traced back
to the most simple fibres’ (Boerhaave). Boerhaave’s Hippocratic medicine,
in other words, put one’s own observation and understanding centre stage,
rather than the following of one’s teacher.48 This was exactly the reason
why Boerhaave could easily incorporate the discoveries of the Moderns
into his Hippocratic physiology – after all, if obtained via the right ‘Hippo-
cratic method’, all discoveries could add to and improve the Hippocratic
corpus.
With respect to physiology, Boerhaave promoted a ‘Hippocratic’
methodology, leaving ample space for new discoveries and ideas. Even

45 Cantor D., “The Uses and Meaning of Hippocrates”, in Cantor D. (ed.), Reinventing
Hippocrates (Aldershot: 2002) 3.
46 See Nutton V., “Hippocrates in the Renaissance”, Sudhoffs Archiv, suppl. 27 (1989)
420–439; Lonie I.M., “The ‘Paris Hippocratics’: Teaching and Research in Paris in the Sec-
ond Half of the Sixteenth Century”, in Wear A. – French R.K. – Lonie I.M. (eds.), The Medi-
cal Renaissance of the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge: 1985) 155–172.
47 See Powers, Herman Boerhaave.
48 I have argued this more extensively in Knoeff, “Boerhaave at Leiden”.
210 rina knoeff

more, he considered the discoveries of the ‘Moderns’, provided they were

acquired through the right Hippocratic method, an explanation of Hip-
pocratic medicine. As I have argued above, he claimed that ‘everything
stated before 1628 (the publishing date of Harvey’s De motu cordis) was
wrong’. This, however, did not include Hippocrates. Quite the opposite;
he argued that Harvey’s doctrine was not contrary to, but an explanation
of Hippocrates:
[T]he progress of physic may be commodiously divided into the ancient
before Harvey, and the modern after his time; for he so happily managed
his discoveries and opinions, that he seems to have gained the consent of
almost all the physicians before his death; for Hippocrates, who was a care-
ful observer of nature, being certain of the causes, has alone left us the truest
accounts of her appearances; nor is the doctrine of Harvey contrary to that
of Hippocrates, but rather an explanation of it.49
In his 1715 oration Boerhaave seamlessly fitted ideas on circulation into a
Hippocratic framework. He asked his audience:
Who will be able to set forth what nature requires for the hair’s nourish-
ment, when he knows nothing about all liquids that are kept going through
the body’s vessels by a continuous motion? Again the Hippocratic oracles
resound as follows: ‘the food given to the stomach, and subjected to various
activities of nature, is eventually employed for the formation of a hair’.50
Here Boerhaave ascribed to Hippocrates the view of his own time that
fluids ‘are kept going by a continuous motion’ and that even the growth
of a hair depends on the circulation of fluids (nutrition, after all, happens
in the smallest vessels of the nervous system).
Boerhaave’s students got the message. For instance, Edward Barry, who
graduated under Boerhaave in 1719, was full of praise for his master and
argued that ‘by the assistance of a full knowledge of the ancient [Hip-
pocratic in particular] and modern discoveries, an unwearied industry,
and an uncommon genius, he [Boerhaave] has already done the greatest
service to the art of physic, and seems to be most capable of bringing
it nearest to perfection’.51 Ten years after Boerhaave’s death John Barker
(medical writer and physician to his majesty’s forces in the Low Countries)

49 Boerhaave, Academical Lectures, vol. I, 42.

50 Boerhaave Herman, Certo in physicis (Leiden: 1715), in Kegel-Brinkgreve – Luyendijk-
Elshout, Boerhaave’s Orations 172.
51 Barry E., A Treatise on a Consumption of the Lungs. With a Previous Account of Nutrition,
and of the Sructure [sic] and Use of the Lungs. By Edward Barry, M.D. (Dublin: 1726) 15.
 herman boerhaave’s neurology 211

still claimed Boerhaave’s ability in ‘following, and improving upon the

Plan, which these Authors [Hippocrates and Sydenham] had laid down,
that he himself rose to that high degree of Reputation which he enjoyed
while living, and which his Works will remain in Possession of, as long as
Physick continues to be an Art’.52 Robert James inserted translations of
lengthy passages of Boerhaave’s first oration on Hippocrates in the preface
of his Medical Dictionary (1743) and Diderot used these passages again
in the article on ‘medicine’ in the Encyclopédie.53 Although the fact that
Boerhaave adopted Hippocrates as his medical hero was not new, he was
extraordinarily successful in creating an image of Hippocrates that for a
long time became the standard view of the ‘Father of Medicine’.54
In order to show how Boerhaave fitted the physiology of his time into
a Hippocratic plan, I conclude with a short discussion of Boerhaave’s lec-
tures on epilepsy. From March to June 1735, Boerhaave extensively dis-
cussed epilepsy in 32 lectures at the end of his course on nervous diseases.
He treated no other nervous disease in such detail. The lectures are full
of references to Hippocrates and Aretaeus of Cappadocia, one of Hippo-
crates’ earliest and most ardent followers.55 Furthermore, the layout of
the lecture course shows striking similarities with the Hippocratic treatise
On the Sacred Disease. He followed Hippocrates by using similar word-
ing in dismissing the opinion that epilepsy had a divine origin, and also
with respect to prognosis and therapy. Against those who pretend to cure
epilepsy through incantations and other ‘divine’ treatments, Boerhaave
argued that ‘it is most advantageous to discuss the Hippocratic treatment
of epilepsy’.56 His veneration for Hippocrates was so great that he even
ascribed to Hippocrates some of the discoveries of his own time. For
instance, when explaining that epilepsy can be caused by the presence of
air in the blood vessels so that the flow of blood is obstructed, Boerhaave
states with reference to Hippocrates’ De flatibus: ‘Did Hippocrates perhaps
know about the spirits?’57 The nature and working of ‘the spirits’ were

52 Barker J., An Essay on the Agreement betwixt Ancient and Modern Physicians. Or a
Comparison between the Practice of Hippocrates, Galen, Sydenham, and Boerhaave (London,
G. Hawkins: 1748) 73.
53 Kegel-Brinkgreve – Luyendijk-Elshout, Boerhaave’s Orations 305, n. 8.
54 This has also been argued by Cunningham in his “Medicine to Calm the Mind” 49.
55 For Hippocrates on epilepsy see: Temkin O., The Falling Sickness. A History of Epilepsy
from the Greeks to the Beginnings of Modern Neurology (Baltimore: 1945); Baumann E.D., De
Heilige Ziekte (Rotterdam: 1923).
56 Boerhaave in Schulte, Praelectiones, prae. 150.
57 Boerhaave in Schulte, Praelectiones, prae. 151.
212 rina knoeff

areas of speculation in the physiology of Boerhaave’s time, but unknown

in the Hippocratic works.
Boerhaave defined epilepsy as a serious disease, sometimes inherited,
but mostly caused either by an abnormal shape of the skull, the cerebral
membranes or the brains or because of a stagnation of foul fluids or a
defect of the sensorium commune.58 After presenting many different cases,
he argued that the disease has many appearances, but two defining char-
acteristics: the ceasing of all perception and the confusion of muscular
motion. The convulsed muscles press upon the arteries and veins so that
the fluids stagnate in the body. Hence, many epileptics have a surplus of
water in their brain, tears in their eyes and a running nose. In worse cases,
the vessels in the brain are so confused that they violently press the blood
towards the outer extremities causing puffy eyes, a swollen mouth and
bruises. As a result, after an epileptic fit the arteries and veins lack blood,
causing weakness of the vegetative, animal and sensitive soul.
In lecture 150 Boerhaave explained to his students the advantages of
following Hippocrates in the treatment of epilepsy. He started summaris-
ing Hippocrates’ view that phlegmatic, rather than bilious, people tend to
suffer from epilepsy.59 Both Hippocrates and Boerhaave believed that the
brain is cleansed by phlegm and that a surplus or deficiency of the fluid
would hurt the brain. The condition and flow of phlegm depends on tem-
perature (heat causes a discharge and cold an obstruction of phlegm) and
temperament (fear or crying can suffocate the spirits). Boerhaave’s treat-
ment of the disease is mainly directed at changing the circumstances that
cause a fit, so he – like Hippocrates – advised a change of temperature and
diet, and the avoidance of mental strain.
Boerhaave also introduced something new in his ‘Hippocratic’ discus-
sion of the disease. He located the origin of an epileptic seizure not only in
the brain (such as a dent in the skull and brain or a surplus or deficiency
of phlegm in the brain), but also in the sensorium commune. In many
instances, he argued, an epileptic fit could be caused through irritation
of the nerves of the stomach or the heart.60 In these instances a poison
changes, confuses and destroys the working of the sensorium commune,
so that the transmission of sense perception into motion is disrupted and
the nervous system is in great disorder. In many cases he recommended

58 Boerhaave in Schulte, Praelectiones, prae. 146.

59 Boerhaave in Schulte, Praelectiones, prae. 150–151; Lloyd, Hippocratic Writings 242.
60 Boerhaave in Schulte, Praelectiones, prae. 67.
 herman boerhaave’s neurology 213

a treatment directed at removing the poisonous spirits in the blood and

stomach, consisting of emetics and, sometimes, bloodletting. In extreme
cases of epilepsy the therapy was directed towards shocking the senso-
rium commune into action again; he described to his students cases cured
by strokes of the cane, marriage and extreme fear.
In Boerhaave’s treatment of epilepsy, in short, the new physiology of cir-
culation dovetailed with the Hippocratic medicine taught in the accepted
medical curriculum. In all cases and in line with Hippocrates, Boerhaave
argued that epilepsy has multiple causes and he urged his students to
carefully observe and understand the nature of each and every individual
epileptic disease. Treatment in almost all cases was directed at removing
the cause of irritation of the nervous system, i.e. at the restoring of the
circulatory power of nervous fluids in the brain and nerves.

Conclusion

Using the example of Boerhaave’s neurology, I have argued that it is prob-

lematic to speak of a changing physiology at the early modern Leiden
medical faculty. Boerhaave, known for his eclecticism, formulated a phys-
iology that combined ancient medicine and early modern anatomical
discoveries. Just how Hippocratic was Boerhaave’s physiology? He incor-
porated ideas of Aristotle, the Stoics, Galen and even early moderns like
Harvey to such an extent that we can hardly call his physiology ‘Hippo-
cratic’ anymore. Primarily, Boerhaave appreciated and adopted the ‘open-
ness’ of the Hippocratic system, which, according to him, was based on
the assumption that everything is relevant as long as it is rooted in obser-
vation and thorough reasoning. This enabled Boerhaave to freely adopt
and combine ideas and discoveries that were not directly discussed in
the Hippocratic treatises, but which added to his understanding of Hippo-
cratic physiology. Ultimately, it was the philosophical nature of physiology
which allowed Boerhaave to fit essentially philosophical hypotheses into
a Hippocratic framework.
For Boerhaave’s physiology of the nervous system, Harvey’s theory of
the blood circulation was crucially important. Boerhaave was not alone
in considering Harvey’s De Motu Cordis (1628) the most important work
of his time. Most notably, the anatomical preparations made by his close
friends Frederik Ruysch and Bernard Siegfried Albinus were based on a
thorough understanding of the circulation of fluids through the tubes and
vessels of the body. Circulation was the catchword in the medical world
214 rina knoeff

of Boerhaave’s time and it is no surprise that his lectures on the nervous

diseases, which were essentially a continuation of classical writings on the
brain and nerves, also matched the new physiology of circulation.
Does this mean that in the case of Boerhaave’s teaching we can speak
of a changing concept of physiology? Ultimately the answer must be ‘No,
we cannot’. Although Harvey’s discovery of the circulation was to have
profound consequences for early modern physiology, it did not change
the nature of physiology as such. It still remained a philosophical disci-
pline embedded in natural philosophy – the questions remained the same
and even the topics did not drastically change. Boerhaave’s physiology of
the nerves shows precisely this. His neurology, which he understood as
the branch of medicine dealing with the ‘commerce between the mind
and the body’, was essentially philosophical. It dealt with classical specu-
lative philosophical topics such as the sensorium commune, the concept of
hormê and the nature of medical spirits. It asked the same old questions
of why they worked as they did. Even the fact that Boerhaave took his
students to the hospital did not change the fundamentally philosophi-
cal character of his teaching. His clinical lectures on nervous diseases
were not discussions of individual patients; instead, he used case studies
in order to illustrate nervous conditions, ultimately directed towards a
rational understanding of the nervous system and its diseases. The only
change was that Boerhaave fitted Harveian ideas on circulation into the
‘old’ physiology taught at the university.
 herman boerhaave’s neurology 215

Selective bibliography

Barker John, An Essay on the Agreement betwixt Ancient and Modern Physicians. Or a
Comparison between the Practice of Hippocrates, Galen, Sydenham, and Boerhaave (Lon-
don, G. Hawkins: 1748).
Barry Edward, A Treatise on a Consumption of the Lungs. With a Previous Account of
Nutrition, and of the Sructure [sic] and Use of the Lungs. By Edward Barry, M.D. (Dublin:
1726).
Baumann E.D., De Heilige Ziekte (Rotterdam: 1923).
Bennett M.R. – Hacker P.M.S. (eds.), History of Cognitive Neuroscience (Oxford: 2008).
Beukers H., “Clinical Teaching in Leiden from its Beginning until the End of the Eigh-
teenth Century”, Clinical Teaching Past and Present. Clio Medica 21 (1987–1988) 139–152.
Boerhaave Herman, Aphorismi de cognoscendis et curandis morbis (Leiden, Johannes van
der Linden: 1709).
——, Dr. Boerhaave’s Academical Lectures on the Theory of Physic. Being a Genuine Transla-
tion of his Institutes and Explanatory Comment (London, W. Innys: 1751).
——, Institutiones medicae (Leiden, Johannes van der Linden: 1708).
Cantor D., “The Uses and Meaning of Hippocrates”, in Cantor D., Reinventing Hippocrates
(Aldershot: 2002) 1–18.
Cook H.J., “Boerhaave and the Flight from Reason in Medicine”, Bulletin for the History of
Medicine 74 (2000) 221–240.
Cunningham A., “Medicine to Calm the Mind: Boerhaave’s Medical System and why it
was adopted in Edinburgh”, in Cunningham A. – French R. The Medical Enlightenment
of the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: 1990) 40–66.
——, The Anatomist Anatomis’d. An Experimental Discipline in Enlightenment Europe
(Aldershot: 2010).
——, “The Pen and the Sword: Recovering the Disciplinary Identity of Physiology and
Anatomy before 1800 I: Old Physiology – The Pen”, Studies in History and Philosophy of
Science Part C. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 33
(2002) 631–665.
——, “The Pen and the Sword: Recovering the Disciplinary Identity of Physiology and
Anatomy before 1800 II: Old Anatomy – The Sword”, Studies in History and Philosophy
of Science Part C. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
34 (2003) 51–76.
Daremberg C., Histoire des Sciences Médicinales (Paris: 1870), vol. 2.
Frank R., Harvey and the Oxford Physiologists. A Study of Scientific Ideas (Berkeley: 1980).
French R., “Harvey in Holland: Circulation and the Calvinists”, in French R. – Wear A.
(eds.), The Medical Revolution of the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: 1989).
Kegel-Brinkgreve E. – Luyendijk-Elshout A., Boerhaave’s Orations (Leiden: 1983).
Knoeff R., “Boerhaave at Leiden: Communis Europae praeceptor”, in Arrizabalaga J. –
Cunningham A. – Grell O.P. (eds.), Centres of Medical Excellence? Medical Travel and
Education in Europe, 1500–1789 (Aldershot: 2010) 269–286.
——, “Chemistry, Mechanics and the Making of Anatomical Knowledge: Boerhaave vs.
Ruysch on the Nature of the Glands”, Ambix 53 (2006) 201–219.
——, Herman Boerhaave (1668–1738). Calvinist Chemist and Physician (Amsterdam: 2002).
——, “Practising Chemistry ‘after the Hippocratical Manner’: Hippocrates and the Impor-
tance of Chemistry for Boerhaave’s Medicine”, in Principe L. (ed.), New Narratives in
Eighteenth-Century Chemistry (Dordrecht: 2007) 63–76.
Lindeboom G.A. (ed.), Haller in Holland. Het Dagboek van Albrecht von Haller van zijn
Verblijf in Holland 1725–1727 (Delft: 1958).
——, Herman Boerhaave. The Man and his Work (Leiden: 1968).
Lonie I.M., “The ‘Paris Hippocratics’: Teaching and Research in Paris in the Second Half
of the Sixteenth Century”, in Wear A. – French R.K. – Lonie I.M. (eds.), The Medical
Renaissance of the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge: 1985) 155–172.
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Luyendijk-Elshout A.M., “Mechanicisme contra Vitalisme: De School van Herman Boer-

haave em de Beginselen van Leven”, Tijdschrift voor de Geschiedenis der Geneeskunde,
Natuurwetenschappen, Wiskunde en Techniek 5 (1982) 16–26.
——, “The Anatomical Illustrations in the London Edition (1741) of Part I of Herman
Boerhaave’s Institutiones medicae”, in Lindeboom G.A. (ed.), Boerhaave and his Time.
Papers Read at the International Symposium in Commemoration of the Tercentenary of
Boerhaave’s Birth (Leiden: 1970) 83–92.
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Powers, J.C. “Chemistry without Principles: Herman Boerhaave on Instruments and Ele-
ments”, in Principe L. (ed.), New Narratives in Eighteenth-Century Chemistry (Dordrecht:
2007) 45–61.
——, Herman Boerhaave and the Pedagogical Reform of Eighteenth-Century Chemistry
(unpublished PhD thesis Indiana University: 2001).
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enment (Chicago: 2002).
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burgh, Vienna and Pavia”, Clinical Teaching Past and Present. Clio Medica 21 (1987–1988)
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­Eighteenth-Century Culture 20 (1990) 289–302.
 THE ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY OF MIND.
DAVID HUME’S VITALISTIC ACCOUNT

Tamás Demeter

Summary*

This paper challenges the widely held view which associates Hume’s philosophy
with mechanical philosophies of nature and particularly with Newton. This view
presents Hume’s account of the human mind as passive receiver of impressions
that bring into motion, from the outside, a mental machinery whose functioning
is described in terms of mechanical causal principles. Instead, I propose an inter-
pretation which suggests that, for Hume, the human mind is composed of non-
modular faculties that can be characterised by their active contribution, which
frequently results in qualitative change. This anatomy of the mind is explored
from a physiological perspective focused on the study of the normal functioning
and interaction ascribed to the mind’s various organs. While pursuing this enter-
prise, Hume’s outlook is closer to Scottish ‘philosophical chemistry’ and vitalistic
physiology than to the mechanical heritage of the seventeenth century.

Introduction

Hume’s project, as developed in his Treatise of Human Nature (1739/1740),

is frequently labelled as a Newtonian exercise sans phrase.1 And while it is
worthwhile to read Hume’s project of exploring human nature in the con-
text of eighteenth-century Newtonianism, using merely this label falls short
of saying something substantive about Hume’s work. The reason is two-
fold. On the one hand, there are several distinctive Newtonian ­traditions
in the eighteenth century,2 so to use the label without further clarification

* I am indebted for helpful comments and discussion to David Bloor, John Christie,
Brad Hume, Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Henning Schmidgen, Ursula Klein, Jeffrey Schweg-
man, Kelly Wilder and Gábor Zemplén. My research has been supported by the Hungarian
Scientific Research Fund (OTKA 79193), and forms part of the research project SROP-
4.2.1.B-10/2KONV-2010-0002.
1 See e.g. Stroud B., Hume (London: 1977) 8. Some more recent examples: Mounce H.O.,
Hume’s Naturalism (London: 1999) 15–18, Dicker G., Hume’s Metaphysics and Epistemology
(London: 1998) 2–5, Pitson A.E., Hume’s Philosophy of the Self (London: 2002) 6, 14, 152.,
Beebee H., Hume on Causation (London: 2006) 5, 183–185.
2 Schofield R.E., “Evolutionary Taxonomy of Eighteenth-Century Newtonianisms”, Stud-
ies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 7 (1978) 175–192. See also Shapiro A.E., Fits, Passions, and
218 tamás demeter

is too vague. On the other hand, there are several passages in Hume that
seem to be critical of some central concepts in, and several others that
do not fit the outlook of, Newton’s Principia with which Hume’s theory is
frequently associated.3 Without clarifying these points it is hard to see in
what sense Hume’s work can be labelled as Newtonian, and how it can
be linked to the traditions of eighteenth-century natural inquiry. This is
a missing but crucial piece of a puzzle in Hume scholarship: in order to
understand how he saw himself as contributing to the joint explanatory
enterprise of moral and natural philosophy, we must locate him properly
in the context of eighteenth-century natural philosophy.
In this essay I intend to clarify the character of Hume’s project in New-
ton’s wake, and primarily in the context of eighteenth-century Scottish
natural philosophy. I am going to argue that the theory Hume elabo-
rates is a qualitatively oriented and a predominantly vitalistic account of
human nature. As such it is congruent in its outlook and language with the
philosophical chemistry and vitalistic physiology that were the prominent
orientations of natural inquiry in the Scottish Enlightenment, and as such
it can be placed in the broader European context of Enlightenment vital-
ism.4 Replacing the Principia’s ideal of couching explanations in terms
of external immaterial forces acting on homogeneous inert matter, this
new vitalism rehabilitated an appeal to qualitative differences and active
material principles while explaining observable phenomena.5 During the
course of the eighteenth century, this outlook became dominant in those
fields of natural inquiry where the mechanical approach failed to deliver
satisfactory explanations – especially in exploring the qualitative differ-
ences and interactions between chemical substances, the nature of quali-
tative change, and in tracking the phenomena of active, living matter. And
this is also characteristic to Hume’s theory of human nature.
Hume’s project has affinities with William Cullen’s chemical doc-
trines, which defined the research agenda of eighteenth-century Scottish

Paroxysms. Physics, Method, and Chemistry and Newton’s Theories of Colored Bodies and Fits
of Easy Reflection (Cambridge: 1993).
3 See Schliesser E., “Hume’s Newtonianism and Anti-Newtonianism”, in Zalta E.N.
(ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2007) http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/
win2008/entries/hume-newton, and also Buckle S. Hume’s Enlightenment Tract (Oxford:
2002), Wright J.P., Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature (Cambridge: 2009).
4 Reill P.H., Vitalizing Nature in the Enlightenment (Berkeley: 2005).
5 Reill P.H., “The Legacy of the ‘Scientific Revolution’ ”, in Porter R. (ed.), Cambridge
History of Science. Volume 4. Eighteenth-Century Science (Cambridge: 2003) 38.
 the anatomy and physiology of mind 219

c­ hemistry.6 Chemistry for Cullen is a qualitative enterprise founded on

the method of analysis of substances into ‘constituent parts’. As opposed
to mechanical investigations into ‘general properties’ common to all bod-
ies, i.e. shape, size, etc., Cullen’s chemistry is aimed at exploring the ‘par-
ticular properties’ of bodies, inducing such properties in bodies that do
not have them, and producing bodies with such properties.7 The project’s
focus on particular properties requires looking at substances through an
ontology sensitive to qualitative differences. Therefore chemical inquiry
cannot proceed by a mechanical analysis of bodies into ‘integrant parts’
by the division of matter into smaller parts with an attention to its ‘gen-
eral properties’. Instead, chemistry studies those properties of bodies that
depend on their mixture by means of analysis of compounds into ‘con-
stituent parts’. This means a qualitative analysis of the different constitu-
ents of which a given mixture is composed, and it aims at studying those
components with respect to their ‘habits of mixture’ and to the ‘properties
of mixts from different ingredients’.8
Chemical investigations in eighteenth-century Scotland were largely
driven by their potential use in medical practice. Although the first pro-
fessors of the Edinburgh medical school were educated at Leiden, and
they imported to Scotland a Boerhaavean mechanistic approach, Edin-
burgh quickly turned into a centre of vitalistic physiology and, from the
second third of the century, offered an alternative to Boerhaavean medi-
cal orthodoxy. Edinburgh professors like William Porterfield and Robert
Whytt emphasised the active influence the mind exerts on physiological
processes.9 Porterfield developed a vitalistic account of binocular motions
that enable us to judge the distance of objects, and then extended it to
other bodily motions too. In his view it is custom and habit, arising from
a rational and voluntary decision, that stabilise the processes as a result of

6 See my “Post-Mechanical Explanation in the Natural and Moral Sciences: The Lan-
guage of Nature and Human Nature in David Hume and William Cullen”, Jahrbuch für
Europäische Wissenschaftskultur (forthcoming).
7 See Donovan A.L., “William Cullen and the Research Tradition of Eighteenth-Century
Scottish Chemistry”, in Campbell R.H. – Skinner A.S. (eds.), The Origins and Nature of the
Scottish Enlightenment (Edinburgh: 1982) 101.
8 Donovan A.L., Philosophical Chemistry in the Scottish Enlightenment (Edinburgh: 1975)
97–99.
9 See Wright J.P., “Metaphysics and Physiology: Mind, Body, and the Animal Economy
in Eighteenth-Century Scotland”, in Stewart M.A. (ed.), Studies in the Philosophy of the Scot-
tish Enlightenment (Oxford: 1990) and his “Materialism and the Life Soul in Eighteenth-
Century Scottish Physiology”, in Wood P. (ed.), The Scottish Enlightenment. Essays in
Reinterpretation (Rochester: 2000).
220 tamás demeter

which we cannot but constantly focus our eyes. This habit thus becomes
a law that the mind imposes on itself because of the intrinsic utility it has
in judging distance.
As his student notes testify, Whytt attended the classes of George
Young, an adjunct teacher at Edinburgh medical school, who taught him
to be sceptical about mechanical explanations in physiological matters
because, as he saw it, presupposing a hidden mechanism behind muscu-
lar motion is empirically ungrounded. Whytt, similarly, explained bodily
responses as arising from ‘an active sentient principle’ of which we may
lack sufficient theoretical knowledge, but we can know its workings from
the direct experience of how it feels. Although its workings are frequently
unconscious, it is due to us being habituated to them and to them being
gentle themselves. Gradually distancing himself from Porterfield’s theory,
with the sentient principle Whytt offered a unified account of bodily pro-
cesses replacing rationality with feeling as its basic principle. Whytt’s was
a picture of various parts of the body communicating via the nervous sys-
tem and responding to stimuli involuntarily and unconsciously. Although
they disagreed in several respects, Porterfield and Whytt agreed on at least
one point which may be called their common vitalistic stance: namely that
living organisms are active in the sense that they respond with more energy
than contained in the stimuli, so they cannot be studied along the same
lines as dead matter. In the explanation of living matter the perspective of
mechanical aggregation must give way to that of animal economy.
In Scotland a vitalistic vocabulary extended its influence beyond the
disciplinary boundaries of medical investigations into the realm of the
moral sciences. There are traces of an important influence of a vitalistic
outlook and language in Adam Smith’s economic theory. It is centred on
the idea of a natural balance in the economic body governing itself with
its own internal active forces. Smith depicts this body as a living organism
whose activities are conceived as interconnected parts of a larger whole
whose balance is maintained by ‘some unknown principle of preserva-
tion’ explicitly compared to the unknown, vital ‘principle of animal life’.10
Adam Ferguson also emphasises the explanatory deficiencies of analogies
drawn between the inanimate material world and society on the basis
that the latter is composed of ‘living and active members’. For him, adopt-
ing the perspective of mechanical theories of inert matter in moral phi-

10 Packham C., “The Physiology of Political Economy: Vitalism and Adam Smith’s
Wealth of Nations”, Journal of the History of Ideas 63 (2002) 465–481, 468.
 the anatomy and physiology of mind 221

losophy can only mean that the dynamic nature of social phenomena is
overlooked.11
As I suggest in this paper, Hume’s theory of human nature is also
informed by similar vitalistic tendencies and thus it can be placed in this
context. As a student at Edinburgh University, Hume took classes in natu-
ral philosophy and later he quite probably read medical works by Bernard
Mandeville and George Cheyne that introduced him to contemporary
physiological ideas.12 While writing up the Treatise (1735–1737) he was
working in Reims, using Noël-Antoine Pluche’s library, and in La Flèche,
the leading Jesuit centre of experimental physics at that time. Later he
was active in the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh, for a while as its
secretary, even editing some of its publications in natural philosophy; and
he had friends like William Cullen and Joseph Black.13 Throughout his life
he was surrounded by ideas of natural philosophy, and his work was not
left untouched by them.
In this paper I intend to show that it is much closer to the actual spirit of
Hume’s work to read it against the background of the metaphor of a quali-
tatively and vitalistically oriented anatomy of the human mind, which is
built upon the foundations of its physiology. It is important to emphasise
that talking about Hume’s anatomy and physiology of mind is metaphori-
cal: it signals the transmission of a language of natural phenomena to the
moral domain. Hume sees moral philosophy, that is, the study of moral
beings qua moral beings, as an independent enterprise: while he certainly
thought that natural philosophy could serve as a model and inspiration
for moral philosophy, and that it could provide the proper methods as
well, still moral philosophy represents an autonomous perspective for
him, from which phenomena characteristic to human beings qua moral
beings could be studied. This is why Hume takes pains to demarcate
his inquiries from anatomy and physiology as disciplines of natural phi-
losophy while repeatedly proclaiming himself explicitly an anatomist of
human nature.14

11 See Reill, Vitalizing Nature 69–70.

12 See Wright, Hume’s A Treatise, 8–9, 16–17.
13 See Barfoot M., “Hume and the Culture of Science in the Early Eighteenth Century”
in Stewart M.A. (ed.), Essays in the Philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment (Oxford: 1990)
and Schabas M., The Natural Origins of Economics (Chicago: 2005) 65–70.
14 See Hume David, Treatise on Human Nature: ed. Norton D.F. – Norton M.J. (Oxford:
2007) 1,1,2 and 3,3,6,6 (References to this work are normally in the form: Book.Part.Section.
Paragraph.)
222 tamás demeter

Hume’s qualitative project. The anatomy of mind

Let me begin with a quotation which I think aptly represents the con-
sensus of most commentators, as well as the public image of Hume: ‘On
Hume’s analysis, the mind is a compound entity, but it is not composed
of independent faculties, as in the scholastic account. The components of
the mind are perceptions, unified by relations of resemblance, causation,
and the operation of sympathy’.15 If this view of the Humean mind as
nothing but a bundle of perceptions is right, then it would make little sense
to talk about anatomy here. But there is something intrinsically suspicious
about this and similar quotations: what is sympathy if not a faculty that
can operate on some perceptions? And what is the ability to recognise
resemblances if it is not a faculty? Hume is very much aware that resem-
blance does not supervene exclusively on the intrinsic properties of per-
ceptions, because if this was the case then some philosophical reflection
would reveal that everything resembles everything, whereby resemblance
would lose all its explanatory power as a principle of ­association.16 Yet,
as a matter of fact, resemblance as a natural relation holds only between
some perceptions. Therefore it seems quite natural to suppose that there
is some faculty that is responsible for picking out some resemblances
as salient from among the infinitely many possible ones, thus making
them available as the basis of a principle of association. And there is one,
indeed: it is memory that is effective in ‘producing the relation of resem-
blance among the perceptions’ – we remember past impressions as being
similar.17
Hume sees his own identity as that of an ‘anatomist of the human
mind’. This metaphor is central throughout the Treatise and later in the
Enquiry concerning Human Understanding. It emerges in a 1739 letter to
Hutcheson in a famous comparison with the painter of human nature:
There are different ways of examining the Mind as well as the Body. One
may consider it either as an Anatomist or as a Painter; either to discover its
most secret Springs and Principles or to describe the Grace and Beauty of its
Actions. I imagine it impossible to conjoin these two Views. Where you pull
off the Skin, and display all the minute Parts, there appears something trivial,
even in the noblest Attitudes and most vigorous Actions: Nor can you ever

15 McIntyre J.L., “Hume’s ‘New and Extraordinary’ Account of the Passions”, in Traiger S.
(ed.), The Blackwell Guide to Hume’s Treatise (Oxford: 2006) 211.
16 Hume, Treatise 1,1,5,3.
17 Hume, Treatise 1,4,6,18.
 the anatomy and physiology of mind 223

render the Object graceful or engaging but by clothing the Parts again with
Skin and Flesh, and presenting only their bare Outside. An Anatomist, how-
ever, can give very good Advice to a Painter or Statuary: And in like manner,
I am persuaded, that a Metaphysician may be very helpful to a Moralist; tho’ I
cannot easily conceive these two Characters united in the same Work.18
This is consonant with the view Hume expounds in the Introduction to
the Treatise, namely, that the science of human nature is the foundation
of all further knowledge; it is, as it were, the first philosophy on which, to
some degree, all the branches of knowledge depend, ‘since they lie under
the cognizance of men, and are judged of by their powers and faculties’.19
Our knowledge is human knowledge through and through: we cannot
know its limits and extent without exploring first the kind of knowledge
we are capable of having at all.
But Hume’s anatomy of the mind offers more than that: the ‘delinea-
tion of the distinct parts and powers of the mind’20 yields a descriptive-
explanatory account of both human knowledge and action – which is
contrasted with the moralists’ normative enterprise. Hume summarises
the methodological credo of the Treatise’s project thus:
‘tis at least worth while to try if the science of man will not admit of the
same accuracy which several parts of natural philosophy are found suscep-
tible of. There seems to be all the reason in the world to imagine that it
may be carried to the greatest degree of exactness. If, in examining several
phæanomena, we find that they resolve themselves into one common prin-
ciple, and can trace this principle into another, we shall at last arrive at
those few simple principles, on which all the rest depend. And tho’ we can
never arrive at the ultimate principles, ‘tis a satisfaction to go as far as our
faculties will allow us.21
As he explains, the ‘logic’ he follows in pursuing this project is a causal
one; it aims at revealing human nature with an attention to the causal
contribution these principles make.22 The task of the anatomist of human
mind begins where that of the anatomist, physiologist and natural philoso-
pher ends, and it is continuous with theirs. And vice versa: it is their task to
submit explanations where the study of human nature cannot go further as
in the case of primary impressions which, if looked at from the perspective

18 Hume David, Letters of David Hume: ed. Greig J.Y.T. (Oxford: 1932) 1: 32–33.
19 Hume, Treatise Introduction.4.
20 Hume David, Enquiry concerning Human Understanding: ed. Beauchamp T. (Oxford:
2000) 1,13.
21 Hume, Treatise Abstract.1.
22 Hume, Treatise 1,3,15,11.
224 tamás demeter

of moral philosophy, arise ‘in the soul originally, from unknown causes’
and whose proper study is anatomy and natural philosophy.23
The task of the moral philosopher starts from the most basic level
directly experienced by, and relevant to the understanding of moral
beings, namely on the level of perceptions. On Hume’s account, there are
two kinds of perceptions in the mind which are the building blocks of
all human cognition: impressions and ideas, and both can be simple and
complex. Impressions are the matter of actual experience, and they are
either provided by the senses or by reflection which produces passions.
Ideas are representations of these impressions, most aptly seen as mental
images or concepts. As he frequently emphasises, the difference between
these two kinds of sensation consists in the force and vivacity with which
they present themselves: simple ideas are fainter copies of simple impres-
sions. Force and vivacity come in degrees. Most commentators take this
difference in degree as being the only difference that distinguishes impres-
sions from ideas; thus it is also implied that there are no qualitative differ-
ences between them. But this view can be challenged by a rarely quoted
passage from the Treatise:
Ideas may be compar’d to the extension and solidity of matter, and impres-
sions, especially reflective ones, to colours, tastes smells and other sensible
qualities. Ideas never admit of a total union, but are endow’d with a kind of
impenetrability, by which they exclude each other, and are capable of form-
ing a compound by their conjunction, not by their mixture. On the other
hand, impressions and passions are susceptible of an entire union and like
colours, may be blended so perfectly together, that each of them may lose
itself, and contribute only to vary that uniform impression, which arises
from the whole. Some of the most curious phænomena of the human mind
are deriv’d from this property of the passions.24
One could perhaps say that here Hume just echoes the then common-
place Cartesian dictum that passions are clear, i.e. vivid perceptions,
but they are not distinct. But one should not overlook the language in
which the distinction is drawn: the passage clearly suggests that there are,
indeed, qualitative differences between impressions and ideas; their inter-
actions follow different principles. On the one hand, ideas are character-
ised by mechanical properties that are preserved in their interactions:
they are and always remain atomistic. This also means that the forma-
tion of a complex idea is a reversible process: its building blocks can be

23 Hume, Treatise 1,1,2.

24 Hume, Treatise 2,2,6,1.
 the anatomy and physiology of mind 225

combined and recombined in various ways without losing their identity.

Impressions, and especially passions, on the other hand, are susceptible of
qualitative transformations, and they are characterised by properties and
interactions that are not explained in a mechanical way.
Hume’s famous ‘missing shade of blue’ thought experiment shows that
this difference has real philosophical import, and it is not just an illusion
arising from a fanciful metaphorical language.25 Here Hume discusses a
puzzling exception to his general rule that simple ideas are copies of pre-
vious simple impressions. He claims that if we are presented with a colour
scale gradually descending from light blue to dark blue with one particu-
lar shade of blue missing in it somewhere, then we can imagine the idea
of that missing shade without having been encountered it before in the
form of an impression. While admitting this case as an exception to the
general authority of his copy claim, Hume dismisses it as a peripheral one
not worthy of serious consideration.
It is important to note that this problem would not even emerge if ideas
and impressions were not qualitatively different. If ideas were not char-
acterised by mechanical properties, but they were presented in a manner
like impressions, then it would be quite natural to say that it is of course
possible to produce the idea of the missing shade: by mixing the ideas
of the two neighbouring shades one could easily imagine the missing
shade. But one cannot do this, as ideas, being atomistic, cannot interact
this way.
And this introduces an important lesson for the anatomy project. If
ideas are copies of impressions, then there must be a principle of human
nature causally responsible for copying. Furthermore, if ideas and impres-
sions are qualitatively different, then this principle must exert an active,
transformative influence on the impressions provided by the senses, and
reflection must do the same when producing passions from ideas. And if
it is possible, even if only in exceptional cases, to produce an idea with-
out a preceding impression, then again, there must be some principle
accounting for that too. The principles themselves are also qualitatively
distinguished by the kind of activity they exert on various perceptions,
and also by the kind of perception they exert it on – as the extract quoted
concerning impressions and ideas suggests. Specific principles apply to
different kinds of impression, deriving either from the senses or reflec-
tion, and also to ideas depending on their content. The task is to explore

25 Hume, Treatise 1,1,1,10.

226 tamás demeter

qualitatively different principles identified through their distinctive causal

contribution to the constitution of human nature.
There is evidence that Hume understood Newton’s Opticks as ‘anatomi-
cal’ in a similarly qualitative way. While his own purpose is to ‘anatomise
human nature in a regular manner’, he has Cleanthes say in his Dialogues
concerning Natural Religion that Newton ‘gives a minute anatomy of
the rays of light’, and that ‘[l]ight is in reality anatomised’.26 This is an
enterprise Newton himself characterises as an analysis of ‘compounds to
ingredients’ in order to explore the ‘original differences of rays of light’.27
This inquiry, especially if seen in the light of the anatomy metaphor, also
seems qualitative in character, and this understanding seems to be analo-
gous with how Hume sees his own task: to analyse compound human
nature into its functionally different ingredients, defined in terms of the
characteristic principles that apply to them, i.e. in terms of their origi-
nal differences. This is the sense in which Hume’s method can be aptly
characterised as Newtonian: much more in the spirit of the Opticks, and
especially of its Queries, than that of the Principia. And this orientation is
consistent with that of the qualitatively oriented philosophical chemistry
in the Scottish Enlightenment as developed by Cullen and others.28

The anatomy of mind. Hume’s faculty psychology

While there are indeed passages where Hume says things like ‘they are
successive perceptions only, that constitute the mind’,29 it would still miss
the point of Hume’s entire project to stop just there. While it is true that
for Hume the contents of the mind consist entirely of perceptions, yet his
aim, as he frequently emphasises, is to find the principles that describe
the causal framework of how those perceptions follow one another. It is
therefore misleading to say that there is nothing more to the Humean
mind than its contents: one can reveal systematic interconnections among
its contents, to establish them as principles whose interconnections can

26 Hume, Treatise Abstract.2 and Hume David, Dialogues concerning Natural Religion:
ed. Kemp Smith N. (Edinburgh: 1974) 136.
27 Newton Isaac, Philosophical Writings: ed. Janiak A. (Cambridge: 2004) 139.
28 See my “Post-Mechanical Explanation” and also Wilson D.B., Seeking Nature’s Logic.
Natural Philosophy in the Scottish Enlightenment (University Park, PA: 2009) 80–82 and
141–142.
29 Hume, Treatise 1,4,6,4.
 the anatomy and physiology of mind 227

be revealed as well. And these findings can be used for the purposes of
explanation of why perceptions follow one another in the order they do.
Without some commitment to the existence and stability of such prin-
ciples Hume’s project would lose its point.
The epistemic status of these principles of human nature is similar to
those of natural philosophy: we are presented with human phenomena and
the philosopher’s task is to explain them by reference to the principles pro-
ductive of them. These principles are not perceived directly, and we have
no impressions of them. Instead, they are revealed by empirical reasoning
and thus our knowledge of them is fallible: only the contents of the mind
are given, while the principles applied in their explanation are theoretical
constructs.30 Therefore they do not presume a robust ontological commit-
ment on Hume’s part, only a tentative or instrumental one, to the extent that
they can be used for the purposes of useful and satisfactory explanations.31
These principles are not scattered regularities, but they are indeed
structured, and in this sense the universal anatomy of the human mind is
analogous with the structure of the body: ‘The case is the same with the
fabric of the mind, as with that of the body. However the parts may differ
in shape or size, their structure and composition are in general the same.
There is a very remarkable resemblance, which preserves itself amidst all
their variety’.32 As some of these principles interact more closely they can
be conveniently subsumed under various faculties, so he talks freely, for
example, about the universal principles of imagination, of sympathy,33 as
well as of other faculties, their limits and imperfections. Talk about fac-
ulties is abundant throughout the text; sometimes they are referred to
straightforwardly as the ‘organs of the human mind’ as in the case of the
faculty which is responsible for producing passions, i.e. reflection.34
The Humean recipe for charting the anatomy of human mind seems
to be this:35 compare phenomena, find analogies between them, ascribe
them to principles, resolve them into more general ones if possible, and
find their place in the structure of their interaction in producing the phe-
nomena. This is a predominantly reductive stance that seeks to subsume a

30 Hume, Treatise 1,2,5,19.

31 Hume, Enquiry 1,9 and 7,29.
32 Hume, Treatise 2,1,11,5.
33 Hume, Treatise 1,1,4,1 and 2,2,5,14.
34 Hume, Treatise 2,1,5,6.
35 On Hume’s method see my “Hume’s Experimental Method”, British Journal for the
History of Philosophy 20, 2012 (forthcoming).
228 tamás demeter

variety of phenomena under a handful of principles, and it makes Hume’s

theory immune to charges of emptiness like the one Locke advanced
­earlier:
we may as properly say, that ’tis the singing Faculty sings, and the dancing
Faculty dances; as that the Will chuses, or that the Understanding conceives;
or, as is usual that the Will directs the Understanding, or the Understanding
obeys, or obeys not the Will: It being altogether as proper and intelligible to
say, that the power of Speaking directs the power of Singing, or the power
of Singing obeys or disobeys the power of Speaking.36
Surely, this passage can be used only as a malicious caricature of Hume’s
project. Subsuming various phenomena under qualitatively different causal
principles can hardly be seen as offering empirically empty ­tautologies.
This method results in a set of principles belonging to various faculties
as the constituent parts of a compound human nature. The list of faculties
includes sensation, memory, imagination, reason, judgement, reflection,
and sympathy. Will is conspicuously missing from the list. But on second
thought it is not surprising: given that for Hume will is not a faculty but
‘the internal impression we feel and are conscious of, when we knowingly
give rise to any new motion of our body, or new perception of our mind’,37
and as such it is explicitly compared to passions like pride and humility,
that are subject to the principles of reflection. Conscious will is just a ‘false
sensation’,38 not a faculty that could play a directive role in action. And
there is a general lesson here: contrary to the dominant view of scholastic
and several early modern authors where reason is normatively prescribed
the role of a supreme faculty that should direct action,39 there is no com-
parable hierarchy of faculties in Hume. Although he famously claims that
‘[r]eason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions’,40 so that it
might sound as if reflection, as the faculty responsible for the produc-
tion of passions, should stand at the top, yet passions themselves are part
of a causal structure of perceptions governed by the principles of vari-
ous faculties, e.g. ‘custom and repetition’ which have a great effect ‘both
to encrease and diminish our passions’.41 So, instead of an ‘upside-down

36 Locke John, An Essay concerning Human Understanding: ed. Nidditch P. (Oxford:

1975) 2,21,17.
37 Hume, Treatise 2,3,1,2.
38 Hume, Treatise 2,3,2,2.
39 See e.g. McIntyre, “Hume’s ‘New and Extraordinary’ Account”.
40 Hume, Treatise 2,3,3,4.
41 Hume, Treatise 2,3,5,1.
 the anatomy and physiology of mind 229

rationalist’ hierarchical organisation, Humean human nature is character-

ised by a continuous interplay of various faculties without a dominating
centre or director.
Not independently of the lack of hierarchy, Humean faculties are not
distinct modules, but they interfuse, penetrate one another and they have
principles in common. Due to its passivity, the best plausible candidate
for a modular faculty is external perception which merely collects impres-
sions. According to Hume’s official definition perception is ‘a mere pas-
sive admission of the impressions thro’ the organs of sensation’.42 Even
though it is passive, ‘[t]hose who are acquainted with the metaphysical
part of optics [. . .] know how we transfer the judgements and conclu-
sions of the understanding to the senses’.43 Hume here seems to imply
a meaning of metaphysics, not uncommon in the period, which bears on
the study of the mind and its operations, and in Scotland at that time it
was frequently conceived as standing in close relation to physiology. So,
beside Berkeley and Malebranche,44 Hume’s insight converges to contem-
porary physiological discourse too – especially to Porterfield’s theory of
binocular motions, first published in two parts in 1735 and 1737,45 accord-
ing to which it is due to custom and habit that we can focus our eyes and
thereby infer the distance of the objects presented in the visual image.46
However, it is important to note that there are divergences between the
concepts of ‘custom and habit’ in Porterfield and Hume. For Porterfield
the emergence of habit is voluntary on the mind’s part, and it consists
in the mind binding itself by an intrinsically useful law, which is there-
fore not innate, but ‘morally necessary’.47 For Hume custom and habit,
far from being voluntary, are the most fundamental principles of human
nature, which can be revealed in the background of several mental pro-
cesses. Its operation does not depend on, and certainly not supervised by
the mind, as Porterfield claims, rather it is a principle constitutive of the
mind itself. Porterfield’s notions of custom and habit are all too volunta-
ristic and rationalistic by Hume’s standards.

42 Hume, Treatise 1,3,2,2.

43 Hume, Treatise 2,2,8,6.
44 See Editors’ annotations Hume, Treatise, vol. 2, 747, 853.
45 Porterfield W., “Essay concerning the Motions of Our Eyes”, Part I: “Of Their External
Motions” in Medical Essays and Observations (Edinburgh: 1735), vol. 3, 160–261; Part II: “Of
Their Internal Motions” (Edinburgh: 1737), vol. IV, 124–294.
46 See Hume, Treatise 1,3,9,11 and also Wright, “Metaphysics and Physiology” 265–268.
47 See e.g. Wright, “Metaphysics and Physiology” 267.
230 tamás demeter

Not only perception but the faculties in general lack clear boundar-
ies in Hume. Association by resemblance is a common principle of both
understanding and reflection, and imagination has a great influence on
the passions.48 Due to their common principles the activity of various fac-
ulties combines in a dynamic and interactive way in producing various
perceptions and actions. These two features, i.e. the lack of hierarchy and
modularity of faculties, are the distinctive marks of Hume’s theory of the
human mind, and not, as is commonly held, that he as an associationist
‘reduced the powers of the mind to one, the ability to receive impressions’
and explained all phenomena of the mind by appeal to laws of associa-
tion.49 Hume’s mind does not work that way.
Despite not being modular, faculties can be characterised functionally –
more precisely, they can be characterised exclusively functionally, only by
the characteristic activity they exert on specific kinds of perception, as
well as by their various influences on each other. The focus on functions
is the only appropriate one for ‘a just and philosophical way of thinking’ as
contrasted with everyday thinking. In our philosophical – that is, by con-
temporary standards, explanatory50 – enterprises ‘the distinction which
we sometimes make betwixt a power and its exercise of it, is entirely frivo-
lous, and [. . .] neither man nor any other being ought ever to be thought
possest of any ability, unless it be exerted and put in action’.51 Accord-
ingly, the faculties of the mind can be studied and described only in terms
of their functioning, i.e. by the processes to which they contribute.
While reconstructing Hume’s views on morality, Rachel Cohon draws
a detailed picture of how the various faculties of reason, sympathy and
moral sense work and interact in his account. She characterises them
as processes in the mind, and suggests that Hume’s talk about faculties
should be understood this way.52 This is perfectly legitimate, as faculties
within the Humean framework cannot be identified independently of
the role they play. However, we should not replace talk about faculties
with that of processes just because they are only functionally identifiable.
Hume’s project aspires to more than a natural history of the mind: it is

48 Hume, Treatise 2,1,4,3 and 2,3,6,1.

49 Hatfield G., “Remaking the Science of Mind: Psychology as a Natural Science”, in
Fox C. – Porter R. – Wokler R. (eds.), Inventing Human Science. Eighteenth Century Domains
(Berkeley: 1995) 188.
50 See Yeo R., “Classifying the Sciences”, in Porter R. (ed.), Cambridge History of Science.
Eighteenth-Century Science (Cambridge: 2003), vol. 4.
51 Hume, Treatise 2,1,10,4 and see also 1,3,14,34.
52 Cohon R., Hume’s Morality. Feeling and Fabrication (Oxford: 2008) 67–69.
 the anatomy and physiology of mind 231

a search for the (causal) principles of human nature, which he needs for
the purposes of explanation of why perceptions follow one another in the
order they do and how actions spring from them. It is thus not merely a
project of describing and classifying processes; rather it is to explore the
causal potentials the human mind exhibits via exploring and classifying
its characteristic activities. Thus allowing for functionally identified facul-
ties exerting active influence on perceptions seems perfectly in order, and
fits the textual evidence better.
As Andrew Cunningham recently argued, Hume’s view of cognitive
activities has a vitalistic flavour: it is the mind’s internal need for activity
that motivates truth-seeking – truth in itself is not enough of a ­motivation.53
I suggest that something similar is true about various faculties in particular:
the principles Hume establishes describe the characteristic interactions
of faculties, the functional structure of human nature whose elements
are causally responsible for processing perceptions relevant to them. This
process is not typically mechanical, and cannot be understood in terms of
impressions causing ideas and vice versa. As we have seen above, ideas are
not just fainter impressions but they are different in kind; the two kinds of
perception have different properties and enter into different interactions.
Thus the faculty responsible for copying impressions into ideas must
make an active and qualitative contribution. So does sympathy: when
we form an idea of a passion that someone else is experiencing, it is the
operation of sympathy that ‘converts’ this idea into an impression thereby
making it possible to feel what the other feels.54 Were it not for the active
and selective influence of sympathy on some ideas, but for a mechanical-
causal relation between ideas and impressions, it would then be impos-
sible to explain why only ideas about others’ passions are turned into the
corresponding impressions. And the case is again similar with imagina-
tion, too. We cannot have an impression of a cause; we can have only a
repetition of similar cases. But we cannot experience anything in a thou-
sand cases which is not there in a single one. Yet, prompted by several
cases, memory, the recognition of resemblances, and habit give rise to ‘a
determination of the mind’, and the way it feels is just the new impression
whose copy is the idea of necessary connection, i.e. causation.55 A similar
scenario can provide the solution for the mystery of ‘the missing shade

53 Cunningham A.S., “Hume’s Vitalism and Its Implications”, British Journal for the His-
tory of Philosophy 15 (2007) 59–73.
54 See Hume, Treatise 2,1,11,3 and 3,3,1,7.
55 Hume, Treatise 1,3,14,15–20.
232 tamás demeter

of blue’: having experienced the regular succession of shades, a similar

determination of the mind can give rise to the impression necessary for
the idea of the missing shade.

The physiology of mind. The study of its normal functioning

Given that we cannot directly observe our faculties or their principles,

we can only chart our ‘mental anatomy’ via inferences from their effects.
Introspection is of no use here: reflecting on mental processes distorts
them, so self-observation or contrived inner experience cannot be appro-
priate ways of studying them, as they ‘wou’d so disturb the operation of
my natural principles, as must render it impossible to form any just con-
clusion from the phænomenon’.56 Hume’s anatomical project proceeds
via the study of processes taking place in the mind, and its proper method
is to find analogies among a variety of human phenomena and trace them
back to their causal sources. This task converges with the contemporary
understanding of medical anatomy and physiology. Cullen, for example,
shares this view of the anatomist’s task when he says ‘from anatomy you
know minutely the structure of the human body itself ’, a knowledge to
be augmented with physiology from which ‘you know the general laws by
which the animal economy is governed, and these detailed in explaining
the function of each particular part’.57 But due to Hume’s functionalist
outlook, ‘parts and powers’ cannot be separated: we have no direct intro-
spective access to the mind’s parts; therefore we can have no knowledge
of its anatomy as independent of the functioning of its different parts.
Given Hume’s anatomy metaphor, it is only through a physiology of the
mind, i.e. through the study of the general laws of its normal functioning,
that we can have access to its anatomy.
Apart from occasional excursions into the territory of actual physi-
ological explanations, Hume keeps his science of man as an autonomous
domain of explanations. Nonetheless, these scattered passages are enough
to testify that he did not consider the body as a mechanical or hydraulic
machine in a Boerhaavean manner. Instead he shares the view of Cullen
and other Scottish physiologists like Porterfield and Whytt, namely, that

56 Hume, Enquiry 1,13 and Treatise, Introduction.10.

57 Cullen W., “Lectures Introductory to the Course on the Practice of Physic”, in The
Works of William Cullen (Edinburgh: 1827), vol. 1, 440.
 the anatomy and physiology of mind 233

mind and body mutually influence one another.58 In these passages, for
example, Hume turns to a physiological explanation of mistakes in rea-
soning couched in terms of animal spirits, or argues from the analogies
between human and animal anatomy and physiology that the mental
capacities of animals must be similar to those of humans, different mostly
in degree and not in kind.59
Beyond this implicit and vague adherence to some sort of physiologi-
cal theory, it is also true, at a more general level, that the Humean lan-
guage of human nature is predominantly a language of active vital forces
and qualitative, chemical changes, and not of the widespread image of an
‘Enlightened Automata’.60 It is his language and outlook that associates
him with Enlightenment vitalism and also with philosophical chemistry
and vitalist physiology in Scotland at that time. Hume’s perspective can
also be characterised by those commitments which, as Peter Hans Reill
argues,61 became widely accepted among natural philosophers during the
course of the eighteenth century. Accordingly, human nature is a com-
pound whose constituents are not separable by mechanical means but by
qualitative analysis. Human phenomena are thus derived from the inter-
actions of different active components that can be decomposed only to
a certain point, whose qualitative differences are never entirely resolved,
and whose combination is regulated, also depending on qualitative differ-
ences. This is the language Hume speaks while discussing the physiology
of the human mind, and not the mechanical language of external forces
acting on homogenous ingredients.
If ideas and impressions are considered qualitatively uniform, then it is
particularly tempting to say that the way Hume envisages the interaction of
ideas and impressions is modelled on Newton’s theory of gravity.62 It seems
the principles of association are especially susceptible of such an interpre-
tation. And indeed, we have seen that ideas are partly characterised by a
mechanical description, especially by their solidity and their capability

58 Wright J.P., “Substance versus Function Dualism in Eighteenth-Century Medicine”,

in Wright J.P. – Porter P. (eds.), Psyche and Soma. Physicians and Metaphysicians on the
Mind-Body Problem from Antiquity to Enlightenment (Oxford: 2002) 251 and Reill, Vitalizing
Nature 122–125.
59 Hume, Treatise 1,2,5,20 and Enquiry 9,1.
60 See Schaffer S., “Enlightened Automata”, in Clark W. – Golinski J. – Schaffer S. (eds.),
The Sciences in Enlightened Europe (Chicago: 1999) 126–165.
61 Reill, Vitalizing Nature 78.
62 See e.g. Broughton J. “Impressions and Ideas” in Traiger S. (ed.), The Blackwell Guide
to Hume’s Treatise (Oxford: 2006) 51. See also Pitson, Hume’s Philosophy 14; Beebee, Hume
on Causation 15.
234 tamás demeter

of forming a union only by conjunction, which preserves their atomistic

identity, and not by mixture. On the surface, it makes sense to say that out
of the three principles of association between ideas, i.e. cause-effect, spatio-
temporal contiguity, and resemblance, at least two, namely cause-effect and
contiguity, seem to be mechanistically respectable. But resemblance should
incite our suspicion, as it cannot be conceived as a mechanical, only as an
intentional, relation which implies the active contribution of the mind. On
second thought, cause-effect and contiguity do not fare much better against
a mechanical background. Ideas are qualitatively different; they do not dif-
fer in shape, size and solidity but in content, i.e. in what they represent.
Representational contents, and not mechanical features, are the properties
on which possible associations depend, and it is also this content that deter-
mines the contribution they can make in complex ideas.
Connecting Humean association to Newtonian gravity is typically based
on the following passage:
These are therefore the principles of union or cohesion among our simple
ideas, and in the imagination supply the place of that inseparable connex-
ion, by which they are united in our memory. Here is a kind of attraction,
which in the mental world will be found to have as extraordinary effects as
in the natural, and to show itself in as many and as various forms. Its effects
are every where conspicuous; but as to its causes, they are mostly unknown,
and must be resolv’d into original qualities of human nature, which I pre-
tend not to explain.63
But nothing suggests here that it is Newton and universal gravity that
Hume has in mind. I suggest that, unlike universal gravity or external
forces, the principles of association should be understood as chemical
processes directed by elective attractions between ideas that depend on
their representational content. The principles of association are elective:
they do not hold universally between all ideas, only between some, and
there are, of course, pairs of ideas that do not stand in associative relations
at all. The principle of cause-effect can connect two ideas that may not
be connected by resemblance, and the possible associative links between
any two ideas depend on their content. If seen through a mechanical lens,
different chains of association cannot be adequately distinguished: the
solidity, number and structure of ideas involved in them do not give a fine
enough resolution for that purpose. In order to see them adequately, one
needs not only to take into account the qualitative differences, i.e. ­content,

63 Hume, Treatise 1,1,4,6.

 the anatomy and physiology of mind 235

of ideas but also the particular principle, ‘some associating quality’,64 by

which they are linked. This results in representationally heterogenous
chains of association held together by elective attractions between ideas.
Although chemical attractions were sometimes conceived by analogy
with Newtonian forces, this was not the only way of thinking about them.
Cullen, for example, argued that Newtonian gravity could not be an ade-
quate model for chemistry because the latter is focused on the particular
features of relative attractions.65 Elective attractions are the cement of the
chemical universe, but not in the sense of Newtonian gravity: while gravity
is a universal attraction, Cullen’s elective attractions are selective depend-
ing on the particular properties of substances and their relative affinities,
but not on their density.66 The business of chemistry is to explore and
arrange these attractions systematically, and to account for various com-
binations and separations of substances in terms of general principles
established by such classifications. This notion of elective attraction suits
Hume’s theory of association much better than universal gravity.
Traces of a qualitatively focused mental physiology are especially con-
spicuous in Hume’s theory of passions. In some passages Hume seems
to echo George Cheyne’s metaphorical language of musical instruments,67
and prima facie this may suggest Hume’s adherence to a mechanical
outlook. As Cheyne writes, the brain where ‘the Nerves, or Instruments
of Sensation terminate’ is ‘like a Musician in a finely fram’d and well-
tune’d Organ-Case’, and ‘these Nerves are like Keys, which, being struck
or touched convey the Sound’.68 For Hume the mind with respect to the
passions is
not of the nature of a wind instrument of music, which in running over all
the notes immediately loses the sound after the breath ceases; but rather
resembles a string-instrument, where after each stroke the vibrations still
retain some sound, which gradually and insensibly decays. The imagina-
tion is extreme quick and agile; but the passions are slow and restive: For

64 Hume, Treatise 1,1,4,1.

65 See e.g. Klein U. – Lefèvre W., Materials in Eighteenth Century Science. A Historical
Ontology (Cambridge, Mass.: 2007) 38, 47, 56–57. On the relation of Cullen’s concept to
that of Buffon and others see Donovan, Philosophical Chemistry 130.
66 See Schofield, Mechanism and Materialism 218, and Klein – Lefèvre, Materials 38, 47,
56–57. On Cullen’s view see Donovan, Philosophical Chemistry 130.
67 Arguably, it was Cheyne to whom Hume intended his famous ‘Letter to a physician’.
See Burton J.H., Life and Correspondence of David Hume (Edinburgh: 1846) 1, 42–43 and
more recently Wright J.P., “Dr. George Cheyne, Chevalier Ramsey, and Hume’s Letter to a
Physician”, Hume Studies 29 (2003) 125–141.
68 Cheyne G., The English Malady (London: 1733) 4–5.
236 tamás demeter

which reason, when any object is presented, that affords a variety of views
to the one, and emotions to the other; ’tho the fancy may change its views
with great celerity; each stroke will not produce a clear and distinct note of
passion, but the one passion will always be mixt and confounded with the
other. According as the probability inclines to good or evil, the passion of
joy or sorrow predominates in the composition.69
Although on its surface this passage suggests a mechanical imagery of
strings, vibrations and winds, the actual emphasis is on qualitatively dif-
ferent passions mixing together, just like sounds, in an unclear and indis-
tinct manner so as to result in a composition.
Hume’s passions are secondary impressions produced by the faculty of
reflection, and are founded on the pleasant or unpleasant character that
conjoins some ideas or primary impressions. The natural path of a single
passion, conceived theoretically as a separate entity, is characterised as
a qualitative, directional change over time.70 Its direction is determined
by association by resemblance, the only way passions can be associated,
and the process can be strengthened by the association of ideas that
play a role in the production of passions either as their causes or their
objects.71 The actual dynamics of passions is, of course, more complex, as
there are several passions at any time interacting in the mind, induced by
legions of impressions and ideas constantly present to it. This interaction
is described with instructive similes:
Upon the whole, contrary passions succeed each other alternately, when
they arise from different objects: They mutually destroy each other, when
they proceed from different parts of the same: And they subsist both of
them, and mingle together, when they are deriv’d from the contrary and in
compatible chances or possibilities, on which any one object depends. The
influence of the relations of ideas is plainly seen in this whole affair. If the
objects of the contrary passions be totally different, the passions are like two
opposite liquors in different bottles, which have no influence on each other.
If the objects be intimately connected, the passions are like an alcali and
an acid, which, being mingled, destroy each other. If the relation be more
imperfect, and consists in the contradictory views of the same object, the
passions are like oil and vinegar, which, however mingled, never perfectly
unite and incorporate.72

69 Hume, Treatise 2,3,9.

70 Hume, Treatise 2,2,9.
71 Hume, Treatise 2,1,4.
72 Hume, Treatise 2,3,9,17.
 the anatomy and physiology of mind 237

More than figurative speech, this is perfectly consistent with the passage
in which Hume made a qualitative distinction between ideas and impres-
sions. And it is now hardly surprising to see that there are qualitative dif-
ferences between passions as well, and that their interactions, which can
again be seen in terms of elective attractions, are founded on those dif-
ferences. Unlike Newtonian forces, the principles of interaction in Hume’s
mental world are sensitive to differences in kind that resist mathematisa-
tion, and belong more organically to the view championed by Cullen in
Scotland and Buffon at the same time on the Continent with its emphasis
‘on the principles of comparison, resemblance, affinity, analogical reason-
ing’ and its explanations in terms of ‘inner, active forces as central agents
in nature’.73
Probably there is no better example of an active force in Hume’s Trea-
tise than the operation of sympathy, which ‘is nothing but the conversion
of an idea into an impression by the force of imagination’.74 The process
is simple: from external signs, gestures, speech, etc. we form an idea, via
inferences, about what goes on in the other’s mind, and sympathy turns
this idea into its corresponding impression so that we can literally feel
what the other feels.75 Sympathy is thus an internal active principle of the
mind which transforms ideas into impressions thereby facilitating com-
munication of opinions and affections. As it makes us sensitive to the
feelings of others, this faculty can aptly be called the basis of sociability.
Sympathy is responsible for the bonds in the social world, and as such it
is analogous with the cohesive force in the world of living organisms:
this is still more remarkable, when we add a sympathy of parts to their com-
mon end, and suppose that they bear to each other, the reciprocal relation
of cause and effect in all their actions and operations. This is the case with
all animals and vegetables; where not only the several parts have a reference
to some general purpose, but also a mutual dependance on, and connexion
with each other.76
Sympathy establishes similar reciprocal relations in human interaction, as
it is due to it that ‘the minds of men are mirrors to one another’.77 It is thus
through the concept of sympathy that the ideas of an organic nature and
human nature, the language of chemical reactions and human ­interactions

73 Reill, Vitalizing Nature 69.

74 Hume, Treatise 2,3,6,8.
75 Hume, Treatise 2,1,11,3.
76 Hume, Treatise 1,4,6,12.
77 Hume, Treatise 2,2,5,21.
238 tamás demeter

are contiguous: living things and society are both organised by their pecu-
liar principles into an organic whole.78 And it is the same image that applies
to the functioning of the various organs of the human mind.

Conclusion

In this paper I have argued that, while developing his theory of human
nature, Hume adopted a perspective and spoke a language that is con-
vergent to the vitalistic tendencies in the Enlightenment. For Hume the
mind is like an organised living body whose anatomy (the structure of its
organs, i.e. faculties) is accessible only through its physiology (the study of
its normal functioning). The mind is a decentralised system of functional
centres characterised by the specific activity they exert on sensations.
These functional parts are linked together by various forms of intercon-
nection, interaction and mutual reciprocity. Through the reciprocal rela-
tions between various processes Hume charts the anatomy of the mind
in which the non-modular interaction of various faculties adds up to a
harmonious whole. Appreciating this vitalistic character of Hume’s proj-
ect, and the language he is using while developing it, helps us to a better
understanding of what was really important to Hume: the principles of
human nature.

78 See Reill, Vitalizing Nature 135–142.

 the anatomy and physiology of mind 239

Selective bibliography

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Stewart M.A. (ed.), Essays in the Philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment (Oxford: 1990)
151–190.
Beebee H., Hume on Causation (London: 2006).
Broughton J. “Impressions and Ideas” in Traiger S. (ed.), The Blackwell Guide to Hume’s
Treatise (Oxford: 2006) 43–58.
Buckle S., Hume’s Enlightenment Tract (Oxford: 2002).
Burton J.H., Life and Correspondence of David Hume, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: 1846).
Cheyne G., The English Malady (London: 1733).
Cohon R., Hume’s Morality. Feeling and Fabrication (Oxford: 2008).
Cullen W., “Lectures Introductory to the Course on the Practice of Physic”, in The Works
of William Cullen (Edinburgh: 1827), vol. 1, 363–464.
Cunningham A.S., “Hume’s Vitalism and Its Implications”, British Journal for the History
of Philosophy 15 (2007) 59–73.
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20 (2012) forthcoming.
——, “Post-Mechanical Explanation in the Natural and Moral Sciences: The Language of
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Dicker G., Hume’s Metaphysics and Epistemology (London: 1998).
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——, “William Cullen and the Research Tradition of Eighteenth-Century Scottish Cem-
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Hatfield G., “Remaking the Science of Mind: Psychology as a Natural Science”, in
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Hume David, Dialogues concerning Natural Religion: ed. Kemp Smith N. (Edinburgh:
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——, Enquiry concerning Human Understanding: ed. Beauchamp T. (Oxford: 2000).
——, Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals: ed. Beauchamp T. (Oxford: 1998).
——, Letters of David Hume: ed. Greig J.Y.T., 2 vols. (Oxford: 1932).
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(Cambridge, Mass.: 2007).
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(ed.), The Blackwell Guide to Hume’s Treatise (Oxford: 2006) 199–215.
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Nations”, Journal of the History of Ideas 63 (2002) 465–481.
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Motions” in Medical Essays and Observations, vol. III (Edinburgh: 1735) 160–261; Part II:
“Of Their Internal Motions”, vol. IV (Edinburgh: 1737) 124–294.
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of Science. Volume 4. Eighteenth-Century Science (Cambridge: 2003) 23–43.
——, Vitalizing Nature in the Enlightenment (Berkeley: 2005).
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Sciences in Enlightened Europe (Chicago: 1999) 126–165.
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Schliesser E., “Hume’s Newtonianism and Anti-Newtonianism”, in Zalta E.N. (ed.), The
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2007) http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2008/
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Theories of Colored Bodies and Fits of Easy Reflection (Cambridge: 1993).
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­Eighteenth-Century Science (Cambridge: 2003), vol. 4, 241–266.
 More than a fading FLAME. The physiology of Old Age
between speculative analogy and experimental method

Daniel Schäfer

Summary

Ancient and early modern notions of ageing posit several reasons for its cause.
Along with common intrinsic factors – steady loss of inner warmth and moisture
resulting in a lack of blood and semen, as well as insufficient digestion, which in
turn leads to an accumulation of putrefying waste products – extrinsic causes are
also taken into account: excessive or insufficient cooling through the surround-
ing air, and incorrect diet. Initially, most of these concepts drew their analogies
from nature: withering leaves, the cooling corpse and, above all, the metaphor of
the fading lamp or flame, which has been the focus of numerous studies. These
conceptions are treated with a certain rigidity in early modern Galenism and
proved astonishingly stable. After 1650, however, iatrochemical and iatromechan-
ical ideas presented alternatives, although they, too, initially employed analogies
based on the ageing of natural elements, chemical reactions, and machines. In a
few places, however – for instance in Francis Bacon’s collection of empirical case
studies (Historiae naturales) – we can glimpse an early tentative attempt to find
new heuristic approaches to the physiology of age and ageing. While this spe-
cialty was in no way a focus of pre-modern physiology, it proves an ideal test case
for studying the use of analogy over the longue dureé of physiological thought.

Overview of the sources

The physiology of old age and ageing – that is, first and foremost the ques-
tion of why ageing happens and how it manifests itself – is not a cen-
tral topic of Greco-Roman natural philosophy and medicine. Indeed, it is
even more marginal than related discussions of the dietetics or pathology
of ageing.1 In line with the overall development of physiology,2 well into
the Hellenistic period we mostly encounter statements on the general

1 An overview of ancient pathology, dietetics and treatment of old age can be found in:
Schäfer D., Old Age and Disease in Early Modern Medicine (London: 2011).
2 Cf. Rothschuh K.E., Physiologie. Der Wandel ihrer Konzepte, Probleme und Methoden
vom 16. bis 19. Jahrhundert (Freiburg-Munich: 1968) 13–14; cf. also the contribution of
V. Nutton in this volume.
242 daniel schäfer

Table 1: Medical Gerocomies and Related Texts 1489–1807

First Print Author Short Title
1489 Gabriele Zerbi Gerontocomia
1489 Marsilio Ficino De vita lib. 2
1540 Antonio Fumanelli De senum regimine
1545 Gilbert Fuchs Gerocomice
1546 Andrés De Laguna De victus [. . .] in senectute
observanda
about 1570 Girolamo Cardano De sanitate tuenda lib. IV;
Theonoston lib. II
1585 Girolamo Brisiani Geraeologia
1588 David de Pomis De senum affectibus
1597 André du Laurens A discourse [. . .] of old age
1606 Aurelio Anselmi Gerocomica
1617 François Fougerolles De senum affectibus
1621/31 Bernhardin Stainer Gerocomicon
1627 François Ranchin Gerokomike
1724 Robert Welsted De aetate vergente
1724 John Floyer Gerocomica
about 1750? John Hill The old man´s guide
1777 Marin Jacques Claire Robert De la vieillesse
1807 Anonymous Gérocomie

­ rocesses of ageing found in nature, particularly in the works of Plato and

p
(Ps.-)Aristotle (Parva naturalia, Generation of Animals, Problems, Physics);
Galen and his followers, on the other hand, already referred primarily to
man.3 But it is only in the Islamic and European Middle Ages, especially
in Avicenna, (Ps.-)Roger Bacon, and Arnald of Villanova, that accounts
of ageing first appear in dedicated chapters and in sub-sections of larger
works. Expert literature on caring for the elderly (gerocomies, see Table 1),
which comes into being in the late fifteenth century and especially around
1600, emphasises dietetics but routinely includes sections on physiology
as well. In contrast, general works on medicine (the Summae of Fernel,
Riolan, etc.) provide comparatively little information on this topic. Only
in the mid-seventeenth century do university writings – particularly doc-
toral theses, which are now written in large numbers – begin to include
works dedicated predominantly or exclusively to the physiology of old
age. Until about 1650, the Aristotelian-Galenic paradigm dominates here

3 Compare Byl S., “La gérontologie de Galien”, History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences
10 (1988) 73–92.
 more than a fading flame 243

as in many other fields of medicine, at least in universities; as it declines,

we find in the subsequent 150 years numerous hybrids, varying regionally,
with iatrochemical, iatromechanical, or iatrodynamic emphases.

Analogies to nature

The concept of analogy was already in use in Greek Antiquity (originat-

ing from the discipline of mathematics). In particular, Aristotle under-
stands it as a logical aid to elucidating phenomena in different domains
based on the similarities of their circumstances: if only one of them is
completely known, an element of the other is determined by way of anal-
ogy (‘paradeigma; syllogismos kat’ analogian’). In its application, analogy
routinely transcends the boundaries between categories by establish-
ing concrete connections across them. Thus structural commonalities
are identified without creating new, superordinate kinds (or categories),
and without establishing a complete identity between the circumstances
being ­compared.4 Furthermore, the concept of analogy can also be used
to establish a middle term, in the sense of a commensurate relationship
between two people and/or things that in themselves are incommensu-
rable: A is to B as C is to D5 (e.g., elephants are larger and live longer than
mice, thus animals with greater mass will age more slowly than those with
less mass).6
In this way, considerations on the physiology of ageing7 were specu-
latively connected to observations from nature, especially in Greek
natural philosophy (and in the ensuing two millennia of its reception).
This is particularly the case for changes which were connected to dry-
ing out, cooling, extinction, putrefaction, or the accumulation of waste
products. These keywords already reveal that, from Antiquity until well
into the Early Modern period, ageing was usually considered a process
closely associated with dying and death. Galen’s metaphor of old age as a
path towards death8 is only one of many examples indicating that it was

4 Kluxen W., “Analogie I.”, in Ritter Joachim (ed.), Historisches Wörterbuch der Philoso-
phie (Darmstadt: 1971), vol. 1, 214–227, col. 216–217.
5 Hoenen M.J.F.M., “Analogie”, in: Ueding Gert (ed.), Historisches Wörterbuch der Rheto-
rik (Darmstadt: 1992), vol. 1, 498–514, col. 498, 503–504.
6 Compare Aristoteles, De longaevitate 466a12–17.
7 An overview is provided by Grmek M.D., On Ageing and Old Age. Basic Problems and
Historic Aspects of Gerontology and Geriatrics (The Hague: 1958).
8 Galenus, De temperamentis 2.2 (2.582 K.).
244 daniel schäfer

c­ ommonly conceived not as a stage at the end of life but rather as the end
of life itself (in the sense of a culmination of life processes, Aristotelian
akmê); the early modern pun senectus defectus9 once again gave dramatic
expression to this view. Only at the end of the nineteenth century did the
notion begin to spread that old age is a period of life in its own right, with
its own characteristics, and not merely the decline of earlier capacities.
In specialised medical literature, analogies are only seldom drawn
explicitly by means of clear biological metaphors (‘wilting’) or references
to nature (‘as with plants’). Instead, it is the simple use of significant
nomina (dry, cold, putrefaction, etc.) that usually indicates that a com-
parison is being implied. As explained above, however, this does not mean
that the reality of human ageing is fully equated with the object to which
it is compared.
Analogical thinking becomes most obvious with the phenomenon of
wilting as a consequence of drying out; in the Mediterranean environment
this can be observed especially in plants, due to their relatively large sur-
face area. Drying out thus primarily refers to the effect of an excess of out-
side heat (e.g., solar radiation) as well as to a lack of available or required
moisture. Aristotle and Galen occasionally employ explicit analogies to
plants in their remarks on the physiology of old age;10 a reference to the
wrinkled, often dry skin of the elderly could have contributed particularly
to this interpretation, even if it is not explicitly mentioned. Aristotle does
say, however, that large animals, due to their sheer bulk, do not dry out
as easily as small ones and thus generally helps them live longer. Humans
doing hard physical labour, on the other hand, age faster, as their work
causes them to dry out.11 Finally, and of obvious importance for the his-
tory of early modern geriatrics, Galen compares the drying out resulting
from fever (marasmos) to natural ageing; both are characterised by ema-
ciation, although in the latter there is no trace of fever.
The notion of coldness and cooling as supposedly essential features of
old age also points to observations from nature. It is probable, although
not attested, that old people were equated with cooling corpses. At any
rate, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Martin Luther, and other early modern

9 Anselmi Aurelio, Gerocomica sive de senum regimine. Opus non modo philosophis et
medicis gratum, sed omnibus hominibus utile (Venice, Franciscus Ciottus: 1606) 13, 24.
10 Aristoteles, De respiratione 478b27–28; Galenus, De sanitate tuenda 1.2 (6.6 K.) 6.3
(6.399–400 K.).
11 Arist. Long. 466a27–28, b13–14.
 more than a fading flame 245

authors refer to the elderly as living corpses.12 And Aristotle – again in

Parva ­naturalia – suggests that animals of the same kind live longer in
hot countries than in cold ones,13 and he maintains that the elderly shiver
because they are cold from within.14 The famous Aristotelian comparison
of old age to a fading flame or (oil) lamp,15 dominant for two millennia,
manages to unite images of drying out and cooling: the flame will dim
as its (moist) fuel runs out, and at the same time the warmth it provides
disappears.
Aristotle also attributes the putrefaction (sêpsis) of humid matter to
external heat and the absence of air or wind. It is typically the cause for
hair becoming grey,16 which is often compared to developing mould;17 but
even old age as a whole (just like death!) can be considered a process of
putrefaction.18
In another analogy, Galen mentions ‘earthy’ dry particles (ousiai) in the
bodies of adults and the elderly that do not ‘burn’ properly (in contrast
to the oily ‘fuel’ of young people), resulting in the development of smoky
vapours.19 This notion combines the image of the burning of solid materi-
als to ashes with the Aristotelian etymology of gêras – gê (Earth).20 For
this reason hypothesised cinders (especially of the blood) were later called
particulae terrenae or terrestres, and they are given an important role in
explaining old age. According to this theory, ageing has something to do
with inadequate ‘burning’ and the accumulation of waste products. Early

12 Luther Martin, Der zwelfte und letzte Teil der Bücher des ehrnwirdigen Herrn D. Mart.
Luthero. Nemlic. Die erste Auslegung über die Epistel an die Galater/Ecclesiastes oder Predi-
ger Salomo [. . .] (Wittenberg, Hans Lufft: 1559) 158 verso. Erasmus Desiderius, Laus stulti-
tiae 31, in Erasmus Desiderius, Ausgewählte Schriften in 8 Bänden, ed. W. Welzig, 5 vols.
(Darmstadt: 1995), vol. 2, 71. Cf. also the early modern etymology of Senex quasi seminex
(half-dead); cf. Struve Georg Adam, Tractatus exhibens iura ac privilegia senectutis, Von
Freyheiten Alter betagter Leute (Jena, Ernest. Christian. Rudolph: 1737) 4.
13 Arist. Long. 466b17–19.
14 Aristoteles, Problemata 874b33.
15 Aristoteles, De juventute 470a1; Resp. 474b13–24; De generatione animalium 784b7f.;
Pr. 875a4–15. Cf. Niebyl P.H., “Old Age, Fever, and the Lamp Metaphor”, Journal of the His-
tory of Medicine and Allied Sciences 26 (1977) 351–368.
16 Arist. GA 784b8–10; 785a26–30; cf. also Historia animalium 518a8–18.
17 Gabriele Zerbi etymologically traces grey or white hair (canities, canitudo) to mould
(candor), which results from humidity and the absence of air. Zerbi Gabriele, Gabrielis
Zerbi Veronensis ad Innocentium VIII. Pon. Max. Gerentocomia [!] feli­ci­ter incipit (Rome:
1489), ch. 5 (unpaginated), cf. Zerbi Gabriele, Gerontocomia. On the Care of the Aged and
Maximianus, Elegies on Old Age and Love (Philadelphia: 1988) 48–49.
18 Arist. Pr. 909b2, 25–27.
19 Galenus, In Hippocratis aphorismos commentarii 14 (17B.410–412 K.).
20 Arist. GA 783b7–8.
246 daniel schäfer

iatrochemistry in particular uses this image, which recalls the smelting of

ores, and varies it by comparing ageing with the rusting of metal.21
Beginning in the mid-seventeenth century, iatrochemical texts also use
another image taken from the natural world: that of alcoholic fermenta-
tion and the underlying ‘ferments’. This can account for physical functions
of many different kinds (digestion, menstruation, movement, sensitivity) as
well as their corresponding decline in old age. For example, a lack of vitality
(spirituoscentia)22 in the blood causes it to appear like spoiled, cloudy wine
(vappa)23 and to lose its ability to produce any useful ‘spirits’ (spiritus).
After 1650, another analogy gains great significance in iatromechani-
cal texts on the physiology of ageing, although this one no longer derives
from nature: the notion of old age as a kind of malfunction, which fol-
lows the Cartesian idea of man as a machine. For example, parts of the
machina hydraulico-pneumatica are damaged through the wear and tear
of constant use and, if there is no possibility of reparatio, will cease to
function.24
These analogies, only very briefly sketched and documented here, are
merely the most important ones used in the field of the physiology of
old age and ageing. In no way did they replace theoretical presupposi-
tions, which in some cases were directly derived from them, in others
were only connected to them, and in others even contradicted them, to
some extent. In any case they went far beyond the simple comparison to
observed phenomena. We can therefore conclude that, even in the ear-
liest periods, physiology had advanced beyond arguments ex analogiae.
In the remainder of this chapter I shall illustrate this by means of a few
examples, which introduce a range of concepts of the physiology of old
age and ageing.

Dry or moist? When images and concepts contradict one another

The analogy between coldness and old age reflected the basic physiologi-
cal view connecting life to warmth, according to which living beings are

21 Paracelsus, Liber de renovatione et restauratione in Paracelsus Theophrastus, Werke,

tr. Peuckert W.E., 5 vols (Basel-Stuttgart: 1965–1968), vol. 1, 451.
22 Camerarius Elias Rudolph – Carolus M. Theodor, Valetudinarii senilis lineae generales
(Tübingen, Gregorius Kerner: 1683), ch. I, th. 10, 10.
23 Schrader Friedrich – Blume Johann Heinrich, Dissertatio medica inauguralis De
senectutis praesidiis (Helmstedt, Georg-Wolfgang Hamm: 1699), § 11 (unpaginated).
24 E.g. Glagau Aegidius, Disputatio medica inauguralis De senectute ipsa morbo (Leiden:
1715), § 4, 8.
 more than a fading flame 247

endowed at birth with a certain amount of interior or innate warmth

(thermon emphuton; later calor innatus), which constantly diminishes
until it has been used up in old age or death.25 Explaining dryness, on the
other hand, was problematic. It is true that, like coldness, it could read-
ily be attributed to the continuous loss of an inner principle, in this case
an oily ‘vital moisture’ (symphutos hygrotês, humor insitus; later called
humidum radicale).26 Old age was therefore considered ‘dry’ and ‘cold’ for
over two millennia, and texts conflated the collective loss of both vital
principles to such a degree that, by the end of the period in which Galenic
medicine dominated, often no clear distinction was made between them.
For example, Gilbert Fuchs of Liège, personal physician to the Prince
Bishop, suggested that exhaling (exhalatio) caused a continuous quantita-
tive diminution (effluvio) not only of warmth but also of the body’s moist
substance.27
There were clearly problems, however, with integrating ‘dry old age’
into the slowly developing grand speculative system of the doctrine of
temperament. According to this doctrine, man, who is composed of the
four elements, contains a different mixture (depending on his age) of the
four qualities of cold, warm, dry and moist. Of decisive importance for
integrating old age into this comprehensive theory was a further analogy,
that between the four seasons and the ages of life, each of which is char-
acterised by two qualities: children were related to spring, the first quarter
of the year, the elderly, on the other hand, to winter, being the final quar-
ter.28 If, as indicated above, one intended to attribute maximum warmth

25 Hippocrates, Aphorismi 1.14 (4.466 L.); Hippocrates, De natura hominis 12 (6.64 L.). –
The pre-Socratic Parmenides of Elea already supposedly traced the onset of old age to a
lack of warmth; following Stobaeus 4.50.2; Hense O. (ed.) Ioannis Stobaei anthologii libri
duo posteriors. Recensuit Otto Hense (Berlin: 1912), vol. 3, 1032. A brief account of Greco-
Roman geriatric medicine is also provided by Horstmanshoff H.F.J., “Alter”, in: Leven K.-H.
(ed.): Antike Medizin. Ein Lexikon (Munich: 2005), col. 32–33; compare also Godderis J.,
“Peri geros: De antieke geneeskunde over de lichamelijke en psychische kwalen van de
oude dag”, Kleio 18 (1989) 51–66.
26 Galenus, De differentiis febrium 1.10 (7.318 K.); cf. Arist. Pr. 875a15; Hall T.S., “Life,
Death, and the Radical Moisture”, Clio Medica 6 (1971) 6–7. On the concept of humidum
radicale in Avicenna cf. Stolberg M., “Die Lehre vom ‘calor innatus’ im lateinischen Canon
medicinae des Avicenna”, Sudhoffs Archiv 77 (1993) 39–40; McVaugh M.R., “The ‘Humidum
Radicale’ in Thirteenth-Century Medicine”, Traditio 30 (1974) 265–266.
27 Fuchs Gilbert, Gerocomice, hoc est senes rite educandi modus et ratio (Cologne, Mar-
tinus Gymnicus: 1545). – Girolamo Cardano also mentions the exhalation of humidum;
Cardano Girolamo, De sanitate tuenda 1.8, in Cardano Girolamo, Opera omnia (Lyons, J.A.
Huguetan and M.A. Ravaud: 1663), vol. VI, 253.
28 Diogenes Laertius (De clarorum philosophorum vitis 8.10) puts this analogy into the
mouth of Pythagoras. The Seleucid year, as well as the Roman (until the introduction of
the Julian calendar), started in spring (March).
248 daniel schäfer

and moisture to children, then for reasons of logic and symmetry summer
(youth) had to be warm and dry, and autumn (adulthood) had to be cold
and dry, but winter (old age) had to be dry and moist.29 Furthermore,
the four humours (humores), which are already mentioned in the Hip-
pocratic Corpus and are likewise characterised by qualities – viz. blood
(warm/moist), yellow bile (warm/dry), black bile (cold/dry) and phlegm
(cold/moist) – are attributed to the four ages in order of preference. Thus,
according to this system of humoral physiology or pathology, which domi-
nated Western medicine for more than 1500 years, old age was accorded a
cold and moist disposition characterised by phlegm (phlegma).30 In line
with this was also the clinical observation, often mentioned in texts, that
old people commonly suffer from catarrh, oozing eyes, and similar secre-
tions of moisture.
In various passages of his works, Galen therefore attempted to harmon-
ise this contradiction, which had already become obvious in his day. In his
view, the solid parts of the body dry out as a result of the circumstances
explained above (continuous loss of humor insitus); their environment,
though, is too moist, since their insufficient calor innatus and resulting
weak digestion prevent ‘extrinsic’ moisture from being absorbed by the
‘intrinsic’ part of the body.31 Thus the (excessively) dry, solid parts of the
body are confronted with a damaging surplus (perittômata; superfluida,
excrementa) of phlegm-like or acrid moisture which, on account of a lack
of interior warmth, is poorly digested. In Galen, however, the constitu-
tional basis for ageing remains cold and dry dyscrasia, the unsound mix-
ture of the ‘intrinsic’.
Galen’s integrative concept of a simultaneously dry and moist old
age had an extensive reception over the following 1500 years. An addi-
tional, chronologically-based explanation of these contradictory qualities
(although one still embedded within the traditional doctrines of tempera-
ments and humours) was provided by a distinction that became common
in the High Middle Ages: that between senectus as a third and senium
as a fourth age of life. Before the onset of the ‘moist’ phlegm of senium,

29 Jean Riolan the Elder, for example, still adheres to this rationale: ‘Senectus frigida
et humida, ut hyems’; Riolan Jean, Universae medicinae compendium (Basel, C. Wald­kirch:
1600) 46. An overview of medieval systematics is provided by Burrow J.A., The Four Ages
of Man (Oxford: 1988) 12–36.
30 Cf. Schöner E., Das Viererschema in der antiken Humoralpathologie (Wiesbaden:
1964) 83, 92.
31 Galenus, In Hippocratis librum de natura hominis commentarii 3.7 (15.185–190 K.); De
temper. 2.2 (1.580–82 K.).
 more than a fading flame 249

man is affected in senectus by ‘dry’ black bile (melan cholê). Since, in the
context of the four-age scheme, Galen does not attribute this black-bile
predisposition to actual old age but to the effects of the third age, early
modern medicine sometimes also mentions ‘melancholic’ phenomena
and illnesses of old age.32 In addition to this rough distinction within old
age, some early modern authors also point to the significance of individ-
ual constitution and temperament of the body and accordingly differen-
tiate between senectus sanguinea, biliosa, pituiosa and melancholica. In
this scheme, ‘cold-dry’ melancholics age more quickly than ‘warm-moist’
sanguine types.33

Why does the flame go out? Disputed conceptions of a deficiency

Particularly influential for the history of Western medicine and culture

was the lamp metaphor already mentioned, used by Aristotle several times
in the Parva naturalia: as with an oil lamp, the inner flame of a living
organism goes out because it lacks fuel, whereupon man dies. This may
happen in one of two ways. On the one hand, the flame may be violently
blown out (sbêsis) when the cold of the surrounding air, which counter-
acts warmth, makes the ‘digestion’ of fuel impossible. On the other hand
it can be extinguished (maransis) for reasons related to old age; in some
cases of this kind, a previous lack of cooling can allow an excessive heat
to consume the fuel too quickly.34
Whereas Aristotle, when introducing the lamp metaphor, does not offer
a more detailed characterisation of the lamp’s moist, oil-like fuel, Galen
expands on the metaphor by fleshing out this very aspect, and it becomes
fundamental to his physiology of old age and ageing. He declares the fuel
of the flame of life to be ‘inner moisture’ (humor insitus), which is partly

32 Galenus, In Hippocratis aphorismos commentarii 3.30 (17B.645 K.). Cf. the incorpo-
ration of concepts of melancholy into the works of Marsilio Ficino, André Du Laurens,
Aurelio Anselmi, François de Fougerolles and François Ranchin; see Schäfer, Old age ch. 2
(2011). There is a fascinating seventeenth-century depiction of the four ages of life that
incorporates many analogies and allegories. As is typical, it associates the last age of life
(beginning at forty-nine) with winter and the grave, but also with melancholia; compare
Horstmanshoff H.F.J. (ed.), The Four Seasons of Human Life. Four Anonymous Engravings
from the Trent Collection (Rotterdam-Durham: 2002).
33 E.g. Ranchin François, “GEROKOMIKE: De senum conservatione et senilium morbo-
rum curatione”, in Ranchin François, Opuscula medica, publici juris facta, cura et studio
H. Gras (Lyons, P. Ravaud: 1627) 458; cf. also Zerbi, Gerontocomia, ch. 7, 61–62.
34 Cf. Arist. Long. 466a30–33; Niebyl, “Old age” 354.
250 daniel schäfer

available from the moment of creation on, but partly also accrues as a
product of a number of digestive processes. In this respect it is clear that
the complete consumption of this sublime moisture by the calor innatus
amounts to a drying out, even if this process only affects the ‘intrinsic’
part of the body, its solid organs as well as their formation and nourish-
ment. According to Galen, calor innatus is also necessary for the digestive
process and for the absorption of moisture by organs, so the body to some
extent produces its own fuel. In this way, a gradual reduction of warmth
gives rise to an irreversible circulus vitiosus. It is Avicenna, however, who
is the first to emphasise this process in particular, thereby providing a
simple explanation for the inner necessity of natural ageing and death:
the consumed moisture becomes increasingly difficult to replace, as the
warmth necessary for its production is lacking.35
Galen, on the other hand, prefers instead to emphasise external influ-
ences on calor innatus, such as exterior warmth or air. These could facil-
itate drying out and, together with the finite amount of inborn humor
insitus, limit the lifespan. Like Aristotle, Galen too speaks of the consump-
tion of fuel,36 but in De marcore he criticises this simple analogy between
a life process and inanimate nature, for calor innatus always sustains life.37
His notion of the influence of ‘exterior heat’ on the flame of life is also
derived from Aristotle, who several times uses the image of one fire being
smothered by another as an example of the aforementioned extinction
of the warmth of life (maransis) from excessive heat.38 Galen, however,
seems to take up this traditional distinction between interior and exterior
heat primarily in order to be able to distinguish better between processes
that sustain life and those that destroy it.39 Avicenna goes far beyond
Galen with his metaphorical notion that, just as lamp oil can no longer be
burned once it has been diluted with water, a surplus of available extrinsic
moisture can indirectly extingush calor innatus in the elderly.40 In the first
printed gerocomy (see Fig. 1), however, the Renaissance physician Gabri-
ele Zerbi speaks of a disproportion of humidum and calor. In the case of

35 Avicenna, Canon medicinae (Venice: 1507) I.3,1, 53 recto; I.1,3,3, 4 recto; cf. Stolberg,
“Lehre” 37; Niebyl, “Old age” 359.
36 Galenus, De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis 7.7 (5.703–704 K.).
37 Galenus, De marcore 3 (7.672–676 K.); In Hipp. Aph. comment. 14 (17B, 408–409 K.);
De causis pulsuum 3.6 (9.129 K.); De methodo medendi 11.8 (10.753 K.); cf. Niebyl, “Old age”
355.
38 Aristoteles, Meteorologica 379a17–19; cf. also Arist. Juv. 469b32–470a4.
39 Galen, De mar. 4 (7.679 K.).
40 Avicenna, Canon I.1,3,3, 4 recto; I.3,1, 53 recto; cf. Stolberg, “Lehre” 37–38.
 more than a fading flame 251

Fig. 1. Gabriele Zerbi, Gerontocomia (Rome, Eucharius Silber: 1489). Cover.

252 daniel schäfer

excessive warmth it results in premature drying out, but in the opposite

case it leads to a putrefaction of inborn moisture.41
Nevertheless, the majority of authors assume an accidental cause for
the loss of warmth, although they only hint at an explanation. For exam-
ple, like Avicenna, they mention external factors that could most readily
be regulated through diet: food, drink, and air are essential for sustain-
ing the solid, fluid and volatile substances of the body (solida, humores,
spiritus), but since they are different from man’s nature, all of them lead
(and increasingly so in old age) to the formation of ‘excrements’. These
‘excrements’ change the body42 and cause premature ageing and illness if
they are not completely eliminated, especially through the bowels, blad-
der, skin and lungs. Solid food in particular, as an inadequate replacement
for humidum radicale, will inevitably result in the accumulation of cinders
(partes terrestres): the flame dies because the quality of its fuel declines
excessively. That is why, according to Cardano, everything conducive to
the ingestion of food is detrimental to a long life.43
Jean Fernel also struggles with Galen’s contradictory position on the
cause of old age. On the one hand, the shift of temperament towards cold-
ness and dryness is supposedly not the result of external influences such
as heat or immoderate living; rather it is due to internal causes, namely
interior warmth, which depletes itself through the consumption of its
own fuel. On the other hand, this process does not happen of its own
accord (per se), since warmth naturally tends to conserve itself, but rather
is brought about accidentally.44 Admittedly, Fernel does not explain this
Galenic paradox in greater detail.

Can warmth and moisture be restored?

This question is closely connected to that of the causes of the increas-

ing decline of internal processes of life, and it extends it to include the

41 Zerbi, Gerontokomia ch. 2, 35.

42 Du Laurens André (Laurentius Andreas), A Discourse of the Preservation of the
Sight, of Melan­cho­like Diseases, of Rheumes, and of Old Age, tr. Surphlet R. (London, Jacson:
1599) 172.
43 Cardano Girolamo, “De sanitate tuenda” 1.8, in Cardano, Opera, vol. VI, 34.
44 Fernel Jean, Jo. Fernelii Universa medicina . . ., postea autem studio et diligentia Gul.
Plantii postremo elimata [. . .] Ed. tertia (Frankfurt, A. Wechel: 1575), Physiologia 4,8 (‘Ut
innatum calidum aetatum inclinatione status mutationem subeat’) 158.
 more than a fading flame 253

d­ iscussions of rejuvenation, longevity, and immortality that flourished

particularly during the Renaissance.
Aristotle already posits a close connection between warmth, semen
and pneuma (spiritus), the last being for him an analogue to eternal
aether, the heavenly element.45 This hypothesis prompted medieval and
early modern medicine to question the transience and supposedly inevi-
table extinction of calor innatus. In a treatise by Jean Fernel46 harshly
criticised in Anselmi’s gerocomy, we read of a calor caelestis: an internal
warmth characterised by a ‘heavenly’ (in the Aristotelian sense) eternal
nature that makes it incapable of exhausting itself. François Fougerolles
[Fig. 2] also claims that this ‘heavenly’ element – as a materialised, ethereal
instrumentum of the immortal soul – is in principle eternal.47 According
to other authors, internal warmth, like all transitory things, is composed
of a variety of elements (calor mixtus).
On the question of the fuel for the flame, Islamic48 and learned West-
ern medicine in the Middle Ages also discuss the similarity between,
and even the identity of, vital humidum radicale and seminal moisture
(humidum spermaticum). Around 1300, in authors such as Arnald of Vil-
lanova and Bernard de Gordon, this leads to the question of whether the
amount of this essential moisture, and thus also that of semen (in the
sense of a body-forming material), is determined at birth. Or might it not
be possible, in a way analogous to visible semen, which is supplied again
and again in the spermificatio for the purpose of procreation, for it to be
reproduced from the blood by means of food, as a high-quality product
of the final stage of the digestive process?49 In principle, humidum radi-
cale’s origin from semen (humidum primigenium) makes it impossible to
replace.50 However, if not replaced, this moisture will be consumed after
a short time. A reparatio of humidum is therefore necessary. As mentioned
above, this occurs through the taking up of additional moisture, whereby

45 Arist. GA 736b34–36.
46 Fernel Jean, De abditis rerum causis libri duo (Hanover: 16106) 2,7–8, 85–93; cf.
Anselmi, Gerocomica 26–27.
47 Fougerolles François de, De senum affectibus praecavendis nonnullisque curandis
enarratio (Lyons, I. de Gabiano and L. Durand: 1617) 22 (diagram of the working of Calor
insitus).
48 Avicenna, Canon III.20,1,3,352 recto: sperm contains humiditates radicales and calor
innatus; it develops from fourth digestion, as a surplus within various organs (so called
‘pan-genetic’ aetiology”). See McVaugh, “Humidum Radicale” 265–268.
49 McVaugh, “Humidum Radicale” 279–281.
50 Brisiani Girolamo, Geraeologia ad serenissimum Ferdinandum Archiducem Austriae
etc. (Trent, I. Baptista and J. Fratres de Gelminis de Sabbio: 1585) 21 recto–23 recto.
254 daniel schäfer

Fig. 2. The physiology and pathology of age and ageing, from François de
Fougerolles, De senum affectibus praecavendis nonnullisque curandis enarratio
(Lyons, Ian. de Gabiano and Laur. Durand: 1617).
 more than a fading flame 255

food is transformed (mutatio) over the course of the various stages of

digestion into humidum alimentum, and thus continued life and growth
are made possible.
But is it also possible to continuously restore (restauratio perpetua)
what has been consumed? On this point opinions differ. For example,
Laurent Joubert believes a reparatio and restauratio of calor and humidum
to be possible by means of the right ‘moist’ food (i.e. a certain diet): in
this way, the empty spaces and pores in the tissue are filled with nutri-
tive humor in order to slow the consumption of humidum radicale, just
as oil in a lamp is diluted to reduce its natural heat.51 Alchemical healers,
too, think that life principles of any kind can be renewed by means of
purification, transmutating arcana, etc.52 Nevertheless, most early mod-
ern physicians and philosophers with a university background reject this,
for several reasons.
The Spanish physician and philosopher Francesco de Valles, for exam-
ple, emphasises fundamental objections (and thus the limits of analogy):
why can fire burn incessantly as long as there is enough fuel, but man
cannot? The difference lies not in the material but in the formal nature
of food: in contrast to inanimate things, living beings need their food
to be transformed into pre-existing forms (praeexistentes) that must be
preserved and increased; fire, on the other hand, is constantly generated
anew by simple alteration (alteratio). The process of transformation may
result in a limitation of lifespan. Imagined as an (internal) motion (motus)
aimed at restoring bodily substance, its effect is slower than that of exter-
nal processes on the body and, furthermore, (in the context of digestion)
is dependent on bodily resources. It is therefore basically impossible for
moistening food to balance out a loss of moisture resulting from external
influence, and that is why the body ultimately dries out.53 Aurelio Anselmi,
a physician from Mantua, rejects this ‘physical’ explanation. Instead he
favours a traditional rationale that places blame on the composition of
food: drying out results from a growing accumulation of the indigestible
partes terrestres54 originally found in food, as well as from a ­weakness

51 Joubert Laurent, Erreurs populaires au fait de la médecine et régime de santé (Bor-

deaux, Millanges: 1578) 1, 2.
52 Cf. the account in: Schäfer, Old Age, ch. 2,3,3.
53 Vallés Francisco de, De iis, quae scripta sunt physice in libris sacris, sive de sacra philos-
ophia liber singularis (Lyons, Q. Hug. a Porta, Fratres de Gabiano: 1592), ch. 6, 107–115.
54 Ficino and Cardano also call them faeces; Ficino, Marsilio, Three Books of Life [De
vita], trs/ann. Kaske C.V. – Clark J.R. (Tempe Arizona: 19982), vol. II, 3, 170; Cardano, “De
sanitate tuenda” 4.1, in Cardano, Opera, vol. VI, 242.
256 daniel schäfer

of those parts of the body (membra) where this process of digestion and
transformation takes place.55 To that effect, Fougerolles emphasises that
the necessary contact with a foreign substance (aliena) generates a mud-
like sludge (crassamentum terreum).56 In Du Laurens’ view too, the orig-
inal semen is cleaner than the nourishing blood. Pollution is only one
factor, though; crucial also is the ‘dilution’ and weakening of the original
humidum due to inadequate replenishment.57 In his Universal Medicine,
Jean Riolan himself takes up the debate on the renewability of humidum
radicale and emphasises that it is impossible for warmth to be restored by
the same process that leads to its consumption: vital moisture is nothing
other than the oily-airy part of semen, which exists in the solid parts of
the body and cannot be renewed.58
This academic debate on the restoration of vital substance belongs to
the context of contemporary speculation on longevity and the retardation
of ageing; however, it also influenced early modern dietetics.

Is natural ageing a ( fever-related) illness?

As mentioned above, Galen used an analogy between the drying out

that results from (hectic) fever, which leads to premature, illness-related
senescence (geras ek nosou; senium ex morbo), and ‘dry’ old age. This com-
parison was intended to illustrate the state of emaciation in the elderly as
well as the difficulties of their medical treatment.59 Nevertheless, Galen
vehemently resisted the equation of old age and illness that was appar-
ently common among his contemporaries.60 The latter could point to
unclear passages in the work of Aristotle, according to which an ebbing of
strength (adynamia) – like old age or pathological consumption (phthisis) –
is a process against nature (para phusin).61 His observation of the revers-
ible greying of hair in cases of (fever-related) illnesses even led Aristotle to

55 Anselmi, Gerocomica 37–50.

56 Fougerolles, De senum 19–20.
57 Du Laurens, Discourse 170.
58 Riolan, Universae medicinae 63 (Physiologia 3,1).
59 Galen, De meth. med. 10.11 (10.730 K.); De mar. 4 (7.677–681 K.). Cf. Niebyl, “Old
age” 357.
60 Galen, De mar. 2 (7.669–670 K.).
61 Aristoteles, De caelo 288b15–20. According to ancient and medieval notions, illnesses
are unnatural events (res praeternaturales).
 more than a fading flame 257

propose a bold thesis: illness is nothing other than acquired old age, but
old age is a natural illness (nosos physikê).62
In his Canon, Avicenna also treats marasmic fever and the involution
of old age as different processes stemming from different causes (external
and internal warmth, respectively). In the case of marasmus, the ‘exter-
nal’ heat of the fever – relative to the severity of the illness – increas-
ingly consumes the ‘secondary moistures’ (humiditates radicales, among
others) that are created at the various stages of digestion. The Muslim
author compares them to various parts of a lamp wick (but not to the
lamp’s oil!). The ‘radical moistures’ in Avicenna should probably not be
seen as identical to Galen’s humor insitus.63 In the aftermath, however, the
subtle differences between pathological marasmus and physiological age-
ing come close to melding into one, as in most cases the same basic sub-
stance (humidum radicale) is hypothesised for both, and the same lamp
metaphor is employed again and again in comparisons.
Galenism seeks to evade the danger of muddying the two concepts
by stubbornly emphasising their differences. Accordingly, late medieval
medicine uses the same name for senium ex morbo64 and hectic fever
(marasmodes), whereas old age is obviously given this title (marasmodes
per etates senectutis) only in the figurative sense (transsumptive).65 Early
modern medicine also receives marasmus initially as a discrete illness and
only occasionally mentions the parallel to natural old age in this context.
Only in the eighteenth century is old age regularly referred to as natural
or senile marasmus, sometimes also with a fever pathology ascribed to
it.66 Accordingly, physicians of this time no longer contradict the popu-
lar saying that old age is itself an illness (senectus ipsa morbus) [Fig. 3];
instead it serves as an illustration of the newly developed iatromechanical
pathophysiology according to which, from birth onwards, man’s machine-
body is constantly changing and is inevitably driven towards a state of

62 Arist. GA 784b33–34. Cf. Galen, De san. tuenda 6.2 (6.388 K.).

63 Stolberg, “Lehre” 39–40.
64 On senium ex morbo cf. Du Cange, Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis (Graz:
1954), vol. 4, 258 (‘marasmodes ex aegritudine senectus’, in Gloss. ad Alex. Iatrosoph. MS.
Lib. 2 Passion. ch. 38).
65 Demaitre L., “The Medical Notion of ‘Withering’ from Galen to the Fourteenth
Century: The Treatise on Marasmus by Bernard of Gordon”, Traditio 47 (1992) 259–307, 298,
300; see also Demaitre L., “The Care and Extension of Old Age in Medieval Medicine”, in
Sheehan M.M. (ed.), Ageing and the Aged in Medieval Europe (Toronto: 1990) 3–22.
66 Some university writings are dedicated specifically to this concept; cf. Schäfer D.,
“ ‘That Senescence Itself is an Illness . . .’ Concepts of Age and Ageing in Perspective”, Medi-
cal History 46 (2002) 525–548.
 258 daniel schäfer

Fig. 3. Reprint of Jacob Hutter’s dissertation/thesis (Halle, Christian Hilliger: 1732). Title page.
 more than a fading flame 259

malfunction by movement, adjustment, and wear and tear. That this

worn-out condition is described as ‘ill’ and no longer as ‘natural’ is due to
the conception of illness of the period, which now favours the opposition
between health and illness instead of the ancient one between nature and
illness: whereas old age had earlier been located within a broad spectrum
of natural phenomena between healthy and ill, in the eighteenth century,
when this spectrum was increasingly negated, it temporarily became a
‘pathological’ state, without anything having changed in its prognosis or
therapy. But, around 1800, holistic concepts of a physiology of old age
increasingly gave way to the study of particular illnesses (a ‘special pathol-
ogy’ of old age); and with that the traditional analogies of old age were
also largely replaced.

New heuristic approaches. Physiological knowledge from Observationes

and Experimenta

Of course, in addition to the central concept of diminishing calor or

humidum, there were many competing ideas about the physiology of age
and ageing. For example, Plato’s Timaeus67 was the source for the idea that
a discordance between the elements (fire, water, air, and earth) was a fac-
tor in causing old age; this was taken up especially by the medical school
of Montpellier (André du Laurens, Francois Ranchin). Another competing
notion cited not only the loss of warmth and moisture, but also the more
general loss of any kind of bodily substance (solida, humores, spiritus). As
for external causes, the influence of the stars was considered by some to
be as pernicious as errors in diet (in the broadest sense).
But, around 1600, new heuristic methods begin to penetrate the science
of physiology and therefore also the realm of proto-gerontology. Francis
Bacon admittedly continues, in his Historia vitae et mortis (1623),68 down
the Aristotelian path of induction; that is, the attempt to proceed from par-
ticular examples of longevity to general knowledge about the ageing pro-
cesses and the potential for a long life.69 Nevertheless, he clearly ­broadens

67 Plato, Timaeus 81d; cf. also Pl. Ti. 32c–33a; 53c–55c.

68 Text in: Bacon Francis, The Works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount
St. Alban, and Lord High Chancellor of England, eds. Spedding J. – Ellis R.L. – Heath D.D.,
14 vols. (London: 1858–1874) (repr. (Stuttgart­-Bad Cannstatt: 1963)), vol. II, 101–226.
69 Cf. Schäfer D., “Gullivers Greise und Medeas Mixturen: Frühneuzeitliche Beispiele
für Langlebigkeit im medizinischen und nichtmedizinischen Kontext”, in: Gadebusch
260 daniel schäfer

this method by bringing a previously unheard-of number of examples to

bear (principle of accumulation) and by consciously taking counterexam-
ples into consideration (principle of falsification). In this way he makes
the nature of ageing into a subject to be studied as objectively as possible.
This approach excludes presuppositions that are in effect speculative, such
as those facilitated by analogies. Even Bacon’s treatise, however, contains
highly speculative considerations, influenced by Neoplatonism, that run
counter to his proposed method. And Bacon himself uses so-called sci-
entific analogies (scientiae analogia) as heuristic categories when sensory
knowledge is wanting.70 For example, his Historia vitae et mortis contains
the traditional allusion to flame-like spiritus, which must be restrained in
order to keep from being consumed too quickly.71
Nevertheless, a glance at late-seventeenth- and eighteenth-century dis-
sertation theses shows progress, despite many run-of-the-mill studies, in
amassing ‘objective knowledge’ about old age. Short, vague exempla are
increasingly replaced by clinical observations,72 although their significance
is often overstated and wrongly generalised. Cumulative analyses con-
tinue to be rare, but epidemiological figures are published with increas-
ing frequency. One example is the London Bills of Mortality [Fig. 4], which
also list the number of deaths due to old age.73 Statistical analyses are
already being used sporadically to refute the Aristotelian hypothesis that
men live longer than women,74 or the existence of climacteric years with a

Bondio M. – Ricklin T. (eds.), Exempla medicorum – Die Ärzte und ihre Beispiele (14.–18.
Jahrhundert) (Florence: 2008) 219–228.
70 Cf. Zittel C., “ ‘Truth is the Daughter of Time’: Zum Verhältnis von Theorie der Wis-
senskultur, Wissensideal und Wissensordnungen bei Bacon”, in Detel W. – Zittel C. (eds.),
Ideals and Cultures of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe/Wissensideale und Wissenskul-
turen in der frühen Neuzeit. Concepts, Methods, Historical Conditions and Social Impact
(Berlin: 2002) 227.
71 Bacon, Works, vol. II, 106.
72 E.g. Roy Hendrik de – Beeck Adrian, Medicatio senis vertiginosi (Utrecht, P.D. Sloot:
1645); Coschwitz Georg Daniel – Hagenbuch Johann Heinrich, Dissertatione inaugurali
medico-chirurgica De sphacelo senum (Halle, J.C. Hilliger: 1725).
73 Cf. Graunt John, Natural and political observations made upon the Bills of Mortality
(London, Roycroft: 1662), Table “The Table of Casualities”, after 76 [repr. Pioneers of demo­
graphy, The earliest classics. With an introduction by Peter Laslett (Westmead: 1973)].
74 Gessner Johannes – Ochsner Jacobus – Schmid Jacob – Dänzler Rudolf, Dissertatio
physico-medico-mathe­matica De termino vitae (Zürich, Gessner: 1748), § 13, 25–26 (sources
u.a. London Bills of Mortality; cf. § 8, 12). In particular, the theologian and statistician
Süßmilch deals with this question and achieves clear results; Süßmilch Johann Peter, Die
göttliche Ordnung in denen Veränderungen des menschlichen Ge­schlechts, aus der Geburt,
dem Tode und der Fortpflanzung desselben erwiesen. 3 vols. (Berlin, Verlag der Buchhand-
lung der Realschule: 1765–17763), vol. II (1765), §§ 477–480, 348–352.
 more than a fading flame 261

Fig. 4. Bills of Mortality, London 1666

(from http://www.slought.org/content/410265/).
262 daniel schäfer

particularly high rate of death.75 Furthermore, authors estimate the actual

share of the population at large represented by the elderly,76 and in so
doing they question the concept of natural old age and death, as almost
all people die of identifiable illnesses.77 The latter insight is increasingly
supported by autopsy reports on the elderly; these are admittedly rare –
if nothing else because of the smaller number of deaths and executions
among the elderly – but they are almost routinely employed to substanti-
ate iatromechanical physiology and the pathology of old age. The findings
of microscopy and the vascular injections pioneered by Ruysch [Fig. 5]
have great significance for the development of the iatromechanical theory
of ageing.78 In a very few instances, animal experiments are also used to
provide evidence for particular physiological questions.79

Conclusion. What significance do analogies have for

physiological concepts?

This cursory glance at physiological conceptions of old age and ageing

over the past 2500 years shows that analogies to natural or cultural pro-
cesses regularly served as the (inductive) starting point for, or at least as
confirmation of, medical concepts. In particular, the image of the fad-
ing lamp definitively influenced Western thought until the end of the
­eighteenth century.80 Analogies were therefore decisive for early gerontology

75 Gessner – Ochsner – Schmid – Dänzler, De termino § 10, 18 and table in the appendix
(unpaginated). Furthermore, Gessner et alii give statistical evidence for the high rate of
child mortality, provide probability calculations for the survival of married couples (§ 10,
19–20), and show that married people statistically live longer than those who are unmar-
ried (§ 13, 26).
76 Gessner – Ochsner – Schmid – Dänzler, De termino § 12, 24; according to this study,
ten out of every eighty-six people (=11.6 % of the population) are older than fifty-six.
77 Gessner – Ochsner – Schmid – Dänzler, De termino § 13, 27. – Cf. also Hoffmann
Friedrich – Blüdorn Christian, “De generatione mortis in morbis”, in Hoffmann Friedrich,
Opera omnia physico-medica, 6 vols. (Geneva, Tournes: 1740) VI, 244–250, § 33, 250; Seiler
Burkhard Wilhelm, Anatomiae corporis humani senilis specimen (Erlangen, Hilpert: 1799)
XVII–XVIII.
78 See the numerous explanations in Ruysch Frederik, Thesaurus anatomicus (Amster-
dam, J. Wolters: 1701).
79 Schrader – Blume, De senectutis § 9 (unpaginated); Zwinger Theodor [Junior], Unter-
richt, ein hohes Alter zu erlangen [. . .] (De aquirenda vitae longaevitate dt.) (Nordhausen,
Joh. Heinrich Groß: 1726), ch. I, 17, 27.
80 Daniel Wilhelm Triller is still using Galenistic arguments for dietetic restraint at the
end of the eighteenth century, as can be seen in the following verses: ‘Soll eine Lampe
lange brennen; Ist ihr nur mäßig, Oel zu gönnen, Weil sie durch dessen Ueberfluß, sonst
 more than a fading flame 263

Fig. 5. ‘Diorama’ of foetus with vascular preparations etc., from Frederik Ruysch,
Thesaurus anatomicus octavus. Het achtste anatomisch cabinet van Frederic Ruysch
(Amsterdam, Joannes Wolters: 1709).
264 daniel schäfer

and geriatrics, although their uncritical equation of natural processes

beyond the original parameters of analogy also facilitated the persistence
of speculative theories. Nevertheless, a close look at textual sources – here
only possible in a few discrete cases – shows that many authors dealt
creatively and productively with such images, discussing them extensively
and arguing about matters of detail. Concepts like the flame that gener-
ates its own fuel or the irreplacable humidum clearly went beyond the
mere interpretation of images. The successive replacement of analogies by
‘objective’ methods, whose cumulative observations and statistical evalu-
ations proved particularly effective in falsifying previous assumptions,
brought new insights to the physiology of old age.
Nevertheless, even today analogies continue to play an important role.
At the molecular and genetic levels, modern theories of old age and age-
ing still discuss environmental factors, toxicity, decline, and wear and tear,
and, at least in popular science texts, they still employ analogies: oxygen
radicals are described as being ‘extremely reactive’, and DNA changes in
mitochondria induce a genetic ‘suicide programme’ (apoptosis). But such
images generally denote secondary processes that are articulated only as
illustrations of established theories. Analogies from nature continue to be
productive in the realm of technological developments (e.g. aircraft con-
struction; lotus blossom effect); for the development of theories, however,
they have outlived their usefulness.

allzufrüh verlöschen muß’; Triller Daniel Wilhelm, Daniel Wilhelm Trillers diätetische Leb-
ensregeln oder Belehrung wie es anzufangen ein hohes Alter zu erlangen. In dessen Sieben
und Achtzigsten Jahre aufgesetzet (Frankfurt-Leipzig, Johann Georg Fleischer: 1783) 12.
 more than a fading flame 265

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 SUFFERING BODIES, SENSIBLE ARTISTS. VITALIST MEDICINE
AND THE VISUALISING OF CORPOREAL LIFE IN DIDEROT

Tomas Macsotay

Summary*

This contribution examines, within the framework of French eighteenth-century

philosophical materialism, the physiological theory to be found in a selection
of aesthetic writings by Diderot. In outlining the medico-physiological outlook
encapsulated in these writings, two historical perspectives are developed. The
first pertains to Diderot’s championing of the school of Montpellier and vitalism,
while the second emerges from Diderot’s concentration on body images as poten-
tial objects in aesthetic experience. This focus on the human figure is already
present in a body of theoretical writings from the Paris Académie royale de pein-
ture et de sculpture, where a form of ‘diagnosis’ of lifelike corporeal images is
effective almost immediately after this institution’s establishment. By a series of
correspondences with practices in artists’ Academies and Montpellier medicine,
Diderot’s writings offer a unique opportunity to broach perceptive (dis)continu-
ities caused by the advent of a novel medico-physiological outlook on life.

Introduction

The infusion of medical ideas in eighteenth-century cultural life poses

many challenges to students of the arts. Following the impact of Oskar
Kristeller’s “The system of the arts” and the postulate that, during the
Enlightenment, the arts and sciences were severed by a new, permanent
divide, some art historians have suggested that medicine was becoming
too complex for artists (and their audiences), who were unable to cope
with its newest notions.1 By contrast, literary historians have assembled

* The author wishes to thank the Henry Moore Foundation for its financial support and
Valerie Mainz for her encouragement and valuable suggestions. Russell Goulbourne kindly
corrected the translations of a number of the cited passages.
1 Kristeller P.O., “The Modern System of the Arts”, in Kristeller P.O. (ed.), Rennaissance
Thought, Papers on Humanism and the Arts (New York: 1965) 165–227. For an excellent
art historical account that stresses the growing separation between art and medicine see
Kirchner T., L’ Expression des Passions. Ausdruck als Darstellungsproblem in der Französis-
chen Kunst und Kunsttheorie des 17. und 18. Jahrhundert (Mainz: 1991), especially 180–207.
268 tomas macsotay

ample evidence of medical ideas permeating literature.2 Barbara Stafford

and others have championed the view that a medico-physiological focus
left its stamp on eighteenth-century culture by communicating new per-
ceptive horizons of hidden or intangible body processes as well as dreams,
semi-conscious states and obscure experience in general.3
Among the different developments affecting Enlightenment clinical
theory, an invigorated science of physiology is without any doubt the most
influential.4 Once considered a revolutionary break with erudite physiol-
ogy, the waning of teleological imperatives in present-day histories of sci-
ence has in no way affected scholarly curiosity in the movement. In fact,
attention has been turning to eighteenth-century medico-­physiological
models as active participants in materialism, the ‘radical’ philosophy
embraced in France by Denis Diderot, Pierre-Louis Moreau de Mauper-
tuis, Julien Offray de La Mettrie, Helvétius and Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron
d’Holbach, all of whom became proponents of different elements of con-
temporary physiological theory.5 Among these writers, it was above all in
the writings of Diderot that materialist inquiries transformed themselves
into vehicles for addressing a wide field of interests that stretched from

2 Elementary reading on the history and historiography of eighteenth-century physi-

ology and literature is Rousseau G.S., Enlightenment Crossings. Pre-and Post-modern Dis-
courses, Anthropological (Manchester: 1991); Rousseau G.S., Enlightenment Borders. Pre-and
Post-modern Discourses, Medical, Scientific (Manchester: 1991). See also Roberts M.M. –
­Porter R. (eds.), Literature and Medicine during the Eighteenth Century (London: 1993).
3 ‘[. . .] researches into irritability, or contractibility, and into sensibility or excitability,
were part of a greater movement within the history of perception that sent vision inward
bound’, Stafford B., Body Criticism. Imagining the Unseen in Enlightenment Art and Medicine
(Cambridge, Mass.: 1991) 409. On Diderot’s predisposition to merge the clinical with the
fictional see Chouillet J., Diderot poète de l’énergie (Paris: 1984), Delon M., L’idée d’énergie
au tournant des lumières (Paris: 1988) and Vila, Enlightenment and Pathology 111–151.
4 Of particular interest for the French reception of eighteenth-century studies on physi-
ology are Duchesneau F., La physiologie des Lumières. Empirisme, modèles et theories (The
Hague: 1982); Vila A.C., Enlightenment and Pathology. Sensibility in the Literature and Medi-
cine of Eighteenth-Century France (Baltimore-London: 1998); Williams E., The Physical and
the Moral. Anthropology, Physiology, and Philosophical Medicine in France, 1750–1850 (Cam-
bridge: 1994); Rey R., Naissance et développement du vitalisme en France de la deuxième
moitié du 18e siècle à la fin du Premier Empire (Oxford: 2000); Riskin J., Science in the Age
of Sensibility. The Sentimental Empiricists of the French Enlightenment (Chicago-London:
2002). Contributions on specific authors mentioned here are Duchesneau F., “Diderot et la
Physiologie de la Sensibilité”, Dix-huitième siècle 31: Mouvement des sciences et esthétiques
(1999) 195–216; Paganini G., “Psychologie et physiologie de l’entendement chez Condillac”,
Dix-huitième siècle 24: Le matérialisme au siècle des Lumières (1992) 165–178.
5 An example of what I am referring to as a teleological history of the life sciences is for
instance Magner L.N., A History of the Life Sciences (New York: 1979).
 suffering bodies, sensible artists 269

morality and politics to the study of history, evolutionary linguistics and

cultural life as such.
This chapter examines representations of the body and vitalist medi-
cine as associated concerns in Diderot’s writings. The scope of Diderot’s
attention to the arts, which encompassed contemporary stage, poetry,
prose fiction, painting and sculpture, does not need special introduction
here. Yet if students of Diderot have pointed to materialism as providing a
coherent pattern of concern through his aesthetics, their accounts seldom
cover problems of artistic production.6 Also missing in present accounts is
the way that a medico-physiological understanding stimulated Diderot’s
engagement with the arts by encouraging a special focus on the human
figure. The following discussion will start by charting Diderot’s idea of
medical knowledge as a factor in artistic production and his debt to Mont-
pellier vitalist medicine. The paper then addresses images of suffering as of
particular interest for the interface between medicine and aesthetics, and
provides a second relevant context for Diderot’s view of the human body as
an object of representation: the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture
(1663–1793). A little-known letter on a marble group by his friend, the aca-
demic sculptor Etienne-Maurice Falconet, will conclude these analyses.7

Art and medicine

In the 1765 Essai sur la peinture, Diderot turned on the basic method for
teaching painting and sculpture in the Paris Royal Academy.8 He warned
of the dangers of relying too heavily on the observation of anatomical
models and drawing from the inert posing model, and conjured up an
alternative art school that would stimulate the observation of bodies in
full life. The youthful visitors to this school would engage in constant
observation of individuals as they moved and performed daily tasks. They

6 Diderot’s criticisms of the visual arts have repeatedly been discussed in the frame-
work of a preoccupation with the integrity of the aesthetic beholder or of the image as
object of aesthetic experience. Examples are Fried M., Absorption and Theatricality. Paint-
ing and Beholder in the Age of Diderot (Berkeley: 1980); Kohle H., Ut Pictura Poesis non erit.
Denis Diderots Kunstbegriff (Hildesheim: 1989) and Starobinski J., Diderot dans l’espace des
peintres (Paris: 1991). By contrast, the present account focuses on body images as objects
of a critical discourse that predates philosophical aesthetics. The pioneering study of Mag-
nien A., La nature et l’antique, la chair et le contour. Essai sur la sculpture française du XVIIIe
siècle. SVEC (Oxford: 2004) was very useful in thinking about this problem.
7 A brief consideration of the letter is provided in Magnien, La nature et l’antique 226.
8 Diderot Denis, Salon de 1765, ed. Bukdahl E.M. et alii (Paris: 1984) 343–350.
270 tomas macsotay

were to use different models, noting differences of sex and age, and if
possible observing persons in successive stages of their active lives.9 By
their very nature, these exercises were more than simple stepping stones
on the way to ‘realism’. As Diderot explained, they are concerned with the
epistemological nature of the artist’s work. The Paris Royal Academy was
not just branded as a tedious place to learn to draw the human figure,
but stood accused of having become a depository for deceptive images of
human beings and for having a corrupting influence on the imagination
of life itself. The goal of the method was to allow students to attain a gen-
eral understanding of the dynamic nature of bodily appearance, where the
body’s exterior was subject to a diagnostic gaze that apprehended both
personal characteristics and life habits on the basis of an examination of
human shape.
Diderot’s recommendations carry over into the realm of painting and
sculpture a sense of the discussions on the nature of human life then ani-
mating the field of medicine. If his two scenarios for schools were sup-
planted by the physicians of Montpellier and Paris, this would leave us
with a striking match. With the Paris camp, we encounter a focus on the
study of wax models, surgical autopsy of the dead and a stack of labels
with technical terminology denoting illnesses. The Montpellier camp
was dedicated to what was known as philosophical medicine. It took an
interest in the observation of the living being, stressed the integrity of the
healthy organism and created a ‘philosophical’ method for distinguish-
ing between types of humans. Moreover, that Diderot’s school should
answer so well to the mission of Montpellier should be no reason for
surprise.
Diderot’s debt to the school of Montpellier is widely acknowledged, and
stands affirmed by much of his later writings. His personal acquaintance
with Théophile de Bordeu and Jean-Joseph Ménuret, both contributors
to a series of influential medical articles for the Encylopédie, turns into
a lasting intellectual bond after 1765, with the posthumously published
dialogue Rêve de d’Alembert (which, written in 1769, features de Bordeu
as Mlle. de l’Espinasse’s interlocutor) and the Éléments de physiologie
(intermittently written in 1774–1780), writings that constitute Diderot’s
crowning achievement as an amateur medical philosopher. The mount-
ing assimilation of ideas from Montpellier physicians – to which were
added multiple borrowings from physicians of different orientation, from

9 Diderot, Salon de 1765 349.

 suffering bodies, sensible artists 271

La Mettrie and ­Buffon to Haller – coincides with a turning point in his

accounts of modern painting and sculpture, the mid-1760s Salons, where
Diderot arguably evolves an understanding of the creative powers of the
artist as partaking in a medical type of knowledge.10 As early as the 1758
De la poésie dramatique it becomes clear that, for Diderot, medico-physi-
ological discourse amounts to much more than diagnostics: it stands for
the elaboration of a model for the observation of individuals, resulting in
a socially meaningful ‘science of man’.11 To Diderot, observation, specula-
tion and taxonomical arrangement are at the forefront of any efforts at
producing body images.
Although Diderot occasionally revised his allegiances to contemporary
artists, he nevertheless found – and most notably in the Salon of 1765 –
two reliable touchstones for this enlarged sense of medical knowledge.
The first was David Garrick, the British actor whose stunning performance
style incited his highest praise, and the other was the achievements of
Greek sculptors.12 Greek sculptors are said by Diderot to have created an
ideal model so true that they could at will ‘deduce’ from it all possible
manifestations of human life.13 In their expert command of the human
figure, Garrick and the Greek sculptors both coined art’s highest achieve-
ments. The medico-artistic nexus thus created has, first, to result in a firm
belief in the intimate relations between the physical and the moral, which
was entirely consonant with materialist philosophy. A second, and equally
important, point is that Diderot extracts from Garrick and the Greek sculp-
tors, as he had from drawing school, a mechanism of the artistic process,
casting image-making as a procedure similar, if not identical, to clinical
duties of observation, diagnostic interpretation and the elucidation of the
particular in terms of a comprehensive ‘science of man’.
Diderot’s artists of preference cast particularly penetrating gazes on
the body. The 1763 fictional elaboration of an account of Falconet’s Pyg-
malion group, exhibited in that year’s Salon, is an example of this. The

10 Magnien, La nature et l’antique 196–218. See also Strugnell A., “Diderot, Hogarth and
the ideal model”, British Journal for Eighteenth Century Studies 18 (1995) 125–137.
11 Diderot’s ideas on the study of man are developed in the ‘Ariste’ passages in the
final section of De la poésie dramatique. Green F. (ed.), Diderot’s Writings on the Theatre
(New York: 1987) 203–210. Connections between Diderot’s interest in physiology and the
late Enlightenment project for ‘l’observation de l’homme’ were explored in Courtine J.J. –
Haroche Cl., Histoire du visage (Paris: 1988) 142.
12 Diderot Denis, Diderot on Art, Vol. II. The Salon of 1767: ed. Goodman J. (New Haven-
London: 1995) 15–16. See also Strugnell “Diderot, Hogarth and the Ideal Model”.
13 On this process of ‘deduction’ see Green F. (ed.), Diderot’s Writings on the Theatre
(New York: 1987) 207–210.
272 tomas macsotay

­ ythological tale of Pygmalion told of a statue that becomes animated

m
by a supernatural infusion of the ‘breath of life’ (allegorised in Falconet’s
group by the addition of a little putto blowing on Galatea’s hand). Diderot
admired the sculpture, but then he went on to introduce a fresh approach
to it. In using the surgeon’s encounters with a patient as the dominant
analogy, he devised a new action for the group that would place the putto
less prominently and have Pygmalion, the sculptor, perform a more physi-
cal act of care. In the revised narrative Pygmalion is turned from a passive
onlooker to an active participant, guiding and observing the process of
animation that unfolds before his eyes by feeling the statue’s pulse and
looking into its eyes as he awaits the opening of the eyelids.14
Throughout the writings of the French materialists, classicising sculp-
ture would prove to be a natural sounding board for such tales of anima-
tion, largely because its life-size single figures had a full-bodied material
presence reminiscent of real bodies.15 In the prelude to Diderot’s 1769 Rêve
de d’Alembert a marble statue is pulverised and left to be consumed by
moss, until its components re-enter, through ingestion and fermentation,
the configurations of plants, animals and ‘conscious’ beings.16 The story,
along with much of what follows it, illustrates an important point about
the Montpellier physicians’ desire to set themselves apart with regard to
both animists and mechanists. Organic life should not be accounted for
entirely in terms of mechanical forces. Living matter is different, and its
mysteries must be broached in terms of a search for the vital principle.
Medicine must look for answers in the living (not the dissected) body,
and try to grasp its functional integrity. Finally, all manifestations of life
(vegetal, animal, ‘conscious’) share the same basic characteristics, in that
in order to have unity and sensibility they all depend on a fortuitous
organisation of matter that ensures the reciprocal action of small living
body parts.17

14 Seznec J., Salons de Diderot (Oxford: 1957–1967), vol. I, 245–246; Bukdahl E.M., Diderot
critique d’art (Copenhagen: 1980), vol. I, 235–236.
15 The theme of the live statue in eighteenth-century France is discussed in Carr J.L.,
“Pygmalion and the Philosophes: The Dream of the Animated Statue in Eighteenth-­Century
France”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 23 (1960) 239–255; Démoris R.,
“Les statues vivent aussi”, Dix-huitieme Siècle 27 (1995) 129–142; Mainz V. – Williams R.,
Sensing Sculpture at the Time of the French Revolution (Leeds: 2006).
16 Diderot Denis, Rêve de d’Alembert: ed. Vernière P. (Paris: 1951) 1–20.
17 For my account of Montpellier school vitalism I rely mostly on Williams, The Physi-
cal and the Moral 20–66 and Wolfe C.T. – Terada M., “The Animal Economy as Object and
Program in Montpellier Vitalism”, Science in Context 21, 4 (2008) 537–579.
 suffering bodies, sensible artists 273

Montpellier and Vitalist medicine

The medical outlook that pervaded Diderot’s various writings was neither
wholly divorced from mechanistic models nor conducive to a strongly
decentralised conception of the body. Indeed, some historians of sci-
ence have found his ideas incoherent and pastiche-like (as is the avowed
project of the Éléments de physiologie).18 Here it will suffice to point out
that whether he adapted the Montpellier teachings or other sources,
Diderot committed himself to taking the recent strands of physiology to
their materialist conclusion. Materialists became particularly hostile to
accounts professing the existence of a life-giving spiritual force as well
as doctrines proclaiming man’s possession of an immaterial soul. Rec-
ognising the relevance for philosophy of current medical developments,
the philosophes created a world where the Cartesian hierarchies no lon-
ger held, spelling the end of the two-substance subject composed of an
immaterial soul commanding a mechanical body.19 Its place was occu-
pied by a host of new models of life – animist, mechanist, vitalist. The
materialists took after the two latter models: man was to them a vital
and sensitive physio-psychological subject, a de-centered, self-regulating
system of organs where sense-perception and consciousness appeared so
inextricably tied together that embodied sensibility emerged as the only
acceptable life-principle.
Among the dominant clinical denominations active in mid-century –
Stahlian animists, Cartesian medicine, Newtonian physiology, iatromech-
anists – most representatives of the school of Montpellier adhered to
a ‘vitalist’ or ‘material vitalist’ creed, named after its basic premise, the
Aristotelian postulate of a vital force in organic life. Bordeu in addition
occupied a position that was uncompromisingly materialist in its denial
of extracorporeal agency, of immaterial life forces that Stahlian animists
deemed necessary in order to ignite and regulate the pulleys, engines and
pumps of a mechanically conceived body. As was remarked by Wolfe and
Terada, if Montpellier vitalism countered attempts to reduce the body to

18 See Bremmer G., “Les Éléments de physiologie et le sens de la vie”, in France P. –

Strugnell A. (eds.), Diderot. Les dernières années (Edinburgh: 1985) 81–91.
19 On the tensions between the Cartesian dual subject and an embodied modern aes-
thetics see the general introduction in Jones A., “Body”, in Nelson R.S. (ed.), Critical Terms
for Art History (Chicago-London: 20022) 251–265. Barbara Stafford has argued in favour of
understanding modern embodied aesthetics and enlightenment medicine in relationship
to one another. See Stafford, Body Criticism.
274 tomas macsotay

a mere machine, it nevertheless used mechanism to impart a sense of the

way in which the body arrives at its vital force.20
Nothing outside the body, Bourdeu said, causes life. Instead, the life
principle depends on the particular, harmonious organisation of small
body parts, which engender a functional unity because their independent
actions answer to one another in ways that enhanced organic unity. In
his model ‘vital properties are accounted for in terms of the interaction
between anatomical structure (the cause) and physiological function (the
effect)’.21 Life was a ‘necessary attribute’ of the specific combinations and
interconnections between fibres, vessels, glands and organs. Admitting
the difficulty of explaining his notions of ‘animal oeconomy’ and ‘organi-
sation’ by recourse to a consistent technical vocabulary, Bordeu used
images that proved extremely popular. His best known metaphor is the
swarm of bees (‘grappe d’abeilles’), to which Ménuret added the poetic
figure of the ‘flock of cranes which fly together, in a particular order, with-
out mutually assisting or depending on one another’. More daringly, the
vitalists played with analogies of lifeless constructions, as in Ménuret’s
account of the laws of acoustics and resonance that set musical strings to
vibrate as if by themselves.22 As these analogies were to show, the state of
‘sympathy’ that prevailed in the healthy body consisted of a ‘connection of
actions’ between conjoining and consecutive movements of smaller body
­structures.
In the Rêve de d’Alembert vitalism fuelled an outlook on subjectivity that
passed from embryology to physiology and psychology. Diderot’s human
being existed in a tension between an endless sensory articulation (the
fibres or ‘brins’) and a nervous centre. The ‘origine du faisceau’, as this
centre was called, produced judgment, imagination and all functions of
consciousness by grace of its capacity to store sense-impressions as mem-
ories. In his Rêve, Diderot, using Bordeu as his mouthpiece, explained con-
sciousness as that animal state in which the nervous centre and the organs
of sensory perception lodged in the body’s extremities were engaged in
a harmonious mode of collaboration. When this was not the case, all

20 Wolfe – Terada, “The Animal Economy” 536.

21 Wolfe – Terada, “The Animal Economy” 557.
22 Wolfe – Terada, “The Animal Economy” 551–552 and 565–568. Wolfe and Terada
argue that a materialist outlook is inherent in the vitalist concept of an ‘animal oeconomy’.
They counter traditional views stressing the notion of a delocalised sensibility and register
the presence of mechanism as part of the ‘scientific program’ in the school of Montpellier.
 suffering bodies, sensible artists 275

kinds of pathological effects took possession of the subject. Particularly

interesting is Diderot’s belief that all great men (sages, ‘philosophes’) pos-
sess centres that act by minimising unwanted sensory information, giving
them a capacity for determination and for influencing others.23
The passage from Cartesianism to vitalism (and the intricate transfor-
mation of the machine analogy in physiology from model to explanatory
principle) will be shown to be the best way of broaching the change that
takes effect with Diderot’s accounts of material images of life. To fully
appreciate this change, we can now turn to the Paris Royal Academy,
where a form of critical interest emerged in how life was to be expressed
in representations of human figures. By a detailed reading of descriptions
of a sculptured figure, it will be shown that a medical Cartesianism was a
factor in the interpretation of artworks.

A seventeenth-century diagnosis of the Laocoön

Laocoön is a subject from the Aeneid, well known from a Hellenistic mar-
ble group representing the story of the death of the Trojan High Priest as
divinely inflicted revenge for his premonition of the fall of Troy. The group,
discovered in 1506 and almost immediately transformed into a standard
of classical art, arranges Laocoön naked with his two sons on either side,
in the stranglehold of giant sea snakes [Fig. 1]. Casts after the principal
figure in the group were the origin of a series of elaborate descriptions
that came from the theoretical debates of the artists’ Royal Academy in
Paris between 1666 and 1676. They anticipated Diderot’s discussions of
suffering bodies, serving as reminders that the novelty of Diderot’s aes-
thetic program resided not in his idea of introducing clinical terms in his
critical vocabulary, but rather in freeing the inherited vocabulary from
a Cartesian dualist understanding of the body.24 The imagery of mortal

23 Diderot, Rêve de d’Alembert 126–130.

24 Although I build upon several contributions on the Laocöon both in the context
of French seventeenth-century art theory and eighteenth-century German aesthetics,
my main aim here is to reveal the perceptive discontinuities that appeared as a result of
changing medico-physiological diagnostic interpretations. Helsdingen H.W. van, “Laocoön
in the Seventeenth Century”, Simiolus 10, 2/3 (1978–1979) 127–141; Décultot E., “Les Laocoön
de Winckelmann”, in Décultot E. – Rider J. le (eds.), Revue Germanique Internationale 19: Le
Laocoön: histoire et réception (2003) 145–157 and Michel C., “Anatomie d’ un chef d’oeuvre:
Laocoön en France au XVIIe siècle”, in ibidem 105–117.
 276 tomas macsotay

Fig. 1. Laocoön, copied from the original (ca. 200 BC) by the three Rhodian sculptors ­Agesander,
Athenodorus and Polydorus. Marble, height 184 cm. Rome, Vatican, Museo Pio-Clementino.
 suffering bodies, sensible artists 277

suffering had a long legacy in early modern art. It is often supposed that
the opprobrium of classicist decorum had been responsible for inhibitions
towards images of fierce violence in the arts. Yet it would appear that
seventeenth-century viewers (accustomed to pray before images of mar-
tyrdom) seemed less affected by them than sections of the public in the
eighteenth century. And even then the production of very graphic dis-
plays of suffering found not just opponents (Lessing), but also lukewarm
proponents (Winckelmann) as well as outright enthusiasts (Diderot). A
formalist aesthetics such as the one developed by Lessing, incidentally,
was intimately involved in condemning the visual spectacle of suffering as
ugly, offensive and unfit for all manner of visual representation.
Although confronted with a carving consisting of a three-figure group,
the artists of the Royal Academy set out with diagnostic interpretations to
convey both the ordeal of the body and the state of the soul. This is clear
as early as the 1668 Félibien edition of academic ‘conférences’. One lec-
turer, the sculptor Gérard van Opstal, argued that artists should go as far
as possible in their study of the Laocoön, both in order to acquire a medi-
cal understanding of the causes of the symptoms visible on the body’s
surface, and to learn how to represent the effects of violent movement in
a dignified way:
[. . .] all of these strong expressions cannot be learned simply by copying the
model, because one could not put the model in a state where all passions
occur in him. Furthermore, it is difficult to copy them directly from persons
in whom these passions actually occur, because of the speed of the move-
ments of the soul. It is thus very important for artists to study their causes,
and in order to see to what extent one can represent their effects with dig-
nity, one can say that it is to these beautiful antiques that it is necessary to
have recourse, since one finds expressions which one would have difficulty
in drawing from life.25

25 “Et même, comme toutes ces fortes expressions ne se peuvent apprendre en dessi-
nant simplement d’après le modèle, parce qu’on ne saurait le mettre en un état où toutes
les passions agissent en lui, et aussi qu’il est difficile de les copier sur les personnes même
en qui elles agiraient effectivement à cause de la vitesse des mouvements de l’âme. Il est
donc très important aux ouvriers d’en étudier les causes, et pour voir combien dignement
on en peut représenter les effets, on peut dire que c’est à ces belles antiques qu’il faut
avoir recours, puisque l’on trouve des expressions qu’ on aurait peine à dessiner sur le
naturel.” Lichtenstein J. – Michel C. (eds.), Conférences de l’Académie royale de Peinture et
de Sculpture (Paris: 2006), vol. 1, 130–131.
278 tomas macsotay

In the Félibien edition, Van Opstal’s lecture was complemented by a

discussion in which Charles le Brun is likely to have played an impor-
tant role.26 Le Brun became known for his singular theory of facial and
corporeal expression and the accompanying graphic series depicting the
passions, a project on which he worked for years and which was directly
inspired by Descartes’ 1649 Les Passions de l’âme.27 Moreover, it is of par-
ticular interest that le Brun and van Opstal both declined to deal with the
group as such, and instead focused solely on the central figure, the High
Priest. In the segment of van Opstal’s lecture presumably by le Brun, this
one figure was discussed for two sets of bodily features, one pertaining
to the father’s high birth, the other to the effect of the terrible circum-
stances affecting both him and his sons. Whereas van Opstal had associ-
ated the Laocoön’s passions with their causes, and registered their effects
on the body as determined by Laocoön’s dignified appearance, le Brun
firmly ascribed the stable and the short-lived qualities to two mutually
exclusive sets of bodily signs, the first able to be interpreted by reference
to physiognomy, the second by le Brun’s own evolving Cartesian theory
of pathognomics:
It was also acknowledged that what made this figure particularly commend-
able is the deep knowledge which the artist has deployed in showing all of
the markers that revealed the high birth of the figure being represented, as
well as the true state the figure found himself in when devoured by these
snakes which, coming out of the depths of the sea, threw themselves on him
and on his two children.28
The problem facing both le Brun and the others who continued van
Opstal’s reflections on the Laocoön was to establish a plausible tool for
distinguishing bodily features of dignity (which in le Brun’s interpretative
model were osseous and muscular) and those that illustrated mortal dan-
ger and depended on a continuum between the soul’s passions and cor-

26 Van Opstal made the delivery of his lecture on July 2, 1667. Along with other texts of
the Félibien edition, it was frequently read anew in the eighteenth century, for instance
on March 5, 1735. For a discussion of it see Helsdingen van, “Laocoön”, Michel, “Anatomie”
and Lichtenstein – Michel, Conférences 1, 127–136.
27 See on le Brun’s investigations on the expression of the passions and its derivations
from Descartes Montagu E., The Expression of the Passions (London: 1994) and Desjardins L.,
Le Corps parlant. Savoirs et représentation des passions au XVIIe siècle (Quebec: 2000).
28 “On reconnut encore que ce qui a rendu si recommandable cette figure, c’est la pro-
fonde science que l’ouvrier a fait paraître à bien représenter toutes les marques qui peu-
vent faire connaître la haute naissance de celui dont il a voulu faire l’image; et le véritable
état où il se trouva lorsqu’il fut dévoré par ces serpents qui, sortant du sein de la mer, se
jetèrent sur lui et sur ses deux enfants.” Lichtenstein – Michel, Conférences 1, 131.
 suffering bodies, sensible artists 279

poreal afflictions. How could one pass from an identification of high birth
to the display of the condition of turmoil without the body’s apparent
physiological functions and its physiognomic structures cancelling each
other out? Such an interpretative tool was in practice difficult to identify,
and le Brun camouflaged its absence by a blind confidence that the unity
of exterior effects (a unity that existed only when the beholder was drawn
into an intellectual interpretation of clinical signs caused by physiological
flux) somehow corresponded with a compositional unity that made the
Laocoön visually satisfying as a image. He diagnosed the figure’s visible
marks of tribulation as straightforward documents of what would happen
in real life, and then he asserted that, once the sculptors had complied
with these medical requirements, they would devise a human figure uni-
versally adequate for their expressive purposes, so that every last element
would confirm the same state of agitation:
[. . .] there is not a single feature in all this body where one does not recogn-
ise the confusion and agitation felt by a man in a similar state.29
There was a spectacular element to le Brun’s diagnostic of the Laocoön,
which was confirmed by his insistence on the idea that the figure’s ani-
mate condition was manifested over the entire body surface. But, turning
now from the formal problems of diagnosis to those of underlying medical
beliefs, we should ask whether le Brun’s satisfaction at the image of suf-
fering in the Laocoön is consonant with a Cartesian dual understanding of
the body. One indication that this would have been the case comes from
le Brun’s references to the classically Galenist notion of ‘esprits’ (pneuma),
which he understood in the way that Descartes proposed in the latter’s Les
Passions de l’âme. Descartes believed that ‘esprits’ travelled in the blood,
entering the nervous system through a valve in the pineal gland in direct
articulation of the soul’s response to the stimuli received from the body.
By relying on the theory of ‘esprits’ le Brun reinforced the mechanistic
underpinnings to his assumption that all the exterior movement in the
body of Laocoön constituted a unity. The unity in his account came from
the fact that all of these afflictions were said to have a single source: a
state of the soul, as it succumbed to the terror inspired by the sight of the
snake and the conscious realisation of fatal danger. The rest was mecha-
nist physiology: the ‘esprits’ transmitted the soul’s message in the nervous

29 Lichtenstein – Michel, Conférences 1, 134 ‘[. . .] il n’y a pas une seule partie dans tout
ce corps où l’on ne reconnaisse la trouble et l’agitation qu’a pu ressentir un homme qui
s’est trouvé dans un pareil état’.
280 tomas macsotay

system to the muscles and caused the general trembling and movement
that affected Laocoön’s body.
An encompassing physiological activity recurred in other seventeenth-
century interpretations of the classical group. Pierre Monnier, in his 1676
contribution Sur les muscles du Laocoön, used the image of air leaving
the pipes of an organ to illustrate the perfect correspondence of muscu-
lar action with signals from the brain.30 Michel Anguier’s ‘conférence’ on
the Laocoön from August 2, 1670 was by far the most complex attempt
to account for the unity of the image’s exterior effects by its reference to
a mechanically-coherent bodily articulation of a soul in thrall to terror.
Anguier subscribed to the seventeenth-century mechanistic common-
place of regarding the nervous system’s ‘esprits’ as engines of the muscles,
using the analogy of a drifting herd of sheep as a further metaphor for the
Laocoön’s ‘tremblement et palpitation universels des muscles’.31
Anguier made a detailed account of how the causes for all of the effects
that the Laocoön was undergoing came down to just one: a single state of
appalling horror. He divided these effects into three different categories:
the simple perception by the terrified soul of the snake’s attack, the physi-
cal reaction to the snake’s poisoned bite and subsequently the counter-
action (now psychological as well as muscular) of Laocoön’s attempt to
escape. Within the parameters of this elaboration, which showed that van
Opstal and le Brun had gone about analysing the Laocoön in too simple a
manner, his medical model was consonant with le Brun’s. Mechanism is
intact in his analysis of the ‘overall movement’ into aggregate causal reg-
isters at different stages of development. Cartesianism left an imprint in
these descriptions in the same way that it permeated le Brun’s descriptive
and graphic series of facial and corporeal expression. The soul’s imper-
meability to mechanisms of physiology ensured that messages sent by
animate states are the same, no matter what the body. Anger, fear, joy
articulated a universal language of ­expression. Such assumptions were to
be severely tested by the intervention of vitalist medicine.

30 Monier P., “Sur les muscles du Laocoön”, in Lichtenstein – Michel, Conférences 1,

581–593. For a discussion of Monier’s lecture see Michel, “Anatomie”.
31 Like le Brun, Anguier is intent on explaining the causes of the ‘tremblement et pal-
pitation universels des muscles’ in the body of Laocoön. This dispersed motion is due
to the action of ‘esprits’ conducted through the nerve system from a single source, the
brain. A manuscript based on Anguier’s text was annotated by Caylus in the 1750s, and his
contemporary Falconet is likely to have known it. Anguier M., “Le Groupe de Laocoön”,
in Lichtenstein – Michel, Conférences 1, 383. For a discussion of Anguier’s conférence see
Michel, “Anatomie”.
 suffering bodies, sensible artists 281

‘Different patients’

A later example of criticism of sculpture that incorporates a diagnostic

gaze is Diderot’s 1774 letter on Etienne-Maurice Falconet’s carving Milo of
Croton. For a proper understanding of its significance, it is important to
address the context in which Diderot wrote his Milo letter. In the spring of
1774, Diderot had taken up temporary residence in The Hague, where he
was been cordially admitted as a guest by the Leiden University philoso-
pher Frans Hemsterhuis, himself an avid reader of modern medicine and
writer in 1769 of a Lettre sur la sculpture. One day, while Hemsterhuis was
away on a visit, Diderot wandered into his cabinet, and his eyes fell on a
plaster he immediately recognised: it was a model after Falconet’s marble
Milo [Fig. 2].32 Not only is the letter contemporary with work on the Élé-
ments de Physiologie, but in addition in the preceding year Diderot had
concluded an argument with Falconet on his Observations sur la statue
de Marc-Aurèle (1771), using some of Bordeu’s teachings as ammunition
against Falconet’s dismissal of the horse in the celebrated bronze eques-
trian statue of Marcus Aurelius in Rome. Notably, in his letters to Falconet
Diderot had recovered the vitalist project to put medicine to social use
by adopting a typological outlook on humanity. Diderot encouraged Fal-
conet to be attentive to the way the shape of animals and human beings
emerge as a result of their personal ‘histories’, each unique for the variety
of daily labours and functions they performed.33 Of course Diderot, who
is described in Schenker’s recent biography as ‘the greatest admirer of
Falconet’s art and his closest intellectual friend in Paris’, had had ample
opportunity to look at the original marble and ask the artist questions
about it.34 But this friendship had soured; as Diderot looked at the Milo,
he was unable to delight in the horror, and instead became profoundly
troubled by it.
Diderot sent his evaluation of the Milo in a letter to his friend Dimitry
Alekseevich Golitsyn.35 To Golitsyn Diderot proclaimed the need to take a
long, fresh look at the Laocoön as an image of ‘man afflicted’ (‘un homme

32 The presence of a replica of the Milo in the Low Countries can be ascertained by its
inclusion in a drawing of the Andriessen family house in Amsterdam in the 1800s.
33 Dieckman H. – Seznec J., “The Horse of Marcus Aurelius: A Controversy between
Diderot and Falconet”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 15 (1951): 198–228.
34 The fragment is from Schenker A.M., The Bronze Horseman. Falconet’s Monument to
Peter the Great (New Haven-London: 2004) 20.
35 ‘Au prince Dimitri Galitsine’ signed “La Haye, 10 mai 1774”, in Diderot Denis, Œuvres,
vol. 5, Correspondance (Paris: 1998) 1233–1236.
 282
tomas macsotay

Fig. 2. Etienne Maurice Falconet, Milo of Croton. 1754. Marble, height 66 cm, width 64 cm. Paris, Louvre.
 suffering bodies, sensible artists 283

qui souffre’), adding, in a revealing slip-of-the-tongue, that Milo and Lao-

coön constitute nevertheless two ‘different patients’. Falconet had por-
trayed the story of a legendary athlete who was devoured by a lion after
his hand got caught in the cleft of a tree bark. The carving was presented
in 1754 as the sculptor’s presentation piece (‘morceau de reception’), the
last prerequisite for full membership of the Royal Academy. Diderot nar-
rowed down his discussion by focusing on the figure of Milo, ignoring the
lion and natural embellishments of the group just as le Brun and his fol-
lowers had ignored Laocoön’s sons. Setting up his diagnostic activity in
this way, Diderot’s letter claimed that Milo was a subject of great interest
that Falconet had spoiled by a bad performance, for the actor had been
miscast and his action misjudged. ‘If the fighter from Croton is not a dis-
tinguished citizen, he is even less a crook’.36 As his many euphemisms for
Falconet’s figure – ‘villain’, ‘crook’, ‘cunning devil’ – made clear, in looking
at the tormented Milo Diderot was uncomfortably reminded of a seedy
underworld. An artist may reasonably have been expected to have made
the struggles of the legendary athlete less easy to mistake for those of
a criminal condemned to the wheel. These remarks were already preg-
nant with associations taken from the school of Montpellier, in that a soul
whose states found identical expression in all humans (the Cartesian war-
rant for le Brun’s theories of expression and of his account of the Laocoön)
had been displaced by a moral condition that construed itself in terms
of physical condition – in the case of Milo, a condition of bravery and
muscular strength.
Diderot affected a diagnostic gaze to correct two movements and a
general condition visible in Falconet’s Milo: the expression of the figure’s
scream, the ‘necessary sympathy between muscles’, and the inflection in
Milo’s consciousness of a ‘system of the suffering animal’. The first was
couched in a mechanical account of the action of the torso as a result of
violent inhaling or exhaling, whereas the sympathy derived from ideas
specific to Ménuret and Bordeu, who defined ‘sympathie’ as a general
correspondence between body parts in their agitation. Finally, Diderot’s
understanding of the ‘system of the suffering animal’ led him to resolve
his criticisms in a way that was consistent with his materialism: there was
a profound conceptual error in collapsing two different human types, as if
singular events transformed subjects with different histories in the same

36 ‘Si le lutteur crotoniate n’est pas un citoyen distingué, c’est encore moins un car-
touchien’, Diderot, Œuvres, vol. 5, 1234.
284 tomas macsotay

manner. Yet it was out of an awareness that the Laocoön and Milo were
indeed ‘different patients’ that the diagnostic gaze had to become com-
mitted in a metaphysical sense. Questions about mind and body could
not be avoided.
The effects of the scream were visible in Falconet’s marble on the lower
half of the upper body, extending between the pubis (‘os pubis’) and the
lower stomach (‘creux de l’estomac’). Here, Diderot was dismayed by a
blurry sequence of folds and cavities. He remarked:
Imagine that in this position the intestines fall towards this lower part
where the bigger of the two hollows has been made, both of which I find
shocking. A hollow would be acceptable in the upper part. But these two
cavities are both false. A man who screams, exhales violently, causing the
area of the stomach and the lower abdomen to subside and extend in equal
proportion.37
As one of a list of anatomical errors, the cavities in Milo’s stomach betrayed
Falconet’s feeble grasp of the effects of heavily exhaling. It is significant
that the only subcutaneous speculations Diderot ventured into when look-
ing at the Milo concern breathing and the push and pull of muscles and
intestines – there was no mention of the circulation of blood or the flow
of spirits, as there had been in le Brun and Anguier. It would appear that
le Brun had been looking back to the Galenist a-mechanical heart, which
expands and contracts obeying the soul’s changing states. Certainly, it was
in terms of an aggressive flux of the ‘esprits’ that the seventeenth-century
‘conférenciers’ had liked to explain the exhalation of the Laocoön. René
Bary, writer of a 1702 handbook on oratory techniques that contains an
essay on ‘le geste de l’horrible’ evinced this particular diagnostic method:
The horrible requires that one opens the eyes and the mouth extraordi-
narily, that one turns the body away towards the left a little, and that both
hands are outstretched as if in self-defense, because those who are about
to suffer the ultimate cruelty, frantically look for every possible means of
avoiding death; that the fear choking the heart by the withdrawal of the
spirits prompts the mouth to open wide; and that the same fear which tight-

37 ‘Songez que dans cette position les intestins tombent vers cette partie inférieure où
l’on a pratiqué le plus considérable des deux creux qui me choquent. Un enforcement
serait tout au plus supportable à la partie supérieure. Mais ces deux cavités sont fausses
l’une et l’autre. L’homme qui crie, pousse son halaine violemment en dehors, action qui
affaise et étend en même proportion la région du ventre et du bas-ventre’. Diderot, Œuvres,
vol. 5, 1234.
 suffering bodies, sensible artists 285

ens the heart also dilates the mouth, turns the body away, and stretches out
the hands.38
Bary, who instructed orators, traced the afflicted body’s many motions
to a single idea. This was fear, which inhabits the soul and dispatches its
messengers, the animal spirits, to the different organs, while functioning
as the foil for an aesthetic experience of moving body parts and surfaces
unified by a single principle of motion. All that was left of this as Diderot
beheld the Milo was a violent exhaling with no specific, central cause, but
rather with a finality – to scream. By the second half of the eighteenth
century Bordeu had discredited the Galenist thesis of ‘esprits animaux’.39
What concerned Diderot most about Milo’s breathing was what it signi-
fied as psychological marker. How did the victim see and understand his
situation? Diderot was distressed that Falconet’s Milo should appear so
lamely downtrodden:
This Milo has the countenance of a man whose every member is in irons, so
defenseless is he. Prometheus shackled in the Caucasus would not behave
otherwise under the beak and the claws of the bird that cuts him up.40
Leaving the ‘safe’ zone of anatomical discernment meant that the critic
could only demonstrate the falsity of the action by empathically imagining
what the athlete would really have done. The character of Milo now posed
a serious challenge to his recumbent position and the ineffectual movement
of the limbs, none of which are engaged in confronting the lion:
A man like this terrible Milo should not allow himself to be devoured like
a fool. In the situation that he has been put into, in the imminent danger
that visits him, what should he do? (He must) avail himself of his right arm,

38 ‘L’horrible veut qu’on ouvre extraordinairement les yeux et la bouche, qu’on détourne
un peu le corps vers la côté gauche, et que les deux mains étendues servent comme de
défense, parce que ceux qui sont sur le point de souffrir les dernières cruautez, cherch-
ent par-tout de l’oeil les moyens d’éviter la mort; que l’effroi étouffant le coeur par la
retraite des esprits porte la bouche à donner à l’air un grand passage; et que le même
effroi qui serre le coeur, dilate la bouche, détourne le corps, et étend les mains’. Bary René,
Méthode pour bien prononcer un Discours, et pour le bien animer (Leiden: 1702) 87–88. A
similar description is given by Jelgerhuis in his 1827 treatise on acting: ‘Concerning the
whole figure, one must establish that during terror the hands are stretched out, or rather
opened up, and especially the fingers are to be set apart, also the setting apart of the legs
must be observed’. Cited after Barnett D., The Art of Gesture. The Practices and Principles
of Eighteenth-century Acting (Heidelberg: 1987) 49.
39 For the first time in his 1743 thesis Recherches sur les crises.
40 ‘Ce Milon a l’air d’un homme garrotté de tous ses membres, tant il se secourt peu.
Un Promethée enchaîné sur le Caucase ne serait pas autrement sous le bec et les serres de
l’oiseau qui le dépèce’. Diderot, Œuvres, vol. 5, 1235.
286 tomas macsotay

caught in the slit of the tree, using it as a point of support for the remain-
der of his body; then release his left arm from underneath him, where it is
useless as a support, and with the left hand seize the animal’s upper jaw,
crushing it and forcing out the eyes of its head, as should be the capacity of
a man of this size who resolves to separate a tree.41
Milo’s heroic struggle was also a type of suffering, and this aspect too
should dictate the entire figure. Hence, even though one was dealing with
different patients, Diderot would have Falconet re-examine the Laocoön;
that is, look at it with greater discernment in terms of its competences,
and thus discover that action in a figure depends less on the objective
situation than on a subject’s consciousness of his own powers, his basic
stance in the face of events:
The Laocoön, whose feet the artist borrowed for his Milo, should have
taught him that one can suffer with dignity. Snakes tearing apart a father
in full sight of his children, one of whom is expiring and the other will soon
undergo the same fate, are well worth a lion. I know that a high priest is not
an athlete. But the latter has his own nobility and confidence; nothing so
enhances this as an awareness of the body’s strength, if not the elevation of
the soul; and whatever differences may exist between the conditions of two
patients, there is a happy medium in everything.42
By 1774, Diderot had seen how Winckelmann, Lessing and his host in
the Hague, Hemsterhuis, had taken issue with the production of images
in painting and sculpture that portrayed violent circumstances, shifting
the parameters with which the paramount representative of this subject
­matter in antique sculpture, the Laocoön, was being valued.43 Diderot, for

41 ‘Un homme comme ce terrible Milon ne doit pas se laisser manger comme un sot.
Dans la position où on l’a mis et dans le péril imminent où il se trouve, que doit-il faire?
Se servir de son bras droit pris dans la fente de l’arbre, comme d’un point d’appui pour
tout le reste de son corps; dégager son bras gauche de dessous lui où il est inutile pour le
soutenir; et saisir de la main de ce bras l’animal par la mâchoire supérieure, la lui écraser
et lui faire sortir le yeux de la tête, comme un homme qui s’est promis de séparer un arbre
de la grosseur de celui que je vois, devait en être capable’. Diderot, Œuvres, vol. 5, 1234.
42 ‘Le Laocoön dont l’artiste a emprunté les pieds de son Milon aurait bien dû lui
apprendre qu’on peut souffrir avec dignité. Des serpents qui déchirent un père à la vue de
ses enfants, dont l’un est expirant et l’autre subira bientôt le même sort, valent bien un
lion. Je sais qu’un grand prêtre n’est pas un athlète. Mais celui-ci a sa noblesse et sa sûreté;
rien n’en donne plus que la conscience de la force du corps, si ce n’est de l’élévation de
l’âme; et quelque différence qu’il ait entre les conditions de deux patients, il y a une juste
mesure à tout’. Diderot, Œuvres, vol. 5, 1233.
43 See Rees J., “Der Apoll vom Belvedere und die Laokoon-Gruppe im Spektrum von
Kunsttheorie und Antikrezeption im 18. Jahrhundert”, in Mai E. – Wettengl K. (eds.), Wet-
tstreit der Künste. Malerei und Skulptur von Dürer bis Daumier (Munich: 2002) 153–169.
On Hemsterhuis’ evolving attitude towards the passions, perception and the Laocoön see
 suffering bodies, sensible artists 287

his part, had ceased demanding an aesthetic unity in the Milo unless it was
warranted by physiological truth. His use of the ‘sympathie’ did not com-
prise a general recurrence of events on the body surface. This is evident
in his remark that Milo’s fingers and toes, some of which are relaxed and
others contracted, did not give the impression of belonging to the same
‘système d’animal souffrant’. On a clinical register, Diderot’s materialism
asserted itself in the absence of a semiotics of the soul, and the implicit
assumption that none of the unity of the suffering subject transcended its
animal sensibility or its anthropological psychology.
Diderot’s materialism, in the event, spelled trouble for the coherence
of aesthetic experience, or at least for his reflections on the artistic pro-
cess. Depending on its degree of movement, corporeal inertia or vitality
gave rise to different types of pictorial composition, causing the dynamic
of absorption and theatricality described by Michael Fried.44 There are
detailed descriptions of sufferers in the Salons of the 1760s that exemplify
this rift. Take, for example, the figures afflicted by the illness then known
as ‘St. Anthony’s fire’ in Diderot’s description of Doyen’s painting of The
Miracle of St. Anthony’s Fire, which was exhibited in the Salon of 1767.
Doyen did not spare his viewers any amount of gruesome detail: in a deso-
late cityscape scattered with cadavers he mounted body upon body of men
succumbing to seizures and convulsions.45 After meticulously describing
these abject scenes (fifteen pages in the recent English edition), Diderot
turned to the painter in gratitude:
Where am I to expect scenes of horror, frightening images, if not in a battle,
a famine, a plague, an epidemic? If you had asked the advice of these people
with delicate, refined taste afraid of sensations that are too strong, you’d
have painted over your frenzied man throwing himself from the hospital,
and the stricken man tearing at his side at the floor of your platform: and
I’d have set fire to the remainder of your composition [. . .].46
Diderot’s description of Doyen’s painting was sustained by delight in hor-
ror, but a gap had appeared between the discourse of making and that
of aesthetic experience. Diderot switched from a detached understanding
of the individual bodies to an openly epicurean delight at the harrowing
image of plague. Although he attempted to reconnect the two through a

Sonderen P.C., Het sculpturale denken. De esthetica van Frans Hemsterhuis (Leende: 2000)
154–203.
44 Fried, Absorption and Theatricality.
45 Diderot, Writings on Art. Salon of 1767 142–157.
46 Diderot, Writings on Art. Salon of 1767 150.
288 tomas macsotay

consideration of paint, chiaroscuro and the compositional whole, physiol-

ogy no longer had any role to play in this negotiation.

Coda

Considering the many instances of an affinity between thinking about

representation and thinking medically, it is time to return to our original
question: with regard to Diderot, what was the status of the human figure?
The answer is unlikely to lie in our sense of materialism as a creed that
simply limits the human to the corporeal. It seems more likely that the
exercise of transferring specific accounts of human life from medicine to
the arts would help to cement a more comprehensive materialist world-
view. First, this act of transfer allowed materialism to take firmer pos-
session of medical traditions sympathetic to its cause, and thus to move
vitalist medicine into materialist ’philosophy’. Diderot distilled an amateur
theoretical medicine out of a vitalist body of writings that (in particular
with Bordeu and Ménuret) already constructed itself as a ‘philosophical’
medicine in contradiction to specific medical traditions, rejecting both
animism and Cartesian dualism. Secondly, in Diderot the medico-physi-
ological turn offers a promise (albeit seldom one that is fully realised) of
operating as a corrective mechanism for artistic production.
It should be noted again that, although fine arts had long enjoyed criti-
cal discourses of their own, during Diderot’s lifetime these discourses were
slowly giving way to a formalist aesthetics with writers like Hemsterhuis
and Lessing. It would however be misleading to present Diderot’s encoun-
ter with physiology, even when it occurs in his discussion of painting and
sculpture, as a token of the systematic method of philosophical theories
on the nature of beauty. If anything, such moments in Diderot’s writings
challenge the ‘spirit of systems’. Aesthetics was no match for material-
ism as the unifying topology for Diderot’s concern for the arts. Nor was
he unique in this: in France the system of fine arts only had a handful of
relatively isolated supporters, with Batteux’ 1746 Les Beaux-arts réduits à
un meme principe being the best example.47
A final, but equally important, way in which Diderot’s advocacy of a
medico-physiological understanding resisted the program of eighteenth-

47 For the rise of philosophical aesthetics in France see Becq A., Genèse de l’esthétique
française moderne (1680–1814) (Paris: 1984).
 suffering bodies, sensible artists 289

century formal aesthetics was that the former’s focus was constituted
by the human figure (and its embodied audience) rather than the art-
work conceived as formal artifact. It follows from this that the nature
of Diderot’s responses to representations of the human body, linking a
physiological reflection on the embodied subject to a critical discourse on
‘good’ and ‘bad’ art, had only a passing need of formalist aesthetic thinking
(with its systematic and synchronic view of the mutual relations between
the arts), while constantly outlining ways for sanitising the arts as pro-
cess, relieving them from their general state of insensitivity, their numbing
withdrawal from physical experience. In Diderot, under the conjunction
of medical and artistic knowledge lies a tacit program of aesthetic dis-
covery (as opposed to one of permanence), where renewed experience
brought deeper connections between art and nature to light and where
the repercussions of a materialist view of moral life and subjectivity for
cultural production were considered, even when this was done without
clear direction or purpose.
290 tomas macsotay

Selective bibliography

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l’Académie royale de Peinture et de Sculpture (Paris: 2006), vol. 1, 377–387.
Barnett D., The Art of Gesture. The Practices and Principles of Eighteenth-century Acting
(Heidelberg: 1987).
Bary René, Méthode pour bien prononcer un Discours, et pour le bien animer (Leiden:
1702).
Becq A., Genèse de l’esthétique française moderne (1680–1814) (Paris: 1984).
Bremmer G., “Les Éléments de physiologie et le sens de la vie”, in P. France – A. Strugnell
(eds.) Diderot. Les dernières années (Edinburgh: 1985).
Bukdahl E.M., Diderot critique d’art (Copenhagen: 1980).
Carr J.L., “Pygmalion and the Philosophes: The Dream of the Animated Statue in
­Eighteenth-Century France”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 23 (1960)
239–255.
Chouillet J., Diderot poète de l’énergie (Paris: 1984).
Courtine J.-J. – Haroche C., Histoire du visage XVIe–début XIXe siècle. Exprimer et taire
ses émotions (Paris: 1988).
Coypel A., Discours prononcés dans les conférences de l’Académie royale de Peinture et de
Sculpture (Paris: 1721).
Décultot E., “Les Laocoön de Winckelmann”, in Décultot E. – Rider, J. le (eds.), Revue
Germanique Internationale 19: Le Laocoön. Histoire et réception (2003) 145–157.
Delon M., L’idée d’énergie au tournant des lumières (Paris: 1988).
Démoris R., “Les statues vivent aussi”, Dix-huitieme Siècle 27 (1995) 129–142.
Desjardins L., Le Corps parlant. Savoirs et représentation des passions au XVIIe siècle (Que-
bec: 2000).
Diderot Denis, Diderot on Art, Vol. II. The Salon of 1767: ed. Goodman J. (New Haven-
London: 1995).
——, Œuvres: (Paris: 1998), vol. 5, Correspondance.
——, Rêve de d’Alembert: ed. Vernière P. (Paris: 1951).
——, Salon de 1765: eds. Bukdahl E.-M. et alii (Paris: 1984).
Dieckman H. – Seznec J., “The Horse of Marcus Aurelius: A Controversy between Diderot
and Falconet”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 15 (1951) 198–228.
Duchesneau F., La physiologie des Lumières. Empirisme, modèles et theories (The Hague:
1982).
Fried M., Absorption and Theatricality. Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot (Berke-
ley: 1980).
Green F. (ed.), Diderot’s Writings on the Theatre (New York: 1987).
Helsdingen H.W. van, “Laocoön in the Seventeenth Century”, Simiolus 10, 2/3 (1978–1979)
127–141.
Jones A., “Body”, in Nelson R.S. (ed.), Critical Terms for Art History (Chicago-London: 2002)
251–265.
Kohle H., Ut Pictura Poesis non erit. Denis Diderots Kunstbegriff (Hildesheim: 1989).
Lichtenstein J. – Michel C. (eds.), Conférences de l’Académie royale de Peinture et de
Sculpture (Paris: 2006), vol. 1.
Magnien A., La nature et l’antique, la chair et le contour. Essai sur la sculpture française du
XVIIIe siècle. SVEC (Oxford: 2004).
Mainz V. – Williams R., Sensing Sculpture at the Time of the French Revolution (Leeds:
2006).
Michel C., “Anatomie d’un chef d’oeuvre: Laocoön en France au XVIIe siècle”, in Décul-
tot E. – Rider J. le (eds.), Revue Germanique Internationale 19: Le Laocoön. Histoire et
réception (2003) 105–117.
Monier P., “Sur les muscles du Laocoön”, in Lichtenstein J. – Michel C. (eds.), Conférences
de l’Académie royale de Peinture et de Sculpture (Paris: 2006), vol. 1, 581–593.
 suffering bodies, sensible artists 291

Rees J., “Der Apoll vom Belvedere und die Laokoon-Gruppe im Spektrum von Kunsttheo-
rie und Antikrezeption im 18. Jahrhundert”, in Mai E. – Wettengl K. (eds.), Wettstreit der
Künste. Malerei und Skulptur von Dürer bis Daumier (Munich: 2002) 153–169.
Rey R., Naissance et développement du vitalisme en France de la deuxième moitié du 18e siècle
à la fin du Premier Empire (Oxford: 2000).
Riskin J., Science in the Age of Sensibility. The Sentimental Empiricists of the French Enlight-
enment (Chicago-London: 2002).
Roberts M.M. – Porter R. (eds.), Literature and Medicine during the Eighteenth Century
(London: 1993).
Rousseau G.S., Enlightenment Borders. Pre-and Post-modern Discourses, Medical, Scientific
(Manchester: 1991).
——, Enlightenment Crossings. Pre- and Post-modern Discourses, Anthropological (Man-
chester: 1991).
Schenker A.M., The Bronze Horseman. Falconet’s Monument to Peter the Great (New
Haven-London: 2004).
Seznec J., Salons de Diderot (Oxford: 1957–1967).
Sonderen P.C., Het sculpturale denken. De esthetica van Frans Hemsterhuis (Leende:
2000).
Stafford B., Body Criticism. Imagining the Unseen in Enlightenment Art and Medicine
(Cambridge, Mass.: 1991).
Starobinski J., Diderot dans l’espace des peintres (Paris: 1991).
Vila A.C., Enlightenment and Pathology. Sensibility in the Literature and Medicine of
­Eighteenth-Century France (Baltimore-London: 1998).
Williams E., The Physical and the Moral. Anthropology, Physiology, and Philosophical Medi-
cine in France, 1750–1850 (Cambridge: 1994).
Wolfe C.T. – Terada M., “The Animal Economy as Object and Program in Montpellier
Vitalism”, Science in Context 21, 4 (2008) 537–579.
PART TWO

blood
 BLOOD, CLOTTING AND THE FOUR HUMOURS

Hans L. Haak

Summary

In view of the huge amounts of blood taken by bloodletting from Antiquity to

the nineteenth century, one wonders how the physician handled the resulting
product. In the Hippocratic Collection observations on clotted blood are rare. Did
the ancient Greeks derive their ideas on the bodily humours by inspecting the
coagulation process? Or were these interpretations developed during medieval
times? How were these views modified during the Enlightenment? Can modern
investi­gations throw light on the various historical reports? This paper, written
from the point of view of a medical professional, takes a broad approach to sev-
eral recorded observations from Antiquity to the present day.

In this paper, I will be examining accounts of the appearance of phle-

botomised blood after coagulation. In view of the amounts that have
been removed since Antiquity, medical practitioners through many cen-
turies must have watched the irreversible change in its appearance and
substance. How has their interpretation changed over time? It should be
noted that this is not meant to be a complete overview of the subject.
I would like to start chronologically backwards with a quote from Rudolf
Virchow’s Die Cellularpathologie (1858). He studied the morpholo­gy of
coagulation in detail; in his book two drawings are included showing the
result of clotting in vitro and the presence of fibres in the clot. He writes
that:
. . . wir nur zweierlei Arten von Fasern haben, welche mit ihnen eine naehere
Aehnlichkeit darbieten. Die eine Art kommt in einer Substanz vor, welche
sonderbarer Weise die aeltesten, vollkommen antiken, kraseologischen Vor-
stellungen mit den modernen annaehert, naemlich im Schleim. In der alten
hippokratischen Medizin geht bekanntlich die ganze Fibrin-Masse noch
unter dem Begriff des Phlegma, Mucus, und wenn wir den Schleim mit dem
Faserstoff vergleichen, so muessen wir zugestehen, dass in der That eine
grosse formelle Uebereinstimmung in der Ausscheidung besteht.1
Virchow describes the layers that occur after coagulation, from top to bot-
tom: clear serum, a whitish thin layer and a red thick clot. He shows that

1 Virchow R., Die Cellularpathologie (Berlin: 1858) 124.

296 hans l. haak

the whitish layer, presently known as the ‘buffy coat’, consists of white
blood cells and fibres that are shown in a separate drawing. The ques-
tion is: to whom in Antiquity is Virchow referring, as he does not quote
a specific source?

Antiquity

In the Hippocratic Corpus we find several passages that might meet this
requirement. In Diseases 2.8 (7.16 L.) coagulation of the blood in vivo is
associated with the influx of phlegm in the blood vessels. But the text
seems to be a theoretical account, not an actual description. The author
of Diseases 4.51 (7.584 L.) explains diseases by a major disturbance in all
of the bodily fluids (tou hugrou pantos) in vivo. He compares the result
with the way the Scythians prepare butter and cheese from horse milk
by churning; thus, bile separates to the surface, the second level down is
blood, the third is composed of phlegm, and water, being heavier than all
of these, is at the lowest level. But this description, too, does not appear
to be based on the observation of clotting blood. In Sacred Disease 10
(6.378 L.) coagulation of blood, together with separation of phlegma, is
held responsible for epileptic fits. According to Places in Man 30 (6.322 L.)
a sore throat is caused by local clotting in the cervical veins.
Observations on clotted blood in vitro (i.e. outside the living body)
have not come down to us in the Hippocratic writings, in contrast to
the many descriptions there of uroscopy. The association of fibres and
coagulation is indicated in Fleshes 8 (8.594 L.): if the container is shaken,
blood does not coagulate because the cold and sticky fibres are removed.
This statement is not followed up by any medical application, however.
The removal of fibrous material from blood by whipping with a branch in
order to keep it liquefied is also described by Plato (Timaeus 85c–e) and
Aristotle (Parts of Animals 2.4, 650b). According to Ekroth this procedure
was performed during sacrificial rituals at the temple since archaic times.2
This author also suggests this was how blood was prepared for consump-
tion, as mentioned in Athenaeus’s Deipnosophistae where black pudding

2 Ekroth G., “The Sacrificial Rituals of Greek Hero-cults in the Archaic to the Early Hel-
lenistic Periods”, Kernos, suppl. 12 (2002) 242–251.
 blood, clotting and the four humours 297

is prepared from fried pieces of meat and blood whipped with honey and
other ingredients.3
Many Hippocratic treatises agree that blood consists of a light fluid part
and a firm heavier part. Duminil, who studied these reports in detail, points
out that Aristotle argues that cooling alone cannot explain the clotting of
blood, because bile does not coagulate in vitro. In contrast to the majority
of the Hippocratic authors, Aristotle concludes that specific other quali-
ties (for example, dryness) of the blood are the primary factors.4 Thus, no
Hippocratic origin can be found for Virchow’s statement.
Galen may have alluded to the separation of a white layer within clot-
ting blood in On the Elements according to Hippocrates, when he wrote
about the different colours and qualities of blood, whether or not these
contained fibres; he noticed that the colour of this blood (haima) can vary
from eruthron (red) to xanthoteron (rather ruddy) to melanteron (dark)
and he adds that ‘sometimes there grows something whitish on the sur-
face of it.5 This suggests that ‘blood’ indicates here only the thick heavier
part, and Galen even exclaims:
Sometimes the whole of it appears livid, often even black, by Jove, like some
deep purple dye; therefore blood is not just one thing.6
This strengthens our view that Galen describes various colours of the thick
red layer. Here he does not relate them to different disease-states, but uses
them as evidence for the complexity of blood as a whole, analogous to the
curdling of milk resulting in cheese (turos) and whey (oros). He compares
the ichôr from the blood with this whey. In On Black Bile he described the
clotting of blood obtained by phlebotomy in more detail:
Phlegm sometimes appears to float on the surface of the blood, whilst in
contrast the blood (or mass) as a whole can seem so thick and dark that it
resembles raw pitch. (translation M. Grant).7

3 Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 6.324 ‘ὑπόσφαγμα δ’ εἶναι κρέασιν ὀπτοῖς ἐκ τοῦ αἵματος

τεταραγμένου μέλιτι κτλ’.
4 Duminil M.-P., Le sang, les vaisseaux, le coeur dans la Collection Hippocratique (Paris:
1983) 226.
5 Galenus, De elementis secundum Hippocratem 2.2 (1.496 K.) ‘ἔστιν ὅτε δὲ καὶ σαφῶς
ἐπανθεῖ τι λευκὸν αὐτῷ’.
6 Galen, De elem. sec. Hipp. 2.2 (1.497 K.): ‘καί ποτε πελιδνὸν ἅπαν ἐφάνη καὶ νὴ Δία γε
πολλάκις ἐγγὺς τῷ μέλανι καθάπερ τις πορφύρα κατακορής, ὥστ’ οὐχ ἓν ἀκριβῶς τὸ αἷμα’; de
Lacy (1996) 145.
7 Galenus, De atra bile 2 (5.107 K.): ‘φαίνεται δὲ ἐνίοτε καὶ φλεγματώδη χυμὸ ἐποχούμενο
τῷ αἵματι, καθάπερ γε καὶ ύμπαν ἱκανῶ παχύτερόν τε καὶ μελάντερον, ὡ ἐοικέναι πολλάκι ὑγρᾷ
πίττῃ’; Grant (2000) 20.
298 hans l. haak

Here again it appears that Galen sees the red thick part as the ‘blood’.
The thin fluid that is separated during congealing (hugrôtês lepta) lies on
top. It is derived from drinking (ek tou potou), mixed with the blood in
the liver and transported to the urine or sweat. It is not clear whether he
distinguishes this fluid from ‘phlegm’. The wording suggests that what is
called now the ‘buffy coat’ is indicated as phlegmatôdês chumos, which
apparently does not always appear on top of the precipitated ‘blood’. In
other writings he stipulates that the word ‘blood’ is used in two different
senses:
we talk about blood in two ways, sometimes as logically distinguished from
the other humours, that is to say the phlegm and both biles; sometimes,
from its dominant element, as the total fluid in the blood vessels. As the
phlegm and the rest are part of it, it is clear that we are talking about one
fluid.8
Galen reiterates a similar opinion in On Hippocrates’ ‘Nature of Man’ 1
(15.73–74 K.); he does not, however, solve this ambiguity. It is clear that
in these passages he does not report on actual observations, but instead
ponders theoretical considerations.

Middle Ages

Moving on to the Middle Ages, we find that Avicenna (ca 1000 AD), in
his Liber canonis, described blood left to clot in a container (catin(us)),
resulting in various layers. Yellow bile (cholera rubea) is equated with a
foamy layer in the top of the clot, and black bile with the lowest part that
looks like dregs and turbid matter (sicut fex et res turbida). What looks
like the white of an egg (albumen ovi) is phlegm; the supernatant watery
part (pars aquosum superfluitas) is to be passed into the urine; and the
remainder is ‘blood’ (residuum vero est sanguis).9 This seems to be the
first attempt to make an explicit connection between the four ‘humours’
and the components visible in clotted blood. The fact remains, however,
that the Canon is a compilation of earlier writers, rather than representing

8 Galenus, In Hippocratis librum de alimento commentarii 3 (15.262 K.) ‘διττῶς δὲ τὸ αἷμα

λέγεται, ἐνίοτε μὲν ἀντιδιαιρούμενον πρὸς τοὺς ἄλλους χυμοὺς, τουτέστι πρὸς τὸ φλέγμα καὶ
ἀμφοτέραν χολὴν, ἐνίοτε δὲ κατ’ ἐπικράτειαν ὅλος ὁ ἐν τοῖς ἀγγείοις χυμός. νῦν δὲ προστιθεὶς καὶ
φλέγμα καὶ τὰ λοιπὰ δῆλός ἐστι σημαίνειν τὸν ἕνα χυμὸν’.
9 Avicenna, Liber canonis (Venice, P. De Paganis: 1507) 6, and Gruner O.C., A Treatise
on the Canon of Medicine of Avicenna (London: 1930) 87.
 blood, clotting and the four humours 299

Avicenna’s own observations.10 Nevertheless, this view was taken up in

the Middle Ages by many authors.
The oldest medieval treatise in Europe that has come down to us is De
phlebotomia by Maurus, a physician who practised in Salerno during the
second half of the twelfth century. It was edited by Buerschaper in 1919
and is included in a study on medieval Blutschau by Lenhardt in 1986. The
last section is entitled ‘De sanguine’ and opens as follows:11
The way to inspect blood is fourfold. When the blood flows, notice its
quality before it has congealed and after coagulation. During the flow it
should be noted whether it behaves as very thick (viscous) or very fluid or
intermediate.12
The whole procedure involved most of the senses: smell, taste, touch and
sight. I shall focus here on the last of these aspects.
After clotting (in a bowl) a supernatant fluid (humiditas) separates
from the clot; this should not be too much nor too little, as the former
indicates too much fluid in the body, and the latter dryness. This ‘serum’
has a colour similar to urine, if it is carefully collected without including
any other parts of the blood. If the colour differs from that of the urine,
it is a bad sign. In fact, the serum is thought to return to the liver and
leave the body through the bladder (redit ad hepar et exit per vesicam).13 It
should be remembered that Maurus also produced a book on the inspec-
tion of urine.
The speed of the clotting process in the bowl (in vase receptus) is also
to be documented and compared with the blood of healthy men (quanto
debeat fieri tempore per sanorum sanguinis inspectionem habet dinosci
humiditas digesta).14 Of particular importance appears to be the following
point: ‘If the blood is foamy and has been shed with force, this indicates
that it is poisonous and disorderly’.15 However, in two other manuscripts

10 Ullmann M., Islamic Medicine (Edinburgh: 1978) 45–46.

11 Buerschaper R., Ein bisher unbekannter Aderlasstraktat des Salernitaner Arztes Mau-
rus. ‘De Flebotomia’ (Leipzig: 1919) 23.
12 ‘Quadruplex est modus inspectione sanguinis. Cum enim sanguis fluit, considera-
num, qualis et quando primo coaguletur et qualis sit post coagulacionem. Quando fluit est
inspicitur, ut eam sit nimis spissus vel nimis fluidus vel mediocriter se habeat’.
13 Lenhardt F., “Blutschau: Untersuchungen zur Entwicklung der Hämatoskopie”, Würz-
burger medizinhistorische Forschungen 22 (1986) 19.
14 Lenhardt, “Blutschau” 20.
15 ‘Si sanguis sit spumosus et in impetus cadendi, significat ipsum esse venenosum et
­indigestum’.
300 hans l. haak

the text here reads: ‘If the blood is foamy and has not been shed with
force [. . .].16
This second reading makes more sense, since it suggests that sponta-
neous foaming indicates dangerous components in the blood. The clot-
ted blood is further inspected from the top to the bottom: the surface
should be level (plana), reddish (ruffa) and clearly separated (claritate
participans); if it is not even (inaequalis) and does not adhere to the vessel
when tilted (non fuerit ex modo tenendi vas et inclinandi), this is a bad sign,
since it indicates that the parts are sparse or unripe (significat enim par-
cium grossiciem). If the colour of the surface is livid or ashen (cinereus) or
fatty mixed with ash (sepo mixtus cum cinere), this points to ­corruption.17
I would suggest that this fatty and ashen layer (light grey) is what we
would call now the ‘buffy’ coat or ‘Speckhaut’.
The next observation apparently concerns the coagulum itself after
decanting the supernatant fluid (aquositate proiecta). If the clot can be
easily split with a piece of wood (cum lingo), this shows that the blood is
dry (aridum) like bread made from millet or other friable ( frangentibus)
materials.18 On the cutting surface of the coagulum in normal blood, a
colour-gradient can be recognised: from the top down, bright reddish (ruf-
fus, multa claritate) to rubeus, changing gradually to dark (negridinem). At
the very bottom it should be black (niger), because that is its proper place
(quia infimum locum sui tenet). If in the middle part one can observe a dif-
ferent colour, e.g. ashen or fat (sepo) mixed with ash, it is a bad sign. Mau-
rus also stipulates that he cannot give the (optimal) relative proportions
of these layers (tamen non est determinandum, quanta proporcio debeat).
In some people the blood looks like barley-gruel (ptisanaria), which is
another bad sign.19
These observations have frequently been repeated during the Middle
Ages, and several reports have been transmitted; for an overview here,
I refer to Lenhardt’s thesis. In these treatises the colours of the different
layers in the clot are described almost uniformly: on top bright red, while
at the bottom a dark layer (niger or faex) is associated with black bile. A
white layer is described here – as it was earlier, by Avicenna – as albumen
ovorum, and it is equated with phlegma. More confusing is the description
of a layer of foam (spuma), equated with colera rubra (red or yellow bile).

16 ‘Si sanguis sit spumosus et non <sit> ex impetu cadendi [. . .]’.

17 Lenhardt, “Blutschau” 20.
18 Lenhardt, “Blutschau” 21.
19 Lenhardt, “Blutschau” 21–22.
 blood, clotting and the four humours 301

The supernatant pars aquosum is not apparently related to the humours,

but is excreted as urine.20
Blutschau was considered important for the diagnosis of leprosy, which
may explain its relative popularity during the period of the leprosy epi-
demics (twelfth-fifteenth centuries). It should be noted, however, that
hematoscopy never attained the status of uroscopy in diagnosis.

Enlightenment

A few centuries later, we find Thomas Schwencke, who practised in The

Hague, publishing Haematologia sive sanguinis historia in 1743. In this
book he summarised and explained Harvey’s De motu cordis and the more
recent findings of Anthony van Leeuwenhoek concerning blood globules.
It is probably the first monograph with ‘haematology’ in the title. He
added several comments and his own observations and experiments. On
normal blood left standing for 24 hours at room tempera­ture (60° Fahr-
enheit) he noted:
The thick part of the blood should be contracted, although less so in the
lowest part, the colour of the top layer should be bright, gradually turning to
red towards the lower part, and on the bottom it is deep purple.21
He mocks those who believe that a mucus-like substance forming in the
blood indicates phlegmatic, rotten or corrupted blood. A white coagulum
develops in any venous blood when cold water is added, without a red clot
forming (due to lysis of the red cells). Schwencke asks: ‘What is this tough
and leathery22 crust, through which a knife can barely cut, that appears on
top of the blood?’23 It was usually observed in people with fevers and other
complaints. However, the crust was also observed in people without any
sickness or disease, and thus the question remains for Schwenke ‘whether
this crust is a cause of a present or future disease or its sequel?’24

20 Lenhardt, “Blutschau” 42.

21 Schwencke Th., Haematologia, sive sanguinis historia, experimentis passim super-
structa (The Hague, Husson: 1743) 101 ‘Sanguinis crassamentum sit coherens, minus tamen
in infima parte, superior color sit floridus, ad inferiorem partem redecens paulatim rubi-
cundior, in fundo purpureus’.
22 The present designation ‘buffy coat’ also indicates its leathery nature: buff = chamois
leather.
23 Schwenke, Haematologia 155 ‘Quidnam sit illa crusta dura, coriacea, et vix cultro
discindende quae apparet supra sanguinem’?
24 Schwenke, Haematologia 156 ‘an crusta haec est causa morbi futuri, vel instantis vel
ejus effectus’?
302 hans l. haak

One thing is certain here: the crust is not part of the solid cruor,
because Schwenke never saw the (red) cells of the cruor in the crust with
a ­microscope.25 Thus, during the Enlightenment, Schwencke described
the macroscopy of clotted blood in the same way as the medieval authors,
but unlike them he does not mention any association with the four clas-
sic humours, and nor does he refer to ancient or medieval medicine. In
the eighteenth century many other new ideas on physiology were devel-
oped: for example, von Haller’s vitalism and Galvani’s electro­physiology.26
As for pathology, Morgagni’s De sedibus et causis morborum appeared in
1761.27 The four humours were quickly losing their impact on medical the-
ory, although the practices of bloodletting and cupping continued until
the end of the next century. As we have seen, in the nineteenth century,
Virchow tried to re-establish a link with Antiquity in the very book that
led to the definitive demise of humoral pathology.

Twentieth century

In 1921 Fahraeus published his thesis on ‘the suspension-stability of the

blood’. In the introduction he reflected on the macroscopic changes
observed in clotting blood and the differences between healthy and sick
donors. He took the position that the model of the four humours was
somehow derived by the ancient Greeks from the observation of the clot-
ting process itself:
As blood dies off through the cooling influence outside of the organism,
these (parts) diverge from their intimate union. The black bile collects at
the bottom (the dark coloured lower portion of the blood cake), the blood
in a limited sense of the word, sanguis, rises towards the surface (the upper
portion of the blood cake, florid from the oxygen of the air); the yellow bile
gradually begins to free itself (the serum pressed out from the blood cake);
the phlegm does not secrete itself spontaneously in healthy blood, but it is
all the same present as the connective substance proper in the blood cake
(fibrin) [. . .]. In unhealthy blood, however, the phlegm collected in a more

25 Schwenke, Haematologia 155.

26 Haller A. von, Elementa physiologiae corporis humani (Lausanne, Bousquet: 1757);
Galvani L. De viribus electricitatis in motu musculari commentarius (Modena: 1792).
27 Morgagni G.B., De sedibus et causis morborum per anatomen indagatis libri quinque
(Venice, Remondini: 1761).
 blood, clotting and the four humours 303

or less thick layer on the top of the blood cake, which was of course inter-
preted as being a consequence of this substance having increased.28
However, Fahraeus supported these opinions with references from the
eighteenth century, rather than by direct quotes from the Hippocratic cor-
pus or from Galen. In a later article (1947) he persisted in his views that
the original four-humour hypothesis was triggered in Antiquity by care-
ful observation of the clotting process of blood obtained by ­phlebotomy.29
The whitish layer forming in certain conditions on top of the clot, the
crusta phlogistica or ‘buffy coat’, was equated with the phlegma of the
ancients, in a similar way to Virchow’s arguments.
In her 1983 work, Duminil indicated that this theory might perhaps
explain the importance of phlegma, but not the contribution of the two
kinds of bile. In addition she feels that
il me semble que les quatre états du sang dans la coagulation dont parle R.
Fahraeus n’existent pas simultanément et particulièrement que si on enlève
la fibrine du sang, on ne verra pas apparaître le sérum.30
She also points out that none of the Hippocratic physicians documented
observations of the blood of their patients suggesting that their disease
was due to (excess of) phlegma.
Flashar, in an earlier criticism of the thesis of C. Vogel,31 who held views
similar to those of Fahraeus, noted that during clotting
sich [. . .] niemals vier Stadien beobachten lassen, da während des Gerin-
nungsprozesses keine Trennung von oxydiertem und reduziertem Blut ein-
tritt. Es sind also nur drei Schichten unterscheidbar [. . .] 32
Schöner, in his study on ancient humoral pathology, also questions the
hypothesis proposed by Vogel and Fahraeus that observation of coagu-
lating blood, rather than speculative natural philosophy, triggered the
humoral theory.33

28 Fahraeus R., The Suspension-Stability of the Blood (Stockholm: 1921) 9.

29 Fahraeus R., “Die erhöhte Senkungsgeschwindigkeit der roten Blutkörperchen und
ihre Bedeutung für die antike Humoralpathologie”, Bulletin der Schweizerischen Akademie
der medizinischen Wissenschaften 3 (1947) 67–80.
30 Duminil, Le sang 227.
31 Vogel C., “Zur Entstehung der hippokratischen Viersäftelehre”, Hippokrates 24 (1956)
779–783.
32 Flashar H., Melancholie und Melancholiker in den medizinischen Theorien der Antike
(Berlin: 1966) 41.
33 Schöner F., Das Viererschema in der antiken Humoralpathologie (Wiesbaden: 1964)
38–39.
304 hans l. haak

But the story does not end here. In 1981 a review was published by
H. Schmid-Schönbein: Hemorheology and the experimental basis of classi-
cal humoral pathology.34 He showed that blood held in a wide container
separates within about four hours into the layers described earlier: clear
serum, whitish buffy coat and a red sediment. His description reads as
follows:
A distinct layering was visible. On the bottom, a dark red (macroscopi-
cally almost black) layer of aggregated, deoxygenated red cells was seen,
gradually extended into a layers with a lower hematocrit (thence [a lighter]
red colour), which no longer changed after clotting. The retraction of the
­fibrin-platelet-clot leads to sepa­ration of the whitish buffy coat and the yel-
low serum.35
The author insists that this phenomenon can only be observed in patients
with a high red cell sedimentation rate, e.g. in fevers or pregnancy. In nor-
mal conditions, usually only two layers are visible: serum and clot.
We should remember that in this ‘simple’ test two separate mecha-
nisms operate simul­taneously: cell-sedimentation and clotting. The first is
a physical process, depending upon the ‘suspension stability’ in the blood
plasma and gravity; the second is a chemical process triggered by the con-
tact of blood with the glass receptacle, leading to a reaction-cascade of
clotting factors, platelets and blood cells. In many diseases (e.g. fevers) a
high sedimentation rate occurs, i.e. the most dense red cells drop down
before being trapped in the clotting process. This layer is more compact
and appears darker than the subsequent strata. Next, the lighter white
cells and platelets float down upon this red cell cake. Finally the platelets
and fibres sediment on this layer, consolidated by the coagulation-pro-
cess. In normal blood these processes occur more or less simultaneously,
leading to a mixed clot of all cells and fibres.
On the basis of these experiments Schmid-Schönbein agrees with
the observations of the medieval authors, Schwencke and Fahraeus but,
despite the title of his essay, he does not link his data with the ‘humours’
of Antiquity; instead he reviews the therapeutic effects of phlebotomy. He
does not quote any of the authors from Antiquity, his oldest references
dating from the seventeenth century.

34 Schmid-Schönbein H., “Hemorheology and the Experimental Basis of Classical

Humoral Pathology: An Essay”, Clinical Hemorheology 1 (1981) 179–195.
35 Schmid-Schönbein, “Hemorheology” 184.
 blood, clotting and the four humours 305

Conclusions

I have argued here that, while the classical authors certainly observed
the blood shed during phlebo­tomy, we cannot know whether they kept
records of the clotting process in vitro. We can find an early, and explicit,
mention of ‘blood’ as containing all four humours, linked to the various
layers observed after clotting, in Avicenna’s Liber Canonis, and during the
later Middle Ages ‘Blutschau’ flourished in western Europe, starting in Sal-
erno. In the eighteenth century Thomas Schwencke both observed and
investigated a similar stratification in clotting blood, and was able to use
the microscope to observe this; however, he did not make the connection
with the classical humours. Virchow’s statement that the fibrous layer rep-
resented phlegma did not originate in Antiquity but in the Middle Ages.
More recently, the link between the macroscopic stratification in clot-
ted blood and ancient humoral pathology has been reinvestigated in the
laboratory, the results showing that the medieval observations were essen-
tially correct, but were probably only valid for blood taken from patients
with inflammatory disease or pregnancy. This refinement of the earlier
historical position should now be used by scholars trying to understand
the views of the classical writers on the four humours.
306 hans l. haak

Selective bibliography

Athenaeus of Naucratis, Dipnosophistarum libri XV, ed. Kaibel G. (Leipzig: 1887).

Avicenna, Liber canonis (Venice, P. de Paganinis: 1507).
Buerschaper R., Ein bisher unbekannter Aderlasstraktat des Salernitaner Arztes Maurus:
De Flebotomia (Leipzig: 1919).
Duminil M.-P., Le sang, les vaisseaux le cœur dans la collection Hippocratique (Paris:
1983).
Ekroth G., “The Sacrificial Rituals of Greek Hero-cults in the Archaic to the Early Hel-
lenistic Periods”, Kernos suppl. 12 (2002).
Fahraeus R., “Die erhöhte Senkungsgeschwindigkeit der roten Blutkörperchen und ihre
Bedeutung für die antike Humoralpathologie”, Bulletin der Schweizerischen Akademie
der medizinischen Wissenschaften 3 (1947) 67–80.
——, The Suspension-Stability of the Blood (Stockholm: 1921).
Flashar H., Melancholie und Melancholiker in den medizinischen Theorien der Antike (Ber-
lin: 1966).
Galen, Opera omnia: ed. Kühn C.G., 20 vols. (Leipzig: 1821–1833).
Gruner O.C., A Treatise on the Canon of Medicine of Avicenna (London: 1930).
Hippocrates: ed. Littré E. (1839–1861), Œuvres Complètes d’Hippocrate, Paris.
Lenhardt F., “Blutschau: Untersuchungen zur Entwicklung der Hämatoskopie”, Würzbur­
ger medizinhistorische Forschungen 22 (1986).
Schmid-Schönbein H., “Hemorheology and the Experimental Basis of Classical Humoral
Pathology: An Essay”, Clinical Hemorheology 1 (1981) 179–195.
Schöner E., Das Viererschema in der antiken Humoralpathologie (Wiesbaden: 1964).
Schwencke Thomas, Haematologia, sive sanguinis historia, experimentis passim super­
structa (The Hague, Husson: 1743).
Ullmann M., Islamic Medicine (Edinburgh: 1978).
Virchow R., Die Cellularpathologie (Berlin: 1858) [reprint Hildesheim: 1966].
 An Issue of Blood. The Healing of the Woman with the
Haemorrhage (MARK 5.24b–34; Luke 8.42b–48; Matthew 9.19–22)
in Early Medieval Visual Culture

Barbara Baert, Liesbet Kusters and Emma Sidgwick

Summary*

The textual and visual tradition of the story of the woman with the haemor-
rhage (Mark 5.24b–34), the so-called Haemorrhoissa, is related in a specific way
to Christ’s healing miracles, but also to conceptions of female menstrual blood.
We notice that with regard to the specific ‘issue of blood’ of the Haemorrhoissa
there is a visual lacuna in the specific iconography that developed around the
story from early Christian times: in the transposition from text to image, there is
no immediate depiction of her bleeding. However, the early-medieval reception
of the story also became an important catalyst for uterine taboos, menstruation
and tits relation to magical healing, understood as a system of health practices. In
this context, the dissemination of the motif in everyday material culture clearly
points to a deep-rooted connection to uterine and menstrual issues. The paper
considers both expressions and their – anthropologically framed – relation to this
female ‘issue of blood’, which the Haemorrhoissa came to embody and epitomise
literally, as well as figuratively.

Introduction

Among the miraculous healings of the Bible, the story of the Haemor-
rhoissa (the haemorrhaging woman) holds a special place (Mark 5.24b–
34). The healing takes place through touch, at the initiative of the sick
person herself, in this case a woman who had been suffering from haem-
orrhages for twelve years. The synoptic gospels suggest that this initiative
on the woman’s part is something that, in this period, was seen as crossing
the boundaries of decency. Moreover, this touching was experienced as
a charged undertaking. Christ felt a certain power flow from himself, as

* This article is part of the research project The Haemorrhaging Woman (Mark 5:24–
34parr). An Iconological Research into the Meaning of the Bleeding Woman in Medieval
Art. Also a Contribution to the Blood and Touching Taboo before the Era of Modernity –
funded by a Research Grant of the University of Leuven (2008–2012). Copy-editing by Paul
Arblaster.
308 barbara baert, liesbet kusters and emma sidgwick

if the woman’s touch took something away from him. The synoptic text
thus holds considerable complexity: there is a remarkable relationship
between touching and healing, and it involves a woman of whom several
exegetical commentaries on the text suggest that she is – because of the
specificity of her illness, her so-called ‘issue of blood’ – impure by law. In
addition, the episode is framed within the context of another miracle: the
raising of Jairus’ daughter.
This chapter treats the theme of the Haemorrhoissa as located in the
interstices of exegesis, iconology and anthropology, with an interdisciplin-
ary focus on the issue of blood. The first part – ‘Text and intertext: what
kind of bleeding?’ – pursues the exegetical question of the specific nature
of the ‘issue of blood’. In the second part – ‘From narrative to iconic space:
the lacuna of the issue of blood’ – we will confront this analysis with the
genesis of the motif of the Haemorrhoissa in art, from which the depic-
tion of the issue of blood is absent. The third part – ‘Healing and amulets:
the motif ’s dissemination’ – will examine the movement of the Gospel
miracle story into the world of everyday material culture. The motif will
therefore be situated in the anthropological context of blood, uterine
taboos and magical healing. We understand magical healing1 in this late
antique context as a system of health practices based on the exploita-
tion and manipulation of impersonal coercive forces at work in the world,
bearing in mind that in late antique times magic, miracle and medicine
were competitive in their relation to healing, but that at the same time
the distinction between them was blurred.

1 Ogden D., Magic, Witchcraft and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman Worlds. A Sourcebook
(Oxford: 2009) 4 notes that the definition of ‘magic’ is ‘famously problematic’, since there is
no consensus in defining the term, which has been in use since Antiquity. This is partly due
to the history of magic itself, revealing crucial shifts in how magic was conceptualised and
in the understanding of how it worked. Scholars currently tend to look at how magic was
understood and worked in particular instances. See also Collins D., Magic in the Ancient
Greek World (Malden: 2008) and Labahn M. – Lietaert Peerbolte B.J. (eds.), A Kind of Magic.
Understanding Magic in the New Testament and its Religious Environment (London: 2007).
We therefore use a heuristic definition of late antique magic as a system of health, follow-
ing Kee H.C., Medicine, Miracle and Magic in New Testament Times (Cambridge: 1986) 3:
‘Magic is a technique, through word or act, by which a desired end is achieved, whether
that end lies in the solution to the seeker’s problem or in damage to the enemy who has
caused the problem’, or further, as in contrast to the (Christian) miracle supplicated from
the divine and understood as personal, 123: ‘In the realm of magic the basic assumption
is that there is a mysterious, inexorable network of forces which the initiated can exploit
for personal benefit, or block for personal protection’. Magic’s relation to the cause or
onset of sickness or disability reflects this: such situations result from invisible, coercive
forces (gods and all other powers) at work in the world, or from a magical curse. See also
Greenwood S., The Anthropology of Magic (Oxford: 2009).
 an issue of blood 309

In the final section, by way of conclusion, we retrace the course of the

motif from story to iconography to performative reception in everyday
material culture, highlighting how the issue of blood became embedded
in different cultural contexts and concurrently held different meanings.

Text and intertext: what kind of bleeding?

The episode of the Haemorrhoissa is told in the synoptic gospels: Mark

5.24–34; Luke 8.42–48 and Matthew 9.19–22.2 The story is framed within
the story of Christ’s resurrection of Jairus’ daughter and takes place when
Jesus has crossed the Sea of Galilee, namely on the west bank, on Jew-
ish soil. The Haemorrhoissa steps forward from the crowd of people as
a nameless woman with her own internal desire: to be healed of the
haemorrhages from which she has been suffering for twelve years. She
believes this will happen as soon as she touches Christ’s clothes. In the
New Revised Standard Version, Mark 5.24b–34 reads as follows:

2 The Haemorrhoissa is discussed in the following exegetic and biblical historical stud-
ies: D’Angelo M.R., “Gender and Power in the Gospel of Mark: The Daughter of Jairus and
the Woman with the Flow of Blood”, in Cavadini J.C. (ed.), Miracles in Jewish and Christian
Antiquity. Imagining (Notre Dame: 1999) 83–109; Fonrobert C., Menstrual Purity. Rabbinic
and Christian Reconstructions of Biblical Gender (Stanford: 2000); Fonrobert C., “The Woman
with a Blood-Flow (Mark 5.24–34) Revisited: Menstrual Laws and Jewish Culture in Chris-
tian Feminist Hermeneutics”, in Evans C.A. – Sanders J.A. (eds.), Early Christian Interpreta-
tion of the Scriptures of Israel. Investigations and Proposals (Sheffield: 1997) 121–140; Haber S.,
“A Woman’s Touch: Feminist Encounters with the Hemorrhaging Woman in Mark 5.24–
34”, Journal for the Study of the New Testament 26, 2 (2003) 171–192; Horsley R.A., Hear-
ing the Whole Story. The Politics of Plot in Mark’s Gospel (Louisville: 2001); Lemarquand G.,
An Issue of Relevance. A Comparative Study of the Story of the Bleeding Woman (Mk
5:25–34; Mt 9:20–22; Lk 8:43–48) in North Atlantic and African Contexts (New York: 2004);
Levine A.-J., “Discharging Responsibility: Matthean Jesus, Biblical Law and Hemorrhaging
Woman”, in Bauer D.R. – Powell M.A. (eds.), Treasure New and Old. Recent Contributions
to Matthean Studies (Atlanta: 1996) 379–397; Marcus J., Mark 1–8. A New Translation with
Introduction and Commentary (New York: 2000); Oppel D., Heilsam erzählen – erzählend
heilen. Die Heilung der Blutflüssigen und die Erweckung der Jairustochter in Mk 5,21–43 als
Beispiel markinischer Erzählfertigkeit (Weinheim: 1995); Plaskow J., “Antijudaism in Femi-
nist Christian Interpretation”, in Schüssler Fiorenza E. (ed.), Searching the Scriptures. A
Feminist Introduction (New York: 1993) 117–129; Schüssler Fiorenza E., In Memory of Her.
A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: 1994) 124; Selvidge
M.J., Woman, Cult, and Miracle Recital. A Redactional Critical Investigation on Mark 5:24–34
(London: 1990); Selvidge M.J., “Mark 5:25–34 and Leviticus: A Reaction to Restrictive Purity
Regulations”, Journal of Biblical Literature 104, 4 (1984) 619–623; Struthers Malbon E., “Nar-
rative Criticism: How Does the Story Mean?”, in Anderson J.C. – Moore S.D. (eds.), Mark
and Method. New Approaches in Biblical Studies (Minneapolis: 1992) 23–49; Trummer P.,
Die Blutende Frau. Wunderheilung im Neuen Testament (Freiburg: 1991) 15–21.
310 barbara baert, liesbet kusters and emma sidgwick

And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him. [25] Now there
was a woman who had been suffering from haemorrhages for twelve years.
[26] She had endured much under many physicians, and had spent all that
she had; and she was no better, but rather grew worse. [27] She had heard
about Jesus, and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his cloak,
[28] for she said, ‘If I but touch his clothes, I will be made well’. [29] Immedi-
ately her haemorrhage stopped; and she felt in her body that she was healed
of her disease. [30] Immediately aware that power had gone forth from
him, Jesus turned about in the crowd and said, ‘Who touched my clothes?’
[31] And his disciples said to him, ‘You see the crowd pressing in on you;
how can you say, ‘Who touched me?’ [32] He looked all round to see who
had done it. [33] But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came
in fear and trembling, fell down before him, and told him the whole truth.
[34] He said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace,
and be healed of your disease’.3
Some exegetes point to a number of interesting connections linking the
story of the Haemorrhoissa to that of Jairus’ daughter. The Jairus story
frames the episode of the Haemorrhoissa, which forces a ‘tormenting delay’
on its frame story: it is precisely because of this woman that Jesus arrives
too late for Jairus’ daughter.4 The Haemorrhoissa episode functions as a
dramatic interruption that is taken from Jesus but which he also considers
a necessity: he pauses to find her. Mark has probably established a num-
ber of symbolic relationships and contrasts between the twelve-year old
girl and the twelve years that the woman had been undergoing ineffective
treatment. The number twelve itself can also refer to the twelve tribes
of Israel. The girl faces the beginning of her menses while the woman is
healed through the stopping of the flood.5 One crowd hinders healing, the
other makes healing possible. Jairus is rich, but the Haemorrhoissa is poor

3 ‘Et abiit cum illo, et sequebatur eum turba multa, et comprimebant eum. Et mulier,
quæ erat in profluvio sanguinis annis duodecim, et fuerat multa perpessa a compluribus
medicis: et erogaverat omnia sua, nec quidquam profecerat, sed magis deterius habebat:
cum audisset de Jesu, venit in turba retro, et tetigit vestimentum ejus: dicebat enim: Quia
si vel vestimentum ejus tetigero, salva ero. Et confestim siccatus est fons sanguinis ejus: et
sensit corpore quia sanata esset a plaga. Et statim Jesus in semetipso cognoscens virtutem
quæ exierat de illo, conversus ad turbam, aiebat: Quis tetigit vestimenta mea? Et dicebant
ei discipuli sui: Vides turbam comprimentem te, et dicis: Quis me tetigit? Et circumspicie-
bat videre eam, quæ hoc fecerat. Mulier vero timens et tremens, sciens quod factum esset
in se, venit et procidit ante eum, et dixit ei omnem veritatem. Ille autem dixit ei: Filia, fides
tua te salvam fecit: vade in pace, et esto sana a plaga tua’.
4 Marcus, Mark 1–8 364–366.
5 One could ask whether the Haemorrhoissa is cured by menopause: her source dried
up; Formanek R. (ed.), The Meanings of Menopause. Historical, Medical and Clinical Per-
spective (Hillsdale: 1990).
 an issue of blood 311

after losing all her money to medical treatment. Both women are called
‘daughter’ although they are both ritually impure: one because of death,
the other because of menstruation. In Numbers 5.1–4 God commands
Moses to expel from the camp both morbidly menstruating women (the
so-called zabâ) and those who have touched corpses; in Mark 5 and Luke 8,
however, Jesus touches, and restores to health, both a haemorrhaging
woman and a dead girl. Both cases therefore develop a certain amount of
tension with Jewish doctrine. Both cases, additionally, share the fact that
fear is a significant emotion.
Exegetes today debate the nature of the healing (is it a miraculous or
magical act?), its performance (the touching happened at the woman’s
initiative) and the possible anti-Judaic undertone of the episode (is Mark
deliberately referring to a Jewish impurity law, i.e. to Leviticus?). The last
point ties in with the fact that besides the problem of healing, magic and
the miraculous act, there has been just as much controversy about the
nature of the Haemorrhoissa’s illness, her ‘issue of blood’, as is explained
by Richard A. Horsley: ‘The importance of the woman who had haemor-
rhaging for twelve years [. . .] has been obscured in recent interpretation.
Indeed, by setting Jesus in opposition to “Judaism”, Christian theological
interpretation has not only blocked recognition of important aspects of
Mark’s story, it has imposed some highly distorting false issues onto these
episodes and the significance of these women. It is important to dispense
with these distorting false issues in order to clear the way for a fresh hear-
ing of these intertwined episodes’.6 As the text makes no specific mention
of vaginal bleeding, some exegetes have suggested that the bleeding could
be due to other causes, even including chronic nosebleeds.7 In current
examinations of the Haemorrhoissa episode, however, it is commonly
accepted that the woman’s bleeding was indeed of a uterine nature.8
Indeed, the text literally says only ‘a woman who had been suffering from
haemorrhages for twelve years’ (mulier quae erat in profluvio sanguinis
annis duodecimo, Mark 5.25). The evangelist not only emphasises the
duration and severity of the sickness, but also seems hesitant to locate the

6 Horsley, Hearing the Whole Story 208.

7 See for example D’Angelo, “Gender and Power” 101–102 and Levine, “Discharging
Responsibility” 384. For an overview of differing opinions see also Loos H. van der, The
Miracles of Jesus (Leiden: 1965) 509–510.
8 A well-balanced position in this can be found in Marcus, Mark 1–8 357, and Robertson
A.T. – Perschbacher W.J., Word Pictures of the New Testament, 1, Matthew and Mark (Grand
Rapids: 2004) passim.
312 barbara baert, liesbet kusters and emma sidgwick

exact source. Mark 5.29, however, refers to the drying up of the ‘source/
fountain of her blood’ ( fons sanguinis eius siccatus est), a concept coming
from Leviticus 12.7, 15.19–33 and 20.18, where the zabâ, a woman suffering
from a menstrual disorder with abnormally heavy and prolonged loss of
blood, is discussed.9 An ancient Judaist substratum lingers in the text.
Be that as it may, literary sources irrefutably reveal that in early Christi-
anity the Haemorrhoissa was perceived as suffering from severe menstrual
bleeding and was as such considered impure, and this was understood in
the context of the early Christian concern with the presence of menstruat-
ing women in sacred space, another bloody realm due to the presence of
Eucharistic blood.10 In early Christianity there was tension between a very
far-reaching taboo on the menstruating woman in Jewish circles and the
attitude and reactions of Christians towards the Jewish views with which
they came into contact.11 The story of Hekhalot Rabbati 18 (third or fourth
century) is typical of this Jewish obsession. A rabbi travels through heaven
but is hurled on to the earth by another rabbi who had a small piece of
wool on his knee that had been touched by a menstruating woman.12 In
Judaism menstrual blood is always impure; it is the consequence of the
fall of man.13
In the Didascalia Apostolorum, a third-century Syrian text, the author
again tries to convince newly-converted Jewish women not to withdraw
from their place in the community while menstruating: ‘You shall not
separate those [women] who are in the wonted courses; for she also who

9 Which, moreover, is Marla Selvidge’s major argument concerning the issue of anti-
Judaism in this passage.
10 In research on the relationship between blood and space in the early Christian Latin
West and Greek East, Joan Branham has published extensively: Branham J.R., “Sacred
Space under Erasure in Ancient Synagogues and Early Churches”, Art Bulletin 74, 3 (1992)
375–394; Branham J.R., “Blood and Sanctity at Issue”, Res. Anthropology and Aesthetics 31
(1997) 53–70; Branham J.R., “Frauen und blutige Räume: Menstruation und Eucharistie
in Spätantike und Mittelalter”, Vorträge Warburg-Haus 3 (1999) 129–161; Branham J.R.,
“Bloody Women and Bloody Spaces”, Harvard Divinity Bulletin (e-journal) 30/06/04; Bra-
nham J.R., “Penetrating the Sacred: Breaches and Barriers in the Jerusalem Temple”, in Ger-
stel S. (ed.), Thresholds of the Sacred. Architectural, Art Historical, Liturgical and Theological
perspectives on religious Screens, East and West (Cambridge: 2006) 6–24.
11 See also Amt E. (ed.), Women’s Lives in Medieval Europe. A Sourcebook (New York:
1993) 279–317; Fonrobert, Menstrual Purity 160–210.
12 Marcus, Mark 1–8 357; Scholem G.G., Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism and Tal-
mudic Tradition (New York: 1960) 10–12; Gruenwald I., Apocalyptic and Merkavah Mysticism
(Leiden: 1980) 164.
13 Cohen S., “Menstruants and the Sacred in Judaism and Christianity”, in Pomeroy S.B.
(ed.), Women’s History and Ancient History (Chapel Hill, NC: 1991) 151–173; McCracken P.,
The Curse of Eve, The Wound of the Hero. Blood, Gender and Medieval Literature (Philadel-
phia, PA: 2003).
 an issue of blood 313

had the flow of blood was not chidden when she touched the skirt of our
Saviour’s cloak, but was even vouchsafed the forgiveness of all her sins’.14
At the same time, however, Dionysius of Alexandria († 264), a student of
Origen, says quite the opposite: ‘Concerning women in their menstrual
separation, whether it is right to them in such a condition to enter the
house of God, I think it is unnecessary even to inquire. For I think that
they, being faithful and pious, would not dare in such a condition either
to approach the home table or to touch the body and blood of Christ’. In
his argument, Dionysius explicitly refers to the woman who only touched
the hem of Christ’s mantle.15
And the controversy of the menses and the sacred space remains.
When, in 597, Augustine of Canterbury asks whether a menstruating
woman may receive communion, Gregory the Great answers as follows:
‘A woman must not be prohibited from entering a church during her usual
periods, for this natural overflowing cannot be reckoned a crime. If the
woman who was suffering from the issue of blood humbly came behind
the Lord’s back and touched the hem of his garment [. . .] was justified
in her boldness, why is it that what was permitted to one woman, was
not permitted to all women?’16 In 688, however, Theodore of Tarsus, later
Archbishop of Canterbury, says that menstruating women are under no
circumstances to receive communion, and also requires a waiting period
before women who have given birth attend church.17 Jonas of Orléans says

14 Didascalia Apostolorum 26, 62, 5 ‘Nam et ea quae fluctum patiebatur, cum tetigisset
salubrem fimbriam, non est repraehensa, sed tum sanata perfectam remissionem peccato-
rum meruit’. Connolly R.H., Didascalia Apostolorum (Oxford: 1929) 254.
15 Dionysius of Alexandria, Epistola Canonica ad Basilidem episcopum, Canon II: ed.
Migne J.P. (1857), S.P.N. Gregorii, Cognomento Thaumaturgi, Opera Quae Reperiri Potuerunt
Omnia, Paris, 1282 ‘Interrogatus ergo sanctus de fidelibus mulieribus, an eas oporteat,
quando a menstruis vexantur, ecclesiam ingredi, respondit non oportere hoc fieri; et
mulierem quae sanguinis profluvio in Evangelio laborabat, in exemplum adduxit, non
ausam Dominum tangere, sed solam ipsius fimbriam’; Cohen, “Menstruants” 288.
16 Gregory the Great, Epistola 64: ed. Migne J.P. (1849), Sancti Gregorii Papae I Cogno-
mento Magni, Opera omnia, Paris, col. 1194 ‘Quae tamen mulier dum ex consuetudine men-
strua patitur, prohiberi ecclesiam intrare non debet, quia ei naturai superfluitas in culpam
non valet imputari, et per hoc quod invita patitur, justum non est ut ingressu ecclesiae
privetur. Novimus namque quod mulier quae sanguinis fluxum patiebatur, post tergum
Domini humiliter veniens vestimenti ejus fimbriam tetigit, atque statim ab ea sua infir-
mitas recessit. Si ergo in fluxu sanguinis posita laudabiliter potuit Domini vestimentum
tangere, cur quae menstruum sanguinis patitur, ei non liceat Domini ecclesiam intrare’?
Wood C.T., “The Doctor’s Dilemma: Sin, Salvation, and the Menstrual Cycle in Medieval
Thought”, Speculum 56, 4 (1981) 710–727, 713.
17 Mc Neill J. – Gamer H.M., Medieval Handbooks of Penance. A transtaion of the prinici-
pal libri poenitentialis and selections from related documents (New York: 1990) 179–217;
Payer P.J., Sex and the Penitentials. The Development of a Sexual Code 550–1150 (Toronto:
1984) 36.
314 barbara baert, liesbet kusters and emma sidgwick

in his De ­institutione laicali: ‘Women do not enter the church during car-
nal impurity’.18 In short, while a bridge is made from the early Christian
period to Western Europe, whereby ‘symbolically bloody realms remain
inaccessible to physically bloody women’, from another perspective, the
Haemorrhoissa was being marshalled in an attempt to turn the tide.19
Exegetic literature has brought forward some important cruxes in the
text of the Haemorrhoissa episode, and has also revealed background
issues of historical relevance, such as the Levitical taboo of menstruation,
positing Leviticus as an important intertext. These background issues are
relevant for the semantics of the image and the iconographic tradition
around the Haemorrhoissa. It is as such remarkable that, in the transposi-
tion from text to image, to which we will now turn, Christian iconography
crystallised around a remarkable lacuna: nowhere is the issue of blood
directly depicted or represented.

From narrative to iconic space. The lacuna of the issue of blood

In his essay ‘À distance’, Carlo Ginzburg has inimitably discussed how the
introduction of the Haemorrhoissa into early Christian art cannot be sep-
arated from a fascination for what he calls the punctum: l’instant ­decisive.20
In the interspace of image and word one finds ‘moments of suction’. The
moment that Christ’s clothes are touched is joined together with the
moment of healing ( fons sanguinis siccatus est) and with the moment
that Jesus feels a ‘power’ (dynamis, virtus) flowing from him and He looks
back. In the condensation of energy around these verses (Mark 5.28–30,
Luke 8.44–46), the opening towards the image presents itself. The texts
tear open and the visual momentum escapes: le point décisif.
A third-century wall painting in the catacomb of Peter and Marcellinus
shows one of the earliest depictions of the scene and reveals the image
as crystallised out of those ‘moments of suction’ [Fig. 1].21 The woman
kneels behind Christ and longingly extends one hand to him, the other

18 Jonas of Orléans, De institutione laicali: ed. Migne J.P. (Paris: 1851) cols. 187–188.
19 Branham, “Bloody Women” 8.
20 Ginzburg C., A distance. Neuf essais sur le point de vue en histoire (Paris: 1998) 101 ‘Ces
images, concentrées sur le punctum, sur l’instant décisif ’.
21 The catacomb of Peter and Marcellinus contains a total of five wall paintings depict-
ing the Haemorrhoissa. See Deckers J.G. – Seeliger H.R. – Mietke G., Die Katacombe “Santi
Marcellino e Pietro”. Repertorium der Malereien (Vatican-Münster: 1987) 223–226, 241–243,
309–318, 330–334.
 an issue of blood 315

Fig. 1. Healing of the Haemorrhoissa, mural in the catacomb of Saints Peter and
Marcellinus, third century. Rome.
316 barbara baert, liesbet kusters and emma sidgwick

hand supporting her chin in an expression of silent sadness and despair;

He however already turns to her and blesses her. An ivory, part of the
so-called Brescia Casket from the fourth century, consolidates the healing
again in their mutual dialogue [Fig. 2]. The Haemorrhoissa still touches
his clothing while he already turns around and places his hand above her
head. The conflation of both moments, the initiative of the woman and
the experience of Christ on the one hand, and his approving blessing on
the other hand, forms the basis of the most common formula in early
Christian art, as seen on the sarcophagus of Adelphia and Syrakus [Fig. 3]
and a fifth-century sarcophagus from the archaeological museum in Istan-
bul [Fig. 4]. The latter repeats almost exactly the depiction of the scene
in the catacomb of Peter and Marcellinus: the woman kneels on one knee
and touches his clothing, he turns around and, in a gesture of blessing, his
hand hovers above her head.
In these first iconographic instances we find no explicit references to
the nature of the Haemorrhoissa’s illness. On the one hand, the iconogra-
phy uses the conventions of the healing Saviour (the laying on of hands):
on the other hand, it uses the elements of the story (a kneeling woman,
the hem, the presence of the disciples). The figurative image is however
limited in its representation of this intimate illness. In depictions of the
healing of the blind man at Siloam ( John 9.1–4) the eyes are pointed to,
and in those of the paralytic at the Piscina Probatica ( John 5.1–8) the bed
or the crutch refer to the specific handicap.22 But in the case of the Hae-
morrhoissa nothing allows us to induce that the miracle involves a haem-
orrhage of the uterus. This can sometimes make her difficult to identify;
she is often confused with Mary Magdalene, the woman of Canaan (Mat-
thew 15.22) or the humpbacked woman (Luke 13.10–17).23 In the miniature

22 Baert B., “La Piscine Probatique à Jérusalem: L’eau médicinale au Moyen Age”, in
Cardon B. (ed.), “Als Ich Can”. Liber Amicorum in Memory of Professor Dr. Maurits Smeyers
(Louvain: 2002) 91–129; Baert B., “The Healing of the Blind Man at Siloam, Jerusalem: A
Contribution to the Relationship Between Holy Places and the Visual Arts in the Middle
Ages”, Arte Cristiana 838 (2007) 49–60; 839 (2007) 121–130; Baert B., “The Pool of Bethsaïda:
The Cultural History of a Holy Place in Jerusalem”, Viator. Medieval and Renaissance Stud-
ies 36 (2005) 1–22.
23 On these confusions, see Knipp D., ‘Christus Medicus’ in der frühchristlichen Sarko-
phagskulptur. Ikonographische Studien der Sepulkralkunst des späten vierten Jahrhunderts
(Leiden: 1998); Bruyne L. de, L’imposition des mains dans l’art chrétien ancien (Vatican,
Pontificio istituto di archeologia cristiana: 1943) 166–174. Due to the sometimes ambiguous
postures, the Haemorrhoissa is most of the time confused with the Noli me tangere motif.
There is for instance no consensus on the depiction of the Brescia Casket. Noga-Banai G.,
The Trophies of the Martyrs. An Art Historical Study of Early Christian Silver Reliquaries
(Oxford: 2008) 38–61. We are however convinced that an independent iconographic motif
 an issue of blood 317

Fig. 2. Healing of the Haemorrhoissa, detail of the Brescia Casket, ca. 360–370. Ivory relief.
­Brescia, Museo Civico.
 318

Fig. 3. Healing of the Haemorrhoissa, detail of the Sarcophagus of Adelphia and Syrakus. Rome, ca. 340. Syracuse (Sicily),
barbara baert, liesbet kusters and emma sidgwick

Museo Nazionale.

an issue of blood

Fig. 4. Healing of the Haemorrhoissa, detail of a sarcophagus, fifth century. Istanbul, Archaeological Museum.
319
 320 barbara baert, liesbet kusters and emma sidgwick

Fig. 5. Healing of the Haemorrhoissa, miniature in the Codex Egberti (Trier, 977–993). Trier,
Stadtbibliothek (ms. 24, f. 90 verso).

of the Codex Egberti, the miniaturist countered confusion by adding above

the woman: fluxum habens [Fig. 5].24
Did, however, this lacuna in the visual depiction of the motif give rise to
any other means of suggesting the issue of blood? We have already men-
tioned that, in the gospels, the illness of the woman is compared to a fons
sanguinis. When one considers the passus as an image of the wellspring,

for the Noli me tangere arose only from Carolingian times onwards. Baert B. – Kusters L.,
“The Twilight Zone of the Noli me tangere: Contributions to the History of the Motif (ca.
400–ca. 1000) in the West”, Louvain Studies 32 (2007) 255–308.
24 Schiel H., Codex Egberti der Stadtbibliothek Trier (Basel: 1960); Ronig F.J., “Erläuterun-
gen zu den Miniaturen des Egbert Codex”, in Dornheim S.D. (ed.), Der Egbert Codex. Das
Leben Jesu. Ein Höhepunkt der Buchmalerei vor 1000 Jahren (Stuttgart: 2005) 122–124.
 an issue of blood 321

it suddenly becomes apparent how the haemorrhage is typologically com-

bined with other biblical episodes and miracles related to wells, fountains
and/or fluidity. In the catacomb of Peter and Marcellinus, another depic-
tion of the Haemorrhoissa is placed to the right of Moses striking water
from the rock, and the paralytic at the Piscina Probatica in Jerusalem.25
The sixth-century encolpion from Adana also places the woman alongside
the healing at the Piscina Probatica [Fig. 6].26 Again, another Haemor-
rhoissa in the catacomb of Peter and Marcellinus is combined with the
Samaritan woman at the well.27 In a mosaic of Ravenna, the healing of the
Haemorrhoissa precedes the Samaritan.28 On the sarcophagus of Celsus in
Milan (fourth century) the Haemorrhoissa is typologically combined with
Peter, who turns the prison wall into water flowing [Fig. 7].29 This proxim-
ity not only points obliquely to the specificity of the Haemorrhoissa’s issue
of blood, it also articulates a contrast between a miraculous flowing and a
miraculous drying up. Both cases feature a necessary restoration of nature
for the sake of the individual and the community. The parallel that was
drawn in this sarcophagus sets out a trail towards a deeper consciousness
of the impact of the healing of the Haemorrhoissa in the context of the
Bible. In sum, the typological combination not only indirectly suggested
the issue of blood; on another level, it also connected the motif to the
paramount importance of Christian miraculous healing.
Christ’s miracles were the dominant evangelical theme of early Chris-
tian imagery. In his book The Clash of Gods. A Reinterpretation of Early
Christian Art, Thomas Mathews situates the miracles of healing in the
context of a still ambivalent view of the Saviour.30 The author makes an
argument for the interpretation of the miracle stories as expressions of
a view of the world that is still influenced by magic. The iconographic
preoccupation – both quantitatively and qualitatively – with the miracles
of healing can be seen as a powerful response to Antique traditions. It is
not Asclepius, the wizard-God, who is central, but the Son of God, who

25 Healing of the Haemorrhoissa, mural in the catacomb of Saints Peter and Marcellinus
(third century), Rome. Deckers, Die Katacombe cat. no. 64.
26 Schiller G., Iconography of Christian Art, 1. Christ’s Incarnation, Childhood, Baptism,
Temptation, Transfiguration, Works and Miracles (London: 1971) 179.
27 Healing of the Haemorrhoissa, mural in the catacomb of Saints Peter and Marcellinus
(third century), Rome. Deckers, Die Katacombe cat. no. 71.
28 Healing of the Haemorrhoissa, mosaic in the San Apollinare Nuovo (520–526),
Ravenna. Schiller, Iconography fig. 431.
29 Knipp, Christus Medicus 124–125.
30 Mathews T.F., The Clash of Gods. A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art (New Jersey:
1993) 65–66.
 322 barbara baert, liesbet kusters and emma sidgwick

Fig. 6. Healing of the Haemorrhoissa, Encolpion from Adana, end of the sixth century.
 an issue of blood 323

Fig. 7. Peter turning the prison wall into water, Celsus ­sarcophagus, fourth century. Milan, S. Maria
presso S. Celso.
324 barbara baert, liesbet kusters and emma sidgwick

heals with one word, one touch, in the power of monotheism, uprooting
the antique traditions. The apologetic character of the iconography on
sarcophagi, for instance, consequently shows itself in depicting Christ as
the ‘true’ magician. ‘The force of the early Christian miracle images is their
radical novelty [. . .]. The moment of the miracle is critical [. . .] this was a
new kind of imagery, for which, surprisingly enough, non-Christian art had
no answer. Paganism had no images to compare with this propaganda’.31
When Origen (ca. 284) defends Christ against mocking heathens, he does
not deny that Christ had gifts of magic, but rather defends him as a true
healer who performed his magic without quackery and without asking a
fee. Indeed, merely uttering his name could exorcise demons.32
Magic and, more specifically, magical healing was still very much alive
in late Christian and early medieval times. This also explains the penetra-
tion of the theme of Christ the Healer into different kinds of imagery:
sarcophagi, ceramics, jewellery, intaglios, amulets, and textiles. Asterius,
Bishop of Pontus on the southern shore of the Black Sea, writes the follow-
ing around 400: ‘The more religious among rich men and women, having
picked out the story of the Gospels, have handed it over to the weavers –
I mean our Christ together with all his disciples, and each one of the mir-
acles the way it is related. You may see the wedding of Galilee with the
water jars, the paralytic carrying his bed on his shoulder, the blind man
healed by means of clay, the woman with an issue of blood seizing Christ’s
hem, the sinful woman falling at the feet of Jesus, Lazarus coming back to
life from his tomb. In doing this, they consider themselves to be religious
and to be wearing clothes that are agreeable to God’.33 It is precisely in the
further early-medieval reception of the motif that profound connections
to female menstrual and blood taboos surfaced most clearly and visibly;

31 Mathews, The Clash of Gods 68.

32 Origen, Contra Celsum 1,67–68; for an edition see Origen, Contra Celsum: tr. Chad-
wick H. (Cambridge: 1965) 62–63.
33 Asterius of Amasia, Homily 1: ed. Migne J.P. (1858), SS. Patrum Aegyptiorum Opera
omnia, Paris, col. 167 ‘Si qui autem cum viri, tum feminae ex iis, qui divitiis affluunt, religio-
siores videntur, collecta ex historia evangelica argumenta, textoribus subministrant; ipsum
inquam Christum nostrum cum discipulis omnibus; ac miracula, qua quodque ratione nar-
ratum habetur. Videbis nuptias Galilaeae et hydrias; paralyticum, lectum in humeris ges-
tantem; caecum, oblito luto curatum; profluvio sanguinis laborantem feminam, fimbriam
prehendentem; peccatricem, ad pedes Jesu accidentem; Lazarum e sepulcro ad vitam
redeuntem: dumque haec faciunt, pie se facere, idque indumenti genus, quod Deo gratum
sit, induere arbitrantur’; Mango C., The Art of the Byzantine Empire 312–1453. Sources and
Documents (Englewood Cliffs: 1972) 51.
 an issue of blood 325

more specifically, in the dissemination of the motif on everyday material

culture closely connected to nothing other than magical healing.

Healing and amulets. The motif ’s dissemination

It is possible that the frequent presence of the Haemorrhoissa in early

Christian iconography is linked to the fascination with the Lord of mira-
cles himself, and thus links to an iconography that responds to a pragmatic
and redeeming interpretation of Christ’s message. The Haemorrhoissa
is a theme grounded in everyday material culture. One representation
has been identified on the basis of her superscription on a fifth-century
piece of cloth used not in a liturgical context, but as a household utensil
[Fig. 8].34 As one goes deeper into the material culture of the first Chris-
tians, one even finds the Haemorrhoissa in the world of gems, spells,
miraculous stones and amulets.35 This crossing over of a gospel miracle
story, appearing in classic sarcophagus cycles, to the world of gems and
the apotropaion is astounding. We will attempt to identify the pattern
behind this transfer below; again, it seems clearly and specifically to con-
nect to the issue of blood.
A.A. Barb mentions an early Byzantine amulet in the British Museum,
bearing Greek inscriptions, which features Christian iconography on one
side and Gnostic-inspired iconography on the other [Fig. 9].36 On the
Christian side are four rows with biblical scenes and miracles of healing,
among them the blind man at Siloam and the man healed of the palsy at
the Piscina Probatica. In the middle of the third row, we find the Haemor-
rhoissa, recognisable by her hands outstretched towards Christ’s hem. The
inscription asks for strength for its bearer and weakness for the enemy.
On the Gnostic side, one recognises ‘Horus on the crocodiles’, an Egyp-
tian magical image, and an inscription which together with Solomon and
angels calls out: ‘Sisinnos bisinnos (sic)’, ‘she should not have strength
any more’.

34 Mathews, The Clash of Gods 60.

35 Spier J., Late Antique and Early Christian Gems (Wiesbaden: 2007); Spier J., “Amulets”,
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 56 (1993) 25–62; Ritner R.K., “A Uterine
Amulet in the Oriental Institute Collection”, Journal of Near Institute Studies 43, 3 (1984)
209–221.
36 Barb A.A., “Three Elusive Amulets”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes
27 (1964) 1–22, 10; fig. 2a–b.
 326 barbara baert, liesbet kusters and emma sidgwick

Fig. 8. Resurrection of Lazarus and Healing of the Haemorrhoissa, fifth century. Coptic textile.
London, Victoria and Albert Museum (inv. no. 722–1897).

an issue of blood

Fig. 9. Healings and Miracles of Christ, early Byzantine amulet. London, British Museum (reg. no. 1938).
327
328 barbara baert, liesbet kusters and emma sidgwick

In his catalogue of early Christian gems, Jeffrey Spier shows a rock crys-
tal with a representation of the Haemorrhoissa at Christ’s feet [Fig. 10].37
Christ does not touch the woman, but his hand hovers protectively over
her head. In his article “Medieval Byzantine Magical Amulets and Their
Tradition”, the author publishes two remarkable amulets. The intaglio
hanger in silver of the New York Metropolitan Museum is a five centime-
tre high haematite with the Haemorrhoissa at Christ’s feet on one side,
and Mary as orant on the other side [Fig. 11]. The inscriptions, corrupted
as they are, refer to the passage in Mark.38 Haematite is also called blood-
stone and, because of its physical qualities, is connected to the healing of
blood illnesses.39
An amulet in a private collection in Asia Minor combines a represen-
tation of the Haemorrhoissa – the inscription reading EMOROYC – on
one side, with a head with seven snakes on the other side [Fig. 12].40 The
snake-head is the gorgon, and connects the Haemorrhoissa to the hysteria
motif in the amulets.41 Medusa’s snake-head is nothing more than one
of the many guises of the womb.42 According to Spier, the amulets with
the gorgon are not to be seen as a threat to the womb, but rather as its
portrait. The portrait dispels and exorcises, as using the name of a demon
exorcises him or her.
On amulets intended to exorcise the womb, one often finds the short
inscription Hysteriikon phylaktiirion.43 Many inscriptions derive from a
lengthier early Byzantine charm for the womb: ‘Womb, Black. Blacken-
ing, as a snake you coil, and as a serpent you hiss, and as a lion you roar,

37 Spier, Late antique cat. no. 684 a and b.

38 Frazer M. – Weitzman K. (eds.), The Age of Spirituality (New York: 1977) 440; Spier,
“Amulets” 44, fig. 6b; also shown by Kötzsche L., catalogue note in Weitzmann K. (ed.), Age
of Spirituality. Late Antique and Early Christian Art, Third to Seventh Century (Princeton:
1979) 440 and Nauerth C.L., “Heilungswunder in der frühchristlichen Kunst”, in Beck H.
(ed.), Spätantike und frühes Christentum (Frankfurt am Main: 1983) 339–346, cat. no. 165. In
n. 111, 44, Spier also refers to the Benaki Museum in Athens, which holds a mid-­Byzantine
green chalcedony intaglio bearing the Haemorrhoissa and the Crucifixion, without inscrip-
tion. Haematite is an iron ore that is not particularly rare. Characteristic for this stone is its
red core, but once processed (sharpened or polished), it turns black to silvery.
39 Meier C., Gemma Spiritualis. Methode und Gebrauch der Edelsteinallegorese vom
frühen Christentum bis ins 18. Jahrhundert (Munich: 1977) 392–395.
40 Spier, “Amulets” 28, 30, 44, 56; 44 ‘The bronze token with the Haemorhoïssa suggests
that it had to help women in some way’.
41 Veith I., Hysteria. The History of a Disease (Chicago: 1965).
42 Pointon M., “Interior Portraits: Women, Physiology and the Male Artist”, Feminist
Review 22 (1986) 5–22.
43 Spier, “Amulets” as in the silver ring in fig. 40–4d, and also on a leaden amulet, both
Corinthian.

an issue of blood
329

Fig. 10. Healing of the Haemorrhoissa, crystal amulet. Rock crystal, 30 × 20 × 4 cm. New York, America Numismatic Society
(inv. no. 307).
 330 barbara baert, liesbet kusters and emma sidgwick

Fig. 11. Healing of the Haemorrhoissa and Mary in Orant, haematite amulet. Egypt, late Antiquity.
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art (17.190.491).

an issue of blood

Fig. 12. Healing of the Haemorrhoissa and hysteria motif, amulet. Private collection.
331
332 barbara baert, liesbet kusters and emma sidgwick

and as a lamb, lie down’.44 The charm asks the uterus to calm down, to
shrink.45 A sixth-century Coptic papyrus offers an example to control hys-
teria: ‘Make the womb of so-and-so, who bore so-and-so, relax into the
natural position, and be uninflamed’.46 Another formula is: ‘Set the womb
of so-and-so in its proper place, you who lift up the disk of the sun’.47 The
charms were used for a wide range of uterine problems: birth, contracep-
tion, afterbirth, contractions, severe menstrual bleeding, etc.48
The amulets should be seen in the context of the conviction that the
uterus is an animated creature, a demon, an animal that constantly needs
to be calmed down.49 The bronze amulet in the British Museum (fifth to
sixth century) asks: ‘Why do you munch like a wolf; why do you devour
like a crocodile, why do you bite like a lion, why do you gore like a bull,
why do you coil like a serpent, why do you lie down like a tame creature?’50
In many cases the formulae are accompanied by ‘Eat and drink blood!’,51
as the stopping of the bleeding was in many cases absolutely necessary, for
instance for the unborn child during pregnancy. The exorcism was meant
to make the demon-hysteria ‘devour’ the blood.52 This is not surprising, as

44 Spier, “Amulets” 30.

45 Spier, “Amulets” 43, often this portrait is of an octopoid.
46 Spier, “Amulets” 43.
47 Spier, “Amulets” 43.
48 There is much literature available on the uterus and menstruation in the premedical
world; Cayleff S.E., “She Was Rendered Incapacitated by Menstrual Difficulties: Historical
Perspectives on Perceived Intellectual and Physiological Impairment Among Menstruating
Women”, in Dan A.J. – Lewis L.L. (eds.), Menstrual Health in Women’s Lives (Urbana, Il:
1992) 229–235; Dean-Jones L., “Menstrual Bleeding According to the Hippocratics and Aris-
totle”, Transactions of the American Philological Association 119 (1989) 177–192; Green M.,
“Female Sexuality in the Medieval West”, Trends in History 4, 4 (1990) 127–158; Hanson A.E.,
“Hippocrates: Diseases of Women I”, Signs 1, 2 (1975) 567–584. Horowitz M.C., “Aristotle and
Woman”, Journal of the History of Biology 9, 2 (1976) 183–213, reveals Aristotle’s biological
and political sexism. For another viewpoint, see Morsink J., “Was Aristotle’s Biology Sexist?”,
Journal of the History of Biology 12, 1 (1979) 83–112. See also Jacquart D. – Thomasset C. –
Adamson M., Sexuality and Medicine in the Middle Ages (Princeton: 1988); Delancy J. –
Lupton M.J. – Toth E., The Curse. A Cultural History of Menstruation (New York: 1976);
Formanek, The Meanings of Menopause.
49 According to Barb, “Three Elusive Amulets” fig. 6a, these ideas go back to Mesopota-
mian archetypes. The amulets also protect men infected by a ‘womb’, like the one (fig. 6a)
for the Russian Basileos. Also see: Aubert J.-J., “Threatened Wombs: Aspects of Ancient
Uterine Magic”, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 30 (1989) 421–449; Bodemer C.W., “His-
torical Interpretations of the Human Uterus and Cervix Uteri”, in Blandau R.J. – Moghissi
K. (eds.), The Biology of the Cervix (Chicago: 1983) 1–11; Griffin S., Woman and Nature. The
Roaring Inside Her (New York: 1978).
50 Spier, “Amulets” 45.
51 Spier, “Amulets” 46.
52 Other examples in Ritner, “A Uterine Amulet in the Oriental Institute Collection”
passim.
 an issue of blood 333

the uterus can swell to dangerous proportions; it can hold or expel great
quantities of blood. Many charms refer to haematite as ‘bloodstone’ or ‘fos-
silised blood’.53 Also in terms of etymology haematite – haima-tithenai –
refers to ‘blood that stops’.54 The history of haematite as a form of ‘mineral
blood’ goes back a long way. The fourth-century Orphica, a poem about
the magical qualities of stones which dates back to a very early period of
Asian literature, calls haematite Chronos’ blood that dripped down from
the sky and was preserved in stone. The author starts his verses about the
haematite with ‘A leech came down from heaven’.55
Early Byzantine and also Germanic charms evoking Zechariah usually
go as follows: ‘By the great name of the almighty God. The prophet Zacha-
rias was slaughtered in the temple to the Lord and his blood solidified in
the middle of the sanctuary like a Stone. So thou too stop the blood of
the servant of God, congeal disease, as that one and as a Stone, may it be
annulled. I exorcise thee by the Faith of Veronica (Beraioonikii), blood,
that you may not drip further; let us stay good, let us stay in fear; amen.
Jesus Christ conquers’.56 Following this, believers were to rub some of
their own blood on their forehead, for instance with a stalk of straw. It
is worth noting that Veronica/Berenice is mentioned in the proverb; her
own connection with blood dates not from the miraculous portrait but
from the apocryphal legend that identified her with the woman with the
bloody issue.57 Beraioonikii is the name given to the Haemorrhoissa from
the third-century apocrypha onwards.58

53 Barb A.A., “St. Zacharias the Prophet and Martyr: A Study in Charms and Incanta-
tions”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948) 35–67, 63 and 67.
54 Meier, Gemma Spiritualis 394 ‘Hematites [. . .] dicitur ab hema, quod est sanguis, et
tithein, quod est sistere, quasi sistens sanguinem’ after Petrus Berchorius (ca. 1290–1362),
Reductorium morale XI, 440a. In the same passage Berchorius attributes the haemorrhage
to ‘luxuria’, to ‘carnalis voluptas, mundana prosperitas, fluxusque cujuscunque iniquitatis’
and thereby refers to the passage in Mark. ‘Figura de haemorrhoissa, quae ad tactum ves-
timenti Christi a fluxu sanguinis est sanata. Vestimentum Christi est abstinentia, quae re
vera sanat ab istis fluxibus animam peccatricem’. The connection between illness and sin,
at least in the late Middle Ages, requires further research.
55 Abel, Orphica, verse 642; Barb, “St. Zacharias” 67.
56 Ebermann O., Blut- und Wundsegen in ihrer Entwicklung dargestellt (Berlin: 1903);
Barb, “St. Zacharias” 38–42.
57 Kusters L., “Who is She? The Identity of the Haemorrhaging Woman and her
Wirkungsgeschichte”, Antwerp Royal Museum Annual (2009) 99–133; Dobschütz E. von,
Christusbilder. Untersuchungen zur christlichen Legenden (Leipzig: 1899) 250.
58 Barb, “St. Zacharias” 42; James M.R., The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford: 1924)
102: Bernice; 183: Beronice; 306: Berenice; and 157: Veronica. The name would also become
an exorcism for various problems. It is also used for fine nitrate.
334 barbara baert, liesbet kusters and emma sidgwick

Exorcism took place in ‘Berenice’s faith’, referring to the final verses of

the synoptic account in which her faith made her well again. The Hae-
morrhoissa’s power is double – taking power away from Christ, but also
her own powerful faith. It combines the realm of superstition and magic
with that of orthodoxy. At that intersection, the Haemorrhoissa character
found the mixed composition that is typical for charms and exorcisms.
A medieval Latin example goes as follows: ‘For stopping blood from the
nose. In the name of Christ write on the forehead with the own blood of
the same the name of Veronica. The same is it who said: If I touch the
fringe of the garment of my Lord I shall be healed’.59 The same reference
can be found in a formula in a thirteenth-century Greek pharmaceutical
manual by Nicolaus Myrepsus. The author copies the passage in Matthew
verbatim.60
In the earlier part of this article, we have already indicated the early
Christian interpretation of the Haemorrhoissa passage in the context of
the Jewish and antique taboo of the menstruating woman. While we have
identified a lacuna in the iconographic visualisation of the issue of blood,
we see its connotations ‘visibly’ appear in the world of gems and amulets.
They reveal that the woman was gradually charged with the fears and fas-
cinations of the ‘wild uterus’ and its bleeding. In sum, the Haemorrhoissa
performatively became engaged in magical healing practices related to
haemorrhages, in exorcism and conjuration.

Conclusion

The iconography of the healing of the Haemorrhoissa relates to the story

of the synoptic Gospels by isolating or compressing different moments,
with other elements of the story being visually ignored. More specifically,
the iconography demonstrates a lacuna in the depiction of the issue of
blood, clearly identified in recent exegesis as uterine bleeding (the ‘fons

59 ‘Ad sanguinem de naribus sistendum. In Christi nomine in fronte scribis de ipso san-
huine ipsius nomen Beronicae, ipsa est quae dixit: se tetigero fimbriam vestimenti domini
mei salvo ero’. Barb, “St. Zacharias” 43, note 1; Steinmeyer E. von, Die kleineren althoch-
deutschen Sprachdenkmäler (Berlin: 1916) 392.
60 Nicolae Myrepsi Alexandrini, De compositione medicamentorum opus [. . .] a Leon-
harto Fuchsio [. . .] e Graeco in Latinum conversum [. . .] in Estienne H., Medicae artis princi-
pes post Hippocratem et Galenum Graeci Latinitate donati (Paris: 1567); Barb, “St. Zacharias”
43; Meyer E., Geschichte der Botanik III (Königsberg: 1856) 339–390; Allbutt T.C., Greek
Medicine in Rome (London: 1921) 439.
 an issue of blood 335

sanguinis’). But the issue of blood does not completely recede into the
background: by means of typological combinations there is an oblique
suggestion of the ‘issue of blood’ as a fons, a wellspring, echoing how the
womb of the zabâ was conceptualised in Leviticus.
In the early medieval reception of the story, however, a profound con-
nection to uterine and menstrual issues again resurfaces. The Haemor-
rhoissa’s miracle of healing becomes entangled in the world of magical
healing, and settles itself in the hysteria field. At the level of sarcophagi it
is not possible to notice this, but the Haemorrhoissa hysteria does appear
in late-antique and early-Byzantine exorcism charms, intaglios, and pro-
tective amulets. This reveals an ongoing interaction between the textual
miracle and magical practices. The Haemorrhoissa is lifted outside the
gospel to lead a life of her own as a protector for women against bleeding
from the uterus, and for men against dangerous swellings.
When we reconstruct the Haemorrhoissa’s story in its textual and icon-
ographical Nachleben, it quickly becomes a story of blood. Her ‘issue of
blood’ takes on a range of different semantic layers, most obvious in the
ways in which its diverse constructions reflect the transition of Jewish
impurity laws to the Christian teachings of healing. These bring the Hae-
morrhoissa to the world of magical healing: exorcising blood with blood.
336 barbara baert, liesbet kusters and emma sidgwick

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 The nature of the soul and the passage of blood
through the lungs. Galen, Ibn al-Nafīs, Servetus,
İtakİ, ‘AṬṬār

Rainer Brömer

Summary

Since Muḥyī el-Dīn el-Taṭāwī’s supposed rediscovery, in 1924, of Ibn al-Nafīs’

thirteenth-century commentary on Avicenna’s anatomy, a heated international
debate has evolved over the presumed priority of discovering the circulation of
the blood, prior to William Harvey’s De motu cordis (1628). Protagonists of this
dispute before Fancy (2006) have paid very little attention to the profoundly
different physiological and epistemological frameworks the historical actors
were working in, despite striking similarities in some anatomical details of their
respective concepts. While actual links between the European successors of Ibn
al-Nafīs, such as Miguel Servet(o) (Michael Servetus) or Realdo Colombo (Real-
dus Columbus) remain speculative, it is becoming increasingly clear that, in the
Islamic world, the work of the former was by no means lost: it continued to be
cited in Arabic and Turkish sources well into the nineteenth century by authors
such as Şemsettin İtaki (1632) and Ḥasan al-‘Aṭṭār (1813).

Introduction

Our knowledge of the history of medicine in Islamic civilisations is still

lamentably limited. Even the most influential classical texts, such as Haly
Abbas’ Kāmil al-Ṣinā‘a (late tenth century), still await comprehensive crit-
ical editions, let alone reliable translations into Western languages, which
would make these writings available to a wider readership of historians
not specialising in Middle Eastern philology.1 We should therefore not be
surprised to find statements to the effect that certain singular empirical
or conceptual innovations did not produce any echo in the subsequent

1 The anatomical section is available in an edition with French translation in Koning

P. de (tr.), Trois traités d’anatomie arabes par Muḥammed ibn Zakariyyā al-Rāzī, ‘Ali ibn
al-‘Abbās et ‘Ali ibn Sīnā (Leiden: 1903) 91–431. The Latin recension by Constantine the
African under the title Liber Pantegni yssac israelite filii adoptivi Salomonis regis arabie is
available electronically in a print version dating from 1515, not in a scholarly edition.
340 rainer brömer

literature – an assessment perhaps based on the fact that later, ‘minor’

texts have escaped the attention of historians of medicine? This observa-
tion should caution us against taking those claims at face value. A good
example of such oversight is the case of Ibn al-Nafīs’ description of the
pulmonary transit of the blood, which is the main subject of this chapter.
Ibn al-Nafīs’ text was brought to the attention of modern western readers
in the 1930s thanks to a dissertation by an Egyptian medical student in
Berlin and Freiburg, Muḥyī el-Dīn el-Taṭāwī (1896–1935),2 and as late as
2008, two leading Turkish historians of medicine claimed that ‘in the Mus-
lim world, there was no physician who became aware of this discovery;
they did not utter a word about it’.3 Almost twenty years earlier, economic
historian Peter Gran had published an extensive study on a well-known
nineteenth-century scholar from Egypt, Ḥasan al-‘Aṭṭār (1766–1835), where
indeed we find a lengthy quotation from Ibn al-Nafīs’ description of the
pulmonary passage in a text written in Damascus around 1813.4 It needs
to be said, however, that this quotation had been taken out of its medical
context and found itself buried in a book on the socio-economic history
of early modern Egypt, where it, too, escaped the attention of medical
historians.5

2 Tatawi, M., Der Lungenkreislauf nach el-Koraschi. Diss. med. (Freiburg: 1924). This work,
together with a number of contributions to the debate it triggered, has been reprinted in
Sezgin F. (ed.), ‘Ali ibn abi l-Ḥazm al-Qarshī Ibn al-Nafīs (d. 687/1288). Texts and Studies
(Frankfurt: 1997) 1–25. While Tatawi subsequently pursued a clinical career and died in
1935, at the age of 38, his Egyptian colleague of German origin, Max Meyerhof, made his
work known through a series of articles in international academic journals. The earliest
report is Meyerhof M., “El-Tatawi, Mohyi el-Din: Der Lungenkreislauf nach el-Koraschi”.
Mitteilungen zur Geschichte der Medizin und der Naturwissenschaften 30 (1931) 55–57. He
subsequently edited and translated the relevant passages in Meyerhof M., “Ibn an-Nafis
und seine Theorie des Lungenkreislaufs”, Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte der Naturwis-
senschaften und der Medizin 4 (1933) 37–88 [7+15 pp. Arabic text].
3 Kâhya E. – Demirhan Erdemir A., Medical Studies and Institutions in the Ottoman
Empire (with brief information about the scientific studies) (Ankara: 2008) 29. The particular
irony of this remark will become apparent below, when we discuss a Turkish text from the
seventeenth century dealing with Ibn al-Nafīs’ idea, written by the Ottoman court physi-
cian Şemsettin İtaki, who does indeed discuss these ideas at some length. This text was
studied and edited by one of the authors of the above quotation, Esin Kahya. However,
the quoted remark does not occur in the Turkish edition of their survey published on the
occasion of the 700th anniversary of the Ottoman Empire, where they offer an otherwise
almost identical presentation of Ibn al-Nafīs, eadem, Osmanlıdan Cumhuriyete Tıp ve Sağlık
Kurumları (Ankara: 2000) 57–58.
4 Gran P., Islamic Roots of Capitalism. Egypt, 1760–1840 (Syracuse, NY: 1998) 170.
5 On the history of this non-discovery, see, for instance, Brömer R., “Nutzen und Nut-
zung der islamischen Medizingeschichte”, in Fansa M. (ed.), Ex oriente lux? Wege zur
neuzeitlichen Wissenschaft (Mainz: 2009) 202–211.
 the passage of blood through the lungs 341

When we turn to Islamic anatomical texts from the Ottoman period,

we find that the question of an exclusive passage of the blood through
the lungs (as opposed to seeping through the central wall of the heart)
was present, and even critical discussants would include a due attribution
to Ibn al-Nafīs. Do these observations prove right those colleagues who,
for almost a century, have claimed that European Renaissance anatomists
from Vesalius to Harvey had been inspired by the Syro-Egyptian physi-
cian when formulating the concept of a universal circulation of the blood
through the entire body, thus usurping the Arab’s fame as discoverer?6
As we will see in the following sections of this chapter, it is on the one
hand plausible that the Paduan school of human anatomy may have had
some knowledge, direct or indirect, of Ibn al-Nafīs’ anatomical commen-
tary. However, both the method and the motivation of the Egyptian and
the Paduans differed fundamentally, as did the outcomes: nowhere does
Ibn al-Nafīs talk about circulation, for the simple reason that his model
of blood flow is not circular. Nor, in all likelihood, is his work based on
dissection, and almost certainly not on vivisection (as is Harvey’s), while
there is no hint of any quantitative approach to his considerations. There-
fore, it does not seem appropriate to conceive of Ibn al-Nafīs as an unac-
knowledged precursor of Harvey, and this conclusion would remain true
even if it could be established that anatomists at Padua, Harvey’s alma
mater, had indeed possessed knowledge of the relevant Arabic sources.
The non-discovery of the circulation of the blood prior to Harvey has been
demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt by a large number of scholars.7
The present chapter will therefore take this aspect for granted, and instead
focus on the contextualisation and reception of Ibn al-Nafīs’ specific idea
in the Islamic world and also on possible conceptual parallels in (or influ-
ences on?) Miguel Servet. Nevertheless, it needs to be remembered that
there is a continuous stream of occidentalist literature claiming Muslim
priority for the discovery of pulmonary (and, by implication: systemic) cir-
culation, which academic historians of medicine cannot simply ignore.8

6 For a recent representative example, see Ghazal S. (2002): “The Discovery of the Pul-
monary Circulation: Who should get the Credit: Ibn Al-Nafis or William Harvey”, Journal
of the International Society for the History of Islamic Medicine 1 (2002) 46–48.
7 For example, for Ibn al-Nafīs, see Pormann P. – Savage-Smith E., Medieval Islamic
Medicine (Edinburgh: 2007) 47–48.
8 While the term Occidentalism can be traced back at least to Russian cultural debates
in the early nineteenth century, it was the Egyptian philosopher Ḥasan Ḥanafī who devel-
oped this notion as a counter-concept in order to turn the tables on Western “Orientalism”
sensu Edward Said, i.e., to reverse Western hegemony by studying its underlying culture
342 rainer brömer

Ibn al-Nafīs. Criticism of Galen and Avicenna9

The thirteenth century was a period of turmoil and massive change in

the Islamic world: the Arab succession to the Prophet of Islam effectively
ended with the extinction of the Abbasid dynasty in Baghdad, the city
itself being destroyed in 1258 by the army of the Mongol Khan Hülägü.
The impact of these momentous events on the intellectual development
of the Islamic world has been the subject of debate: while there is no
doubt that the destruction of the famous library led to an enormous loss
of scholarly texts, it also needs to be remembered that the same Hülägü
Khan, only one year after the sack of Baghdad, commissioned the creation
of what was at that time the largest astronomical observatory in Maragha,
complete with a library and other facilities required for scientific pursuits,
ushering in a new age of rapid scientific innovation.10 Similarly, apocalyp-
tic visions from the vantage point of the Egyptian Mamlūks (who brought
the Mongol advance to a halt at the Syrian spring of ‘Ayn Jālūt in 1260
and installed a kind of ‘shadow caliphate’ in Cairo) now increasingly seem
to be constructions of the following centuries rather than a widespread
sentiment of the time, even though there was some argument in the late
thirteenth century about the invasion as divine punishment and a call for
the return to the ways of the Prophet, including in the field of medicine.11
The Syrian physician Ibn al-Nafīs had been living in Cairo for over a
decade by the time that the Mamlūks wrested power from the Ayyūbids
in 1250. For most of his life, he worked at the Nāṣirī hospital, built by the

and philosophy; see Ḥanafī Ḥ., Muqaddima fī ‘ilm al-istighrāb (Prolegomena to the Disci-
pline of Occidentalism) (Cairo: 1991).
9 It is my pleasure to acknowledge my debt for much of the content of this section
to my colleague Nahyan Fancy. Both through his dissertation and through personal con-
versations he has helped me enormously in transcending the limitations of traditional
historiography of medicine and considering the wider philosophical issues shaping the
thought of classical Islamic scholars, Fancy N., Pulmonary Transit and Bodily Resurrection.
The Interaction of Medicine, Philosophy and Religion in the Works of Ibn al-Nafis (d. 1288)
(Notre Dame: 2006). The responsibility for possible misappropriations and misinterpreta-
tions lies of course entirely with the present author.
10 The subsequent developments have been analysed by Fazlıoğlu İ, (2008): “The Samar-
qand Mathematical-Astronomical School: A Basis for Ottoman Philosophy and Science”,
Journal for the History of Arabic Science 14 (2008) 3–68.
11 On ‘Prophetic Medicine’ (or ‘The Prophet’s Medicine’), see, e.g., Attewell G., “Islamic
Medicines: Perspectives on the Greek Legacy in the History of Islamic Medical Traditions
in West Asia”, in Selin H. – Shapiro H., Medicine Across Cultures (Dordrecht: 2003) 325–350,
esp. 329–333. More extensively: Perho I., “The Prophet’s Medicine: A Creation of the Mus-
lim Traditionalist Scholars”, Studia Orientalia 74 (1995) 1–158.
 the passage of blood through the lungs 343

founder of the Ayyūbid dynasty, Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn (Saladin), and in the last few
years of his career at the Manṣūrī hospital founded in 1284 by the Mamlūk
Sultan Qalāwūn.12 It is therefore appropriate to refer to Ibn al-Nafīs as a
physician by profession, even though his erudition and literary produc-
tion spanned the whole range of ‘ulūm and ādāb (loosely: sciences, includ-
ing the religious disciplines, and belles lettres), and he figures prominently
in several near-contemporary biographical dictionaries of Shāfi‘ī religious
jurists, while he is curiously absent from the leading medical biographical
dictionary of his time written by Ibn Abī Uṣaybi‘a.13 This clarification is
significant for understanding the complexity of his writings, which should
not be reduced to disciplinary works only (or even mainly) restricted to
a single field of enquiry. Thus, when Ibn al-Nafīs criticises established
medical authorities such as Galen and Avicenna, as we will see in the
following paragraphs, we have to consider his philosophical and religious
commitments as well as the medical aspects of his work, and we should
not be surprised to find that the physiology of the soul, from a primarily
theological viewpoint, may well take precedence over anatomical empiri-
cism regarding the structure and function of the heart, lungs, and the con-
necting major blood vessels.
This is not to say that Ibn al-Nafīs had been generally averse to the
empirical practice of anatomy, although it is not always easy to under-
stand what aspect of tashrīḥ the author refers to, given that the Arabic
term is ambiguous, meaning anatomical knowledge as well as dissection.14
There are passages in Ibn al-Nafīs’s writings where he unequivocally talks
about the ‘practice of dissection (mubāsharat al-tashrīḥ)’, but mainly in a
negative sense, where the physician declares that he had been discour-
aged by ‘the precepts of Islamic law [. . .] along with whatever compas-
sion is in our temperaments’; at the same time, he admits that certain

12 For a very brief sketch of Cairo’s hospital history from the Ayyūbids to the Mamlūks,
see Pormann – Savage-Smith, Medieval Islamic Medicine 99–100. A detailed treatment with
a focus on Qalāwūn’s Manṣūrī hospital can be found in Issa Bey A., Histoire des Bimaristans
(hopitaux) à l’époque islamique (Cairo: 1928) 40–76.
13 In general, surprisingly little is known about Ibn al-Nafīs’ life; see Fancy N., Pulmo-
nary Transit, esp. 44–48. There are a number of biographies available in Arabic, though
they are based on a limited range of sources. For a relevant recent contribution see Zaydan
Y., ‘Alā’ al-Dīn (Ibn al-Nafīs) al-Qarashī – i‘ādat iktishāf (Abu Dhabi: 1999).
14 In the Latin West, it was only around the same time (turn of the fourteenth century)
that ‘The term “anatomy” acquired the sense of the exercise consisting of the dissection of
an individual human body according to prescribed rules’, while previously the mandatory
‘ “[. . .] anatomy of human bodies” [. . .] would be fulfilled through the study of texts and dis-
section of animals’. Siraisi N., Medieval & Early Renaissance Medicine (Chicago: 1990) 86.
344 rainer brömer

studies would even require vivisection, yet that approach he regards as

impractical because of the ‘disturbance of the living (iḍṭirāb al-ḥayy) due
to its feeling of pain’ – not, it seems, because of any ethical concerns.15
However, as the context of these quotations makes clear, the author does
not lay claim to any empirical or even experimental innovations over his
ancient and more recent ancestors – even though he refers to anatomy
(tashrīḥ) as disproving Avicenna’s description of the connections between
the two main ventricles of the heart.16 More specifically, at a time when
many scholars advocate a return to scriptural and traditional sources
against the pursuit of rational philosophy ( falsafa), including the field of
medicine, Ibn al-Nafīs seeks to achieve a fine balance between reason and
revelation. It is in this context, as Nahyan Fancy has compellingly dem-
onstrated, that he undertakes his thorough investigation of philosophical
implications from anatomical detail as found in the works of Galen and
Avicenna: (medical) physiology for Ibn al-Nafīs is of crucial importance to
his arguments for a novel (theological) psychology, a ‘hylomorphic’ doc-
trine of the soul and its link with the (entire) body in view of bodily res-
urrection for the afterlife, reconciling philosophical reason and religious
revelation, in opposition to the contention that reason alone could dis-
cover all religious truths without the intervention of prophecy.17
The nature of the soul had been a major issue in the different branches
of Islamic thought before and after Avicenna, despite a Qur’ānic verse that
could be understood as discouraging these speculations.18 Galen’s concept
of a tripartite soul had already been rejected in the Arab world by early

15 The English translation can be found in Savage-Smith E., “Attitudes Toward Dissec-
tion in Medieval Islam”, Journal of the History of Medicine 50 (1995) 100–101. In S. Qaṭāya
(Catahier) and B. Ghalyūnjī’s edition of Ibn al-Nafīs, ‘A., Kitāb Sharḥ tashrīḥ al-Qānūn
(Cairo: 1988), the relevant passages are on 17 and 30, respectively.
16 Ibn al-Nafīs, ‘A., Kitāb Sharḥ tashrīḥ 388.
17 Fancy, Pulmonary Transit, ch. 3 and 4. This programme is most explicitly developed
in Ibn al-Nafīs A. Theologus autodidactus (Oxford 1968) [References to pages from the
English and Arabic texts are separated by a vertical line]. The title of the English transla-
tion by Max Meyerhof and Joseph Schacht is however misleading, as this philosophical
novel, a response to Ibn Ṭufayl’s Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān, actually opposes autodidacticism, which
contemporary Ṣūfīs advocated through a combination of reason and mystical union with
God, see Fancy Pulmonary Transit 74–78 and passim. For a brief discussion of Aristotle’s
(presumed) hylomorphism see ibidem 201 n. 142, quoting Bos A., “Aristotle’s Psychology:
Diagnosis of the Need for a Fundamental Reinterpretation”, American Catholic Philosophi-
cal Quarterly 73 (1999) 309–331 [which I have not been able to consult].
18 The verse in question is 17:85, speaking about the rūḥ sent by God. Fancy points out,
however, that the Qur’ān never uses rūḥ with regard to the human soul – yet he also
underlines that the distinction between rūḥ and nafs was not strictly observed in later
discussions. Fancy Pulmonary Transit 125.
 the passage of blood through the lungs 345

translators and medical philosophers such as Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq and Qustā
ibn Lūqā, who were moving closer towards an earlier Aristotelian con-
cept of one soul connected to the heart as the ‘chief organ’ of the body.
Avicenna strongly argued against the corporeality of the soul, which he
conceived instead as the final cause of bodily functions such as nourish-
ment, growth, and reproduction – which created a new difficulty: while
the Neoplatonic concept of final and efficient causes as transcending their
effects allowed for the separation of the soul from the body after death,
an insurmountable problem arose when Avicenna was not able to provide
a sufficient account for the individuality of the human soul in the grave,
given that he had to assume, with Aristotle, that matter was the only pos-
sible principle of individuation. This difficulty was compounded by Avi-
cenna’s rejection of bodily resurrection, a position which in the spectrum
of thought existing in the Islamic world was acceptable for the followers
of falsafa (based mainly on ancient Greek philosophy), but anathema to
traditionalist scholars following scripture and prophetic traditions (ahl
al-ḥadīth).
Ibn al-Nafīs, as a Shāfi‘ite jurist, felt closer to the traditionalists, all the
while using certain arguments of the falāsifa, such as the suggestion that
revelation used inexact expressions geared towards the level of under-
standing accessible to the ‘ignorant masses’, which gave him some leeway
for non-literal interpretation of Scripture and, more liberally, the trans-
mitted ḥadīth.19 However, he makes it unmistakeably clear that for him,
the Qur’ānic exhortations not to deny bodily resurrection are to be taken
seriously, while he follows Avicenna’s arguments for the immateriality
of the soul. Addressing the hitherto open question of the individuation
of an incorporeal soul once the matter to which it had been connected
disintegrates after death, Ibn al-Nafīs takes up a concept which has been
introduced in the ḥadīth literature postulating the existence of a mate-
rial nucleus of the human being, first created at conception and surviving
the demise of the person. ‘This matter is called the ‘ajb al-dhanab,’ as he
says in his Theologus, and organs of the body are assembled around this
core which is produced through a fine balance of matter at conception,
‘from sperm and similar things, and when the soul becomes attached to it
and then begins to feed and to produce the organs, the body is generated

19 Ibn al-Nafīs, Theologus 56|27.

346 rainer brömer

from it’.20 This highly balanced matter, having received the soul emanat-
ing from God, is itself imperishable and guarantees bodily resurrection on
the Day of Judgement, when ‘the soul stirs again and feeds this (nucleus
of ) matter by attracting other matter to it [. . .] and therefrom grows a
body a second time’.21
Thus, for Ibn al-Nafīs the soul is no longer intimately connected with
the spirit localised in the left ventricle of the heart, as it was for Avicenna;
rather, the spirit (rūḥ) is a material substance continuously generated
from air and blood, whereas the soul connects with the entirety of the
body. The spirit merely serves as a vehicle for the soul. In order to be sub-
tle enough to penetrate the entire matter of the body, Ibn al-Nafīs argues
repeatedly, the substances from which the rūḥ is produced have to be
particularly fine (raqīq jiddan), and the process of concoction must not be
disturbed by potential corruption through the thick blood which the right
ventricle receives from the liver and which first needs to be ‘strained’ in
the lungs, before only its finest components can contribute to the concoc-
tion of spirit from the mixture of blood and air through the innate heat
present in the heart, which is later to be ‘tempered’ by the brain. The spirit
is then, according to Ibn al-Nafīs, that which ‘carries [the soul’s] faculties
throughout the body’.22
In conclusion, we see how Ibn al-Nafīs’ anatomical postulate of the
impermeability of the heart’s central wall follows directly from his natu-
ral theological model of the soul’s hylomorphic association with the body,
mediated through the very fine spirit which is generated in the left ven-
tricle of the heart, not to be unbalanced by thicker components contained
in the right chamber. The pulmonary passage of the blood is a necessary
corollary of his model23 and as such not dependent on autopsy: specula-
tions about possible dissections are therefore not warranted except from
an anachronistic, at least early modern, perspective.

20 Ibn al-Nafīs, Theologus 58|30. Fancy, Pulmonary Transit 148 rejects Meyerhof and
Schacht’s translation of ‘ajb al-dhanab as ‘coccyx’, pointing out that Ibn al-Nafīs does not
make any reference to an anatomically specific structure. Fancy traces Ibn al-Nafīs’ use of
this term to the ḥadīth scholar and jurist Mālik ibn Anas; ibidem.
21 Ibn al-Nafīs Theologus 59|30, addition in round brackets by the editors.
22 Fancy, Pulmonary Transit 214–218, the quote on 214 refers to Ibn al-Nafīs’ unedited
Sharh al-Qānūn MS Wellcome Or. 51 [which I have not been able to consult].
23 This would also explain why Ibn al-Nafīs does not mention the pulmonary passage
except in his anatomy commentary, even though practically all his medical works apply
the underlying physiological model, Fancy, Pulmonary Transit 205.
 the passage of blood through the lungs 347

Miguel Servet. Martyr for heterodox theology (not medicine)

As is well known, Servet was engaged in a theological battle that proved

fatal to him.24 Living at a time of Reformation in the Latin Church, he
counted on the nascent Protestantism to support his project aimed at
doing away with the dogma of the Trinity of God the Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit. In his Unitarian approach to the teachings of the Gospels,
Servet needed the vital spirit of the arterial blood as a vector for the divine
spirit which was inhaled with the air through the lungs, where it is mixed
with the finer part of the blood coming from the right ventricle and made
into the vital spirit which is then attracted into the left chamber of the
heart in diastole and subsequently distributed via the aorta to the arte-
rial system of the body.25 In order to remove any lingering doubts that
there might be any kind of Trinity implied in the Galenic description of
the vital, natural, and animal spirits, Servet concludes by stressing that
‘In all of these there is the energy of one Spirit and God’s Light (Unius
spiritus et lucis Dei energia)’, and historically it is the vital spirit from
the heart that takes precedence over the natural spirit from the liver: It
is ‘Through inhalation into the mouth and nostrils [that] the soul is truly
drawn inwards’, and only subsequently, thanks to ‘the anastomoses from
arteries to veins’, can it be ‘communicated thence to the liver’.26 The role
of the arterial blood-cum-(animal) spirit for the global distribution of the
inhaled soul is strongly reminiscent of Ibn al-Nafīs’ concept which we have
just discussed, even though the anatomical corroboration is more solid in
Servet’s formulations – based on ample experience in the dissection the-
atre, which allowed him to argue against Galen’s assertion that the small
dimension of the ‘arterial vein’ (pulmonary artery) required that some of
the blood used in the left ventricle of the heart to concoct the pneuma
pass through the central septum in the first place.27 This ­observation

24 The classical biography by Bainton R., Hunted Heretic. The Life and Death of Michael
Servetus, 1511–1553 (Boston: 1953) has actually been re-edited more than half a century later
(Providence, RI: 2005). A more recent, though somewhat hagiographic work is Hillar M. –
Allen C., Michael Servetus. Intellectual Giant, Humanist, and Martyr (Lanham: 2002).
25 Bröer R., “Blutkreislauf und Dreieinigkeit: Medizinischer Antitrinitarismus von
Michael Servet (1511–1553) bis Giorgio Biandrata (1515–1588)”, Berichte zur Wissenschafts-
geschichte 29 (2006) 21–37.
26 Servetus Michael, The Restoration of Christianity (Lewiston: 2007) 241 [169].
27 Wilson L.G., “The Problem of the Discovery of the Pulmonary Circulation”, Journal
of the History of Medicine 17 (1962) 229–244 discusses the intricate procedures developed
by Servet’s teacher Winter of Andernach and his fellow student Vesalius to study the large
pulmonary vessels in living (dying) animals. Further, Wilson discusses Realdo Colombo’s
348 rainer brömer

conversely reinforces the supposition that Ibn al-Nafīs’ innovations were

almost certainly not based on dissection or even vivisection.
It should be noted here that, just as Ibn al-Nafīs never speaks of ‘cir-
culation’, neither does Servet, who describes a ‘long passage’ of the fine
blood ‘kept in motion from the right ventricle of the heart’.28 In the later
sixteenth century, the Latin term circulatio did indeed make its appear-
ance in physiological writings, as in Andrea Cesalpino’s Questionum peri-
pateticarum libri quinque (1571/1588); however, as Gweneth Whitteridge
has shown in much detail, this word referred to the alchemical concept of
heating and cooling in the process of distillation, not to a systemic circular
movement of the blood, to the extent that in the post-Harveyan debate, it
was sometimes deemed preferable to replace this (originally Aristotelian)
notion of circulatio by a less charged circuitio sanguinis.29
Did Servet then have any knowledge of Ibn al-Nafīs’ anatomical com-
mentary and the physiological ideas it proposed? The question of a pos-
sible case of ‘plagiarism’ has much exercised recent occidentalist writers.
In actual fact, works by ‘Ebenfis’ had been known in the Republic of Ven-
ice and its university town Padua from the early sixteenth century, thanks
to the activities of the physician Andrea Alpago and his nephew Paolo.30
Andrea had been living in Damascus since 1487, exercising the medical
profession at the Venetian consulate while studying Arabic medical man-
uscripts with the help of a local physician, Ibn al-Makkī.31 At the time of
the Ottoman conquest of Syria in 1517, he left the Levant and returned to
Padua where he and Paolo Alpago published an impressive number of
Latin translations of some of the texts collected in Damascus, notably a
new translation of Avicenna’s Canon, but also a short passage from Ibn

investigation of the blood-filled venous artery (pulmonary vein) developed into another
empirical argument against the original Galenic concept, according to which mainly air
and “exhausts” were moving back and forth between the lungs and the left chamber of
the heart.
28 Servetus, The Restoration 243 [170] longo per pulmones ductu, agitatur sanguis subtilis.
For Servet, the refinement of the blood starts in the right ventricle of the heart, whereas Ibn
al-Nafīs envisaged a ‘straining’ process in the porous (mutakhalkhil) tissue of the lungs.
29 Whitteridge G., William Harvey and the Circulation of the Blood (London: 1971). The
relevant passages are on 43–44, 66–67, and 126–127. See also Bröer R., “Blutkreislauf ” 29.
30 O’Malley has even argued that a small treatise by Ibn al-Nafīs published in Latin
in 1547 implicitly contained the concept of a pulmonary passage, though not explicitly
mentioning the absence of trans-septal passages. O’Malley C., “A Latin Translation of Ibn
Nafis (1547) Related to the Problem of the Circulation of the Blood”, Journal of the History
of Medicine and Allied Sciences 12 (1957) 248–253.
31 See the detailed biography by Lucchetta F., Il medico e filosofo bellunese Andrea
Alpago (†1522), traduttore di Avicenna (Padua 1964).
 the passage of blood through the lungs 349

al-Nafīs’ commentary on that work – though not the relevant section on

anatomy, which apparently had often been copied separately from the
rest of the text.32 The papers of the Alpago family were dispersed between
the time of Paolo’s death (before 1559) and the eighteenth century, at
which time a copy of Ibn al-Nafīs’ anatomical commentary was acquired
by the Nani family in Venice.33 This element of circumstantial evidence is
of course quite vague, and therefore historians of medicine had to resort
to closer textual analysis in order to establish a possible link between the
Sharḥ al-tashrīḥ and the Restitutio. Soon after Meyerhof ’s communica-
tions, Owsei Temkin undertook the first attempt, pointing out that the
two authors in question differed in at least two fundamental anatomical
details: one concerning the pores of the septum, which Ibn al-Nafīs denied
categorically while Servet allowed that some blood would ‘sweat through’
to the left ventricle, and the other regarding the precise description of
the passage of the blood from the arterial vein (pulmonary artery) to the
venous artery (pulmonary vein) either through the flesh of the lung (Ibn
al-Nafīs) or via intermediate vessels (Servet).34 As we have seen in the sec-
tion above, Ibn al-Nafīs had good reasons to insist on the impermeability
of the septum, which would not have been equally stringent for Servet.
Also, we have to consider that the latter did have first-hand experience
with human dissection, which may well have given him a different per-
spective on the structure of the cardio-pulmonary system. Therefore, one
might be reluctant to follow Temkin, who concluded that these differ-
ences make it seem unlikely that Servet had known of the Arabic text.
Joseph Schacht, on the other hand, claims to show convincingly that
Servet, more directly than the other candidates among the sixteenth-
century anatomists linked to the university of Padua, was dependent on
specific ideas gleaned from Ibn al-Nafīs’s commentary, addressing most
of the Egyptian’s propositions directly, although contradicting some –
presumably on empirical grounds, especially those regarding the relative
dimensions of the two ventricles, which Servet may well have observed
during his anatomical practice with Winter of Andernach in Paris.35
There is however further work to be done towards a more ­comprehensive

32 Iskandar A.Z., A Catalogue of Arabic Manuscripts on Medicine and Science in the Well-
come Historical Medical Library (London: 1967) 43–51.
33 Lucchetta, Il medico e filosofo, 60 and n. 2, 66 and n. 5.
34 Temkin O., “Was Servetus Influenced by Ibn an-Nafīs?”, Bulletin of the History of
Medicine 8 (1940) 731–734.
35 Schacht J., “Ibn al-Nafīs, Servetus and Colombo”, Al-Andalus 22 (1957) 317–336.
350 rainer brömer

c­ omparison of the parallels and differences between the Arabic and

the Latin works in their respective wider theological and philosophical
­contexts.36

Şemsettin İtaki. Eclectic rather than accurate

It has been commonly asserted, from Meyerhof’s international presenta-

tion of Taṭāwī’s dissertation in the 1930s37 to recent textbooks on the his-
tory of Ottoman medicine, that Ibn al-Nafīs’ description of the pulmonary
passage had been forgotten in the Muslim world, if perhaps not in the West
– although it was well known that the manuscript from which Taṭāwī was
working dates from the early eighteenth century, so somebody had cared
enough about the text to commission a new copy.38 But the continued
scribal tradition is not the only indication of a continued awareness, if
not necessarily acceptance, of Ibn al-Nafīs’ concept. Thus, when looking
at the second known illustrated anatomical work in the Islamic world,
composed around 1630 by the Ottoman physician Şemsettin İtaki and
presented to Sultan Murat IV in 1632 (which was also the first one to be
written in the Ottoman Turkish language),39 we actually find Ibn al-Nafīs
mentioned by name, in the appropriate section ‘On the Ventricles of the
Heart’. In order to gain a better understanding of the position İtaki occu-
pies in this debate, it may be useful to quote the context of his assertions
more extensively, beginning with the previous section ‘On the Anatomy
of the Heart’:

36 Such a project can build on the thorough analysis of the relevant protagonists in
Fancy, Pulmonary Transit. Another essential contribution to this investigation is Bröer R.,
“Blutkreislauf und Dreieinigkeit”.
37 Meyerhof M., “Ibn an-Nafis (XIIIth cent.) and his theory of the lesser circulation”,
Isis 23 (1935) 100–120.
38 Brömer R., “Abū al-Ḥasan ‘Alā al-Dīn ‘Alī ibn al-Ḥazm al-Qurašī”, in Fansa M. (ed.),
Ex oriente lux? Wege zur neuzeitlichen Wissenschaft (Mainz: 2009) 420–421.
39 Of the numerous established spelling variants for İtaki’s name, I am here going with
the modern Turkish rules, while preserving the academic transliteration in the bibliogra-
phy. There are two editions of his work available, both prepared by Esin Kâhya. The first
one (1990) offers a facsimile of one particular manuscript with English translation ‘based
on a standardised text established by collating seven manuscripts’, while the second work
(1996) is a critical edition using all seven known manuscripts and providing a modern
Turkish translation. Kahya E., The Treatise on Anatomy of [the] Human Body and Interpre-
tation of Philosophers by Al-‘Itāqī (Islamabad 1990); Kâhya E., Şemseddîn-i İtâḳî’nin resimli
anatomi kitabı (Ankara: 1996). References will be made by year and then first the page
number of the Ottoman text followed by the number of the modern translation.
 the passage of blood through the lungs 351

The heart has three cavities. Two of them are large, and the cavity in the
middle is smaller than the two others. Some physicians call it a passage. For
the other two ventricles open into this cavity [. . .].
We have already mentioned three ventricles of the heart. All anatomists
give the same information. But Ibn an-Nafīs in his Commentary on the Ana-
tomical Section of the Qanon claimed that this was wrong, and said that
the heart had two ventricles; one of them was the right ventricle in which
the blood coming from the liver was cooked, and then sent into the left
ventricle where blood was cooked to a certain degree and refined; blood
was then sent to the lungs. In the lungs, it mixed with the air and nourished
the lungs. The same blood which mixed with air came to the heart [. . .]. Ibn
an-Nafīs said that there was no cavity between the right and left ventricles.
He also said that they were separated by a fleshy septum which resembled a
sponge. The blood passed through this spongy flesh from the right ventricle
to the left [. . .]. Ibn an-Nafīs said that the blood which came from the liver
was changed into spirit and distributed into the body by the heart. God
knows best.40
These passages invite broad reflections about the routes of transmission
and translation of medical knowledge. What was the ‘best knowledge [. . .]
that ancient scholars have revealed and expressed as human anatomy’,
on which İtaki put ‘Turkish clothes and Anatolian covering’?41 The author
provides only sporadic references to his sources, although the editor made
a considerable effort to trace possible models for İtaki’s descriptions of the
bodily organs.42 The numerous illustrations present in the earlier copies
of his text give some clear indications: there are a number of representa-
tions obviously inspired by Vesalius’ Latin work De humani corporis fab-
rica libri VII (1543/1555) [Figs. 1 and 2], and another set of diagrams directly
reproduced from Manṣūr b. Ilyās’ Persian Tashrīḥ-i badan-i insān (before
1400) [Figs. 3 and 4]. Such an eclectic choice of illustrations is certainly
surprising, and this selection begs the question as to the understanding of
the texts accompanying these treatises.43 Without venturing into broader
generalisations, we may simply analyse the passages just quoted, where
we find one very general reference (‘all anatomists’) and one individual
name (‘Ibn an-Nafīs in his commentary on the anatomical section . . .’).

40 Kahya (1990) 204, 205 | 104, 105; Kâhya (1996) 196, 197–198 | 211, 212.
41 Kahya (1990) 13 | 24; Kâhya (1996) 13 | 122.
42 Kâhya (1996) 11–109.
43 There has been an interesting debate about the question of linguistic barriers hinder-
ing the reception of foreign sciences in the Ottoman Empire. Kahya – Demirhan Erdemir,
Medicine in the Ottoman Empire 77; Sarı, N., “Ottoman Medical Practice and the Medical
Science”, in Demirhan Erdemir A. – Öncel Ö. (eds.) Selected Papers on Turkish Medical
History (Istanbul: 2008) 5–89, esp. 20–32.
352 rainer brömer

Fig. 1. Skeleton, from Andreas Vesalius, De humani corporis fabrica libri septem
(Basel, Oporinus: 1543).

the passage of blood through the lungs
353

Fig. 2. Skeleton, from Şemsettin İtaki, Teşrîh-i Ebdân ve Tercümân Kıbâle-ı Fezlesûfān (Hüsrev Paşa 464 fol. 31).
 354
rainer brömer

Fig. 3. Venous system from Manṣūr ibn Ilyās, Tashrīh-i badan-i insan, (Ayasofya 3597 fol 25b).

the passage of blood through the lungs
355

Fig. 4. Venous system from Şemsettin İtaki’s Teşrîh-i Ebdân ve Tercümân Kıbâle-ı Feylesûfān (Hüsrev Paşa 464
fol. 84b).
356 rainer brömer

Now it can hardly be said that ‘all anatomists’ in the Islamic world unani-
mously subscribed to the Aristotelian conviction that there was a middle
ventricle in the heart (of larger animals), even though the Galenic ‘con-
nection’ was interpreted in various forms and shapes by authors such as
Rhazes, al-Majūsī, and Averroës. But it was only Avicenna who went so far
as to postulate a third ventricle.44
The Aristotelian view is for instance mentioned in very cautious terms
by Manṣūr b. Ilyās, one of İtaki’s sources: the Persian anatomist comple-
ments his description of two ventricles (and two auricles) of the heart
with a brief remark, saying that ‘[s]ome of the physicians claimed that the
heart has three cavities’45 – certainly not ‘all’. As İtaki himself acknowl-
edges, Ibn al-Nafīs rejected this claim with his characteristic concise clar-
ity: ‘[Avicenna] said: [the heart] contains three ventricles. This statement
is not true. Namely, there are only two ventricles in the heart’. At the same
point, Ibn al-Nafīs emphasises that it is wrong to assert that the barrier
between the ventricles is rich in porosities (kathīr al-takhalkhul ), as any
leakage of right-ventricular blood into the left chamber would corrupt
the essence of the pneuma ( fa-yafsidu jawharahā [al-rūḥ]).46 This is of
course a far cry from İtaki’s interpretation of ‘porous flesh’ being present
between the ventricles, ‘mütehelhil et’ in his words, using exactly the term
Ibn al-Nafīs explicitly rejects.47
Finally, the rendition of the Cairene scholar-physician’s intricate con-
cept of pneuma as ‘blood [. . .] from the liver [. . .] changed into spirit and
distributed into the body’ is uniquely laconic, betraying İtaki’s marked

44 See the overview in Prioreschi P., A History of Medicine vol. IV. Byzantine and Islamic
Medicine (Omaha, NE 20042) 409–410, based on de Koning’s edition and translation of
three classical anatomical texts; Koning P. de, Trois traités. Rhazes in his Kitāb al-Manṣūrī
describes two ventricles and two “auricle-like” accessories (62–65: ‘zā’idatān shabīhatān bi-
l-adhnayn’), mentioning passages (manāfidh, [plural! RBr] 62) between the two ventricles.
Haly Abbas, on the other hand, in his Kāmil al-ṣinā‘a engaged critically with the Aristote-
lian description of a third ventricle, which he rejected: ‘min al-tajwīf al-ayman ilā ‘l-tajwīf
al-aysar manfadh yusammīhi qawm tajwīfan thālithan wa-laysa dhalik ka-dhalik’ (344); ‘De
la cavité droite à la cavité gauche mène un passage [singular! RBr] que quelques-uns appel-
lent troisième cavité, mais il n’en est pas ainsi’ (345). See also Kâhya (1996) 76–80.
45 Kâhya E. – Bilgen B. (eds./trs.), Kitab-ı Teşrihü’l-Ebdan Min e’t Tıb. Mansur b.
Muhammed b. Ahmed. (Ankara: 2008) 156.
46 Ibn al-Nafīs, ‘A., Kitāb Sharḥ tashrīḥ 388.
47 The term takhalkhul comes from the same Arabic root as mütehelhil, kh-l-kh-l, and in
case the Turkish readers did not understand the term, İtaki adds the Turkish explanation
‘sünger gibi’, i.e., ‘sponge-like’, which is not to be found in the Arabic sources.
 the passage of blood through the lungs 357

lack of interest in functional, physiological aspects of human structure.

Similarly vague is his description of nerve function, when he states that
the nerves which come out of the brain and go to the eyes [. . .] were cre-
ated [. . .] hollow because light goes through them. But some nerves are not
hollow; they are solid; the animal spirit penetrates them as rose water pen-
etrates a rose and oil penetrates sesame.48
We may therefore conclude that İtaki definitely knew about Ibn al-Nafīs’
work, which he cites with its established title, confirming that the Sharḥ
al-tashrīḥ was far from forgotten in the seventeenth century. At the same
time, it is quite obvious that the Ottoman author had little interest in the
physiological, let alone the philosophical aspects of his source, quoting the
anatomical detail inaccurately to the point where he inverts Ibn al-Nafīs’
statement about the texture of the flesh (et) between the ventricles.

Ḥasan al-‘Aṭṭār. Scholar for life, one-time physician

Only recently has the career of Ḥasan al-‘Aṭṭār been reclaimed for the his-
tory of medicine.49 It has to be said that al-‘Aṭṭār devoted only about one
decade of his life to medicine, and later focused on disciplines closer to
religious sciences (kalām, ḥikma; grammar, logic; literature [ādāb]).50 He
is best remembered for his contributions to Muḥammad ‘Alī Pasha’s wide-
ranging cultural and technological reforms in Egypt after the French inva-
sion under Napoleon Bonaparte, and his student Rifā‘a al-Ṭahṭāwī wrote
a famous description of Paris, where he had spent five years as the imam
of an Egyptian student mission, reporting among other events the French
July revolution of 1830.51 Al-‘Aṭṭār was instrumental in establishing printing
in Egypt, and al-Ṭahṭāwī’s book was probably the first Arabic monograph
published directly through the printing press rather than in manuscript

48 Kahya (1990) 79 | 56; Kâhya (1996) 80|157.

49 Brömer R., “Kulturgeschichte der Osmanischen Medizin: Anatomie von Ibn al-Nafīs
und Vesal zu Şanizade und Hasan al-‘Attār”, in Groß D. – Karenberg A. (eds.), Medizinge-
schichte im Rheinland (Kassel: 2009) 267–276.
50 Gran P., Islamic Roots of Capitalism. A second important study concerning al-‘Aṭṭār,
apparently written independently from Gran’s, is contained in Delanoue G., Moralistes et
politiques musulmans dans l’Égypte du XIXe siècle (1798–1882) (Cairo: 1982) 344–357.
51 English translation by Newman D., An Imam in Paris. Al-Tahtawi’s Visit to France
(1826–1831) (London: 2002).
358 rainer brömer

form. However, regarding the reception of Ibn al-Nafīs’ description of the

pulmonary passage of the blood, al-‘Aṭṭār is another important witness.
Two years after the French had been expelled from Egypt, al-‘Aṭṭār
left his country and travelled widely across the Ottoman Empire, mainly
in and around Anatolia. He spent several years in Istanbul studying and
­writing about medicine.52 In 1810, he moved on to Damascus, where he
stayed for five more years and for a short time put his medical knowledge
into practice. It is from this period that we have a massive, unedited medi-
cal treatise of 251 folios, a commentary on a text by the sixteenth-cen-
tury physician Dawūd al-Anṭākī (‘of Antioch’), in which al-‘Aṭṭār quotes
Ibn al-Nafīs at length, and correctly, contrary to what Gran makes of the
passage. Commenting on a phrase where al-Anṭākī briefly asserts (with
Avicenna) that ‘the heart [. . .] is a conical organ with three cavities’,53
al-‘Aṭṭār retorts:
Al-Qurashi [Ibn al-Nafīs] said that this view is incorrect, for the heart has
two internal ventricles only, one of which is filled with blood, and it is on
the right side. The other is filled with vital spirit [rūḥ] and it is on the left
side. There is absolutely no passageway between the two, nor does the blood
penetrate into the side of the spirit, and thereby corrupt [Gran has ‘correct’]
its essence. Dissection makes a lie of what they have said.54
Instead, Gran suggests that al-‘Aṭṭār had Ibn al-Nafīs believe in the exis-
tence of a third ventricle, and makes it sound as if he was correcting the
latter. In Gran’s translation it therefore reads:
This is the view of al-Qurashī [Ibn al-Nafīs], and it is incorrect, for the heart
has two internal ventricles only [. . .] [al-‘Aṭṭār concludes with a contrast
between the heart in larger and smaller animals].55
In the endnotes, Gran adds a rather cryptic remark, saying

52 Gran, Islamic Roots of Capitalism 103; exactly how far he went (maybe not as far as
Albania) is still a matter of debate; ibidem 192–196.
53 Al-Anṭākī D., Nuzhat al-adhhān fī iṣlāḥ al-abdān: ed. Zakkūr M.Y. (Damascus: 2007)
131 ‘wa-huwa ‘uḍwun ṣanawbarī la-hu thalātha buṭūn’. Gran, Islamic Roots 245 n. 3 for
169 does not provide a reference for the copy consulted.
54 Al-‘Aṭṭār H., Sharḥ al-‘Aṭṭār al-musammā bi-rāḥat al-abdān ‘alā nuzhat al-adhhān fī
‘ilm al-ṭibb [Recreation of the bodies on the peregrination of the minds in medical science]
(Damascus 1813, now Cairo Al-Azhar, MS 3434 Riwāq al Maghāriba). The passage in ques-
tion is on fol. 97 verso, cf. Gran, Islamic Roots 170.
55 Gran, Islamic Roots 170. Insertions in square brackets by Gran. The comment about
smaller and larger animals echoes Aristotle’s assertion that smaller animals had only one ven-
tricle, medium-sized two, and larger three chambers, see Prioreschi, History of Medicine 410.
 the passage of blood through the lungs 359

Why on this crucial passage did al-‘Aṭṭār actually agree with al-Qurashī,56
whose relevant work he cites (p. 35A),57 and yet claim that he opposed him?58
Was he undermined by the copyist, or were the ‘circumstances’ in Damascus,
which he referred to above, not conducive to an onslaught on Ibn Sīnā?59
The last sentence would actually be an interesting thought, were it not
based on an inaccurate reading of al-‘Aṭṭār’s text. For the time being, we
have to conclude this section by admitting that too little is known about
the context of al-‘Aṭṭār’s writing, including the (only recently edited) minor
work by al-Anṭākī on which he is commenting, which, as we have seen,
only very briefly mentions the existence of three ventricles in the manner
of Avicenna. What we can say at this point, however, is that an early nine-
teenth-century medical student in Istanbul and practitioner in Damascus
could have accurate knowledge of Ibn al-Nafīs’ anatomical commentary
and would quote him correctly and approvingly, at a time when we have
previously been told that the text was ignored in Middle Eastern as well as
Western medicine; in fact these two approaches actually met and mingled
on the shores of the Bosphorus, where al-‘Aṭṭār had ample opportunities
for intellectual exchanges with physicians from Europe.60

Conclusion

Tracking the movement of an isolated ‘factoid’ and its subsequent elabora-

tion in different cultural contexts may be of some interest, mainly in order
to dispel irrelevant historical claims of ‘priority’ and ‘plagiarism’. As a by-
product, a more continuous pattern of scientific change emerges, both dia-
chronically within one civilisation, the Muslim world from the thirteenth
to the early nineteenth century, and geographically between the eastern
and north-western Mediterranean. However, when Ibn al-Nafīs, Servet,
İtaki, al-‘Aṭṭār, and finally the twentieth-century historians of medicine

56 He does; RBr.

57 There, al-‘Aṭṭār cites the Mūjaz al-Qānūn (Epitome of the Canon), now ed. Murad Y.
(Beirut: 2004). Fancy, Pulmonary Transit 244–251 provides strong arguments casting doubt
on Ibn al-Nafīs’ authorship of this popular abridgement of Avicenna’s magnum opus, which
actually does not contain any references to the pulmonary passage of the blood – nor to
the ‘new physiology’ pervading Ibn al-Nafīs’ other medical works; so the reference would
not be relevant to the argument discussed here.
58 He does not; RBr.
59 Gran, Islamic Roots 245, n. 9 for 170.
60 Gran, Islamic Roots 105, quoting al-‘Aṭṭār Sharḥ fols. 70–71.
360 rainer brömer

talk about the structure and function of the cardio-pulmonary system,

they are not speaking of the same ‘thing’, even where they may (or may
not) be taking their cues from their respective ‘predecessors’. It is only
with the benefit of hindsight that we are tempted to align these scholars’
works into a tradition of ‘discovering the circulation of the blood’, which,
as we have seen, would not have occurred to the historical actors whose
concerns were radically different from one another’s – and incommensu-
rable with those of contemporary apologists for particular success stories
of one civilisation or another. Rather than pressing Ibn al-Nafīs’ work into
the lineage of William Harvey’s physiology, a study of the different ways in
which a single anatomical idea was developed and in some cases appro-
priated by different actors serves to highlight the crucial importance of
reflecting the intellectual and wider cultural context in which scholars
became convinced that at least some blood passes through the lungs from
one side of the heart to the other, and none (or almost none) directly
through the central wall between the heart’s ventricles. The conceptual
continuity, if there is any, between Servet and his presumed predecessor
Ibn al-Nafīs turns out to be more significant on a natural theological level
than in the anatomo-physiological realm, as further studies should be able
to demonstrate more comprehensively than has so far been possible.
 the passage of blood through the lungs 361

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 SPERM AND BLOOD, FORM AND FOOD.
LATE MEDIEVAL MEDICAL NOTIONS OF MALE AND FEMALE
IN THE EMBRYOLOGY OF MEMBRA

Karine van ’t Land

Summary

According to late medieval medical authors, human bodies consisted of hard,

noble, white, and sustaining parts, the spermatic membra, and of soft, inferior,
red, and filling parts, the sanguinary membra. These two types of membra were
formed within the developing body of the embryo. While sanguinary membra
were derived solely from menstrual blood, spermatic membra came from male
and female sperm.
The central question in this paper is: what connections existed between gen-
eration and nutrition in the embryology of spermatic and sanguinary membra in
late medieval academic medicine, and how did these connections function in the
construction of notions of male and female in early physiology? Commentaries
on the chapter discussing membra in Avicenna’s Canon (I.1,5,1) form the main
sources.
In the paper, many ties between generation and nutrition are described. Most
significant for answering the paper’s central question is, however, the strong and
consistent connection between the female contribution to generation and nour-
ishment, which was in line with broader cultural assumptions about the female
role in society. Sanguinary membra came about when the spermatic membra
started to be nourished. Later in life, the soft sanguinary membra would be eas-
ily replaceable by material which had entered the body as nourishment. The
spermatic membra, on the other hand, were just as irreplaceable as they were
indispensible for the continuing existence of the body, reflecting contemporary
ideas about masculine superiority and about sperm as the inimitable core of the
human body.

Introduction

In early thought about physiology, the dividing lines between generation

on the one hand, and nutrition and growth on the other were intriguingly
fuzzy. Learned medieval physicians found it difficult to establish the pre-
cise difference between the constitution of an embryo during generation,
and the bringing about of new tissue in nutrition. Many other facts in
364 karine van ’t land

early physiology confirmed the tight connections between nutrition and

generation. For instance, nutrition and generation both were capacities of
the nutritive soul, the sperm necessary for generation was also a product
of food, the uterus had a mouth just like the one in the face, and female
sperm functioned as nourishment for male sperm.
It is innovative to study early embryology not as an isolated strand
of thought, but as a subject tightly linked to nutrition through bonds of
metaphors and parallels, with only vague boundaries separating the two
processes.1 Through this new research trajectory, I hope to throw new
light on the notions of male and female within medieval physiology.2
Much has been said already – and therefore I can safely summarise the
debate – about the supposedly misogynist theory of Aristotle concern-
ing the generation of the embryo, and its supposedly more liberating
counterpart devised by Galen. Aristotle claimed that form was brought
upon the embryo entirely by male sperm, which would refrain equally
entirely from becoming part of the embryo. Female blood would provide
only matter for the embryo. Galen wrote about the ovaries, the female

1 For embryology in the Middle Ages see, for instance: Brisson L. et alii (eds.), L’embryon.
Formation et animation. Antiquité grecque et latine, traditions hébraïque, chrétienne et
islamique (Paris: 2008); Elsakkers M., “The Early Medieval Latin and Vernacular Vocabu-
lary of Abortion and Embryology”, in Goyens M. et alii (eds.), Science Translated. Latin and
Vernacular Translations of Scientific Treatises in Medieval Europe (Turnhout: 2008) 377–413;
Ziegler J., “The Scientific Context of Dante’s Embryology”, in Barnes J.C. – Petrie J. (eds.),
Dante and the Human Body. Eight Essays (Dublin: 2007) 61–88; Cilliers L., “Vindicianus’
Gynaecia: Text and Translation of the Codex Monacensis (Clm 4622)”, Journal of Medieval
Latin 15 (2005) 153–236; Lugt M. van der, Le ver, le démon et la vierge. Les théories médiévales
de la génération extraordinaire (Paris: 2004); Martorelli Vico R., Medicina e filosofia. Per
una storia dell’embriologia medievale nel XIII e XIV secolo (Naples: 2002); Pahta P., Medi-
eval Embryology in the Vernacular. The Case of De Spermate, Mémoires de la Société Néo-
philologique de Helsinki 53 (Helsinki: 1998); Cadden J., Meanings of Sex Difference in the
Middle Ages. Medicine, Science and Culture (Cambridge: 1993); Dunstan G.R. (ed.), The Human
Embryo. Aristotle and the Arabic and European Traditions (Exeter: 1990); Demaitre L. –
Travill A.A., “Human Embryology and Development in the Works of Albertus Magnus”,
in Weisheipl J.A. (ed.), Albertus Magnus and the Sciences. Commemorative Essays 1980
(Toronto: 1980) 405–440; Hewson M.A., Giles of Rome and the Medieval Theory of Concep-
tion (London: 1975). For medieval theory of nutrition see: Reynolds P.L., Food and the Body.
Some Peculiar Questions in High Medieval Theology (Leiden: 1999); Cadden J., “Albertus
Magnus’ Universal Physiology: The Example of Nutrition”, in Weisheipl, Albertus Magnus
and the Sciences 321–339; Cadden J., The Medieval Philosophy and Biology of Growth. Alber-
tus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Albert of Saxony and Marsilius of Inghen on Book I, Chapter V
of Aristotle’s De Generatione et Corruptione, with Translated Texts of Albertus Magnus and
Thomas Aquinas (Dissertation Indiana University: 1971).
2 In tracing the imagery of embryology and femininity in medical texts, I am following
King H., “Making a Man: Becoming Human in Early Greek Medicine”, in Dunstan (ed.), The
Human Embryo 10–19, where the image of the female as soil is discussed.
 sperm and blood, form and food 365

testicles, and stated that females did secrete true semen, capable of giv-
ing form, although weaker than that of the male. In Galen’s eyes, male
sperm also provided matter for the embryo, although to a considerably
lesser extent than that of the female. In her short account of the contro-
versy and its historiography, Joan Cadden rightly refrained from seeing
the theories themselves as either misogynist or feminist.3 However, she
clearly described the huge gap these authors created between the male
and the female, the clear hierarchy between the two principles, and the
role which the classical theories played in establishing both the gap and
the hierarchy.4
Taking full account of the relationships between generation and nutri-
tion might, I suspect, offer a new approach to the discussion about male
and female principles. Generatio counted as a truly masculine act – females
could only conceive and give birth, as van der Lugt concluded after inves-
tigating medieval encyclopaedias and dictionaries.5 On the other hand,
the connection between femininity and nourishment was firmly rooted
in medieval culture, and can even be applied to almost every human cul-
ture. Seen from a cross-cultural perspective, food is a resource controlled
by women.6 Women feed their husbands, their children, and other fam-
ily members. There are many grounds for this widespread association of
women and the nourishment of others, but one powerful reason seems to
be the biological analogy. Women feed the foetus in their wombs, secrete
milk for their newborn babies, and continue to provide food when the
child grows, and biological necessity diminishes.7
In order to bring together the subjects of generation and nutrition and
the male and the female, spermatic and sanguinary membra will function
as a case study here. The concept of membrum in late medieval learned
medicine is very specific, and I will therefore use the term without transla-
tion. Sometimes, the word membrum seems to suggest modern tissues or
structures, like all the arteries in the body. At other times, learned authors
denoted complete parts of the body, such as hands, by the term. And then
again, they could also discuss modern ‘organs’, like the liver, under the

3 Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference 117, further bibliography in n. 23.

4 Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference 119–130.
5 Lugt van der, Le ver, le démon et la vierge 37–38.
6 Sanday P.R., Female Power and Male Dominance. On the Origins of Sexual Inequality
(Cambridge: 1981) 76–77.
7 Walker Bynum C., Holy Feast and Holy Fast. The Religious Significance of Food to Medi-
eval Women (Berkeley etc.: 1987) 190.
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heading of membrum. The creation of matter for membra counted as the

final stage of nutrition, while the creation of the membra of the embryo
was a final stage of generation. Because membra functioned as the end
stage for both processes, they are an ideal subject for investigating the
ties between the two.
Spermatic membra were, simply put, the hard and white parts of the
body, sustaining and structuring it. The sanguinary membra were soft
flesh and fat, filling up the empty spaces between the spermatic membra.
They were created in the early development of the embryo, and continued
to exist during the whole life cycle of the body. Therefore, they needed
to be fed, both inside the womb, and after the human being had been
born. The idea of spermatic and sanguinary membra has received little
attention in modern historiography of science.8 Aristotle stated that some
membra, like bones and sinews, were formed from a spermatic residue.9
Galen expanded this theory in his treatise De spermate,10 and Ibn Sina
used it in his Qanun.11 In the late Middle Ages, the idea of spermatic and
sanguinary membra belonged to the realm of medicine. A philosopher
and theologian like Giles of Rome, when writing on embryology, tried very
hard to dismiss the theory of spermatic and sanguinary membra.12 Yet
traces of the body’s division into spermatic and sanguinary membra can
be found in late medieval philosophical works as well.13
The subject of the two types of membra forms a valuable way of study-
ing maleness and femaleness, because of the notions attached to sperm
and blood. The two different types of membra were created during the ges-
tation of the embryo out of sperm and menstrual blood, as indeed was the
whole embryo. The spermatic and sanguinary nature of the different types
of membra might suggest a direct relation to male sperm and female men-
strual blood: that spermatic membra would come from masculine sperm,
and sanguinary ones from menstrual blood. The relations between the
generative substances and the membra were not that clear-cut, however.

8 Cadden mentioned the medical idea of spermatic parts in her account of the ques-
tion of whether the sperm of the father became part of the embryo: Cadden, Meanings of
Sex Difference 128–130. As will be discussed below, spermatic parts were supposed to have
their origin at least mainly in female sperm as well. Other authors mentioned the idea
in passing, e.g. Lugt van der, Le ver, le démon et la vierge 51, and Ziegler, “The Scientific
Context of Dante’s Embryology” 81.
9 Aristoteles, De generatione animalium 744b–745b.
10 Galenus, De semine (4.512–651 K.).
11 In its Latin translation: Avicenna, Canon I.1,5,1 Quid sit membrum et sue partes.
12 Hewson, Giles of Rome 78–85.
13 Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference 128–130.
 sperm and blood, form and food 367

The confusing nature of the terminology forced the medieval authors to

be extremely scrupulous – even more scrupulous than they would other-
wise have been – about their language, and about their explanations as to
how, for instance, female sperm from menstrual blood formed the basis
for spermatic membra.
The central question in this paper is: what connections existed between
generation and nutrition in the embryology of spermatic and sanguinary
membra in late medieval academic medicine, and how did these connec-
tions function in the construction of notions of male and female in early
physiology? As the learned physicians of the fourteenth and fifteenth cen-
turies studied embryology within a thoroughly Aristotelian framework,
some attention will also be given to the links between the two physio­
logical processes in Aristotle’s writings.
As sources, I will use commentaries on the chapter discussing membra
in Avicenna’s Canon.14 The Latin translation of Ibn Sina’s Qanun counted
as a highly reliable and comprehensive encyclopaedia of medicine in the
late Middle Ages. Not many authors ventured into writing a commen-
tary on the great work. Four university physicians included the chapter
on membra in their commentaries on the Canon. These were the Italians
Gentile da Foligno († 1348),15 Jacopo da Forlì († 1414)16 and Ugo Benzi
(† 1439),17 and the Flemish physician Jacques Despars († 1458).18 Their
texts will form the main corpus of sources in this paper.19 The learned
medical debate about embryology was a lively one in their days, and

14 Avicenna, Canon I.1,5,1. For the role of the Canon in medieval medical learning, see
Siraisi N.G., Avicenna in Renaissance Italy. The Canon and Medical Teaching in Italian
Universities after 1500 (Princeton NJ: 1987) 43–76; Jacquart D., “Lectures universitaires du
Canon d’Avicenne”, in Janssens J. – Smet D. de (eds.), Avicenna and his Heritage. Acts of
the International Colloquium, Leuven – Louvain-la-Neuve, September 8–September 11, 1999
(Louvain: 2002) 313–324.
15 French R., Canonical Medicine. Gentile da Foligno and Scholasticism (Leiden etc.: 2001)
1–50.
16 Ottosson P.-G., Scholastic Medicine and Philosophy. A Study of Commentaries on
Galen’s Tegni (ca. 1300–1450) (Naples: 1984) 53–58.
17 Lockwood D.P., Ugo Benzi. Medieval Philosopher and Physician (1376–1439) (Chicago:
1951) 1–32.
18 Jacquart D., “Le regard d’un médecin sur son temps: Jacques Despars (1380?-1458)”,
Bibliothèque d’humanisme et Renaissance. Travaux et documents 138 (1980) 35–77.
19 For Gentile da Foligno and Jacques Despars: Hic merito inscribi potens vite liber cor-
poralis Abohali Abynsceni canonis libros quinque duplici fere per totum commento munitos
nuperque translatos [. . .] doctores circa textum positi ut locis suis apparebit hi sunt: Gentilis
de Fulgineo et alii (Venice: 1503); for Jacopo da Forlì: Expositio et quaestiones in primum
Canonem Avicennae (Venice: 1547); for Benzi Ugo: Expositio Ugonis Senensis super primo
Canonis Avicenne cum questionibus eiusdem (Venice: 1498).
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strongly ­oriented towards Aristotle’s writings. They must have been famil-
iar with the main contemporary texts on embryology, in which Canon
commentaries figured prominently.20

Generation, nutrition and growth in Aristotle’s thought

According to Aristotle, generation was a multi-faceted phenomenon. He

investigated generation within three of his main areas of thought, namely
physics, psychology, and biology. In physics, he considered generation
as coupled to corruption, and as one of the processes bringing about
change. In Aristotle’s psychology and biology, the term generation meant
the reproduction of living organisms; plants, animals, and humans. Both
the philosopher himself and his medieval followers distinguished these
two types of generation from one another, and saw them as different
­processes.21
As for physics, Aristotle exposed some of the fundamental problems of
generation in the treatise On Generation and Corruption.22 Here he com-
pared coming-to-be or generation, change and growth with one another.
He focused on the differences between the processes of change. While he
envisaged these types of change in lifeless things, such as fire, they were of
great importance for living organisms as well. In his biology and psychol-
ogy, Aristotle clearly showed the difficulty of drawing a line between nutri-
tion and generation, or between creating new tissue and creating a new
being. He often discussed the similarities between generation and nutri-
tion in living organisms. In the treatise On the Soul, Aristotle explained
that nutrition, growth and generation all belonged to the nutritive soul.

20 See Martorelli Vico, Medicina e filosofia; Ziegler, “The Scientific Context of Dante’s
Embryology” 75–76. Mondino de’ Liuzzi († 1326), Tomasso del Garbo († 1370) and Jacopo
da Forlì wrote subsequent commentaries on the chapter about the generation of the
embryo in the Canon: Canon III. 21.doctrina 1. capitulum 2. One other commentary on this
Canon chapter has been ascribed to Dino del Garbo († 1327), but Siraisi asserted that this
commentary cannot be truly his: Siraisi N., Taddeo Alderotti and his Pupils. Two Genera-
tions of Italian Medical Learning (Princeton: 1981) 200, note 142. Dino wrote a commentary
on Hippocrates’ treatise De natura fetus. Pietro Torrigiano de’ Torrigiani († ca. 1320) wrote
about embryology in his text Plusquam commentum, just like Pietro d’Abano († ca. 1316)
in his Conciliator.
21 Lugt van der, Le ver, le démon et la vierge 33–35.
22 For detailed discussions of the text, and bibliography, see Haas F. de – Mansfeld J.
(eds.), Aristotle. On Generation and Corruption, Book I, Symposium Aristotelicum (Oxford:
2004).
 sperm and blood, form and food 369

He discussed generation as a separate phenomenon in On the History of

Animals, in book VI and VII, and chiefly in On the Generation of Animals. I
will use On Generation and Corruption, On the Soul and On the Generation
of Animals as source material here. At the end of the section, I will say a
few words about Aristotle’s influence on Avicenna and on the Western
university physicians.
In On Generation and Corruption, Aristotle studied coming-to-be and
passing-away, alteration and growth, as he announced in the first lines of
the treatise. These were three forms of change for the sublunary world. The
exact nature of worldly changes had been difficult to define in the history
of philosophy. For those presocratic authors, for instance, who maintained
that the universe was made out of a single ‘something’, alteration and gen-
eration would be the same kinds of change. If everything was composed
from the same matter, the generation of a new thing would mean merely
an alteration of the universal matter. Thus, the ties between generation
and other types of change were established at the very start of the era of
philosophical reasoning. For thinkers like Aristotle, however, who presup-
posed that the world was constructed from more than one basic material,
the generation of new things would differ from alteration.23
Aristotle paid a great deal of attention to analysing the nature of gen-
eration, alteration, and growth, and only a very rough outline of his ideas
on these subjects can be provided here. When the qualities of a substance
changed, but the substance itself did not, the process of change could be
either growth or alteration. The change would be growth (or its counter-
part, diminution), if it could be defined in terms of magnitude or quan-
tity. Alteration took place if one or more qualities of the changing thing
altered.24 According to Aristotle, generation would be a change of the sub-
stance itself. The thing would change as a whole, for instance when seed
was changed into blood, or water into air.25
The philosopher dedicated a whole chapter of Book I of On Generation
and Corruption to growth. After a thorough investigation, he identified as
the fundamental difference between growth and generation the point that,
during growth, some magnitude acquired a new form within a substance
which already existed, while in generation, a magnitude would acquire a
new form and become a new substance. Aristotle used fire and wood as

23 Aristoteles, De generatione et corruptione 314a–314b.

24 Arist. GC 319b–320a.
25 Arist. GC 319b.
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an example. If the fire already existed when new wood was added to it, it
would grow. When, on the other hand, a pile of wood was set on fire, this
would mean a generation of fire.26 In this way, the difference between the
processes of growth and generation became clear: at the start of the gen-
eration of a fire, there was no fire, but when fire began to grow, there was
already a fire. The example also shows, however, how close generation and
growth remained to one another.27 In both cases, the fire was fed with fuel,
and expanded in terms of space.
Aristotle thus carefully distinguished generation, growth, and change
from one another. All these processes affected everything material,
including humans. In his doxography, Aristotle described how coming-
to-be and change had been one and the same for philosophers accepting
just a single universal matter. He disagreed with them but, as his own
subtle reasoning proves, he too found it difficult to draw firm boundaries
between the different processes.
Aristotle also investigated processes like generation and growth as part
of the physiology of living organisms. Nutrition, growth, and generation
were tied to one another in Aristotle’s biology. These functions were all
capacities of the nutritive soul, the main function of which was the preser-
vation of that which existed. The organism itself was preserved as well as
possible through the capacity of nutrition, while the capacity of reproduc-
tion performed the same function of continuation, but on the level of the
species.28 As Aristotle stated, the nutritive soul distinguished itself from
the other souls by its use of food.29
And indeed, all three capacities depended on the assimilation of food
to the body. For nutrition and growth this may seem obvious, but gen-
eration too was ultimately facilitated by food. Aristotle saw male semen
and female menstrual blood, which constituted the formal and material
cause of generation respectively, as useful by-products of nutriment in the
final stage of digestion. Both were derived from blood, which for Aristotle
was equal to almost completely assimilated food.30 In order to prove his
case, Aristotle pointed to the relative infertility of fat people. As the food
they ate had apparently been turned into fat, there was little left for the

26 Arist. GC 322a.
27 Cadden, The Medieval Philosophy and Biology of Growth 10–11.
28 Aristoteles, De anima 416b.
29 Arist. De An. 416a.
30 Aristoteles, De generatione animalium 726a; 766b.
 sperm and blood, form and food 371

production of semen, and hence it was difficult for them to ­conceive.31

The exhaustion people felt after coitus was further clear proof of the
fact that the production of sperm cost precious nutriment, in the final
stage of digestion. So even if just a little was excreted, it would be sorely
missed. Admittedly, a few young people could feel relieved after emitting
an excess of semen. This rare phenomenon should be understood as the
relief people could feel after vomiting, when they had removed an excess
of food from their bodies.32 Children did not produce semen, as they used
all their nourishment for growth.33
When creating the embryo, the male semen forced form on the female
matter. Aristotle described this process as analogous to growth in two
ways. First, the materials used to compose human matter were compa-
rable, as both menstrual blood (in the generation of the embryo) and nor-
mal blood (in growth) were products of food, which closely resembled one
another. Secondly, the way in which flesh was formed was, in essence, the
same for the generation of the embryo and for the growth of members in
a later stage of life. In both processes of formation, matter took on a new
form, while it was guided by the bearer of this same new form.34 Thus, it
was quite logical to presume that the nutritive soul was the driving force
behind both the creation of the embryo out of semen and menstrual
blood, and the incorporation of new matter in a growing member.
Aristotle also devoted attention to the role of nutrition in the develop-
ment of the embryo. He stated that the matter which the female provided
potentially contained the nutritive soul, so that it could grow and be fed.
Because female matter did not contain other potential parts of the soul,
female animals needed male animals as well in order to produce living
offspring. The sensitive soul, necessary for the formation of animal parts,
could only be found in male semen.35 Some parts of the embryo were
formed from the seminal secretion, like bones, sinews, and hairs. After
formation, they would grow from nutriment like all other parts.36
In the text On the Soul, Aristotle focused on the similarities between
the physiological processes of generation, nutrition and growth in the liv-
ing organism. He explained why the three should be taken together in

31 Arist. GA 725b–726a.
32 Arist. GA 725b.
33 Arist. GA 725b.
34 Arist. GA 740b–741a.
35 Arist. GA 741a.
36 Arist. GA 744b–745b.
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the nutritive soul, and therefore stressed the parallels between them. The
nutritive soul had food as its object, and formed the basis of the enduring
existence of both the individual and the species. In other biological works,
like On the Generation of Animals, he discussed links between nutrition
and generation in more detail. The origins of semen in food formed a
major link, just like the nourishing function of menstrual blood. So,
whether Aristotle discussed the coming-to-be, growth and decline of fire,
or investigated the generation, nutrition and growth of a human child, he
perceived the processes under scrutiny as difficult to separate from one
another, with many connections and likenesses.
Aristotle’s ideas on generation and nutrition were highly influential,
both in the Arabic world of Avicenna and in the late medieval Western
universities. The three works On Generation and Corruption, On the Soul,
and On the Generation of Animals were well-known to Avicenna and
his late medieval Western commentators. On the Generation of Animals
had become part of the larger work On Animals (books XV–XIX), which
brought together the latter treatise with On the History of Animals and On
the Parts of Animals. Michael Scot († ca. 1235) translated both the Arabic
translation of Aristotle’s On Animals and Avicenna’s commentary on this
work into Latin.37
Avicenna was both philosopher and physician, and he was therefore
versed in both Aristotelian and Galenic theories of generation. He did not
try to hide the differences between the two. Although he adopted Aris-
totle’s main ideas on generation, he made room for Galenic adaptations.
Avicenna accepted Galen’s idea that female seed, derived from the female
testicles, was necessary for generation. He also followed Galen in stating
that male sperm became part of the embryo. Avicenna’s main discussions
of generation can be found in the Canon, III.21–22 and in his commentary
on On Animals, IX.1–5.38
Late medieval university masters usually were far stricter Aristotelians
than Avicenna in their ideas about generation. This counted even for uni-
versity physicians commenting on Galen’s Tegni. Van der Lugt explained

37 A.M.I. van Oppenraay is currently preparing editions of these two large bodies of text
for the projects Aristoteles Semitico-Latinus and Avicenna Latinus, based at the Huygens
Instituut, The Hague. The edition of Scotus’ translation of On the Generation of Animals
is already available: Aristotle, De animalibus. Michael Scot’s Arabic-Latin Translation. Part
Three, Books xv–xix. Generation of Animals, Aristoteles semitico-latinus (Leiden: 1992),
vol. 5.
38 Lugt van der, Le ver, le démon et la vierge 61; Cadden, Meanings of Sex Differerence
106–110.
 sperm and blood, form and food 373

the phenomenon by pointing out that the medieval physicians could not
in any way observe the process of conception. Left to rely on theorising,
they resorted to the systematic training in Aristotelian logic and meta-
physics which they had received before moving on to medicine.39 When
these same masters were confronted with Avicenna’s slightly aberrant
ideas, they could react with confusion, as will be seen below.

Generation and nutrition of membra in late medieval university medicine

Four university masters, Gentile da Foligno, Ugo Benzi, Jacopo da Forlì,

and Jacques Despars, wrote a commentary on Avicenna’s Canon which
included the chapter on membra or parts.40 The authors understood quite
well the main difference between their own theorising about generation
and that of Aristotle in On Generation and Corruption. As Jacques Despars
explained:
Note that, admittedly, generation in its proper meaning would be the
­sudden change of a substance out of not being into being, as Aristotle
said [. . .]. However, the concept is used in a different way by physicians, who
just speak about the generation of animals. They then take generation as the
function of the generative capacity [of the soul], which transforms sperm and
blood from being an animal in potential to being an animal in act.41
While Aristotle had had in mind an abstract concept, applicable to the
coming-to-be of all natural substances, physicians thought of sperm and
blood coming together, and forming a new animal. They concentrated
exclusively on the physiological side of coming-to-be.
For these physicians too, the boundaries between generation and nutri-
tion were sometimes vague. Following Aristotle’s biology, they shared his
uncertainties. When an embryo was generated out of sperm and blood,
something grew, and it would continue to grow. Where would the first
phase of growth, namely that of generation, end and where would the
­second phase, that of a growing embryo, begin? Indeed, the menstrual

39 Lugt van der, Le ver, le démon et la vierge 76–77.

40 Avicenna, Canon I.1,5,1, entitled Quid sit membrum et sue partes.
41 Despars Jacques, Canon I.1,6,2 ‘Attende secundo quod licet generatio proprie dicta sit
mutatio instantanea ad substantiam de non esse ad esse ut ait Aristoteles .5. phisicorum.
Aliter tamen a medicis de sola generatione animalium loquentibus accipitur generatio pro
operatione generative virtutis qua sperma et menstruum paulatim transmutantur ab esse
animal in potentia ad esse animal actu’.
374 karine van ’t land

blood which provided matter for generation also fed the growing embryo.
And once the embryo had left the womb, the first food the baby would
receive was mother’s milk, which was supposed to be produced from
menstrual blood, conveyed to the breast. Only very gradually would other
foodstuffs start to play a role in the nutrition and growth of the child, mak-
ing the analogy of menstrual blood with food all the more ­immediate.
While writing about membra, the late medieval physicians clearly
showed that they associated nutrition with generation. Their source
text, the Canon chapter on membra, connected membra only to nutri-
tion. Avicenna defined membra as a series of comings-to-be in the full-
grown man. Elements became food, food became humours, and humours
became membra.42 Still, the commentators often discussed embryology
in the asides of their commentaries. Jacopo da Forlì and Gentile da Foli-
gno bracketed nutrition and generation of the embryo together in at least
three ways, for instance, when they investigated the transformation of
humours into membra. They envisaged analogies between the two pro-
cesses in the materials used, in the nature of the mutations, and in the
driving force behind the process.
First of all, the commentators saw the materials which changed into
membra as comparable for the two processes. Humours indeed became
membra, Jacopo explained: secondary moistures turned into membra dur-
ing nutrition, while corresponding fluids served for the generation of the
foetus in the womb at conception.43 Gentile too argued that the humours
in the uterus were, admittedly, barely noticeable, but actually identical
with the humours used for nutrition and growth.44 Jacopo spoke of simi-
larities in the character of the mutations, which were necessary for the two
processes to take place. The material for generation underwent ­mutations
in the womb, which were comparable to the mutations of food during

42 Avicenna, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘Membra sunt corpora que ex prima humorum generantur
commixtione, quemadmodum humores sunt corpora, que ex prima ciborum generantur
commixtione sicut cibi sunt ex prima commixtione generati elementorum’.
43 Jacopo da Forlì, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘quia ex prima commixtione humorum nutritur. igitur
generatur. patet consequentia, quia eadem est materia nutricationis et generationis [. . .].
Vel exponitur. ex prima commixtione humorum idest ex re immediate ex humoribus com-
mixtis generata, et ista est humiditas secunda ut in nutricatione aut sibi proportionalis ut
in generatione fetus in matrice’.
44 Gentile da Foligno, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘Dicendum quod loquitur de factione membrorum in
utero: ibi autem non apparet materia manifestior ex qua membra fiant: nisi humores forsan
tamen humores transeunt ad formas membrorum per humiditates similes humiditatibus qui-
bus membra nutriuntur: sed iste non sunt multum manifeste: et ideo dicuntur membra primo
idest immediate: ut communiter exponitur fieri ex humoribus existentibus in matrice’.
 sperm and blood, form and food 375

nutrition.45 Both authors noted yet another resemblance between the two
processes. They pointed out that an extrinsic actor would be necessary
for humours to become membra during both nutrition and generation, as
the humours would not be able to successfully mix and change by them-
selves.46 At the very beginning of life, when membra were generated in the
womb, sperm or the generative power would exert power over humours in
order to create membra. During life, humours as products of food took care
of the sustaining and growth of membra. They in their turn were forced by
the membra themselves to mix and become part of the membra.
Thus, the commentators easily linked aspects of the coming-to-be of
small parts of growing or full-grown membra with their initial coming-to-
be at conception. Avicenna’s definition of the concept, which so strongly
focused on the generation of membra from other structures, certainly
made way for associations with their initial generation.

Spermatic and sanguinary membra

According to the medieval medical tradition, sperm and menstrual blood

left their traces in the body during the whole course of life. In the Canon,
university physicians could find a description of spermatic and sanguinary
membra, with their origins in sperm and menstrual blood.47 The Canon

45 Jacopo da Forlì, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘Aliter per generationem intelligit seiunctam distinctam
contra nutricationem. Ista sit in matrice immediate saltem ad apparentiam nostram ex
humoribus, quia non est nota nobis alia forma ad quam prius transmutetur, licet rationale
sit materiam generationis recipere in matrice mutationes proportionales illis, quas recipit
in nutricatione’.
46 Gentile da Foligno, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘poterit tenere quod quamvis quattuor humores nec-
essario requirantur ut materia membrorum: tamen inter se nil agunt necessario requisitum
as membrorum generationem: sed extrinseco agente fiunt membra. [. . .] sed humores non
agunt et patiuntur adinvicem: immo patiuntur a membro: quod membrum sit ex eis per
nutricationem: aut a spermate: quando fiunt membra per generationem [. . .]. Amplius ad
membrorum generationem et nutricationem requiruntur quattuor humores oppositarum
qualitatum adinvicem: igitur actione eorum et passione et cum hoc extrinseco agente
fient membra ex illis [. . .]. Imaginandum igitur est quod spermate vel membro agente in
humoribus ipsi etiam ad se invicem commiscentur et confranguntur: et sit membrum’.
Jacopo da Forlì, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘Secundum dubium. Videtur quod membra non generen-
tur ex humoribus per commixtionem sicut humores ex elementis. [. . .] assumptum patet
quia humores in nutricatione patiuntur a membro, et in generatione patiuntur a virtute
generativa [. . .]’.
47 For medieval ideas about menstruation, see Green M.H., “Flowers, Poisons, and Men:
Menstruation in Medieval Western Europe”, in Shail A. – Howie G. (eds.), Menstruation. A
Cultural History (New York: 2005) 51–64.
376 karine van ’t land

commentators theorised on the embryological background of different

membra, and in this way explicitly connected adult membra with their
counterparts at conception. The two types of membra and their reception
in learned medieval medicine will be studied here.
In principle, the division between spermatic and sanguinary body parts
was a simple one. Flesh and fat were sanguinary membra. Practically all the
other membra simplicia, or the membra consisting of one type of matter,
were described as spermatic.48 As Gentile da Foligno explained: spermatic
membra were those which were hard and mostly white, like bones, carti-
lage, nerves, chords, ligaments, arteries, and veins, while other spermatic
tissues possessed a celestial colour, like membranes and coverings.49
Spermatic membra were considered to be better than the flesh and fat
of the sanguinary membra. Gentile da Foligno was most outspoken, when
he stated that membra spermatica were all the principal, noble, intrin-
sic parts, like the liver, the heart, and the lungs, as well as the firm and
solid extrinsic parts, like bones and nerves.50 The flesh and fat of the san-
guinary membra could be found in between all these organs and tissues.
Other commentators depicted the relationship between the two parts
with a comparison between nature, creating an embryo, and a painter at
work.51 Just as the painter would start his painting with the contours and
outlines of his object, so would nature first create the spermatic membra
of the embryo. And while the painter would only afterwards fill in the

48 Gentile da Foligno, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘Considerandum quod Avicenna innuit hanc divi-
sionem membrorum: quedam generantur ex sanguine: ut caro et adeps: quedam ex sper-
mate: ut reliqua membra: que dicuntur spermatica ut dicitur’. Ugo Benzi, Canon I.1,5,1
‘Dicit primo denuo dicendum esse quod membrorum quedam sunt que generantur ex
spermate: quedam sunt que generantur ex sanguine. primo modo sunt omnia simplicia
membra preter carnem et adipem. secundi modi sunt caro et adeps’.
49 Gentile da Foligno, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘Dicamus secundo quod per membra spermatica possu-
mus intelligere omnia membra que ad duriciem deveniunt et albedinem: saltim plurima: sicut
sunt ossa: cartilagines: nervi: corde: ligamenta: panniculi: vene: et arterie: et dixi plurima: quia
quedam spermatica sunt celestini coloris: ut tunicasive pellucila vuca: et secundina [. . .]’.
50 Gentile da Foligno, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘Dicamus tertia quod per membra spermatica possumus
intelligere omnia membra principalia et nobilia intrinseca quantum ad omnem partem neces-
saria eis: et omnia membra extrinseca dura vel solida: sicut ossa: nervi etc. Et tunc caro epatis
et cordis et splenis et pulmonis et corpus cerebri dicentur membra spermatica: carnes autem
pure in musculis et carnes sensitive et carnes glandose dicentur membra carniformia [. . .]’.
51 The metaphor is connected to the comparison Aristotle drew when describing the
function of the bones: ‘For just as an artist, when he is moulding an animal out of clay or
other soft substance, takes first some solid body as a basis, and round this moulds the clay,
so also has nature acted in fashioning the animal body out of flesh’. Aristotles, De partibus
animalium 654b–655a; translation Ogle W. (1882).
 sperm and blood, form and food 377

empty spaces in his painting with suitable colours, nature would fill in the
voids of the embryo with flesh and fat at a later stage.52
When considering spermatic and sanguinary membra in the embryo,
one might expect that masculine sperm would generate the spermatic
membra, and female menstrual blood the sanguinary membra. For the
sanguinary membra, this prediction would be correct. However, when it
came to spermatic membra, or to the precise description of ‘menstrual
blood’, scholastic knowledge about the subject was far more complicated.
The commentators had to face three problems before making statements
about the origins of spermatic and sanguinary parts. Their first problem
was the existence of multiple sperms, the second the definition of men-
struum, and the third the participation of male matter in the embryo.
Originally, scholastic medical authors knew two forms of female sperm,
both tightly linked to notions of nutrition. Women secreted true sperm,
which was white and well-digested, and necessary for conception, in the
veins surrounding the female testicles. From there, it fell into the uterus at
the time of conception.53 In the medical tradition, it was a long-accepted
tradition to view the true female sperm as food for the male sperm.54
While the male sperm was strongest in giving form to the embryo, the
female sperm was best known for its passive quality of providing matter.
In the presentation of female sperm as nourishment for the male sperm,
both ideas elegantly came together. Just as the membra forced form on
digested food later in life, and the digested food served to add or restore

52 Despars, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘[. . .] sed est apta ut coaguletur et convertatur in carnem et
adipem ad implendum loca vacua circa lineationes et protractiones membrorum sperma-
ticorum: ita quod natura facit ut pictores qui primo lineant et protrahunt imagines: postea
replent aptis coloribus loca intermedia et circumstantia linearum’.
53 Benzi, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘[. . .] et de spermate mulieris hora conceptionis’.
Gentile da Foligno, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘Alia tertia est materia in muliere: que proprie dicitur
sperma mulieris: que quidem est materia alba digesta in vasis spermaticis circa testiculos
mulieris: que in hora conceptionis cadit in concavum matricis: ut determinatum passivum
in generatione fetus [. . .]’.
54 Despars, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘Secunda conclusio: sperma mulieris est utile ad generationem
[. . .]. Quarto ut nutriat virile sperma et ipsum augmentet ad id existens magis idoneum
quam sanguis menstruus propter maiorem similitudinem ipsius cum spermate virili. Et
harum utilitatum feminei spermatis meminit Galienus.14. de utilitate partium capitu-
lum.11.[. . .] Easdem utilitates commemorat sedundo de spermate capitulum.5’. Gentile
da Foligno, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘[. . .] particulariter autem loquendo Galienus voluit quod sperma
mulieris sicut frigidius et aquosius sit quidam cibus spermate viri: ut apparet primo libro
de spermate capitulum.9. et secundo libro capitulum.8. [. . .] Sed si subtilius consideras
Galienus ibi per sperma: utrumque sperma intelligit: licet principaliter sperma viri: et vult
ista spermata vere augeri: et vere nutriri scilicet ex sanguine mulieris: vocat tamen ibi
sperma id quid est agens: et hoc principalius est sperma viri’.
378 karine van ’t land

matter to the membra, male sperm forced form on its food, female sperm,
which gave matter and volume to the newly-formed embryo.
As the interior of the womb was not sensitive to touch, the emission
of the female sperm in the proper sense would not become a source of
pleasure to the woman during coitus. A second type of sperm, secreted
to the outside just like masculine sperm, would take care of that.55 This
sperm was like saliva, and came from the mouth of the womb.56 Saliva,
the mouth, and sensual pleasure: Jacopo da Forlì, who gave the most com-
plete description, constructed three parallels between the act of eating and
the act of intercourse while discussing this female spermatic ­substance.57
Thus, the relations between nutrition, generation and femininity were
firmly stressed in the medical discourse of female sperm.
The two forms of female sperm were analogues of the two types of male
sperm. The first type of male sperm was true sperm, necessary for pro-
creation. It was useful, active, white and foamy, made from well-digested
blood.58 In the Canon, a second and infertile form of male sperm was also
described under the name of alguadi. This sperm would be secreted by
men before or without intercourse, just by the touch or sight of a woman.59
The commentators associated neither of these sperms with food.

55 Jacopo da Forlì, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘dicitur etiam de superfluitate salivali ad os matricis

expulsa in muliere hora coitus, que [. . .] solum gratia delectationis a natura in muliere
inventa. Cum enim sperma mulieris grossum utile generationi oporteat propelli in conca-
vum matricis non percepisset multam delectationem in coitu nisi alia superfluitas fuisset
per collum matricis expulsa, quod est membrum multe sensibilitatis’.
56 Jacopo da Forlì, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘dicitur etiam de superfluitate salivali ad os matricis
expulsa in muliere hora coitus, que non est per se utilis ad generationem, sed solum gratia
delectationis a natura in muliere inventa’. Gentile da Foligno, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘unum sperma est
humiditas quedam salivalis: in cuius expulsione mulieres delectantur in coitu [. . .]’. Benzi,
Canon I.1,5,1 ‘Et de humiditate salivali subtili quandoque in coitu a mulieribus expulsa [. . .]’.
57 Cadden cites Dino del Garbo’s description of saliva-like sperm, taken from the Rec-
ollectiones super libro Hyppocratis De natura fetus, as such: ‘First, it [female sperm] can
enhance the pleasure of coitus in the way that saliva, which comes to the mouth when one
is hungry, enhances the pleasure of food’. Cadden, Meanings of Sex Differences 125.
58 Benzi, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘Ubi considera quod nomen spermatis apud auctores invenitur
equivoce dicendum de quattuor scilicet de vero spermate prolifico maris per coitu expulso
[. . .]’ Gentile da Foligno, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘et dicamus quod nomen hoc sperma equivocum est
in viris et mulieribus: secundum Avicenna fen .20. in viris est etiam equivocum ad duo
ad sperma verum prolificium [. . .] sperma viri utile est quoddam corpus album digestum
spumosum factum a virtute generativa viri ubicumque sit illa: quid sperma potest generare
active [. . .]’.
59 Gentile da Foligno, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘[. . .] et ad sperma dicitur alguady: quod est quedam
humiditas: que prevenit coitum: immo sine coitu exit in tactu mulieris [. . .]’ Benzi, Canon
I.1,5,1 ‘[. . .] et de humiditate quedam ante coitu expulsa in mulieris contactu que vocatur
ab Avicenna alguadi’. Jacopo da Forlì, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘[. . .] et sic dicitur de superfluitate tenui
 sperm and blood, form and food 379

While the concept of fourfold sperma already confused the relation-

ship between sperma and membra spermatica, problems really began with
the definition of menstruum. Female sperm in philosophical interpreta-
tions contained menstruum as well.60 In medical circles, however, it was
common to use the terms the other way round. Menstruum then denoted
everything a woman added to the formation and feeding of the embryo,
including female sperm and spermatic parts of the embryo. Yet, menses,
or the monthly expulsions of blood from the uterus, could also be called
menstruum.61 The relations between female sperma and menstruum thus
became rather complicated. Jacopo da Forlì acknowledged that authori-
ties used the term menstruum now in this, now in that way, causing a
great deal of confusion and contradictions.62 So, while all authors agreed
that women delivered the matter necessary for generation and nutrition
of the embryo, it was difficult to delineate exactly what matter women
added, and unclear which terms should be used.
A third problem was the question of male matter. Would male sperm
act only as a forming force on female matter, without in any way becom-
ing a material part of the embryo, as Aristotle claimed? But then the weak
female sperm would lay the basis for the noble spermatic parts of the
body on its own! Avicenna chose to moderate the Aristotelian views in
his Canon, and to follow Galen more closely. He started his discussion
of the involvement of male matter in the embryo with one of Aristotle’s
metaphors of generation. The formation of an embryo is like the process
of turning milk into cheese, Avicenna said. The active principle of rennet

dicta alguadi in viris quandoque expulsa solo mulieris aspectu, que etiam expellitur in
pueris antequam polluantur’.
60 Gentile da Foligno, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘Alia materia in muliere: quam aristoteles in suis
libris de generatione animalium vocat sperma est menstruum mulieris: quod communiter
omni mense expellitur: [. . .] et hoc sperma ab aristotele sic nominatum: apud medicos
communiter non dicitur sperma: quia non est id ex quo in prima generatione fit fetus [. . .]
et hoc sperma mulieris [true female sperm] et menstruum quod omni mense expellitur:
dictum sperma ab Aristotele’.
61 Benzi, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘primo de sanguine per venas matricis a matrice ex earum aper-
tione propulso qui immo dicitur menstruus: quia de mense in mensem propellitur’.
62 Jacopo da Forlì, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘Sciendum secundo hoc nomen menstruum sumi quan-
doque pro sanguine periodice, et secundum plurimum de mense in mensem per venas
matricis expulso [. . .] Quandoque se extendit ad materiam generationis embrionis a
muliere decisam, et sic extenditur nomen menstrui ad sanguinem attractum ad locum
generationis et ad sperma muliebre quod non videtur nisi sanguis ulteriori digestione
digestus et albatus. Dum igitur de menstruo auctores loquuntur, quando accipiunt pro
uno quando pro alio. Et ex hoc tali possunt multe apparere contrarietates’.
380 karine van ’t land

forced the milk to coagulate – like male sperm gave form to female sperm.
Avicenna only deviated from Aristotle’s interpretation of the metaphor in
his conclusion. Both milk and rennet would become part of the ­resulting
cheese, just like male and female sperm became part of the embryo’s
­substance.63
In the same vein, Avicenna wrote that male and female sperm together
formed the spermatic membra, while the sanguinary membra were gener-
ated from blood.64 One can understand his reasoning: if both male and
female sperm became part of the embryo, it would be logical to assume
that the two would come together in the spermatic membra.
The reaction of the commentators to this scheme of Avicenna was
extremely varied. Two commentators refused to acknowledge Avicenna’s
distortion of Aristotle’s opinion. Gentile da Foligno and Jacopo da Forlì
clung to Aristotle’s ideas and to their faith in Avicenna’s wisdom alike.
According to them, anyone who might think that Avicenna deviated from
Aristotle here was mistaken.65
The commentators seemed to accept Avicenna’s second premise, that
male and female sperm formed the spermatic parts together. Yet they
devoted so much effort to explaining the differences between the two
types of true sperm, and between female sperm and menstrual blood, that
this smokescreen diverted attention from Avicenna’s original statement.
For instance, after discussing eight differences between female sperm and
menstruum, followed by three differences between the female sperms and
male sperm, Gentile stated that every time he spoke about true and well-

63 Avicenna, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘Sed secundum sermonem eius qui de sapientibus verificavit,
de spermate masculi generatur sicut generatur caseus, de coagulo, et de spermate mulieris
generatur sicut caseus generatur de lacte [. . .]. Et quemadmodum unumquodque duorum,
coaguli videlicet et lactis est pars substantie casei qui sit ex eis, ita unumquodque duorum
spermatum est pars substantie embrionis’.
64 Avicenna, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘Et etiam denuo dicemus quod membrorum alia sunt que
generantur ex spermate que sunt similium partium membra preter carnem et adipem. Et
alia sunt que ex sanguine generantur, sicut adeps et caro. Quod enim est preter hec duo ex
duobus generatur spermatibus, masculorum spermate et spermate mulierum’.
65 Gentile da Foligno, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘Hic quidam mordent Avicenna quod non bene
intellexerit Aristotelem quia vult quod unumquodque duorum spermatum est pars substan-
tie embrionis [. . .] Nos dicamus quod Avicenna omnino sequitur Aristoteles in hac opinione
[. . .]’ Jacopo da Forlì, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘Circa hec quedam insurgunt dubia. Primum, quia hec non
videtur positio Aristoteli quam Avicenna in littera explicat [. . .]. Ad primum dicitur quod
per partem substantie embrionis non intellexit Avicenna in littera partem que est proprie
sumpta scilicet integralem aut essentialem, sed per partem intellexit omne essentialiter con-
currens ad alterius productionem, vel omnem causam ordinatam essentialiter concurrens ad
productionem alterius, sicut sperma viri et mulieris ad productionem embrionis’.
 sperm and blood, form and food 381

digested female sperm, he used these positive epithets in relation to men-

strual blood or to other female sperms, and not in relation to the superior
male sperm.66 Proceeding in this way, Gentile did not need to say much
about the origins of the spermatic membra.
Ugo Benzi and Jacques Despars took a more positive stance towards
Avicenna’s modifications. Ugo Benzi referred to a distinction between del-
icate, foamy male sperm, and coarse male sperm: only the latter became
part of the embryo.67 Still, according to Ugo, the spermatic membra came
from whitened menstruum.68 Jacques Despars stayed closest to Avicenna’s
interpretation. Despars not only agreed with Avicenna that it was far more
likely that rennet remained part of cheese,69 he also vehemently argued
that male sperm found a place within the embryo’s substance. How else,
for instance, should one explain the hereditary likeness between father
and child?70 Despars repeated Avicenna freely on the point of female and
male sperm as the two sources of membra spermatica, confirming the
statement with another reference to heredity. If the woman’s sperm did
not become part of the embryo, how else should the likeness between
mother and child be explained?71

66 Gentile da Foligno, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘Considerandum autem circa premissa quod semper
cum dico verum sperma mulieris et bene digestum: non intelligo hoc respectu spermatis
viris: quia respectu illius est incompletum: sed intelligo respectu menstrui mulieris vel
respectu alterius spermatis in eis’.
67 Benzi, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘Et quia super tegni diximus sperma viri solum secundum par-
tem spumosam effective concurrere ad fetus generationem. Et pars grossa est solum ut sit
vehiculum spiritus ut sit materia spiritus: immo cum spiritus in membrorum substantiam
non convertatur materialiter: sed solum se diffundendo per materiam ipsam transmutet’.
68 Benzi, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘[. . .] sed immo dicuntur spermatica: quia illorum materia est
sanguis menstruus in mulierum testiculis dealbatus et depuratus qui sanguis a quibusdam
dicitur sperma muliebre etc’.
69 Despars, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘Circa tertio. Attende quod aristoteli sententia est quod neque
coagulum est pars casei neque sperma viri pars embrionis. [. . .] verumtamen sententia
principis quod coagulum est pars casei est sensui confromior et verisimilior. Nam in con-
stitutione casei coagulum immiscetur lacti; et nusquam apparet postquam immixtum est
quod separetur immo caseus retinet aliquid odoris et saporis ex coagulo presertim si de
eo multum ponatur’.
70 Despars, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘Secundo nisi sperma masculi intraret substantiam fetus et fier-
ent ex eo membra sibi proportionata: sed esset solum sicut artifex sequeretur quod calculo-
sus non generaret calculosum: neque strumosus strumosum: neque mancus mancum: sicut
artifex deformis: vel monstruosus non facit imaginem deformem: vel monstruosam. Ista
enim non contingunt nisi quia semen patris infectum manet infectum in substantia filii’.
71 Despars, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘Secunda conclusio: sperma mulieris est utile ad generationem.
Primo quidem ut cum spermate viri sit materia membrorum spermaticorum. Cuius rei
signum est quod mulier podagrica vel calculosa vel monstruosa generat similem prolem’.
382 karine van ’t land

Nourishment and blood

After considering these different opinions on male sperm as embryologi-

cal matter, the commentaries on the following section of the Canon read
as a miracle of agreement. There, the physicians discussed Avicenna’s pas-
sages on the nourishment of the embryo after its original formation, and
apparently these remained close to their own basic ideas on the order of
the world. The authors turned to menstrual blood. Nutrition, femininity,
and generation were once again linked.
When the spermatic membra of the embryo had been formed, Avi-
cenna said, female menstrual blood started to play its role. Menstrual
blood consisted of different parts. A first part was turned into a white
substance, with a nature close to that of sperm. This part of menstrual
blood served as nourishment to the spermatic membra. Another part of
menstrual blood would coagulate into flesh and fat, and fill in the gaps
between the spermatic membra. In other words, the second part of men-
strual blood formed the sanguinary membra, and was thus involved in
generation, not in nutrition. A third part of the blood was superfluous
and of no use. It remained in the womb until the baby was born.72 After
delivery, Avicenna indicated, the baby would be fed with milk, produced
from menstrual blood.73
The commentators were eager to follow Avicenna on this scheme of
female blood and nutrition. Jacques Despars described most explicitly
the ongoing use of menstrual blood as nourishment before and after
­delivery:
Thirdly he says that after the infant has left the mother’s womb, blood
made by his own liver replaces this [menstrual] blood. His liver generates
the blood from milk, suckled at the breast. From the milk, the same flesh
and fat and parts of spermatic membra are generated which were generated
before from menstrual blood in the maternal womb, but now through nutri-
tion and growth.74

72 Avicenna, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘Postea vero sanguis qui in tempore menstruorum a muliere
separabatur sit nutrimentum. Sed alia pars eius est que in similitudinem convertitur sub-
stantie spermatis et membrorum que ex eo generantur et erit nutrimentum augmentans
ipsum. Alia pars eius est que non nutrimentum sit adhuc: sed est conveniens ut coaguletur
ad implenda loca membrorum primorum vacua et sit caro et adeps. et alia pars eius est
superfluitas que nulli harum duarum rerum est bona et remanet usque ad horam partus
quam utpote natura superfluam expellit’.
73 Avicenna, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘Cumque infans parturitur sanguis quem ipsius hepar generat,
huius sanguinis vices supplet et generatur ex eo quid ab eo sanguine generabatur’.
74 Despars, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘Tertio dicit quod postquam infans exiverit ab utero materno
sanguis quem generat epar ipsius ex lacte scilicet sucto a mamillis supplet vices huius
 sperm and blood, form and food 383

The mother’s body nourished the child, before and after birth, through
menstrual blood and its product, milk. Jacopo da Forlì showed at other
points in his commentary on this chapter how logical and natural the
connection between nutrition and motherhood felt. For instance, external
signs of female fecundity were for him not so much signs of the ability to
conceive, but signs of the ability to feed. The growth of pubic hair, the
onset of menstruation, and the elevation of the breasts showed that an
abundance of matter existed in the female body. The matter was useful as
nourishment for the woman’s membra, but clearly could also serve as food
for the foetus, because it was for the sake of the foetus that nature brought
about all these external changes. As nature should not be more solici-
tous for nutrition than for generation, Jacopo continued, she also pushed
superfluous matter to the spermatic veins and to the woman’s testicles, in
order to be turned into female sperm.75 Elsewhere, the author wondered
why nature had chosen to feed the foetus from menstrual blood, and not
simply to bring food to the foetus’s stomach, food which the mother had
chewed for him.76 Jacopo referred to morning sickness as one reason for
nature’s choice in this matter: so that if the mother’s stomach was so upset
that no appetite was left, the child would not lack nourishment.77
Avicenna’s discussion of nourishing menstrual blood brought to the
fore once again the commentators’ belief in the superiority of the sper-
matic membra over the sanguinary ones. A first distinction within the
monthly discharges from the womb would be the one between impure
and pure parts. Although menstrual blood looked filthy and putrid, the
commentators stated, it still contained unpolluted and laudable parts,

sanguinis et generatur ex eo illud quid generabatur ex sanguine menstruo in utero materno

scilicet caro et adeps partes membrorum spermaticorum per viam nutritionis et augmenti’.
75 Jacopo da Forlì, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘Ad primum respondetur et dicitur quod licet naturalis
exitus menstruorum cum aliis signis pluribus apparentibus in muliere in etate pubertatis,
puta elevatione mamillarum, pilositate pectinis [. . .] sint signa quod mulier sit fecundabi-
lis , non tamen necessario hec signa nec aliquod precedit conceptionem, licet in pluri-
bus antecedant. Concedendum est tamen quod sunt huiusmodi signa pro quanto sunt
ostendentia iam superesse materiam, non solum pro nutrimento membrorum mulieris
necessaria, sed etiam pro nutrimento foetus, propter quod natura iam materias superfluas
expellit versus mamillas et partes matricis, et mamillas augmentat ut sint lactis conte-
netive et generative. Et ex hoc comprehenditur naturam pellere materiam ad vasa sper-
matica et testiculos superfluam convertibilem in sperma. Non enim magis sollicita videtur
debere esse natura de materia nutricationis quam de materia generationis’.
76 Jacopo da Forlì, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘Tertium dubium. Per quem modum nutriatur foetus in
utero ex sanguine iam dicto, et quare non ordinavit natura ad stomachum pueri transire
cibum masticatum a matre, ex quo fieret ibi chylus et sanguis in hepate eiusdem’.
77 Jacopo da Forlì, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘Tertio ne cum perturbaretur aut destruetur appetitus
stomachi matris deficeret foetui nutrimentum’.
384 karine van ’t land

which were used for formation of the embryo and nutrition of the foe-
tus during ­pregnancy.78 The best of these pure parts were used for the
nutrition of the spermatic membra, while the pure parts of a lesser quality
became flesh and fat.79
It is also significant in this respect that the generation of the sanguinary
membra received so little attention from both Avicenna and his commen-
tators, when compared to the generation of the spermatic membra in an
earlier stage of conception. Avicenna mentioned the generation of flesh
and fat only after the nutrition of the already-created membra spermatica,
and his commentators took little heed of this step in the formation of the
embryo, which to modern eyes would seem vital. Jacopo da Forlì took the
trouble of explaining that this same part of menstrual blood would serve
first as matter for the generation of flesh and fat, and then as nourishment
of these sanguinary membra. Gentile da Foligno mentioned that, during
pregnancy, the time of nutrition and growth of the embryo started after
the time of generation. The time of generation, he explained, could also be
seen as the time of the sperms. Yet, as explained above, the Canon actually
presented the generation of flesh and blood as starting together with the
nutrition of spermatic membra, and therefore after spermatic generation
had been completed.80 Obviously, the learned doctors saw the genera-
tion of the noble and sustaining membra spermatica, the outlines of the
embryo, as far more important than the creation of the embryo’s flesh

78 Jacopo da Forlì, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘Sciendum secundo quod quantumcumque sanguis

menstruus videatur putridus et corruptus, in eo tamen sunt partes alique non putride
nec corrupte sed pure et laudabiles ab hepate et natura pueri rectificabiles, ex quibus
alique transeunt in materiam nutricationis. alique vero opportuno tempore transeunt in
lac. partes autem penitus impure aut non rectificabiles reservantur ad horam partus et
simul cum foetu expelluntur cum infra videbitur’. Benzi, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘tertio de sanguine
que tempore pregnationis malus et superfluus detinetur in partu pellendus. quarto de illo
sanguine que in muliere ad mammillas: ut in lac convertatur transmittitur’. Gentile da
Foligno, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘Et notandum quod [. . .] huic sanguini solum tres partes assignat
scilicet unam ex qua fetus nutritur: et aliam que sit lac: et iste sunt meliores partes illius
sanguinis: et tertiam que reservatur usque ad horam partus [. . .]’.
79 Gentile da Foligno, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘Considerandum quod quatuor partes assignat san-
guini menstruo: unam que dealbatur ut sit nutrimentum conveniens membrorum sperma-
ticorum iam formatorum: et hoc est quod Avicenna dicit. [. . .] quia pars sanguinis menstrui
que periodico motu evacuabatur fit nutrimentum hoc modo: quia una pars eius scilicet
melior convertitur in similitudinem substantie spermatis: aliam partem huius menstrui
Avicenna ponit converti in carnem et adipem predictos secundum modum qui dicetur’.
80 Gentile da Foligno, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘Aliud est tempus nutricationis: et augmentationis:
quod incipit post tempus generationis scilicet spermaticorum: et tunc simul incipit gen-
eratio carnis et adipis’.
 sperm and blood, form and food 385

and blood, which were supposed only to fill in the empty places between
the lines.81

Spermatic and sanguinary membra later in life

During the whole course of life of the human, his body would remind him
of the low materials out of which it was initially created. Not for nothing
did Jacques Despars exclaim:
O miraculous wisdom and goodness of God almighty, who joins such filthy
matters together, and creates such useful bodies! O poor mortal with your
fragile nature, why are you proud? Consider your origins!82
Sperm and menstrual blood remained visible in the physical structures of
man. Spermatic membra still were the hard, white, and sustaining parts of
the body, while the sanguinary membra kept their softness and usefulness
in filling up the spaces between the spermatic parts.
While these differences in appearance and firmness had already been
clear in the embryo, one other important distinction between spermatic
and sanguinary membra came to the fore only after the period in the
womb. The two types of tissue differed markedly in their reaction to injury,
or the break in continuity, as it was called in medieval medicine. Avicenna
described how the spermatic membra would in principle not be restored
after injury. If their continuity was broken, no new tissue would be cre-
ated to fill the gap, and to reconnect the two ends. He allowed exceptions
to this general rule: in the bodies of children and youngsters, small lesions
in relatively unimportant structures could be filled.83 If, however, the san-
guinary membra were to be damaged, new and similar material would be

81 Jacopo da Forlì, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘Declarat quo ad secundum partem, in quam dividitur
sanguis. Et dicit quod illa alia pars sanquinis que adhuc non sit nutrimentum alicuius
membri est conveniens ad hoc ut fiat materia generationis carnis adipis, et pinguedinis,
que debent replere loca vacua primorum membrorum idest vacuitates cadentes inter
prima membra idest spermatica’.
82 Despars, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘O mirabilis sapientia et bonitas omnipotentis dei qui tam fedas
materias tantis applicas commodis. O fragilis nature pauper homo cur superbis. Considera
primordia tua’.
83 Avicenna, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘Membra autem que ex spermate sunt creata cum solutionem
continuitatis patiuntur certa continuitate non restaurantur nisi pauca ex eis: et in pau-
cis habitudinibus et in etate pueritie: sicut ossa et rami venarum parvi: non enim magni
neque arteriarum. Cum enim aliqua eorum pars seiungitur nihil locus eius nascitur. Et hec
quidem sunt sicut ossa et nervi’.
386 karine van ’t land

created to make up for the loss, and continuity would be restored. The
Canon used the word renascere, to be reborn, to describe the process.84
The different outcomes of injury experienced by the two types of mem-
bra gave rise to new thoughts about the relation between generation and
nutrition. For instance, when Jacques Despars wondered if the regener-
ated parts of sanguinary membra would really be one and the same as the
parts which had been lost because of the injury, he mused on Socrates’
identity and the effect of nutrition. Through nutrition, Socrates’ matter
would change, but as his soul remained untouched, he himself kept the
same numerical form. The same would count for regenerated parts of
flesh, the matter for which had also been provided by food.85
In this context, the commentators often referred to Aristotle’s opinion
that the material for nutrition was the same as the material for genera-
tion. If sperm was made of nourishment, why should it be impossible to
regenerate the spermatic membra?86 After all, it seemed certain that the
spermatic membra received sustenance during the whole course of life,
and that they grew during childhood. Taddeo Alderotti had provided a
solution for this problem, which was repeated by Jacopo da Forlì. The
restorative power of the body could only function if its matter was pro-
portionate to that which had been lost. For the sanguinary parts, it was
easy to find matching matter. They were so soft and permeable that all
matter from conception had been lost during the processes of nutrition
and growth after birth. Because of that, they could without difficulty be
regenerated from food. The soft parts needed to be sustained by hard,
spermatic membra. These membra always retained some of the original
matter of the embryo deep in their core. Therefore, it was impossible to

84 Avicenna, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘Illa vero que ex sanguine sunt creata renascuntur post perdi-
tionem suam et continuantur tali substantia qualis sunt ipsa sicut caro’.
85 Despars, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘Secundo ex hoc quod forma substantialis scilicet rationalis anima
est eadem in renata que fuit in deperdita: sicut ergo Socrates materialiter mutatus per viam
nutritionis assidue manet idem numero tota vita quia anima eius est eadem ita videtur hic’.
86 Despars, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘Queritur utrum membra spermatica soluta ipsorum continu-
itate possint consolidari et deperdita restaurari. Arguitur quod sic principium efficiens
membrorum spermaticorum et ipsorum materia salve manent in corpore [. . .]. Assump-
tum probatur. Primo de efficienti principio: quia in corpore est virtus restaurativa partium
deperditarum in omnibus membra faciens de nutrimento partem membri. Alioquin non
nutrirentur omnia corporis membra. Est etiam materia ad restaurationem deperditorum
idonea. Nam cum sperma sit superfluitas utilis alimenti ultimi ut ait Aristoteles primo de
generatione animalium capitulum .18. Et alimentum ultimum sit inventum in toto corpore:
sperma etiam reperietur in toto corpore’.
 sperm and blood, form and food 387

find entirely similar matter after birth, and the spermatic membra could
not be regenerated.87
Another explanation came from Pietro d’Abano, and was cited by Ugo
Benzi and Jacopo da Forlì. Pietro gave four reasons to explain why sper-
matic membra could not be restored after birth. Nutrition was an impor-
tant notion in three of them, which will be discussed here. For Pietro’s
first argument, he used the notion of the virtutes or soul powers. Virtutes
performed functions of the soul, and so the nutritive soul possessed gen-
erative and nutritive powers. As the spermatic parts were generated in the
very first stage of foetal life, they needed the generative power for their
formation, which was still active then. The generative power left the body
when the foetus was completely formed, and because of this it was impos-
sible to recreate the membra it created. Sanguinary membra were formed
in a later stage by the nutritive power. This power remained active in the
body after birth, so it could be employed to restore lost flesh and fat. A
second reason focused on the availability of matter for the restoration.
Sperm or sperm-like matter was not available any more after birth, while
blood, the nourishment of sanguinary membra, abounded.88 Thirdly, sper-
matic membra were very hard, so that food and the digestive humours
needed to be thoroughly transformed before they came to resemble these
rigid structures, making it difficult to replace them.89

87 Jacopo da Forlì, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘Aliter dixit Thadeus quod causa propter quam pars
membri generati ex sanguine potest regenerari, non autem membri spermatici est, quia
virtus restaurativa invenit in corpore materiam proportionatam carni ex qua potest regen-
erari caro. Non autem invenit in corpore materiam proportionatam ossi aut alteri sperma-
tico. et causa est quia in carne non remansit de antiqua materia ex qua primo fuit genita
caro, sed tota fluxit antiqua et sustenantur tantummodo super nova materia, unde sanguis
noviter genitus ex illi carni proportionatus. Expediebat enim corpori animalis ad salvandas
actiones suas aliquas eius partes esse molles faciles etiam transmurabiles, sed pro funda-
mento harum partium mollium oportuit esse in eo partes spermaticas duras, in quibus
semper quamdiu vivit animal remanet aliquid de antiqua materia ex qua prima genita
sunt, cui non est proportionalis aliqua materia in corpore reperta: et ideo cum illa antiqua
materia solvitur non restauratur: et similiter cum deperditur a multo fortiori’.
88 Jacopo da Forlì, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘Ad primum istorum. Dicit Conciliator [. . .] cuius
causam dicit esse multiplicem. Prima est abscentia virtutis informative que evanescit for-
mato foetu, ut dicit ostensum esse differentia .43. Secunda est defectus materie spermatice
per quam stabat membri unitas. [. . .] et propter oppositas causas membra ex sanguine
generata soluta vel scissa possunt restaurari. Primo quia non deficit materia. Secundo nec
virtus, quia illa est virtus nutritiva carnis et carnosorum membrorum [. . .]’.
89 Benzi, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘Conciliator enim differentia tertia annexo quarto ponit cau-
sas. [. . .] quarta est duricies membri: unde nutrimentum multa indiget transmutatione
antequam in membri substantiam convertatur [. . .]’.
388 karine van ’t land

That sanguinary membra could regenerate, and spermatic membra

could not, seems to have caused some uneasiness about the supposed
superiority of the spermatic structures in the body. Suddenly, the san-
guinary membra could do something the spermatic membra could not.
How was this to be explained? The uncertainty gave rise to expositions
about imperfect animals, which were able to regenerate whole parts of
their body. Lobsters, for instance, could acquire a complete new claw after
losing one, and serpents regenerated their tail if it had been cut off, not
to mention the ability of plants to redevelop new branches and leaves.90
Jacopo da Forlì once again had recourse to Pietro d’Abano to explain this
phenomenon. When nature made the perfect animals – man being the
most perfect animal possible – she tried with all her might to make them
as good as possible, right from the beginning of their life. Nature con-
sidered that perfect animals would live longest if their parts were com-
plete, strong, and well aligned from conception onwards. She was a lot
less careful during the creation of imperfect animals, but made up for
that by leaving some extra matter in their bodies, which they could use
to overcome injuries and accidents. This solution might seem speculative,
Jacopo added, but according to him it made good sense.91
The speculative message about the hierarchy between spermatic and
sanguinary membra seems clear. The spermatic membra were the perfect
ones, as they were created from one piece in the embryo, and therefore
could not be restored later in life. Sanguinary membra were not that care-
fully put together, and in turn retained the capacity to regenerate.

90 Jacopo da Forlì, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘Item non minorem debet habere natura sollicitudinem
de animalibus perfectis quam de imperfectis, sed ad salutem imperfectorum post eorum
generationem ex semine relinquit natura in eorum membris virtutem generativam eorum
post eorum deperditionem, ut in cancris, in quibus abscissis pedibus regenerantur, et et
in lacertis serpentibus abscissis caudis regenerantur [. . .]. Et simile argumentum potest
adduci de plantis in quibus partes alique abscisse regenerantur’.
91 Jacopo da Forlì, Canon I.1,5,1 ‘Conciliator vere dicit quod natura in productione
animalis perfecti totum suum posse facit ut perficiat a principio et non ita operatur in
productione imperfecti. Natura enim considerans quod perfecta possint multo tempore
permanere si partes haberent perfectas a principio et completas et fortes et bene continu-
atas ipsas a principio tales produxit. Sed imperfecta quantumcumque a principio producta
integre non possunt permanere diu, ideo decrevit in animalibus imperfectis in principio
non expendere totum suum posse, sed aliam materiam apud se retinet, ex qua insurgen-
tibus defectibus et occasionibus possit succurere. Et hec solutio licet videatur rhetorica,
posset tamen reduci ad sanum intellectum’.
 sperm and blood, form and food 389

Conclusion

Late medieval learned physicians discussed similar themes concerning

the formation of sanguinary and spermatic membra in the embryo, while
commenting on Avicenna’s Canon. Spermatic membra were formed first,
from a fusion of female and male sperm. They were noble, hard, white,
and sustained the body. The formation of sanguinary membra out of men-
strual blood did not receive that much attention. Sanguinary membra
comprised all the flesh and fat located in between the spermatic mem-
bra, and they were soft. The spermatic membra could not be regenerated,
because they contained an inimitable trace of the original sperm through
which the embryo had been conceived. Sanguinary membra came from
nurturing blood, which was still present in a grown body, and therefore
could be restored after injury.
Even more dichotomies than noble-ignoble, hard-soft, skeleton-filling,
and irreplaceable-replaceable can be found in the expositions on the
spermatic and sanguinary membra. In the medieval commentaries, the
formation of spermatic and sanguinary membra, female, blood, food, and
inferiority were firmly linked to one another, and opposed to male, sperm,
formation, and superiority. From a more traditional investigation of Aris-
totelian embryology, namely as an isolated strand of physiology, the series
of dichotomies would be quite familiar. Two things, however, are new.
Because of the specific nature of the case study, the aspect of replication
is involved. Secondly, usually ‘matter’ would be mentioned as the oppo-
site of ‘form’, but in this case study ‘food’ has entered the female series,
and replaced ‘matter’. The female contribution to generation could be
formulated concisely as that of offering nourishment: to the male semen,
to the embryo, and to the newborn. The new series of dichotomies seems
to illustrate the value of following contemporary associations, like the
association of generation with nutrition, when studying the history of
­science.
The late medieval authors clearly showed just how self-evident these
connections felt. When the Canon, their mother text, gave statements
which seemed to go against the usual associations, the commentators pro-
vided a wide variety of arguments, which were often unclear. Yet if the
Canon stayed in line with their expectations, their arguments were fluent,
logical, and unanimous. Their obvious preference for arguments accord-
ing to the standard dichotomy suggests that these associations reflected
broader cultural preferences of their age.
390 karine van ’t land

The learned medical authors equated the female principle in concep-

tion, female sperm or menstrual blood, with food. The bonds between
femininity and food in the Middle Ages became clear in the realm of reli-
gion as well. Caroline Walker Bynum has given a highly nuanced account
of the ways in which food practices were specific to female devotion in
Western Christianity. Feeding others and denying food for oneself were
important aspects of the ways in which medieval women honoured God.
Charitable women would go out and bring food to the poor, food which
they denied to themselves, while charitable men would typically give
money.92 Another form of female fasting could be part of eucharistic
devotion. Women, more than men, craved to receive the body of Christ,
and eagerly cleansed their bodies through fasting beforehand. Eucharis-
tic miracles were far more common for female than for male saints and
mystics.93 Walker Bynum also suggests that fasting, charity, and ecstasy
could be means for wives as well as daughters to escape the role of food
preparer or nurturer.94 Thus, through deviant food practices, medieval
women could actually flee the responsibilities society expected them to
take – responsibilities shaped by food and fertility.
The story of male sperm as the precious and irreplaceable core and
foundation of the human body was also sustained by a firm cultural basis
in the Middle Ages. In a theological context, male sperm was sometimes
seen as providing the core of the human being, necessary for resurrection.
Peter Lombard’s (ca. 1100–† 1160) account, for instance, had proved highly
influential. Lombard explained the biblical fact that the whole of mankind
inherited Adam’s sin by pointing out that the substance of every human
being was in Adam’s loins when he sinned. The human substances grew
miraculously by multiplying in themselves, without the addition of any
extraneous material like food. Furthermore, during the process of gen-
eration, the substance which originally resided in Adam’s loins would be
passed from one individual to the next, together with original sin. This
material was essential for conception, and food would not influence it
in any way.95 Thus, Lombard’s account firmly stressed the superiority of

92 Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast 88.

93 Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast 77.
94 Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast 220–227.
95 Reynolds, Food and the Body 1–2. The passage can be found in Peter Lombard’s work
Sententiae, vol. II, 30, 14–15. Cf. also Walker Bynum C., The Resurrection of the Body in
Western Christianity, 200–1336 (New York: 1995) 124–126.
 sperm and blood, form and food 391

formation over nutrition, and presented male sperm as the true matter of
the human body.
In the thirteenth century, theologians could no longer accept Lom-
bard’s miraculous account of sperm and food, and tried to move more
into line with contemporary science. They started using concepts of radi-
cal moisture or humidum radicale and nutrimental moisture or humidum
nutrimentale. Radical moisture was supposed to be the root of the body,
infused into the embryo at the moment of conception through the semen,
and providing the body’s stability. Nutrimental moisture came from food,
as the name indicated, and was built into the body in order to replace the
lost radical moisture. When all radical moisture was used up, the human
being died.96 Again, sperm was presented as opposite to food and as a
unique, superior substance, sustaining the existence of the human body.
Food could not truly replace the spermatic substance, as it merely added
some volume and fuel. The science of embryology thus contained images
and meanings which connected generation, nutrition, and growth. With
this science, authors went far beyond a simple account of the growing
foetus. They constructed powerful images of male superiority and female
inferiority.

96 Reynolds’ book Food and the Body deals with exactly this part of intellectual history,
and treats the main thirteenth-century theological accounts in great detail. In the same
year, Joseph Ziegler published an article on the same subject matter: Ziegler J., “Ut dicunt
medici: Medical Knowledge and Theological Debates in the Second Half of the Thirteenth
Century”, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 73 (1999) 208–237. For humidum radicale, see
also McVaugh M.R., “The ‘Humidum Radicale’ in Thirteenth-Century Medicine”, Traditio
30 (1974) 259–283.
392 karine van ’t land

Selective bibliography

Aristotle, De anima: tr. Smith J.A. (1931), On the Soul, in The Complete Works of Aristotle.
Electronic edition, Bollingen Series LXXI 2, Vol. 1.
——, De generatione animalium: tr. Platt A. (1912), On the Generation of Animals, in The
Complete Works of Aristotle. Electronic edition, Bollingen Series LXXI 2, Vol. 1.
——, De generatione et corruptione: tr. Joachim H.H. (1930), Generation and Corruption, The
Complete Works of Aristotle. Electronic Edition, BOLLINGEN SERIES LXXI 2. Volume 1.
Avicenna, Liber canonis (Hildesheim: 1964; reprint of Venice, Paganius de Paganinis:
1507).
Benzi Ugo, Expositio Ugonis Senensis super primo Canonis Avicenne cum questionibus eius-
dem (Venice, Opus impressum mandato et expensis Octaviani Scoti, Bonetus Locatellus:
1498).
Cadden J., Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages. Medicine, Science and Culture
(Cambridge: 1993).
Dunstan G.R. (ed.), The Human Embryo. Aristotle and the Arabic and European Traditions
(Exeter: 1990).
Gentile Da Foligno, Hic merito inscribi potens vite liber corporalis Abohali Abynsceni
canonis libros quinque duplici fere per totum commento munitos nuperque translatos [. . .]
doctores circa textum positi ut locis suis apparebit hi sunt: Gentilis de Fulgineo [et alii]
(Venice, Bernardinus Benalius: 1503).
Green M.H., “Flowers, Poisons, and Men: Menstruation in Medieval Western Europe”, in
Shail A. – Howie G. (eds.), Menstruation. A Cultural History (New York: 2005) 51–64.
Hewson M.A., Giles of Rome and the Medieval Theory of Conception (London: 1975).
Jacopo Da Forlì, Expositio et quaestiones in primum Canonem Avicennae (Venice, Giunta:
1547).
Lugt M. van der, Le ver, le démon et la vierge. Les théories médiévales de la génération
extraordinaire (Paris: 2004).
Martorelli Vico R., Medicina e filosofia. Per una storia dell’embriologia medievale nel XIII
e XIV secolo (Naples: 2002).
Reynolds P.L., Food and the Body. Some Peculiar Questions in High Medieval Theology
(Leiden: 1999).
Siraisi N.G., Avicenna in Renaissance Italy. The Canon and Medical Teaching in Italian Uni-
versities after 1500 (Princeton NJ: 1987).
Ziegler J., “The Scientific Context of Dante’s Embryology”, in Barnes J.C. – Petrie J. (eds.),
Dante and the Human Body. Eight Essays (Dublin: 2007) 61–88.
 The music of the pulse in Marsilio Ficino’s
Timaeus commentary

Jacomien Prins

Summary*

Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) dedicated part of his commentary on the Timaeus

to Plato’s ideas about human physiology. With few other means of diagnosis at
his disposal, Ficino, as a musical healer, developed considerable sensitivity to
minute variations of pulse, because they could indicate various types of emotion
and disease. This paper aims to answer two central questions: why does Ficino
describe hearing in the way he does and how is it connected with bodily ­fluids?
I aim to show how Ficino’s account of human physiology is strongly motivated
by his interest in healing and spiritual growth. The paper engages with the tra-
ditional problems of how perception brings about changes in the perceiver, and
how humours are involved in these. It argues that, although Ficino mainly seems
to follow the medical tradition, he represented the interaction of hearing and
humours in such a way that it offered new theoretical possibilities for music
therapy.

Introduction

Up to and during the Renaissance, the belief that music is inherent in

the beating of the pulse was widely held by scholars in the discipline of
physiology.1 In the texts on music and medicine by the Italian Renaissance
philosopher Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) explicit statements of this belief,
and of the associated ideas that music is also present in the emotions,
the humours and in other bodily rhythms, are widespread. For Ficino, the
idea of the music of the pulse was only one specific expression of the more
general notion that musical harmonies are inherent in the human as well
as in the cosmic body and soul. The supposed links between music and

* I would like to thank Prof. Helen King and Dr Richard Ashdowne for their help with
my English. Of course, I bear responsibility for any errors which remain in the text.
1 The main source of inspiration for this article has been Siraisi N., “The Music of Pulse
in the Writings of Italian Academic Physicians (Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries)”,
Speculum 50 (1975) 689–710.
394 jacomien prins

human physiology and psychology were of interest for Ficino not only
as a philosopher and musician, but also as a physician. Like many other
philosophers, doctors, music theorists and musicians working in North
Italy during the fifteenth century, Ficino provided his readers with detailed
information on the influence of music on physical as well as spiritual well-
being. His account of the nature of the music of the pulse, seen as part of
an all-inclusive philosophy of musica mundana (cosmic harmony), repre-
sents a largely continuous tradition.2 His views not only throw light on the
concept of the harmony of the pulse itself, and hence on one aspect of early
Renaissance treatment of the ancient theme of musica humana (music of
the human soul and body), but they also illustrate something of the nature
of the actual application in medical practice of the venerable tradition of
linking medicine with philosophy and with the art of music.3 For Ficino,
as an academic writer on physiology, health, healing, and spiritual growth,
the value of a profound knowledge of the science and the practice of music
for the understanding of the pulse became one of a set of significant illus-
trations of the importance of an education in liberal arts for physicians.
The following discussion of Ficino’s beliefs regarding the music of the pulse
aims to show the extent to which this particular topic functioned as a key
concept in his ideas about human physiology and medicine.
This paper will outline the physiological bases for music therapy in
Ficino’s Timaeus commentary, and then explore how his theoretical ideas
about human physiology were used in his musico-therapeutical practice.4
In addition, I will try to answer the question of how far Ficino’s transla-
tion and study of the account of human physiology, health and healing
in Plato’s Timaeus – which, thanks to his efforts, became accessible again
in the West – changed the traditional Aristotelian and Galenic views of

2 For a detailed discussion of this topic, see the first two chapters of Prins J.W., Echoes of
an Invisible World. Marsilio Ficino and Francesco Patrizi on Cosmic Order and Music Theory
(Alblasserdam: 2009) 15–142.
3 For the way in which this tradition was institutionalised in the very existence of the
faculties of arts and medicine of the Italian universities, see Park K., Doctors and Medicine
in Early Renaissance Florence (Princeton: 1985) 198–209.
4 For the revival of the Timaeus in the context of natural philosophy in the fifteenth
century in Italy, see Hankins J., Plato in the Italian Renaissance (Leiden: 1990), esp. 267–359;
and idem, “The Study of the Timaeus in Early Renaissance Italy”, in Grafton A. – Siraisi N.
(eds.), Natural Particulars. Nature and the Disciplines in Renaissance Europe (Cambridge,
MA etc.: 1999) 77–95.
 the music of the pulse 395

human physiology, in particular of the relationship between the sense of

hearing, blood ‘circulation’ and the emotions.5

The harmony of the human body and soul and the music of the pulse

Ficino’s intellectual interests as a musical healer, as expressed in his differ-

ent texts on the topic, were largely shaped by his training in the traditional
theory and practice of the disciplines of music and medicine.6 Ficino, for
example, studied Galen with deep interest and used this knowledge in his
explanation of physiological and medical subjects in Plato’s Timaeus:7
Already for a long time I was convinced by the very powerful causes [of
­disease], about which I read in the work of the Platonist Galen, and some
time ago my opinion was confirmed by the famous physician Georgius
Cyprius. For he found me, because during these days he visited our house
often in order to cure my mother, reading about these topics, and he con-
nected in a miraculous way the mind of Galen with the mind of Plato.8
With only a few other means of diagnosis at his disposal, Ficino, in a quite
traditional way, developed considerable sensitivity to minute variations of
the duration and intensity of the pulse, because he believed that they could
indicate various types of emotion and disease. A patient had fever when-
ever his pulse became more frequent or more forceful. Until the fifteenth
century this was seen as a symptom of increased internal heat, which was
associated with the element of fire. In contrast, if the pulse lost some of
its high frequency or forcefulness, this was interpreted as an ­alleviation
of fever or as a symptom of another disease. Ficino, as the result of his

5 For an introduction into Plato’s view on physiology and medicine in the Timaeus, see
Nutton V., Ancient Medicine (London: 2004) 115–118.
6 For Ficino’s training, see Kristeller P.O., “The Scholastic Background of Marsilio Ficino
with an Edition of Unpublished Texts” [‘De Sono’], Traditio. Studies in Ancient and Medi-
eval History (1944) 257–318.
7 For Ficino’s use of Galen’s De Placitis, see Nutton V., “De Placitis Hippocratis et Plato-
nis in the Renaissance”, in Manuli P. – Vegetti M. (eds.), Le Opera Psicologiche di Galeno
(Naples: 1988) 292–293.
8 Ficino Marsilio, Compendium in Timaeum (hereafter abbreviated as CiT), Cap. XXXXV,
1465 (page number in the Opera Omnia, 1576), fol. 79 verso (page number in the 1496
edition, which is used in this article) ‘Quales esse potissimum rationes, quas apud Gale-
num Platonicum legi, iamdiu existimavi, ac nuper a Georgio Cyprio insigni medico sum
in sententia confirmatus. Hic enim his diebus cum ad me curandae matris meae gratia
frequenter accederet, meque reperiret haec ipsa legentem miro quodam ordine Galeni
mentem cum Platonica mente coniunxit’.
396 jacomien prins

confidence in the belief that the frequency of the pulse could be mea-
sured very precisely and was a reliable symptom, compared the pulse of
his patient with the natural pulse corresponding to each age [Fig. 1].9
The different pulses of man were embedded in a fourfold system, in
which the number four (1, 2, 3, 4) was supposed to symbolise the elements,
the humours, the temperaments, the seasons of the year, and the ages of
man (infancy, youth, manhood, old age).10 When a trained doctor held a
patient’s wrist, he would compare the number of pulse-beats occurring
during a set period with the natural and healthy number of pulse-beats
for the patient in question and, if the pulse was more or less frequent
than the norm, this indicated that he had a fever or another physical or
mental disorder.
As in the human body, the pulse in music is also used to indicate the
basic beat of a piece of music. The pulse is not necessarily the fastest or
the slowest component of the rhythm but the one that is perceived as
basic. The pulse has a regular periodicity, consisting of a series of identi-
cal short-duration stimuli. The pulse, therefore, depends upon repetition.
The tempo of a piece of music is the speed of the pulse. For Ficino, a pulse
which became too fast would become a drone, while one that became too
slow would be perceived as unconnected sounds. ‘Musical’ pulses were
generally specified by him as ‘well-tempered’, which probably means that
they were somewhere in the range of 40 to 240 beats per minute.11 Ficino,
as a musical healer, used music to temper the pulse of a patient: as an
‘antidote’ he used fast music to speed up a pulse, and slow music to slow
it down.
In his ideas on the interrelatedness of musical rhythms, bodily move-
ments and spiritual and emotional life, Ficino was drawing upon traditions
stretching back to classical Antiquity in the disciplines of both music and
medicine. In Antiquity and the Middle Ages there were two ­theoretical
bases for the practice of musical therapy, which may be termed as the

   
9 In ancient and medieval medicine, instruments such as water-clocks and hour-glasses
were used for measurements, but to my knowledge there is no evidence left of Ficino’s
instrument of measurement. For the pulse as a diagnostic aid in ancient times, see Nutton,
Ancient Medicine 126–127, 237–238, 345 n 29.
10 Plato, Timaeus 35b–36b. For a detailed explanation of this system, see Cornford
F.M., Plato’s Cosmology (London: 1937) 66–74 esp. 70.
11 For an introduction into the history of the relationship between humoral medicine,
pulse and music, see Kümmel W.F., “Der Puls und das Problem der Zeitmessung in der
Geschichte der Medizin”, Medizinhistorisches Journal 9, 1974, 1–22; and idem, Musik und
Medizin. Ihre Wechselbeziehungen in Theorie und Praxis von 800 bis 1800 (Freiburg im
Breisgau: 1977) esp. ch. 1, “Puls und Musik”, 23–62.
 the music of the pulse 397

Fig. 1. Physician taking the pulse of a plague victim. Ioannis de Ketham, Fasciculo
di Medicina Vulgare (Venice, 1493). Frontispiece.
398 jacomien prins

‘­ethical’ and the ‘astrological’ respectively.12 The first was based on the
doctrine of ethos and sprang from the observation that music affected the
emotions, and therefore – according to Plato’s Timaeus 47b–d – ­exercised
a direct influence over the state of the soul and indirectly also over the
body. The best-known Christian illustration of this was in the famous
biblical story of the curative power of David’s harp on the madness of
King Saul, which Ficino mentioned in one of his letters.13 Even though
no detailed explanation was given of the way in which music supposedly
influenced man, Ficino, following tradition, firmly believed that man’s
soul was essentially harmonious in nature. As a consequence, he was
convinced that music could directly influence man’s soul, spirit and emo-
tions, and through them also bodily rhythms. In order to rediscover the
knowledge of the magical curative power of music, which was still known
by King David as well as by such Greek wise men as Orpheus, Pythago-
ras and Plato, Ficino studied the Greek musical modes which were sup-
posed to express different well-defined emotions. This is reflected in his
texts, which are full of references to the playing of a particular musical
mode in order to induce a particular effect on man’s emotions or physical
­constitution.
Ficino’s claim that music had curative powers was based upon a com-
bined ethical-astrological theoretical base. The physiological belief that
both musical consonance and musical numerical proportions were in
some way to be found in the pulse is substantiated by it. In his practice
as a musical healer, he used his musico-theoretical knowledge, first of all,
to diagnose a patient’s condition by taking his pulse. His musical back-
ground thus functioned as a useful tool in analysing a very detailed kind
of information on a patient’s health, which was supposed to be encoded
in the rhythm of his pulse. Just as an astrologer was supposed to be able to
gather detailed information from someone’s horoscope, a musical healer
could ‘hear’ someone’s mental as well as physical condition in his pulse.
In his Platonic Theology Ficino cites a well-known illustration of musical
pulse-reading:

12 Cf. Burnett C., “ ‘Spiritual Medicine’: Music and Healing in Islam and its Influence in
Western Medicine”, in Horden P. (ed.), Music as Medicine. The History of Music Therapy
since Antiquity (Aldershot etc.: 2000) 85.
13 For Ficino’s quotation of 1 Samuel 16: 14–23, see Letter 92 “De Musica” in Ficino,
Opera Omnia, vol. II, 651 (for an English translation of this letter, see Ficino, “On Music”
in The Letters of Marsilio Ficino 1 (translated from the Latin by members of the Language
Department of the School of Economic Science, London (London: 1975–) 141–144).
 the music of the pulse 399

Four emotions accompany the fantasy: desire, pleasure, fear, and pain. When
they are at their most intense, they immediately and totally affect someone’s
own body and even sometimes another’s. What frenzied ardour the desire
for revenge stirs up in the heart or the desire for pleasure in the liver, yea
in the pulse too! It was by changes in his pulse that the doctor Erasistratus14
knew that Antiochus had been seized with love of Stratonice.15
Ficino clearly endorsed the traditional notion that the duration and inten-
sity of heartbeats corresponded to particular, identifiable musical propor-
tions. So, to detect the secrets of the heart in the rhythm of a pulse, a
physician needed a profound musical training.
In addition to diagnostic practices, theoretical as well as practical
knowledge of music could also be used in the actual practice of heal-
ing. The best-known illustration of this was a story told about the Ara-
bic scholar al-Kindi (ca. 801–ca. 873), who deeply influenced Marsilio’s
thought on the subject.16 His follower Ibn al-Qifti (1172–1248) reported of
his master that one of his patients who suffered from a stroke was cured
by music: after al-Kindi had diagnosed the illness on basis of the pulse
of the patient, he summoned four lute-players, who subsequently played
their music for a long time to let the patient regain his strength. It worked,
of course, and after the long musico-therapeutical session al-Kindi took
the pulse of the patient again. Not only had he by then regained a regular
musical pulse, but he also started to move again and his consciousness
had been fully restored.17 It is precisely this musico-magical dimension of
physiology and medicine that Ficino intended to revive, after it had been
almost completely lost due to scholastics who concentrated too much on
the human body at the expense of the soul.

14 Plutarchus, Demetrius 38.3–4. Ficino probably knew the story through Leonardi
Bruni’s Novella di Antioco, Re di Siria (also known under the title Stratonica), a popular
novel of the fifteenth century. The text is in Locella G., Novelle Italiane di Quaranta Autori
(Leipzig: 1879) 238–242. For Erasistratus’ place in the history of Greek medicine, see Nut-
ton, Ancient Medicine 133–139.
15 Ficino Marsilio, Theologia Platonica XIII,I,1 ‘Phantasiam quatuor sequuntur affectus:
appetitus, voluptas, metus ac dolor. Hi omnes quando vehementissimi sunt, subito corpus pro-
prium omnino, nonnumquam etiam alienum afficiunt. Quantos ardores vel cupiditas vindic-
tae ciet in corde vel libido voluptatis in iecore, immo et in pulsu! Ex cuius mutatione cognovit
medicus Erasistratus Antiochum esse amore Stratonicae captum’ [English translation –
with a small adjustment – by M.J.B. Allen, Platonic Theology 4, XIII,I,1, 110–111].
16 For al-Kindi’s influence on Ficino, see, for example, Three Books on Life, 28, 46, 50,
51, 83 and 86.
17 Ibn al-Qifti’s Ta’rih al-hukama (republication of A. Müller’s edition by J. Lippert)
(Leipzig: 1903). 376. Cf. Kümmel, Musik und Medizin 61.
400 jacomien prins

Ficino’s concept of physiology was deeply rooted not only in his musi-
cal beliefs about the universe, but also in his astrological thinking. Both
sets of belief were theoretically based on the Timaean doctrine of the har-
monic relationship between the four elements, which existed among all
the different parts of the universe.18 The specific astrological interpreta-
tion of the universe as a harmonic network of analogies was, however,
another feature borrowed by Ficino from al-Kindi, who may have been
responsible for its development.19 In his Timaeus commentary Ficino read
the passages on humours, health and harmony through the lenses of al-
Kindi’s astrological thought.20 In his interpretation, he stresses that man
must be studied as an integral part of the universe.
Although human physiology is defined by Ficino as the science of the
normal phenomena of human life, it is sometimes hardly recognisable
for us, because his views of ‘normal human life’ and ‘nature’ are under-
pinned by metaphysical, magical and astrological ideas which are remote
from our modern beliefs. Therefore, knowledge of the normal phenom-
ena of human life includes an understanding of man’s place in the har-
monic universe and of his goal in life. This certainly included knowledge
about the four basic rhythms of life which were associated with each of
the four strings of a lute, the quarters of the zodiac, the four elements,
four winds, four seasons, four quarters of the month, four quarters of the
day, four humours, four ages of life, four mental faculties, four faculties of
the vegetative soul, and four humoral temperaments of man. Against the
backdrop of this network of analogies, Ficino divides the animated human
body into three parts, based on the principal cavities of head, thorax, and
lower belly. In terms of cosmic analogies, the heart corresponds to the
sun [Fig. 2].21

18 Pl. Ti. 31b-32c corresponding to Ficino, CiT, ch. XVIII.

19 Cf. Burnett, “Spiritual Medicine” 86.
20 In his Timaeus Plato dealt with the physiological details of the union of human soul
and body: heart, lung, belly, liver, marrow, bone, flesh, sinews; structure of the head at
69–76; with plants as food; veins and air passages; respiration; movement without void;
projectiles and sounds; digestion at 77–80; with death and decay; physical and psychic
illnesses at 81–87; and with physical fitness and psychic well-being; harmony within the
individual and affinity with the cosmos at 87–90.
21 Ficino, CiT XXXXV, 1464, fol. 79 recto. The Timaean fourfold partition of the world
is reflected in the fourfold partition of man, who is composed of body, and three parts
of soul. This diagram of a threefold man is based on the three parts of the human soul.
Although this illustration in a treatise of Fludd (1574–1637) is a later visualisation of ideas
about the human anatomy, it is used here because it illustrates Ficino’s notion of physiol-
ogy as a branch of an all-embracing metaphysics quite well. Ficino and Fludd share the
view that, just as in the three realms of the macrocosm, the light of God is shining, so also
 the music of the pulse 401

Fig. 2. Threefold man. Robert Fludd, Utriusque cosmi maioris scilicet et minoris
metaphysica, physica atque technica historia in duo volumina secundum cosmi dif-
ferentiam diuisa (Oppenheim, Ære Johan-Theodori de Bry. Hieronymus: 1617/1621).
402 jacomien prins

In Ficino’s commentary on the Timaeus, this knowledge was combined

with musical knowledge about combinations of high- and low-sounding
lute strings which, if played together, resulted in mixtures analogous to
the mixing of the four qualities.22 His concept of health, then, was defined
in terms of the correct proportion between the parts. If there was an
excess or lack of a specific body-component, physicians as well as musi-
cians could remove it or add to or it, and thus restore the normal physical
and mental balance:
Very expert doctors mix particular liquids together in particular propor-
tions, and as a result many varied substances come together into a single
new form and in a wondrous way obtain a heavenly power in addition to
their original force; this transformation is evident in Mithridates’23 concoc-
tion and in Andromachus’24 remedy for animal bites. In the same way the
most skilful musicians blend together very low tones like cold substances,
and very high tones like hot ones, and moderately low tones like wet sub-
stances and moderately high tones like dry ones, these they blend together
in such proportions that a distinct single form is created out of many, and
that form obtains a heavenly virtue in addition to its auditory one.25

this is the case in the three realms of which man is composed. Furthermore, the highest
heaven corresponds to the head, the planetary spheres or ethereal heaven to the thorax,
and the elemental spheres to the abdomen.
22 Ficino probably made a slight error in his explanation. Against the background of the
traditional system of the four elements, humours and temperaments, medium low voices
already possess a moist quality. In order to temper them, they have to acquire a dry or a
hot quality. He could also have had in mind a slightly different system. Ficino’s ideas are
based on a system of harmonic analogies touching less directly on music as ordered sound
found, for example, in Ptolemy. See Ptolemy, Harmonics, tr. Barker A., Greek Musical Writ-
ings (Cambridge: 1989), vol. 2, 275–391.
Element Primary qualities Humour Temperament Tone
fire dry and hot yellow bile choleric high tone
air hot and moist blood sanguine medium high tone
water moist and cold phlegm phlegmatic medium low tone
earth cold and dry black bile melancholic low tone
23 Fear of poisoning prompted Mithridates the Great to develop a universal antidote,
with which he became the father of empirical toxicology. For the use of universal antidotes
in ancient medicine, see Nutton, Ancient Medicine 141–142, 177.
24 Andromachus developed the antidote ‘theriacus’ against bites of wild animals, which
was composed of opium powdered with some tannic bitter substance. For Ficino’s use
of ‘theriacus’, see Donald Beecher, “Ficino, Theriaca and the Stars”, in Allen M.J.B. et alii
(eds.), Marsilio Ficino. His Theology, His Philosophy, His Legacy (Leiden: 2002) 243–256.
25 Ficino, CiT ch. XXXI, 1455, fol. 70 verso ‘Quemadmodum medici peritissimi certos
invicem succos certa quadam ratione commiscent, per quam in unam novamque formam
plures atque diversae materiae coeant, et ultra vim elementalem virtutem quoque cael-
estem mirifice nanciscantur, quod in Mithridatis confectione et Andromachi theriaca est
manifestum; similiter artificiosissimi musici gravissimas voces, quasi materias frigidas,
 the music of the pulse 403

For example, if someone were agitated or depressed, a musical healer

would prescribe listening, at a beneficial astrological moment, to a high
and a low string (voce), which correspond to joy and sadness, because,
when played together, they could produce the effect of equanimity in the
actions of the soul.
In his commentary on the Timaeus, Ficino, following tradition, assigned
the seven notes of a musical scale to the seven planets.26 This is explained
as the result of music being the science that creates harmony between the
soul and the universe.27 In his letter On Musical Proportions, following al-
Kindi, Ficino developed this idea of analogy even further: the ratios which
create musical harmony (octave or dupla – 2:1; fifth or sesquialtera – 3:2;
and fourth or sesquitertia – 4:3) are said to have correspondences with the
aspects formed by the planets in the heavens.28 In this letter, Ficino even
associated particular musical modes with the 12 signs of the zodiac, which
were distributed among the four elements, the four humours, and were
alternatively male and female. This musico-astrological theory opened
many possibilities for Ficino. Given that he already had a good knowledge
of music and astrology, as a musical healer it was relatively easy for him
to diagnose a patient and to prescribe a cure.
It can now tentatively be concluded that Ficino was one of the first
musical healers who went beyond the general acceptance of the essen-
tial Platonic idea that the movements of the soul must be in harmony
with the movements of the universe.29 As is already known, in his Three
Books on Life he developed a theory about psychological cures through
the observation of particular astrological situations.30 I will now inves-
tigate how these fundamental ethical and astrological theoretical beliefs
influenced his interpretation of the concept of physiology as formulated
in Plato’s Timaeus or, to reverse this proposal, how this theoretical base
for music therapy was influenced by Timaean physiology.

voces item acutissimas, quasi calidas, rursus mediocriter graves, ut humidas, mediocriter
et acutas, ut siccas, tanta ratione contemperant, ut una quaedam forma fiat ex pluribus,
quae ultra vocalem virtutem consequatur insuper et caelestem’.
26 Ficino, CiT ch. XXXII, 1457, fol. 72 recto.
27 Pl. Ti. 34b–36d corresponding to Ficino, CiT ch. XXVIII–XXXVI.
28 For this letter, see De Rationibus Musicae in Kristeller P.O., Supplementum Ficinianum
54 (English translation of this letter by Farndell A. in Godwin J. (ed.), Harmony of the
Spheres. A Sourcebook of the Pythagorean Tradition in Music (Rochester, Vt.: 1993) 167).
29 Pl. Ti. 47d corresponding to Ficino, CiT ch. XXXXII.
30 This theory in Ficino’s Three Books on Life has been explored in Walker D.P., “Ficino’s
Spiritus and Music”, Annales Musicologiques 1 (1953), esp. at 140–150; and in Voss A.,
“Marsilio Ficino, The Second Orpheus”, in Horden, Music as Medicine, esp. at 161–168.
404 jacomien prins

Hearing and blood circulation. Two examples of the principle

of circular thrust

In his commentary on the Timaeus, Ficino tries to identify the transac-

tions through which music can help in promoting the return of the revo-
lutions of the human soul to their proper order (Timaeus 47c–e). In his
definition of sound and the sense of hearing Ficino still used a traditional
theory of sensation according to which the sense-organs are of the same
structure and substance as what is sensed. His ideas on the sense of hear-
ing are embedded in the network of analogies mentioned above:
For the moment, I make but passing mention of the fact that the followers of
Plato, in their scheme of the senses, match sight with fire, hearing with air,
smell with a vapour blended from air and water, taste with water, and touch
with earth: and they think that wondrous pleasure appears when the pro-
portions of something perceptible through its qualities and degrees match up
and harmonise at every point with the proportions which constitute the nature
of sense and spirit [. . .]. The followers of Plato locate in the constitution of
hearing one degree of earth; also, one of water, but with a third more; one
and a half degrees of fire; and lastly, two of air. Hence they consider that the
power to arise most strongly is that of the ratios of 3:4, 2:3 and 2:1.31
The sense of hearing of a normal, healthy person, then, is defined by
Ficino in terms of the correct proportions between the four elements: if
there is enough air in the sense of hearing, sounds can travel unhampered
through the human body, and thereby influence the human soul. Follow-
ing the Timaeus, in Ficino’s commentary the sense of hearing uses the
veins and the arteries inside the human body for sound propagation. This
is in fact the supposed physiological basis for the putative effectiveness of
Ficino’s music therapy.
The proportions in the pulse of a healthy well-balanced person were
also generally held to be 2:1, 3:2, and 4:3. Despite unanimous agreement
that these proportions did in some sense or other occur in the duration

31 Ficino Marsilio, De Rationibus Musicae, in Kristeller P.O., Supplementum Ficinianum

54 ‘Micto in presentia quod Platonici in sensibus disponendis igni visum, auditum aëri,
olfactum vapori ex aëre et aqua mixto, gustum aque, terre tactum accommodant. Atque
ubi proportio rei sensibilis per qualitates gradusque suos proportioni qua sensus ipsius
spiritusque complexio constat undique quadrat et consonat, ibi putant voluptatem mirifi-
cam provenire [. . .]. Platonici in ipsa auditus complexione unum terre collocant gradum,
aque vero unum quoque, sed tertiam insuper partem, ignis preterea unum atque dim-
idium, aëris denique duos. Hinc ergo vim proportionis sexquitertie, sexquialtere, duple
oriri maxime arbitrantur’ (English translation by Farndell A. in Godwin J. (ed.), Harmony
of the Spheres. A Sourcebook of the Pythagorean Tradition in Music 167).
 the music of the pulse 405

of heartbeats, many authors in the Middle Ages and early Renaissance

remained doubtful of the precise relationships involved.32 In order to
resolve this issue, Ficino consulted Plato’s Timaeus, convinced that a
definitive solution to these problems could be found there. If we recon-
struct Ficino’s interpretation of the music of the pulse, we see that it is
expressed in terms of rareness of density. Just as tones could be high or
low, so pulses could be high (rare) or low (dense). The rareness or density
of a pulse reflected the condition of someone’s blood. Healthy blood will
result in a regular harmonious pulse:
For a good disposition of the body (as I have said) eight parts of the blood
are necessary, four of phlegm [1:2], two of [yellow or red] bile [1:4] and one
of black bile [1:8]. Then so that the blood perhaps is warm by one degree and
the damp is also somewhat warmer, the bile is warm by three, and phlegm
damp by three. For thus the fluid of the phlegm together with the heat of the
bile seems to restore the right temperament of the blood. The veins are the
place of the denser blood, and the arteries of the lighter. The necessary light
phlegm drains from us into the veins below the blood, in order to temper or
recreate the blood. Red bile flows to the same place like some kind of thin
blood. In the same place, black bile subsides like a kind of tartaric acid33 of
blood, but all these things are necessary in the blood both for its tempering
and also for the nutrition of limbs similar to these [. . .].34
Expressed in proportional values, the composition of ideal blood is as fol-
lows: blood-phlegm must be in the proportion 1:2; blood-yellow/red bile in
the proportion 1:4; and blood-black bile in the proportion 1:8.
In line with Timaeus 80d–81e, in Ficino’s commentary blood is above all
an expression of cosmic harmony: like everything in the cosmos it is ruled
by the principle of concordia discors. This principle holds that cosmos is

32 Cf. Siraisi N.G., “The Music of Pulse in the Writings of Italian Academic Physicians
(Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries)” 693.
33 Tartaric acid is a calcareous acid which in grey or red form often develops on the
sides of wine barrels. As an invisible humour black bile was conceived of as a substance
in the blood possessing properties similar to those of tartaric acid.
34 Ficino, CiT, Distinctiones ch. LXXXVII, 1481, fol. 91 recto ‘Ad bonam corporis habi-
tudinem (ut ita dixerim) octo partes sanguinis necessariae sunt, pituitae quatuor, bilis
duae, atrae bilis una. Item ut sanguis forte uno sit gradu calidus atque humidus forte etiam
paulo calidior. Bilis tribus calida, pituita tribus humida. Sic enim humor pituitae cum bilis
calore temperiem sanguinis referre videtur. Locus sanguinis crassioris venae sunt. Arteriae
vero subtilioris. Subtilis pituita necessaria nobis sub sanguine venis illabitur, ad sanguinem
vel temperandum, vel recreandum. Eodem confluit rubea bilis quasi tenuis quidam sanguis.
­Ibidem subsidet quasi faecula quaedam sanguinis, atra bilis, necessaria vero haec omnia
sunt in sanguine, cum ad ipsius temperamentum, turn etiam ad membrorum his similium
­nutrimentum [. . .]’.
406 jacomien prins

a reconciliation of opposites in which the parts retain their autonomous

identity even though they function harmoniously in a stable system.35 So,
relatively noxious substances like black bile and phlegm are necessary to
temper the blood. But, given that the human body is a harmonic system
in itself, the processes of blood circulation and digestion are designed in
such a way that an overdose of, for example, phlegm was exuded automat-
ically on a daily basis: ‘Thin phlegm that arises every day, though mixed
with blood, drips out through sweat and tears’.36
Whereas in a healthy person the blood has a self-cleansing power, the
blood of an unhealthy person loses this, as a result of which the natural
process of blood circulation is interrupted: ‘Sometimes the pore of the
bone is so narrowed or obstructed that they can neither release dense
vapours nor allow nourishment to enter’.37
When the veins or arteries were silted up, this resulted in dense blood,
with a low pulse. A physician with a musical training, then, could hear
in the music of the pulse if the blood was well-tempered and running
smoothly. If the blood circulation was in some way slow or restricted, so
that the other humours accumulated in the blood instead of leaving it in
the form of sweat and tears, a musical healer could advise listening to musi-
cal modes of a stimulating, or even agitating, nature. In these cases, music
functioned as an antidote against noxious substances in the blood.38
Furthermore, blood is an animated substance which contains spirit
(spiritus), an intermediary entity between the human body and soul which
facilitates communication between the different corporeal and incorpo-
real substances of which man is created. The incorporeal-corporeal spirit
can intermingle with earthly matter and bring about changes in its form.
In his commentary on the Timaeus Ficino explains the function of spirit
as follows:
Natural heat has its tinder in the heart, and spiritus, that is some [rare]
vapour of the blood, has it in the same place, as it is created by the same
heat from the most subtle blood. Each penetrates the whole body with both
a remarkable efficacy and rareness. Because spiritus is life-giving, it creates
the expanding and contracting motion of the heart, and for that reason it

35 Ficino, CiT ch. XXVIIII, 1453, fol. 69 recto.

36 Ficino, CiT, Distinctiones ch. LXXXXI, 1481, fol. 91 recto ‘Subtilis pituita quotidie
nascens, neque dum permixta sanguini, per sudorem exstillat et lachrimas’.
37 Ficino, CiT, Distinctiones ch. LXXXXII, 1482, fol. 91 verso ‘Nonnunquam poris ossis
adeo coarctantur vel obstruuntur, ut nec emittere graves vapores possint, nec admittere
nutrimentum’.
38 See note 25 above.
 the music of the pulse 407

revolves by some perpetual motion, and through its motion jumps back and
forth, and it always arouses heat by its motion and carries it through every-
thing with it.39
Ficino seeks to defend Plato’s anatomical idea that the arteries are able
to take in healing substances, such as musical spirits, and can relieve the
body of pathogenic waste:
These [arteries] now, when they are dilated, absorb open air through the
whole body both to cool down the hot spirits as well as to generate ani-
mal spirit. [But when the arteries are] compressed, they purge [the arteries]
from the saturated evaporations of the spirit that had been absorbed. Such
a process is characterised [by Galen] as the real perspiration.40
Ficino seeks to defend this view on the specific interrelationship of respi-
ration and blood circulation, because it provides him with an anatomical
foundation for his theory of musical healing. Spirit, in his opinion, is also
an essential component of the air of which musical sound is composed.
On the question of why music is capable, more than anything else, of
influencing the human soul and body, Ficino responds:
The response to this would be that musical consonance occurs in the ele-
ment which is the mean of all [i.e. air], and reaches the ears through motion,
in fact circular motion such that it is not surprising that it should be fitting
to the soul, which is both the mean of things, and the origin of circular
motion. Add to this the fact that musical sound, more than anything else
perceived by the senses, as if alive, takes the desire, sense, and thought of
the singer’s or player’s soul and conveys them to the listeners’ souls; thus it
pre-eminently agrees with the soul.41

39 Ficino, CiT, Distinctiones ch. LXXX, 1479, fol. 89 verso ‘Calor naturalis fomitem habet
in corde, ibidem spiritus, id est sanguineus quidam vapor, ab ipso calore ex subtilissimo
sanguine procreatus. Uterque mira cum efficacia turn etiam tenuitate corpus totum pen-
etrat. Spiritus quia et vitalis est, et motu cordis dilatante contrahenteque creatus, ideo per-
petuo quodam motu revolvitur, perque meatus omnes prosilit atque resilit, suoque motu
calorem semper excitat secumque per omnia transfert’.
40 Ficino, CiT ch. XXXXVI, 1484, fol. 79 verso ‘Quae quidem dilatatae externum aerem
per totum corpus accipiunt et ad spiritus ferventes refrigerandos, et ad animalem spiritum
generandum. Compressae vero caliginosos vapores spiritus insertos expurgant. Eiusmodi
motum perspirationem proprie nominat’.
41 Ficino, CiT ch. XXVIIII, 1453, fol. 69 recto ‘Responderetur ad haec musicam conso-
nantiam in elemento fieri omnium medio; perque motum, et hunc quidem orbicularem
ad aures provenire, ut non mirum sit eam animae convenire tum mediae rerum, tum
motionis principio in circuitu revolubili. Adde quod concentus potissimum inter illa quae
sentiuntur quasi animatus affectum sensuumque cogitationem animae sive canentis sive
sonantis perfert in animos audientes. Ideoque in primis cum animo congruit’.
408 jacomien prins

Thus, the structural similarity between musical and human spirit accounts
for the circular transportation of music through the human body. In a
literal way, listening to music is a remedy to replenish the human spirit.
The correct amount of spirit inside the human body provides for a tem-
pered blood circulation as well as for the smooth removal of waste matter,
like an overdose of black bile.42 In Ficino’s circular model of the sense of
hearing between the head and the liver the arteries are responsible for
bringing the natural spirits from the liver to the heart and subsequently
the vital spirits from the heart to the base of the brain, where they are
transformed into extremely rare animal spirits. These spirits are the
instruments through which the brain receives the external sense impres-
sions which, when they arrive at the brain, are transformed from simple
sound images carried by vital spirits into musical mirror images carried
by animal spirits [Fig. 3].
Finally, demons play a very active role in Ficino’s explanation of physi-
ological processes.43 The combined explanation of the sense of hearing
and blood circulation constituted for him the perfect channel for demonic
interplay:
We believe that the motion of such perturbation occurs for the most part
in the following manner. Clearly the airy demons move the airy spirit in us,
and when the spirit has so to speak vibrated, the humours too are moved in
the body and images are aroused in the fantasy. But how? In the sanguine
body certainly the demons entice the rational soul to empty pleasures by
often moving the blood and the images in a way resembling blood.44
In the anatomy of the Timaeus, the lowest part of the irrational soul is kept
as far as possible from the head, the seat of thought and ­deliberation.45

42 Traditionally black bile was considered as something harmful, because it was sup-
posed to cause melancholy. The literature about Ficino’s famous reformation of this doc-
trine is vast, but particularly illustrative in the context of this article is Kümmel, Musik und
Medizin 285–306, esp. 288–290.
43 The classical treatment of Ficino’s demonology is in Walker D.P., Spiritual and
Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella (London: 1958). Although Ficino tried in his
commentary on the Timaeus as well as in his other texts to distance his own beliefs from
unorthodox ones, his writings resurrect the possibility that music may be used in incanta-
tions, magical and demonic rituals, and other practices seen as ‘suspect’ from a Christian
perspective.
44 Ficino, Theologia Platonica XVI.VII.18 ‘Perturbationis huius motum ita potissimum
fieri arbitramur. Movent sane aereum in nobis spiritum aerei demone, quo quidem quasi
vibrato et humores movementur in corpore et in phantasia immagine excitantur. Sed
quonam pacto? Nempe in sanguineo corpore sanguinem imaginesque quodammodo simi-
les saepius commoventus ad inanes animum voluptates alliciunt’ [English translation by
Allen M.J.B., Platonic Theology 5, XVI.VII.18, 308–309].
45 Pl. Ti. 70d–72b.
 the music of the pulse 409

Mens, Intellectus
Reason
sense of hearing
(transmission of
sound images)
Animal spirit

Heart

Vital spirit

Liver
sense of inner hearing
(transmission of Natural spirit
sound images)

Fig. 3. Blood circulation and the sense of hearing following the same archetypal laws of
circular thrust. Based on Plato’s Cosmology. The Timaeus of Plato, tr./comm. MacDonald
Cornford F. (London-New York: 1937).

It has no understanding of intellect and reason, and even when it gains

some awareness of such things it is not in its nature to discern them.46
The lower part of the irrational soul is influenced, instead, by images and
phantasms.47 By making the liver dense and smooth and shiny, the gods
in the Timaeus charged with the creation of man enabled this organ to
serve as a mirror which reflects the power of thoughts, transmitted from
the mind, receiving and emitting these thoughts as ‘images’. In Ficino’s
commentary on the Timaeus this passage provides a clue to the way in
which music presents itself to the part of the soul responsible for percep-
tion and emotion. Hearing is envisaged as a movement that is transmitted
between the head and the liver, and the perceptive irrational soul can
act as a receptor for anything that is reflected from the liver’s smooth

46 Pl. Ti. 70d–71a.

47 Pl. Ti. 71a–b.
410 jacomien prins

surface. Although in his commentary Ficino does not openly adhere to

this Pythagorean doctrine, he deals with it in detail:
In fact concerning the liver itself you have to observe the remarkable opin-
ion of the Pythagoreans, namely that this organ, made of a certain hard-
ness and an equally shining softness, is harmoniously tuned in such a way
that it receives the images of things in the manner of a mirror and easily
reflects them.48
Even though Ficino had a genuine interest in the natural phenomena of
human life, he could see them only through the lenses of his metaphysical
theory. The ‘nature’ of which Ficino speaks is not our observed nature, but
the supernatural nature of the intelligible harmonic realm. ‘Supernatural’
hearing in which demonic influence on the liver was involved, therefore,
was still a necessary concept in Ficino’s account of music’s power over
man’s soul.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I would like to return to Fig. 1, where a physician is taking

the pulse of a plague victim, and ask whether Ficino’s study and inter-
pretation of the ideas found in the Timaeus about human physiology and
health would have increased insight into the medical condition or prog-
nosis of the patient depicted there. At first sight, the answer would appear
to be in the affirmative. In Ficino’s treatises a critical attitude towards the
authoritative writers of the past comes out in occasional paragraphs, an
attitude which could almost be regarded as ‘early modern’. In his treatise
The Counsel against the Plague, for example, on the basis of his own per-
sonal experience with plague victims, he strongly argues against medical
authorities who hold that this illness was transmitted through the thin-
nest and purest air, that is, spirit or ether, which, according to Ficino,
ran counter to the most elemental physical laws and against experience.49
But, if we take a closer look, it is clear that Ficino’s personal experience

48 Ficino, CiT ch. XXXXV, 1465, fol. 79 recto ‘Verum de hoc ipso iecore miram Pythago-
ricorum notabis opinionem, videlicet id membrum ex certa soliditate et clara pariter leni-
tate, sic esse contemperatum, ut speculi modo imagines rerum accipiat, facile admodum
atque reddat’.
49 Ficino Marsilio, Il Consilio contro la Pestilentia (Florence: 1481) 2 verso, quoted in the
introduction of the edition of this text by Katinis T., Medicina e Filosofia in Marsilio Ficino.
Il Consilio contro la Pestilenza (Rome: 2007) 80.
 the music of the pulse 411

and observations were deeply rooted in his metaphysical conception of

the cosmos and, as a consequence of this, he could not allow spirit or
ether to be somehow impure, because that would deprive him of the theo-
retical base for his healing practice.
Against this backdrop, it comes as no surprise that, where Ficino reports
his own healing practices, he banishes any comments about failure: such
an outcome is usually attributed to the failure of the patient to follow
his prescriptions properly. As an example of this rhetorical strategy, for
example, he warns his readers not to follow the superstition of one of
his patients who thought that, if one had recovered successfully from the
plague once, one would be immune for the future:
In that year, in the month of September, I healed a woman from the illness
[i.e. the plague], subsequently, when she felt healthy [again] like any other
person, she talked to victims of the plague and became ill again after eigh-
teen days, and died because she could not take her medicine in time.50
So, from the total absence of doubt or even uncertainty about his diag-
noses and cures, we may gather that Ficino was fully convinced of the
truth of his own physiological and medical knowledge, which was based
on traditional ways of thinking in terms of cosmic analogies. Even if
Ficino could have deduced from the music of the pulse that a patient
had the plague – which has, as one of its symptoms, a high fever, and
­consequently a heightened heartbeat – and gave him an adequate thera-
peutic prescription, for example of a musical antidote, nevertheless, given
the total absence of an understanding of the plague, in my opinion the
recovery of the patient would still be down to good luck.
While I would argue that, by the second half of the fifteenth century,
humanist learning had begun to penetrate the discipline of medicine
itself, this development had very little impact on traditional humoral
pathology. This lack of influence is not difficult to understand. Scholars
like Ficino, who were versed in late medieval medicine, continued to rely
on traditional humoral medicine, because it was a sophisticated discipline
with a tested method of putting it into practice.51 In this way, the medical
tradition hindered the assimilation of new texts, such as Plato’s Timaeus,

50 Ficino, Consilio 47 recto, in Katinis T., Medicina e Filosofia 81 ‘[. . .] in questo anno, nel
mese di septembre, io liberai una donna dal morbo, poi, sendo sana come qualunche altra
persona, conversò con amorbati et rammorbò doppo giorni diciocto et perì non havendo
le medicine a tempo’.
51 This conclusion supports the results of Park, Doctors and Medicine 237–239.
412 jacomien prins

and new approaches. Esoteric interpretations concerning the music of the

pulse were of little or no use for doctors inside the context of the medical
faculties of the Italian universities, a system which had been in place for
two centuries. This explains why no coherent school of medical human-
ism or Renaissance medicine emerged until the sixteenth century; and,
when it did, Ficino’s music therapy played no part in it. His musico-thera-
peutical ideas, however, became immensely popular in the sixteenth cen-
tury in elite circles all over Europe. Even today, Plato’s aversion to regular
medicine and his preference for a healthy regime informed by a profound
knowledge of human physiology52 – which experienced a revival in West-
ern culture partly as a result of Ficino’s commentary on it – remains a
voice in contemporary debates about health and medicine.

52 Pl. Ti. 87–90.

 the music of the pulse 413

Selective bibliography

Burnett C., “ ‘Spiritual Medicine’: Music and Healing in Islam and its Influence in Western
Medicine”, in Horden P. (ed.), Music as Medicine. The History of Music Therapy since
Antiquity (Aldershot etc.: 2000) 85–91.
Burnett C. – Fend M. – Gouk P. (eds.), The Second Sense. Studies in Hearing and Musical
Judgement from Antiquity to the Seventeenth Century (London: 1991). 
Ficino Marsilio, Commentaria in Platonem (Florence: 1496).
——, De Rationibus Musicae: in P.O. Kristeller, Supplementum Ficinianum 54 (English
translation of this letter by Farndell A. in Godwin J. (ed.), Harmony of the Spheres.
A Sourcebook of the Pythagorean Tradition in Music (Rochester, Vt.: 1993) 167).
——, Theologia Platonica: trs. Allen M.J.B. – Warden J.; Latin text eds. Hankins J. – Bowen W.
(2001–2006), Platonic Theology, Cambridge, Mass.
——, De vita libri tres: A critical eds/trs. Kaske C.V. – Clark J.R. (1989), Three Books on Life,
Binghamton, NY.
Gouk P. (ed.), Musical Healing in Cultural Contexts (Aldershot: 2000).
Hankins J., Plato in the Italian Renaissance (Leiden: 1990).
——, “The Study of the Timaeus in Early Renaissance Italy”, in Grafton A. – Siraisi N. (eds.),
Natural Particulars. Nature and the Disciplines in Renaissance Europe (Cambridge, MA
etc.: 1999) 77–95.
Katinis T., “Bibliografia Ficiniana: Studi ed Edizioni delle Opere di Marsilio Ficino dal 1986”,
Accademia 2 (2000) 101–136 [A bibliography from 1986 to 2000; updated annually].
——, Medicina e Filosofia in Marsilio Ficino. Il Consilio contro la Pestilenza (Rome: 2007).
Kristeller P.O., “The Scholastic Background of Marsilio Ficino with an Edition of Unpub-
lished Texts” [‘De Sono’], Traditio. Studies in Ancient and Medieval history (1944) 257–
318.
Kümmel W.F., “Der Puls und das Problem der Zeitmessung in der Geschichte der Medizin”,
Medizinhistorisches Journal 9 (1974) 1–22.
——, Musik und Medizin. Ihre Wechselbeziehungen in Theorie und Praxis von 800 bis 1800
(Freiburg [Breisgau] etc.: 1977).
Nutton V., Ancient Medicine (London: 2004).
——, “De Placitis Hippocratis et Platonis in the Renaissance”, in Manuli P. – Vegetti M.
(eds.), Le Opera Psicologiche di Galeno (Naples: 1988) 281–309.
Park K., Doctors and Medicine in Early Renaissance Florence (Princeton: 1985).
Plato, Timaeus: tr./comm. Cornford F.M. (1937), Plato’s Cosmology. The Timaeus of Plato,
London.
Prins J.W., Echoes of an Invisible World. Marsilio Ficino and Francesco Patrizi on Cosmic
Order and Music Theory (Alblasserdam: 2009).
Siraisi N.G., “The Music of Pulse in the Writings of Italian Academic Physicians (Four-
teenth and Fifteenth Centuries)”, Speculum 50 (1975) 689–710.
Voss A., Magic, Astrology and Music. The Background to Marsilio Ficino’s Astrological
Music Therapy and his Role as a Renaissance Magus, unpublished dissertation (London:
1992).
——, “Marsilio Ficino, The Second Orpheus”, in Horden P. (ed.), Music as Medicine. The
History of Music Therapy since Antiquity (Aldershot etc.: 2000) 154–172.
Walker D.P., “Ficino’s Spiritus and Music”, Annales Musicologiques 1 (1953) 131–150 [repr.
in Gouk P. (ed.), Music, Spirit and Language in the Renaissance (London: 1985)].
——, Music, Spirit and Language in the Renaissance, ed. Gouk P. (London: 1985).
——, Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella (London: 1958).
 ‘FOR THE LIFE OF A CREATURE IS IN THE BLOOD’ (LEVITICUS 17:11).
SOME CONSIDERATIONS ON BLOOD AS THE SOURCE OF LIFE
IN SIXTEENTH-CENTURY RELIGION AND MEDICINE
AND THEIR INTERCONNECTIONS

Catrien Santing

Summary

This article studies the different meanings of blood, focusing on the Early Mod-
ern period in which the unravelling of its secrets worked not only at a medical
level, but also in relationship to philosophy and religion. My points of departure
are the works of two sixteenth-century medical authors, the Dutchman Levinus
Lemnius and the Italian Andrea ­Cesalpino. It is claimed that they were much
more interested in physiology than in anatomy, and that only in that context
can we fully appreciate the value of blood. Inspired by recent work on the role
of blood in religious history, such as Caroline Walker Bynum’s Wonderful Blood,
I present blood as a substance that, due to its immense value, tended to lose its
materiality and took on spiritual aspects, which made devotional interpretations
inevitable. By exposing its non-corporeal aspects, the association with God, espe-
cially with the Holy Spirit and its terrestrial emanation, becomes evident. No mat-
ter how much they exploited not only Aristotle, but also Galen, the arguments
of both Lemnius and Cesalpino had at their centre a spiritualisation of blood. In
his extensive regimina, the more traditional Levinus Lemnius emphasised the
spiritus vitalis that determined the quality of blood. At its most refined stage, it
approached the spiritus universalis, and almost converged with the Holy Spirit.
Likewise, the Aristotelian Cesalpino placed the heart and the spiritualised human
fuel, blood, again and again at the centre, bringing everything back to its origin,
God: the deus rotator.

In recent publications on the Early Modern period, anatomy has been at

the centre of attention. The opening up of bodies during the Renaissance,
which took place despite existing taboos or merely because of an urge to
find material evidence for either medical complaints or religious miracles,
has proved to be a fruitful subject of research from a medical-historical
perspective. In this respect, the ingenuity of Andreas Vesalius’ self-­display
still reverberates today. This self-acclaimed and, until now, widely-
endorsed view that anatomy played the star role may explain the relative
neglect of blood in medical-historical studies. The fact of the matter is
that, until the seventeenth century when Harvey made his breakthrough
416 catrien santing

on its circulation, blood was a minor topic in elite western medicine.1

Anatomical textbooks hardly dealt with the blood and, when they did,
the authors mainly enlarged upon the spirits it carried through the body.
This does not mean that blood was completely disregarded in premod-
ern medical science and practice. Indeed, I would argue the reverse. But,
in order to expose the value of blood for that period, medical historians
should avoid the temptations of anatomy and study early modern physiol-
ogy in combination with natural philosophy.
This is what Jean Fernel did in his Physiologia (1542), a survey that care-
fully discusses the generation and function of blood, as well as the differ-
ent varieties of the liquid itself. In his comprehensive Universa medicina
(1567), Fernel defined physiology as follows: ‘So as the five parts of a
complete medicine are set in order, physiology will be the first of all; it
concerns itself with the nature of a wholly healthy human being, all the
powers and functions’.2 This statement shows that, during the sixteenth
century, physiology was judged to be far more important than anatomy.
Early modern anatomy investigated the parts of the body that are within
reach of the senses. By exploring their structure, action and use, anato-
mists tried to answer the question of how they functioned, and in this
way attempted to unravel the sources and secrets of life.3 Physiology built
on the results of anatomical research, but itself aimed higher, claiming
to penetrate the nature of things. Its central principle was to establish
why the body was constituted and functioned as it did. Its practitioners
showed by logical demonstration how, as a branch of natural philosophy,
it revealed not only the causal operations of the body, but also the causes
of human nature. Of course, at this time anatomy and physiology were
related, sometimes being practised by the same person. For this paper,
however, it seems crucial to carefully distinguish between them and to
concentrate on the latter.

1 Cunningham A. “The Principality of Blood: William Harvey, the Blood, and the Early
Transfusion Experiments”, in: Santing C. – Touber J. (eds.), Blood Symbol Liquid (Louvain:
2011) 193–205.
2 Forrester J. tr/ann., The Physiologia of Jean Fernel (Philadelphia: 2003) 5.
3 This means that present-day (experimental) physiology resembled what was then
labelled anatomy. This confusion is carefully unravelled in Cunningham A., “The Pen and
the Sword: Recovering the Disciplinary Identity of Physiology and Anatomy before 1800 I:
Old Physiology – The Pen”, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C. Studies in
History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 33 (2002) 631–665 and idem,
“The Pen and the Sword: Recovering the Disciplinary Identity of Physiology and Anatomy
before 1800 II: Old Anatomy – The Sword”, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part
C. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 34 (2003) 51–76.
 blood as the source of life 417

In this chapter, two sixteenth-century medical authors, Levinus Lem-

nius and Andrea Cesalpino, will be closely examined in order to highlight
the value of blood in its various connotations for early modern medical
doctors. While other doctors could have been selected, these two provide
a useful combination: one doctor writing for the general public and living
in Reformation Northern Europe, the other highly academically trained
and practising in the service of the papal court. Both doctors were inter-
ested in anatomy and followed its findings, but appear not to have been
anatomists themselves. Instead they pursued Fernel’s line of argument
and fully developed their physiological concepts in accordance with the
foundations of natural philosophy.
In the analysis of their works, a third factor will be brought in, that of
religion. Both authors not only lived in an era of great religious upheaval,
but were also intensely devout and as such heavily engaged with the
developments of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation respectively.
Although a canon in later life, the Dutch Levinus Lemnius was under
suspicion of sympathy towards the Reformation; indeed, his works were
eventually placed on the Spanish-Dutch index of forbidden books.4 His
name features in Piero Camporesi’s book, Il sugo della vita (1984), which
embraces all aspects of the liquid, blood.5 Although presented in a dispa-
rate, at times chaotic, form, this brief and sketchy work already touches
upon many of the ideas about blood explored by Caroline Walker Bynum
and Miri Rubin, to which I shall return shortly. The title is almost untrans-
latable, since its English translation, Juice of Life, clearly pales before the
original. Camporesi referred to blood as eternally moving and simmer-
ing, hailing it as the treasury of human life, just as is the case with the
most common (red) sauce in the Italian kitchen, sugo bolognese, the
product of Camporesi’s hometown of Bologna. The book usefully devel-
ops the positive, not to say nutritious, wholesome and hearty reminis-
cences of blood, not only in the lives of saints – which formed a priceless
source for ­Camporesi – but also in many medical treatises, such as the
­comprehensive Regimina of Lemnius, which were even translated into
Italian openly a few years after their publication. The second protagonist
of this paper is the Italian medical professor, papal physician and devout
Catholic, Andrea Cesalpino. He, rather than William Harvey, has been

4 Reusch Fr.H., Der Index der verbotenen Bücher ein Beitrag zur Kirchen- und Literatur-
geschichte (Bonn: 1883) I, 497.
5 Camporesi P., Il sugo della vita. Simbolismo e magia del sangue (Milan: 1984).
418 catrien santing

claimed by some Italian authors as the discoverer of the circulation of

blood,6 a claim that has been refuted definitively by authors such as Walter
Pagel and Jerome Bylebyl.7 By focusing on Lemnius’ and Cesalpino’s views
on blood, it will become apparent that there is a relationship between
the traditional homo sanguinicus – so widely known from medieval and
Renaissance medical consilia and regimina as well as from research on the
heart and the circulation of blood by sixteenth-century anatomists – and
the blood dripping from the body of the Crucified Jesus or Man of Sorrows
celebrated in European art and devotional treatises dating from the same
period as the works of Lemnius and Cesalpino.
While blood has been relatively neglected in medical history, there has
been considerable recent enthusiasm for it in more mainstream histori-
cal publications. The precious liquid, however, is to be encountered over-
whelmingly in the field of recent history of religion, notably in the history
of its customs, practices and rituals. In the slipstream of the history of the
body over the last twenty years, this field has seen an avalanche of publica-
tions on blood. Here it will suffice to mention Miri Rubin’s Corpus Christi.
The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture and Caroline Walker Bynum’s latest
book Wonderful Blood, as they are the foremost protagonists of this line of
approach, but of course there are many, many more.8 Both authors played
a pivotal role in the ‘bodily turn’ in the history of the church and theology.
Rubin was one of the first to call the attention of cultural historians to the
phenomenon of transubstantiation. According to this thirteenth-century
church doctrine, all of Christ, both body and blood, was transubstantiated
in the consecrated wine and bread. Walker Bynum’s book represents a
slight shift of orientation for this prolific author. She supplemented her
usual corporal concerns with scrutiny of a far less tangible substance: Holy
Blood and its veneration. Many of her assertions yield fruitful insights for
medical historians and will therefore be used here to draw attention to

6 Archieri J.P., The Circulation of Blood and Andrea Cesalpino of Arezzo (New York: s.a.)
and Piccini S., Andrea Cesalpino scopritore, William Harvey promulgatore della circolazione
sanguigna (Milan: 1963).
7 Pagel W., William Harvey’s Biological Ideas (New York: 1967), esp. 169–209 and idem,
“The Claim of Cesalpino and the First and Second Editions of his Peripatetic Questions”,
History of Science 13 (1975) 130–138; Bylebyl J.J., “Cesalpino and Harvey on Portal Circula-
tion” in Debus A. (ed.), Science, Medicine and Society in the Renaissance (New York: 1973)
I, 39–52 and idem, “Nutrition, Quantification and Circulation”, Bulletin of the History of
Medicine 51 (1977) 369–385.
8 Rubin M., Corpus Christi. The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge: 1991);
Bildhauer B., Medieval Blood (Cardiff: 2006) and Walker Bynum C., Wonderful Blood. Theol-
ogy and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond (Philadelphia PA: 2007).
 blood as the source of life 419

certain aspects of sixteenth-century medical views on blood. Much of

Wonderful Blood is dedicated to how, why and when blood became a pre-
eminent subject in Northern European art. The concern with the blood of
Christ and its equivalents in other human bodies, and even in mammals,
also provided an opportunity to explore what were then considered to be
crucial philosophical and religious issues, which Walker Bynum explores.
She shows that the precious liquid provided a focus for intense debate
about the nature of matter, humanity, God and the entire universe. Since
medical doctors and other authors shared a common ground of cultur-
ally agreed assumptions, a similar fascination with blood can be found in
medical publications of that time, where medical and religious reasoning
are amalgamated in exploring the numerous different notions and conno-
tations of blood.9 In addition to the traditional medical authorities, writers
quoted freely from biblical, hagiographical and literary sources and almost
united these into one single perspective. In his Anatomical Renaissance,
Andrew Cunningham proposed studying the sixteenth-century enterprise
of investigating nature in precisely these terms, considering that ‘nature’
was religiously steered and understood. In the present article, too, I work
from the assumption that in the sixteenth century there was no funda-
mental divide between science and religion.10
Walker Bynum’s observations compel us to look differently at the
publications by sixteenth-century medical doctors.11 To begin with, she
contests the idea that, in the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the
connotations of blood were principally negative: suffering, mutilation
of the body and violence, all manifestations which carry undertones of
death.12 Looking at the many images of blood piety, such as the Masses
of Saint Gregory or the many Men of Sorrows which were tremendously
popular in this period, it is clear that blood emerges as streaming, flowing

   
9 Siraisi N.G., “Life Sciences and Medicine in the Renaissance World” in Grafton A.
(ed.), Rome Reborn. The Vatican Library & Renaissance Culture (Washington: 1993) 169–198
and idem, “Signs and Evidence: Autopsy and Sanctity in Late Sixteenth-Century Italy” in
Siraisi N.G. (ed.), Medicine and the Italian Universities, 1250–1600 (Leiden: 2001) 356–380.
10 Cunningham A., The Anatomical Renaissance. The Resurrection of the Anatomical
Projects of the Ancients (Aldershot: 1997). Valuable are also idem, “Sir Thomas Browne
and his Religio Medici: Reason, Nature and Religion” in Grell O.P. – Cunningham A.
(eds.), Medicine and Religion in Seventeenth-Century England (Aldershot: 1997) 12–55 and
Helm J. – ­Winkelmann A. (eds.), Religious Confessions and the Sciences in the Sixteenth
Century (Leiden: 2001).
11 For this argument see Walker Bynum C., Wonderful Blood, the introduction, “A Frenzy
for Blood” 1–23 and ch. vii “Living Blood Poured Out”.
12 Walker Bynum, Wonderful Blood 14–15.
420 catrien santing

or even ­welling up [Fig. 1]. It is not dried in clots, as would be expected in

case of the depiction of the corpse. What we encounter in these images
is sanguis, that is, living blood, rather than cruor, coagulating blood, to
use the distinction that many authors preferred.13 In images and in the
scriptural renderings of many visions, Jesus is not dead. The wound in his
side, created by the lance well before he breathed his last, bleeds copi-
ously and usually functions as the central feature. This was interpreted
as the ‘opening up of Christ’, which gave humanity access to the sacra-
ments through the door of life, leading to the possibility of eternal life.
Blood in its entirety functioned as the secret of life and as food for the
human soul.
Walker Bynum’s section on ‘Blood as sedes animae’ develops this rea-
soning.14 The title refers to Leviticus 17.11, Anima carnis in sanguine est (For
the life of a creature is in the blood). Here Walker Bynum discusses popu-
lar preaching texts, implying that blood was valued as the transporter and
source of life. As a vehicle of the soul, blood was allegorically, symbolically
and, I would like to add, also literally, fastened to spirit. Whereas in much
discourse the body/blood contrast illustrates the opposition of body and
soul, Walker Bynum’s material shows that it is better to see the two as
connected and bring them into harmony. This is what the Carthusian,
Petrus Dorlandus († 1507), did in his devotional treatise Viola animae,
very popular throughout the sixteenth century. A very special donation, a
blood transfusion by Jesus to humankind, is described as follows:
He wished to be wounded that he might repair our wound and poured out
his blood that he might by grace revive to life those only half alive. For just
as the life of all ensouled creatures is in the blood, so the life of the just per-
son comes through the blood of Christ, which he therefore in compassionate
generosity pours out from his body so that you can drink it with your mouth
and slake your thirst from it in your heart.15
The story about an alleged blood transfusion given to the dying Pope Inno-
cent VIII in 1492 recorded by the chronicler of scandals, Stefano Infessura,
proves my point of blood being the pre-eminent life-giving potion in more
than one sense. Three small boys are said to have donated their blood,
resulting in their own demise and that of the Pope. While the annalist

13 Walker Bynum, Wonderful Blood 17–18.

14 Walker Bynum, Wonderful Blood 161–166.
15 Walker Bynum, Wonderful Blood 163.
 blood as the source of life 421

Fig. 1. Jacob van Oostsanen, Man of Sorrows, ca. 1520.

422 catrien santing

did not reveal the details of the transfusion, it seems likely this was by
drinking the blood.16
Here, therefore, I will be discussing blood as the source and seat of life
in its fullest sense. Following the line of reasoning used by both Cunning-
ham and Walker Bynum, I will then show that it needs to be separated in
some ways from the body. I will argue that historical, medical-­historical
and religious-historical studies on blood have understood the liquid rather
too materially, too bodily and too literally. Since blood was deemed to be
involved with the soul, a more holistic approach appears justified. This
concurs with Cunningham’s allegation that anatomy in the western tra-
dition was essentially about the soul, a statement that prevails in early
modern medicine as a whole.17 According to premodern medical and
theological discourses it carried spirit or spirits – with and without a capi-
tal S – through the body.

Bloud and spirite the treasure of lyfe18

Levinus Lemnius (1506–1568) studied in Louvain, practised in Zee-

land and travelled to Italy as well as to London.19 He was the author of
lengthy medical works. Although they were originally written in Latin,
their content was of a practical and advisory nature. With amazing speed,
these voluminous publications were translated into the vernacular and
remained in print in Italian, French, English and German until the end of
the seventeenth century.20 Evidently, many readers longed for substantial,
but at the same time legible, information on how to procure and preserve
health and happiness. It was precisely these qualities that made Lemnius’
encyclopaedic works – which are densely packed with quotations from

16 Infessura S., Diario della città di Roma di Stefano Infessura scriba senato. Nuova ediz-
ione a cura di Oreste Tommasini (Rome: 1890) 275–276.
17 Cunningham, Anatomical Renaissance, esp. 196–197.
18 Lemnius Levinus, The touchstone of complexions. Expedient and profitable for all such
as bee desirous and carefull of their bodily health. Contayning most ready tokens, whereby
every one may perfectly try, and thorowly know, as well the exact state, habit, disposition, and
institution of his body outwardly: as also the inclinations, affections, motions, and desires of
his minde inwardly (London, Jo. Streater and Humphrey Moseley: 1633) 86.
19 Hoorn C.M. van, Levinus Lemnius (1505/1568). Zestiende-eeuws Zeeuws geneesheer
(Amsterdam: 1978).
20 On this phenomenon in England: Slack P., “Mirrors of Health and Treasures of Poor
Men: The Uses of the Vernacular Medical Literature of Tudor England” in Webster Ch.
(ed.), Health, Medicine and Mortality in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge: 1979) 237–242.
 blood as the source of life 423

ancient medical and literary authors as well as from the Bible and the
church fathers – so attractive. His De miraculis occultis naturae (first edi-
tion, Antwerp 1559) considers the signs, sources and causes of the several
wonders of nature. The book attempts to explain these by observation
and reasoning but was aimed to demonstrate and glorify the vastness and
perfection of God’s Creation, with man as the summit, paying due tribute
to the leading role of the soul. Tellingly, chapter xi is entitled ‘The soul
of man comes not from the parent’s seed but is infused by God’.21 It is
not possible to define Lemnius’ confessional views as either Catholic or
Protestant. He was certainly critical towards the Mother Church, in par-
ticular criticising the veneration of saints, but in his works he stressed
the centrality of Christ’s blood shed for men, as represented in the Holy
Sacrament. Taking the sacrament ensured that ‘Christ is in us and we in
him (. . . .). We are confident [. . .] that faith infused into us by the Spirit,
prompts us’.22 Lemnius’ urge to decipher the wonders of God’s creation is
also apparent from his two works on vegetation in the Bible.23
For a treatise on the hidden forces of human existence, it is likely that
the secret of life played a leading role here. Much attention is therefore
paid to the significance of the various humours, especially to their role
in the constitution of a human being. Although the soul is considered
more important than the body, in the exhortation that teaches ‘how to
lead a life that shall be most excellent’ the reader is told to take meticu-
lous care of the body, since it is the house of the soul.24 It is claimed
that, in force and value, blood lies far above the other three humours, as
long as it remains pure, clean and clear, of course. For example, Lemnius
states that when it becomes too thick, people tend to become fierce, cruel,

21 English translation: ‘The secret miracles of nature in four books. Learnedly and mod-
erately treating of generation, and the parts thereof, the soul, and its immortality, of plants
and living creatures, of diseases, their symptoms and cures, and many other rarities [. . .]:
whereunto is added one book containing philosophical and prudential rules how man
shall become excellent in all conditions, whether high or low, and lead his life with health
of body and mind’ (London, Jo. Streater and Humphrey Moseley: 1658) 22.
22 Lemnius, De miraculis occultis naturae (Antwerp 1559), ch. xiv, esp. 56. Lemnius’ reli-
gious views van Hoorn, Lemnius 55–56.
23 Herbarum atque arborum quae in Bibliis passim obviae sunt (Antwerp, Gulielmus
Simonis: 1564) and Similitvdinvm ac parabolarvm, qvæ in bibliis ex herbis atque arboribus
desumuntur, dilucida explicatio (Antwerp, Guilelmus Simonis: 1568).
24 Lemnius Levinus, Secrets chs. XXI and XXII, 332–335. There are parallels with
Melanchthon; compare Helm J., “Religion and Medicine: Anatomical Education at Wit-
tenberg and Ingolstadt” in Helm J. – Winkelmann A. (eds.), Religious Confessions and the
Sciences in the Sixteenth Century (Leiden: 2001) 51–68, esp. 54–62 and Cunningham, Ana-
tomical Renaissance 230–233.
424 catrien santing

i­ nhospitable and even inhumane. Such a quality of the blood was char-
acteristic of those engaged in the rougher professions, such as musicians,
potters, messengers, mariners and soldiers. Such people, he argues, held
no regard for conscience and often little respect for religion. The thickness
of their blood engendered ‘grosse and troublesome spirits’, which resulted
in deficient principles, a darkened mind and many vices; indeed, even in
godlessness.
When speaking of the sanguine constitution in general, the author
points out that it combined the qualities of heat and moistness. This
implied excellent health, especially in youth, when people are most full
of blood. However, no matter how admirable this constitution, it could
lead to frivolity and even result in licentious and thus inhumane behav-
iour. Sometimes sanguine temperaments could become excessively
involved in physical activity, song, storytelling and other pleasures. Since
the humours were seen as the causes of the passions, these delights had
dangerous consequences. During these times of indulgence, the heart
was prone to be affected, as the humours started to boil. The spirits in
blood were especially likely to rise up and brim over. Consequently, the
mind could become inflamed and produce either extreme joy or excessive
anger. The latter condition, especially, was highly dangerous and in some
cases resulted in death, with the blood withdrawing from and forsaking
the heart, or choking the heart in its abundance.25
Lemnius’ De habitu et constitutione corporis (1561) was likewise a best-
seller in various countries. The work is in fact a very sophisticated Regi-
men directed towards a variety of medical professionals. It describes the
best type of human being, explaining the humours, the elements, spirits,
qualities and temperaments. In English, the book is called The Touchstone
of Complexions and it was translated in 1576 by the London physician and
poet, Thomas Newton [Fig. 2].26 In this treatise, blood is also presented as
a very special humour and hailed as the most excellent of the four.
What does Lemnius argue? The best type of human, he says, is one
who meets the requirements of Polyclitus’ Canon, a reference to the per-
fect sculpture of a man produced in the fifth century BC by the Greek
­Polyclitus. In his De tuenda valetudine, a very important source for Lem-
nius’ work and quoted numerous times, Galen expanded on Polyclitus’
ideas from a medical point of view by equating harmonious human

25 Lemnius, Secrets 60–62.

26 On Newton: van Hoorn, Levinus Lemnius 62, 310–311.
 blood as the source of life 425

Fig. 2. Title page of the English translation of Lemnius’ De habitu et constitutione

corporis, tr. Newton Thomas (London, Thomas Marsh: 1576).
426 catrien santing

­ roportions and splendour to a balance of the humours and tempera-

p
ment. Henceforth, beauty, health and happiness were on a par.27 This is
also Lemnius’ conclusion. What he describes as the Regula Polycleti had to
be followed, given that it was the touchstone for a congruent and propor-
tionate distribution of humours and spirits in the human body, leading at
the same time to soundness and perfection.28 Here, it is not necessary to
repeat Lemnius’ ideas on the generation of the spirits and temperaments,
as they are genuinely Galenic and thus familiar to us.29
Blood is considered to be extremely important here because it carried
the spirits through the body. Lemnius makes these even more valuable
by completing them with a fourth one, the spiritus universalis or Spirit
of God, next to the Galenic spiritus naturalis, vitalis and animalis. This
substance, he claims, mixes in the human body with the other spirits and
makes man the true heir of God and his son. It was God’s breath that had
animated dead matter, and which was felt by every living creature from
the most humble plant to man himself. For Lemnius, the construction of a
fourth spirit allowed him to round off Galen’s Regula and link the new list
of four spirits, including one which was genuinely spiritual, with the four
elements, four humours and four temperaments.30 That fourth spirit was,
of course, the principal one, which brought the others together into one
harmonious whole and directed them in the execution of their function:
For the heavenly Spirite, is the guyde and governor of the Spyrites of mans
bodye, which are then more qualefyed, quieted, and kept under better
order, when they be governed and ledde by the conducte and direction of
this Spyrite. For if they once begin tumultuously to ruffle and styire by sedi-
tion wytin the bodye.
The book also explains, along traditional Galenic lines, that blood is pro-
duced in the liver, called ‘the shoppe of the body’, and transported by
the veins. Part of it ran to the heart, which enriched the liquid with spir-
itus vitalis. This was the spirit that safeguarded the sensitive functions,
and was particularly associated with blood and maintained its force and
power. The perfected blood that resulted, together with the calor nativus

27 Santing C., “De menselijke canon: Het vraagstuk van de ideale mens in de Neder-
landse medische wetenschap”, Bijdragen en Mededelingen voor de Geschiedenis der Neder-
landen 122 (2007) 484–502.
28 Lemnius, Touchstone 33–34.
29 For a general survey of the humours in relation to human temperaments: Arikha N.,
Passions and Tempers. A History of the Humours (New York: 2007).
30 Lemnius, Touchstone 20–25.
 blood as the source of life 427

or innate heat, was carried by the arteries through the whole body. The
quality of this blood was determined by the degree of its mixture with
the other three humours and the proportions of this concoction, as well
as by food or by environmental influences such as climate, region and
time of the year. While analysing the various human complexions, blood
is praised as the most precious humour. Here, like most medical authors
of that time, we should differentiate between blood as such – that is, the
matter flowing through the arteries and veins of the human body – and
blood as a distinct humour.31 Lemnius also emphasises that the human
blood which is discerned when a vein is opened contains all four humours.
This is not to deny the fact that in the remainder of his argument he does
not make such a strict distinction. Blood is considered most excellent, as
it is supposed to bear the qualities of warmth and moistness. It is at its
best in young people, as can be seen from their ruddy facial complexions.
The excellence of the liquid was moreover demonstrated by its smooth
taste, which he considered reminiscent of rice and milk. This concurs with
the equation of blood and milk in devotional literature.
In order to determine the best type of human being, Lemnius deploys
the notions of the complexio or temperament, bringing both terms into
play. What is meant here is the balance of the qualities of hot, wet, cold
and dry resulting from the mixture of elements in the human body that, in
combination with the humours, was held responsible for physiological as
well as psychological characteristics.32 A hot and moist complexion was
the best blend. As long as the blood was at its full strength and quality, the
combination produced a sanguine person. Those with the purest sanguine
complexio – Lemnius mentions as foremost examples, the Old Testament
king David and the Spanish king Philip II, and makes a point of noting
that Philip was also his lord – are considered to be the strongest, to have
the healthiest colour, the benefit of the best balance as well as the most
attractive appearance, and are mentally the most flexible. Young people
or adolescents are the most typical sanguinics, but they run the risk of
becoming too volatile. Growing older, although not too old, the spiritus
vitalis becomes warmer, stronger and thus perfects a human being. By
cherishing this temperament and training the accompanying strength of
mind, the adult sanguinic could become rich in knowledge and ­experience

31 Discussed in Arikha, Passions and Tempers.

32 Siraisi N.G., Medieval and Renaissance Medicine. An Introduction to Knowledge and
Practice (Chicago: 1990) 101–106. See for the tempers also Arikha, Passions and Tempers.
428 catrien santing

and achieve great wisdom. Remarkably, scarcely any attention is paid to

the spiritus animalis, traditionally related to the brain and nerves. Instead,
Lemnius concentrates on the spiritus vitalis that was added to the blood
in the heart and, as a result, functioned as the ‘fountain of life’. This is an
argument for the tendency to spiritualise blood. The spiritus vitalis was
seen to be transported by the (perfected) blood through the arteries and
brought natural heat to the farthest extremities of the body. It nurtured
the life force of every breathing creature. Again religious arguments are
brought in, such as those from Leviticus. Moses’ prohibition of the con-
sumption of mammalian blood in Leviticus 17 is used to stress the impor-
tance of blood and to warn against its wastage. The warm arterial blood
is supposed to feed life, just as the flame of a lamp burns more brightly
when using good oil. A contrast is also made with the loss of blood, since
it causes paleness and coldness, making it appear that the victim is dying.
Blood, the conclusion goes, represents life, while loss of blood inevitably
leads to death.
In his survey, Lemnius departs little from the thirteenth-century Regi-
men sanitatis Salernitatum, simply adding to it many medical, biblical
and classical sources. Its verses concern dietary rules that give blood, and
thus the sanguine complexio, a pivotal role in the life of mammals, espe-
cially of human beings, with the lines: Consona sunt aer, sanguis, puericia
verque (Compatible are air, blood, youth and spring) and largus, amans,
hilaris, ridens, rubeique coloris, cantans, carnosus, satis audax atque benig-
nus (Generous, loving, joyful, merry, of ruddy complexion, singing, fleshy,
rather daring, and friendly).33 In addition to his appearance in many
regimina and practica, the sanguinic is found extensively in courtly lit-
erature. In romances and love lyrics he is the rosy-cheeked, jovial young
lover who eats red (sic!) cherries and is born under the sign of Venus
and Jupiter. Sometimes he finds himself in trouble because of his volatil-
ity or his excessive sexual urges, as discussed above.34 Nonetheless, the
argument changes slightly here as, during the sixteenth century, the san-
guinic of the Middle Ages was transformed into the ideal human being,

33 Klibansky R. – Panofsky E. – Saxl F., Saturn und Melancholie. Studien zur Geschichte
der Naturphilosophie und Medizin, der Religion und der Kunst (Frankfurt: 1992) 187; Burrow
J.A., Ages of Man. A Study in Medieval Writing and Thought (Oxford: 1986) 18.
34 Sears E., The Ages of Man. Medieval Interpretations of the Life Cycle (Princeton: 1986);
Dove M., The Perfect Age of Man’s Life (Cambridge: 1986); Burrow J.A., Ages of Man, in rela-
tion to the medical aspect, and Land K. van ’t, “Een middeleeuwse James Bond: Een ideaal
met schaduwkanten”, Geschiedenis Magazine 43 (2008) 16–21.
 blood as the source of life 429

a transformation that also brought along spiritualisation. Being already

full-blooded and mature, he emerges as the resurrection of Polyclitus’ and
Galen’s ancient Canon, but this time brought into a close relation with the
resurrection of Christ, an event extensively discussed in Lemnius’ works.35
The description in his Touchstone echoes the criteria handed down from
Antiquity, as we hear of the warm and smooth skin, comely stature, and
even features such as rosy cheeks, auburn hair and a blond or red beard,
as well as a perfect body shape.36 To conclude, one could say that, by sing-
ing the praise of homo sanguinicus, the author repeated the theories of
Galen and his medieval followers, but embedded these in a firm Christian
framework. It is impossible here not to think of Jesus who, when crucified
at the age of 32 and three months, was at the height of his capabilities in
a physical as well as spiritual sense; in other words, a homo sanguinicus.
This is clear, for example, in a painting by Lemnius’ fellow countryman
and contemporary, Maarten van Heemskerck [Fig. 3].

Blood and the heart

The Pisan and Roman professor Andrea Cesalpino (1525–1603) discussed

the function of blood in several of his learned works. These publications
were directed towards an audience of medical and professorial colleagues,
but at the same time show the signs of his profound Catholic, Counter-
­Reformation beliefs. In this third section, I will demonstrate how both
fields, medicine and theology, were conflated in his concept of blood.37
Cesalpino was of Tuscan origin, studying medicine at the most impor-
tant university of that region, Pisa.38 During his student years there, the
­institution experienced a Golden Age of scholarly success thanks to the
presence and work of famous medical doctors such as Guido Guidi (1500–
1569), an eminent authority on Hippocrates and Galen and ­experienced

35 Lemnius, Secrets ch. xiv.

36 Lemnius, Touchstone 90.
37 Cesalpino’s views are more elaborately discussed in my “Deus rotator and the
Microrotator: Blood as the Source of Life in the Life and Works of Andrea Cesalpino” in
Santing – Touber, Blood Symbol Liquid 137–155.
38 Ferrari A. de, “Cesalpino”, in Dizionario biografico degli Italiani (Rome: 1980) XXIV,
122–125; Viviani U., Vita e opere dii Andrea Cesalpino (Arezzo: 1922); Colombero C., “Pen-
siero filosofico di Andrea A. Cesalpino”, Rivista critica di storia della filosofia 32 (1977)
269–284 and Bylebyl J.J., “Cesalpino and Harvey on the Portal Circulation” in Debus A.G.
(ed.), Science, Medicine, and Society in the Renaissance. Essays to honour Walter Pagel (New
York: 1972) 39–52.
 430
catrien santing

Fig. 3. Maarten van Heemskerck, Christ crowned with thorns, ca. 1550/1555.
 blood as the source of life 431

anatomist, the botanist Luca Ghini (1490–1556), and the anatomists Realdo
Colombo (1516–1559) and Gabriele Fallopio (1523–1562).39 Colombo in
particular must have exerted a major influence on Cesalpino in several
respects. He set an example by exchanging Pisa and Padua for Rome, try-
ing his luck at the more rewarding as well as more lucrative papal court.
Cesalpino would likewise find himself in the Eternal City in the latter
part of his career, in the capacity of papal physician. Colombo is still
known for his discovery of the so-called ‘pulmonary or lesser circulation
of blood’, demonstrating that all the blood goes from the right ventricle
of the heart through the lungs before returning to the left ventricle.40 This
breakthrough disproved Galen’s idea that blood passed from the right to
the left ventricle through minute pores in the septum, the dividing wall
between the two ventricles of the heart. It is possible that Colombo and
his Romano-Spanish pupil Juan Valverde d’Amusco might have built
these findings on Michael Servetus’ (1511–1553) work Christianismi restitu-
tio (1553), a treatise that was confiscated by the Inquisition. Undeniably,
Servetus’ ideas on blood and its function within a system of unified body
and soul bear a clear resemblance to those of Colombo and Cesalpino.41
While living and working in Rome, Cesalpino’s deep religiosity not only
made him a reliable physician to popes and cardinals, but his convictions
equally drove him into the arms of the Roman Counter-Reformation
religious leader Filippo Neri and his Oratory.42 All of these factors had a
profound influence on his medical views, leading him to accommodate
them to Catholic doctrine and practice. In their high tone, Cesalpino’s
medical works resemble those of Andreas Vesalius and in turn those of the
common adversary of both of them, Galen. Nonetheless, he by no means
envisioned himself as an innovator, which had been an image Vesalius
had to some extent cherished. On the contrary, in line with the spirit of

39 Grendler P., The Universities of the Italian Renaissance (Baltimore: 2002) 70–77.
40 There are no comprehensive publications on Colombo. See: Bylebyl J.J., “Realdo
Colombo”, in Gillespie C.C. (ed.), Dictionary of Scientific Biography (New York: 1973) viii,
354–357; Moes R.J. – O’Malley C.D., “Realdo Colombo: On those Things rarely found in
Anatomy, an Annotated Translation from the De re anatomica (1559)” , Bulletin for the His-
tory of Medicine 34 (1960) 508–528 and Cunningham, Anatomical Renaissance 143–166.
41 For a summary of this discussion see Mason S., “Religious Reform and the Pulmonary
Transit of the Blood”, History of Science 41 (2003) 459–471.
42 See Santing C., “De affectibus cordis et palpitatione – Secrets of the Heart in Counter-
Reformation Italy” in Blecourt W. de – Usborne C. (eds.), Cultural Approaches to the History
of Medicine. Mediating Medicine in Early Modern and Modern Europe (Basingstoke: 2003)
10–35 and Touber J.J., Emblemen van lijdzaamheid. Recht, geneeskunde en techniek in het
hagiografische werk van Antonio Gallonio (1556–1605) (Groningen: 2009).
432 catrien santing

the ­Counter-Reformation, which aimed to return to the time of the Early

Church in Antiquity, he wholeheartedly embraced Aristotle. This preference
for the Greek philosopher deepened when, in the course of the sixteenth
century, the papacy, together with leading theologians, often members of
newly established orders, came to reaffirm the ties between Catholicism
and Aristotelianism.43 Cesalpino’s constant disapproval of Galen who, as
we have seen above with regard to Lemnius, was still extremely popular,
is also connected to the realisation of Aristotle’s research programme in
the sixteenth century.44 In pleading his case, Cesalpino moved from what
might be called a prisca medicina towards a synthesis of faith and reason.
In this Aristotelian medicina theologica, that was also influenced by the
works of Marsilio Ficino, blood and the heart played the leading roles,
while God functioned as the one and only constituent cause of all things.45
In this regard, Cesalpino once used the term deus rotator to describe the
work of God, suggesting that he valued the heart as God’s counterpart, as
some kind of ‘microrotator’ (my term).
Before discussing further Cesalpino’s considerations on blood, it is
important to state again that in the sixteenth century several types of
blood were distinguished, and he was very conscious of all of the subtle
distinctions between them. The first type was the bodily fluid, forming
part of the humoral system, which had its origin in the liver. Ingested
food, transformed by the stomach into chyle, was transported to the liver,
where it was heated to become blood. The two types of bile originated in
the same organ. The fluid to be found in the veins was considered to be a
sanguineous mass consisting of a mixture of pure blood with a lesser pro-
portion of the other three humours. However, Cesalpino’s interest mainly
lay in the second type of blood. This was a concoction that combined
blood and spirit, the latter drawn by the lungs from the air and brought
into the heart. He sometimes calls this ‘perfected’ or ‘matured’ blood.

43 See for example, Grendler, Italian Universities 309 and Cunningham, Anatomical
Renaissance.
44 Cunningham A., “Fabricius and the ‘Aristotle Project’ in Anatomical Teaching and
Research at Padua”, in Wear A. – French R.K. – Lonie I.M. (eds.), The Medical Renaissance
of the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge: 1985) 195–222 and idem, Anatomical Renaissance.
45 On the intricacies of Christian Platonism in this respect see Mulsow M., “The Ambi-
guities of the Prisca Sapientia in Late Renaissance Humanism”, Journal of the History of
Ideas 65 (2004) 1–13, who discusses Cesalpino’s counterpart Francesco Patrizi and his Dis-
cussiones Peripateticae (Venice, Giunta: 1571). This combination of Aristotelianism with
(Neo)Platonic influences is also to be met in Melanchthon: Frank G., “Melanchthon and
the Tradition of Neoplatonism”, in Helm J. – Winkelmann A. (eds.), Religious Confessions
and the Sciences in the Sixteenth Century (Leiden: 2001) 3–18.
 blood as the source of life 433

The resulting mixture formed the vehicle of the spiritus vitalis that fol-
lowed its course through the body via the arteries. In addition to the per-
fected blood, the virtus vitalis is a crucial element in Cesalpino’s discourse.
This is the faculty present in man that guaranteed the existence of the
vital spirit and therefore was a crucial element in the principle of life. Hav-
ing its foundations in the heart, it manifested itself via heartbeat, pulse
and respiration. The associated organs were those of the thoracic cavity
and the arteries, with the heart at the centre.46
The fifth book of his Questiones peripateticarum discusses biological
and physiological topics.47 Tellingly, the point of departure is the unity of
the human body, which is safeguarded by the soul. Galen and Plato, with
their notion of a triple soul, are fiercely denounced, leading to a discus-
sion of the different parts of the soul and the disparities between the vari-
ous species. Creatures which have a heart, and thus live because they have
blood, are professed to belong to the most perfect class. The explanation
for this is that the heart is proclaimed to be the first organ to be formed
in the foetus and the last to die, an argument borrowed from Aristotle’s
De partibus animalium.48 Cesalpino states that without this organ all other
parts of the human body are merely ‘dead hands’ or ‘dead eyes’. Contrary
to the brain or the liver, which can function with minor blemishes, here
not the slightest loss of quality can be tolerated; every tear proves fatal.
Therefore, for Cesalpino the heart is the origin of all corporeal operation;
out of affection for it every other organ follows its lead, as with the cardiac
pulsations, for example.
The superiority of the heart is given a fourfold Aristotelian ground-
ing. First, of course, is its position at the centre, being the best location
for the even distribution of life through the body. Obviously, ‘at the cen-
tre’ suggests all kinds of other, non-medical references to perfection and
the ideal. According to Cesalpino, the most important argument for the

46 The sixteenth-century discussion is explained by Bylebyl J.J., “Disputation and

Description in the Renaissance Pulse Controversy” in Wear A. – French R.K. – Lonie I.M.
(eds.), The Medical Renaissance of the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge: 1985) 223–244. For a
brief description of the physiological system concerning virtues, faculties, spirits, etc., see
Siraisi, Medieval and Renaissance Medicine, ch. iv.
47 Quaestionum peripateticarum libri V. The first edition was published in 1571, the sec-
ond in 1593. The translation of most parts of the five books with an introduction to his
philosophy was carried out by Dorolle M., Césalpin Questions Péripatéticiens (Paris: 1929).
For Book V, 4 Clark M.E. – Minis S.A. – Rochefort G., “Andreas Cesalpino, ‘Quaestionum
peripateticarum’, libri v, liber v, quaestio IV”, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied
Sciences 33 (1978) 185–213.
48 Arist. PA 3.4.
434 catrien santing

­ rimacy of the heart is that it contains and maintains the warmth of the
p
soul, the virtus vitalis. All other organs acquire their warmth from it. This
interpretation brings him to the arteries and veins. They are also bound
to have their origin in the heart, where the heat produces blood, the
supreme nourishment, which is to be dispersed throughout the body by
the arteries and brought back to its origin by the veins. Here, Cesalpino
also compares the arteries with rivulets drawing their fluid from a source,
but at the same time emphasises that veins and arteries form a single,
uninterrupted, system. Even the nerves form part of this completely inter-
connected transit system, being viewed as the finest ends of the capillar-
ies of the aorta.49 Thus, blood – that is, perfected blood – is declared the
supreme nourishment and the concoction that engenders the growth and
maturation of all creatures. As such, it must emerge from the source of
heat: the heart. This interpretation is based on the observation that after
conception the very early foetus looks like a bloody clot.
Subsequently, the author feels compelled to elucidate the movement of
blood through the body. To begin with, the Galenic idea about veins and
arteries with their separate tasks is denounced in favour of the unified
Aristotelian system. The problems with the precise details of Cesalpino’s
ideas in this context are widely discussed in the literature, but the sys-
tem he sketches is still very confusing. For the purposes of my argument
here, it is enough to know that in the right ventricle of the heart the rich-
est and warmest blood was found, whereas the purest and freshest blood
was found in the left ventricle. The former’s function was supposed to be
sustenance, distributed via the vena cava. The latter’s task was maintain-
ing and maturing the body’s form through the aorta. Ultimately, the pure
fresh blood ascended from the heart towards the brain, and as such this
fine and pure matter generated the sensations, which otherwise would be
far too unsubtle and even coarse. One could say that blood was thought
to be refined a further time in the brain. The excess warmth was regarded
as being cooled by the humidity and low temperature of the brain. Again,
this was done best in human beings, as they had the most blood and most
heat at their disposal and also had the largest brains.
In the eyes of Cesalpino, the pulsation of the heart and the arteries
was the result of the boiling of the humour of blood in the heart; that is,
the creation of perfected blood, mentioned above. This is logical, he says,

49 All to be found in Questiones, book 5, question III, “That the heart is not only the
principle of the arteries, but also of the nerves.”
 blood as the source of life 435

since pulsations also occur in other fluids that are boiled. To achieve this,
the heart and the vessels swell up. This contradicts Galen, who claimed
that there was an alternating pulsation in the heart and arteries and also
established that there was a relationship between respiration and the
cooling of blood. Cesalpino, however, asserts that ‘all the arteries with
the heart, moreover, are like a kind of whole, for they form a continuous
vessel of pure blood’.50 In his view, nourishment of the parts of the body
occurs via the continuous generation of blood in the heart. The blood
pulses strongly in the arteries because of the spirit they carry through the
body. This reasoning brings Cesalpino to his description of the blood’s
movement. Here he makes a meticulous distinction between the arteries
and veins and seems to have a clear idea of the position and function of
the valves, which secure a very specific path for the blood: ‘from the veins
into the heart while the heat [of the heart] is drawing nourishment from
the heart into the arteries’.51 For Cesalpino, this nourishment is the spirit
prepared by the warmth in the heart and dispersed by arterial blood. To
maintain this warmth, nature had placed the heart at the centre of the
body and took care to protect it with the pericardium. The cooling pro-
cess is said to occur in the lungs, described more or less in accordance
with the opinion of his teacher Colombo, except for the remarks on the
anastomosis, where he still leaves some space for the movement of blood
through septal pores:
[. . .] The lung, then, draws warm blood through the veinlike artery [vena
arterialis] from the right ventricle of the heart and returns it through anas-
tomosis to the arteria venalis, which enters the left ventricle of the heart. In
the meantime there is cooling only by contact with the cool air transmitted
through the canals of the windpipe, which spread out next to the arteria
venalis, but do not communicate by openings, as Galen thought. Dissection
corroborates this circulation of blood from the right ventricle through the
lungs and to the left ventricle of the same.52
In the first lines of his handbook, Ars medica (1602–1603), Cesalpino
enlightens us as to the general principles of healing and the ­constitution of
the human body [Fig. 4].53 Human beings are immediately ­characterised
as mundus parvus and likened to creation as a whole. Here, the views on
blood do not deviate from those expressed in the much older Questiones,

50 Clark – Nimis – Rochefort, “Cesalpino” 197.

51 Clark – Nimis – Rochefort, “Cesalpino” 199.
52 Clark – Nimis – Rochefort, “Cesalpino” 209.
53 Cesalpino Andrea, Ars medica (Rome, Aloysius Zanettus: 1602–1603).
436 catrien santing

Fig. 4. Beginning of the first book of Andrea Cesalpino’s handbook Ars medica
with an image of the Vera Icon in the top margin.
 blood as the source of life 437

but his Christian world-view, not to say ‘body view’, seems to have devel-
oped after his arrival in Rome. In the capacity of a ‘little world’, the author
maintained, everything the human body contains was also to be found in
the universe. Its most precious matter and purest substance was the calor
innatus or innate heat, in which the divine virtus was far brighter than
in any other mortal matter. Hence, the body is considered to be divinely
constructed, with ultimate wisdom and as an uninterrupted whole, as a
container in which blood procured spirit throughout the body. The source
of this blood, he says, lies in the heart and thus this organ is the most
important to human beings. He compares it with the sun and its rays,
but also with God and the Holy Spirit. The biblical reference is unmistak-
able, with the four veins – (Vena) Cava, Aorta, Arteria venalis and Vena
arterialis – that distribute the blood likened to the four rivers springing
from Paradise.
In conclusion, one could say that Cesalpino’s natural philosophy focuses
on the centre of life and aims to investigate its secrets. In his Questiones
he concludes: ‘The heart is like a flame effecting the heating of blood and
continual generation of spirit’, which sounds very much like Lemnius.
Although in his Ars medica he carefully distinguished the role of the doc-
tor from that of God, it obvious that he judges the truths of Christianity
to be revealed in the human body, its fabrication and workings. His views
on the heart and blood, and therefore his fervent denial of Galen, must
have been religiously motivated. The fact of the matter is that Aristotle’s
preference for the heart as the ruling part of the body is in line with the
doctor’s devotional inclinations. The circulation of blood was a refuelling
procedure which fed the body and distributed warmth. The perfected
blood and the heart’s faculty, spiritus, become equivalents of the Holy
Spirit and its divine fervour.

The s/Spirit of blood

The study of blood is a many-voiced enterprise. In premodern times the

unravelling of its secrets was of a mixed, that is, philosophical, medical
and religious, nature and I hope to have demonstrated that blood was
seen as precious in several of the discourses then current. Each genre, of
course, adhered to its disciplinary practices, but the incentives steering
its authors cannot be labelled unequivocally religious, philosophical or
medical. The essence of the problem is that as a material substance blood
was still valued as so very precious that it paradoxically tended to lose its
438 catrien santing

materiality and take on spiritual aspects, which made devotional associa-

tions inevitable. Caroline Walker Bynum was completely correct to point
to the non-corporeal aspects of blood, associating it with God, especially
with the Holy Spirit and its terrestrial emanation. No matter how they
exploited Aristotle, as well as Galen, a spiritualisation of blood was also
at stake in the works of Lemnius and Cesalpino and, for instance, that of
Paracelsus too, although there is no room here to discuss his ‘Spiritualist
reform of medicine’.54 In his extensive regimina, the more traditional Levi-
nus Lemnius emphasised the spiritus vitalis that determined the quality of
blood. At its finest stage, it approached the spiritus universalis almost con-
verging with the Holy Spirit. Likewise the Aristotelian Cesalpino placed
the heart and the spiritualised human fuel blood again and again at the
centre, bringing everything back to its origin, God: the deus rotator.

54 Cunningham, Anatomical Renaissance 236–247.

 blood as the source of life 439

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 WHITE BLOOD AND RED MILK.
ANALOGICAL REASONING IN MEDICAL PRACTICE
AND EXPERIMENTAL PHYSIOLOGY (1560–1730)

Barbara Orland

Summary

In early modern physiological thinking, analogies between different parts of the

body played an essential role in understanding the hidden workings inside the
living body. One very old and widely used example of this style of reasoning is
the analogy between blood and milk. The aim of this article is to investigate this
analogy in two ways: first, by describing how the analogy was embodied in medi-
cal practices for dealing with women’s generative capacities. Second, historicisa-
tion of the analogy will serve as a guide to understanding changing conceptions
of blood and milk formation within the emerging fields of experimental physiol-
ogy. The epistemic tool of the blood-milk analogy, it will be argued, managed to
survive the shift from a humoral to a hydraulic body concept but acquired an
interesting new meaning. Within a hydromechanical theory of nutrition, blood
came to be more explicitly equated with ‘red milk’, while ‘milk’ was set in a new
relation to ‘white chyle’.

Introduction. Body, matter and analogy

‘If we would define or describe what Milk is, it seemeth to be nothing

but white blood’, wrote the English physician and naturalist Thomas Mof-
fett (1553–1604) in his dietetic rules for a healthy body.1 ‘If one examines
blood somewhat more closely, one will detect that it is almost nothing but
milk [. . .] milk, just slightly coloured’, Dutch physician Cornelis Bontekoe
(1647–1685) pointed out in his popular book on Life, Health, Illness and
Death from 1685.2 Far more than just metaphorical views on two eminent

1 Moffett Thomas, Healths Improvement. Or, Rules Comprizing and Discovering the
Nature, Method, and Manner of Preparing all sorts of food used in this nation, corrected and
enlarged by Christopher Bennet (London, Newcomb for Samuel Thomson: 1655) 119–120
(Orig. written ca. 1595).
2 ‘Wenn man nun das Blut was näher untersuchet | so wird man befinden | daß es bey
nahe schier nichts denn Milch ist [. . .] Milch | ein wenig gefärbet’. Bontekoe Cornelis,
Kurtze Abhandlung von dem Menschlichen Leben/ Gesundheit/ Kranckheit und Tod/ In Drey
444 barbara orland

body substances, these references to milk as ‘white blood’ and to blood as

‘red milk’ were part of a heritage from the ancients that was handed down
to modern physiology until the turn of the nineteenth century. Nurtured
and fostered through philosophical debates as well as daily routines in
medicine and everyday life, comparing the two fluids was a common prac-
tice. These two phrases expressed longstanding and widespread assump-
tions about generative and nutritive processes inside a humoral body.
Historians recently have argued that the ‘humoral body’ was the fun-
damental conception of the self in the Early Modern period. In the words
of Gail Kern Paster, ‘whenever the early modern subject became aware of
her or his body [. . .] the body in question was always a humoral entity’.3
Yet humoral, as has been shown by these studies, referred not only to the
canonical four humours of Galenic physiology: blood, phlegm, yellow bile,
and black bile (and, concomitantly, the awareness of the four elements
or qualities hot, cold, wet, and dry). The experience of the humoral body
included many other fluids. Together with the solid parts they formed a
humid and vaporous body, in which organs played a subordinated role.
Placing emphasis on the fluidity of the body had epistemic conse-
quences. Whether the sensory mode of knowing oneself, the definition
of health or the medical diagnosis and pharmacological treatment of the
sick person, all knowledge patterns and bodily practices were based on
the idea that the human constitution could be known from the fluids.4
Permeability was also observed in the solid parts of the body, which most
often were evaluated as fundamental parts of a continuous flow system.
Organs as a collection of containers for liquids accomplished the specific
task of the delicate balancing of fluids that was indispensable for mental
and physical health. With natural evacuations on the one side and arti-
ficial manipulations like blood letting, reduced diet, or overindulgence
in food on the other, the humoral body constantly changed its shape.
The term ‘humoral’ was thus employed with a wide range of meanings.
It could signify material states, qualities, or individual dispositions that

unterschiedenen Theylen verfasset/ Davon das I. Unterricht giebet von dem Leibe [. . .]. II. Von
der Kranckheit/ und derselben Ursachen. III Von denen Mitteln/ das Leben und die Gesund-
heit zu unterhalten und zu verlängern [. . .] (Bautzen Rudolstadt, F. Arnst and Joh. Rudolph
Löwe: 1692) 32 (Orig. written in Dutch 1684).
3 Paster G.K., The Body embarrassed. Drama and the Disciplines of Shame in Early Mod-
ern England (Ithaca, NY: 1993) 10.
4 The practical examination of urine was one of the most important tools of early mod-
ern medical diagnosis. Cf. Stolberg M., Die Harnschau. Eine Kultur- und Alltagsgeschichte
(Cologne etc.: 2009).
 white blood and red milk 445

were the result of an inherent composition of the body influenced by its

environment. Once again in the words of Gail Kern Paster: ‘we fail to rec-
ognise how the porous and volatile humoral body, with its faulty borders
and penetrable stuff, interacts differently with the world than the ‘static,
solid’ modern bodily container’.5
In the face of such unstable bodies, the comparison of two empirical
fluids could help to understand and communicate the uncertainties of the
body. As the quotations of Moffett and Bontekoe illustrate, the authors
presumed similarities between blood and milk, but they did not expect a
material identity or consider the two fluids to be physiologically homolo-
gous substances. In particular their use of the metaphors of ‘white blood’
and ‘red milk’ makes clear that the analogy reflected far more than sensory
evidence. Instead the authors anticipated an identity of relation between
two different fluids. To them the metaphors were pieces of knowledge
that illuminated the complex theory of the formation and functioning of
the humours. Their analogical reasoning referred to a theoretical object,
a theory that encompasses ideas about the hidden workings of the body.
What then is the relationship between blood and milk? How did the com-
munity of learned physicians study this relationship, and why?
For a long time, the history of the humoral theory has attracted the
attention of historians. Yet until now there has been little interest in the
epistemological tools that constituted the mode of knowledge production
in physiology and medical practice. Recent scholars interested in study-
ing the history of the humoral body have confined themselves mostly to
the construction of individual subjectivity and emotional life as it was
expressed in different literary sources (e.g. the plays of Shakespeare).6 An
older historiographical tradition has described humoral thinking as the
outcome of the long-standing Hippocratic-Galenic tradition in early mod-
ern medicine.7 Only a few historians have started to investigate humoral
theory as an immediate knowledge that guided medical experts as well
as lay people in their understanding of the hidden functionings of the

5 Paster G.K., Humoring the Body. Emotions and the Shakespearean Sage (Chicago:
2004) 23.
6 In addition to Paster see also Schoenfeldt M.C., Bodies and Selves in Early Modern
England. Physiology and Inwardness in Spenser, Shakespeare, Herbert, and Milton (Cam-
bridge etc.: 1999).
7 Of the many relevant works see for example Wear A., Knowledge and Practice in Eng-
lish medicine, 1550–1680 (Cambridge etc.: 2000); Siraisi N.G., Medieval and Early Renaissance
Medicine. An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice (Chicago, Il. etc.: 1990); Nutton V.,
Ancient Medicine (London: 2004).
446 barbara orland

invisible body.8 One of the most inspiring but also controversial studies
which emphasised the historical contingency of the humoral physiology
was Thomas Laqueur’s Making Sex. Laqueur called for a rethinking of the
notion of the humoral body in terms of a ‘physiology of fungible fluids
and corporeal flux’. He explained this shift like this: ‘Endless mutations, a
cacophonous ringing of changes, become possible where modern physiol-
ogy would see distinct and often sexually specific entities’.9 But what pre-
cisely does it mean if bodily fluids like blood, semen, sweat, tears, or milk
turned into one another and hence were ‘entirely fungible’? What kind
of mutations were at work? Laqueur’s concern was the humoral similar-
ity between male and female bodies, and not the history of transforma-
tions of bodily matter. Although he mentioned the coming into being of
milk from blood, some of his formulations nevertheless suggest that the
unfixed boundaries of sex had a material expression in unfixed liquids.
This can however be misunderstood, because it implies the physiological
replaceability of different substances.
Early modern authors did not think that way; bodily fluids obviously
were not entirely fungible. Whether in scientific or in popular writings, the
authors were quite unambiguous concerning the fundamental ontological
make-up of bodily fluids. Bontekoe had no doubt about the true ‘nature’
of both fluids in the sense that they had a regularly recurring appearance.
One could identify the fluid for what it is: blood was blood and milk was
milk.10 Nevertheless, the physical identity as it was accessible to the senses
was unstable, because persisting substances always differ with respect to
their momentary stages. Sensual experiences therefore had to be comple-
mented by the wisdom and knowledge of practice, reason and tradition,
not least with reference to the Bible and the theories of the ancient philoso-
phers. In this respect, most early modern authors would have agreed that
­variations existed by nature. Blood and milk could not always be the same,
because everybody had his or her distinctive complexion (in the sense of

   
8 Cf. Duden B., The Woman beneath the Skin. A Doctor’s Patients in Eighteenth-Century
Germany (Cambridge, Mass.: 1991); Stolberg M., Homo patiens. Krankheits- und Körperer-
fahrung in der Frühen Neuzeit (Cologne etc.: 2003); Arikha N., Passions and Tempers. A
History of the Humours (New York: 2007).
   
9 Laqueur T. Making Sex. Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, Mass.-
London: 1990) 35.
10 ‘Aber gleichwie die Milch weiß ist | so ist das Blut roth | und wie dieses roth ist | so
ist die Gall alleine der Safft | welcher dunckel-gelbe ist; Der Urin hergegen ist lichte | und
als Citron-gelbe’. Bontekoe, Kurtze Abhandlung 33.
 white blood and red milk 447

­ ake-up).11 The nature of a woman differs from that of a man; the physis
m
of a child is unlike that of an adult. The material substance of a strong
body differs from that of a weak one, and so on. Like every other part of
the body, a body’s blood and milk acquired their material imprint at the
moment of conception, while external influences (the ‘six non-naturals’)
had a constant impact through life. Therefore it is not surprising to find
a philosopher debating the quality of cow’s milk according to age, sea-
son, and weather. The British polyhistor and philosopher Thomas Browne
(1605–1682) declared in his section on coagulation, one has ‘to know the
differences of milk in several seasons’. When cows give birth to a calf in
the spring, their milk grows thick around Christmas.12
Furthermore, there could be qualitative differences in bodily fluids that
were completely impossible to explain on the basis of sensory percep-
tions. In this respect, common sense would have argued that the material
changes and transformations necessary to sustain life happen due to the
workings inside the body. To Johann Storch (1681–1751), the town physi-
cian of Eisenach in the 1730s, the inside was ‘a place of metamorphosis’,
as Barbara Duden has put it.13 Because these inner metamorphoses could
not be perceived with the senses, philosophers as well as medical prac-
titioners needed knowledge tools that provided at least indirect experi-
ence. The constraints and limitations of the information obtained from
anatomical dissection lay in the rapid drying-out of the dissected dead
body. This problem, which was already explicit in the mind of ancient
anatomists, was posed anew by experimental physiologists during the
Early Modern period. Gaining knowledge from the living body remained
one of the biggest challenges of anatomy.14 The study of fluids and flows
that could be observed externally therefore was indispensable in order to
understand the hidden make-up of the humoral body. As will be argued
in the following, the comparison of blood and milk must be viewed as an
outcome of this age-old problem of medicine.
This paper will begin by examining the medical perspectives on gen-
erative processes inside the female body that made use of the analogy

11 A detailed explanation of the early modern concept of complexion is offered by

Groebner V., “Complexio/­Complexion: Categorizing Individual Natures 1250–1600”, in
Daston L. ­– Vidal F. (eds.), The Moral Authority of Nature (London: 2004) 361–383.
12 Wilkin S. (ed.), Sir Thomas Browne’s Works. Including his Life and Correspondence
(London: 1835), vol. 4, 430–431.
13 Duden, The Woman beneath the Skin 109.
14 Cf. Maehle A.H. – Troehler U., “Animal Experimentation from Antiquity to the End
of the Eighteenth Century: Attitudes and Arguments” in Rupke N.A. (ed.), Vivisection in
Historical Perspective (London-New York: 1990) 14–47.
448 barbara orland

between blood and milk. Bodily signs had enormous importance in the
diagnosis and prognosis of the state of health of an individual body, its
illnesses and necessary treatments. But physiological knowledge, as part
of medical theory, was based to a similar extent on comparative anatomy
and analogical reasoning. As will be shown in the second part of the paper,
the functions of nutrition in general and, more concretely, of embryonic
nutrition, were reflected with regard to the blood-milk-analogy as well. All
of the most important schools of physiological theory, whether the Aris-
totelian-Galenic school, the iatrochemical that originated with Paracelsus,
or the iatromechanical that started with Descartes, made use of it.15 But
although descriptions of the inner workings of the body changed rapidly
once scientists used new experimental technology, relational representa-
tions of blood and milk remained practically feasible for the physiological
understanding of metabolic processes.

Menstruation and lactation

‘[. . .] [W]e commonly come to say the fetus is nourished and milk is gen-
erated from the menstrual blood’.16 When medical textbooks of the Early
Modern period referred to the child-bearing capacity of women and female
animals, then they introduced the blood-milk analogy for obvious reasons.
Lactating women usually do not menstruate.17 Pregnancy stops the menses,

15 See for example Davis A.B., Circulation Physiology and Medical Chemistry in England
(1650–1680) (Lawrence, Kansas: 1973); Brown T.M., The Mechanical Philosophy and the
‘Animal Oeconomy’. A Study in the Development of English Physiology in the Seventeenth
and Early Eighteenth Centuries (New York: 1981); Roger J., The Life Sciences in Eighteenth-
­Century French Thought (Stanford, CA: 1997); Smith J.E.H., The Problem of Animal Genera-
tion in Early Modern Philosophy (Cambridge: 2006).
16 Forrester J., The Physiologia of Jean Fernel (1567) (Philadelphia: 2003) 565.
17 In contrast to the physiology of lactation, the cultural history of menstruation
attracted much historical attention. Cf. Shail A. – Howie G. (eds.) Menstruation. A Cultural
History (Hampshire: 2005); Stolberg M., “Deutungen und Erfahrungen der Menstruation
in der Frühen Neuzeit”, in Mahlmann-Bauer B. (ed.), Scientiae et artes. Die Vermittlung
alten und neuen Wissens in Literatur, Kunst und Musik (Wiesbaden: 2004), vol. 2, 913–931;
Stolberg M., “The Monthly Malady: A History of Pre-Menstrual Suffering”, Medical History
44 (2000) 301–322; Lord A., “ ‘The Great Arcana of the Deity’: Menstruation and Menstrual
Disorders in Eighteenth-Century British Medical Thought”, Bulletin of the History of Medi-
cine 73, 1 (1999) 38–63; Crawford P., “Attitudes to Menstruation in Seventeenth-Century
England”, Past & Present 91 (1981) 47–73. On menstruation and lactation in folk medicine
Cf. Fissell M.E., Vernacular Bodies. The Politics of Reproduction in Early Modern England
(New York: 2004); Gélis J., History of Childbirth. Fertility, Pregnancy and Birth in Early Mod-
ern Europe (Cambridge: 1991).
 white blood and red milk 449

and doctors argued that the production of milk would start before delivery.
After birth, the diminishing flow of lochia and the increasing production
of milk that became thicker and more nutritive were interrelated as well.
Hence, until about 1650, medical discourses upheld the uncontested view
that the flow of blood and milk were but two products of what was in fact
one female flow for generative purposes, the ‘Feminine Flux’, as Jean Riolan
the Younger (1577–1657) called it.18 Although the substances of blood and
milk were by no means the same – neither in appearance, in composition,
nor in function – for generative purposes they obviously were not clearly
separated. Blood was whitened on its way to the breasts, ‘[. . .] and therefore
the Infant being born, the Blood is carried no longer to the womb but to the
Dugs, and is turned into milk’.19
Menstruation and lactation were linked to one another; thus, the
blood-milk analogy expressed the cyclic behavior and interdependence
of the two fluids. The analogy seemed to be substantiated not so much by
the materiality of the two fluids as by the substitution and replacement
of blood through milk. Observations about flows instead of fluids lent
weight to these arguments and gave rise to many related assumptions and
instructions, e.g. the interpretation of the body as a vascular network.20 As
such, the analogy was far more than a scientific ideal; it was part of the
logic of everyday life. Daily experience confirmed that both fluids acted
in a manner that was complementary to one other, and the syllogism
(milk is a whitened blood) helped to smooth out the uncertainties of the
body. In this spirit, the colours red and white were widely used symbols
for fertility, and many rules, images and narratives in housekeeping, folk

18 Riolan Jean, A sure Guide, or, the Best and Nearest Way to Physick and Chyrurgery
that is to say, the Arts of Healing by Medicine and manual Operation. Being an Anatomical
Description of the Whole Body of Man and its Parts. With their Respective Diseases demon-
strated from the Fabrick and Vse of the Said Parts. In Six Books [. . .], written in Latin by
Johannes Riolanus [. . .]; Englished by Nich. Culpeper (London, Peter Cole: 1657) 86.
19 Bartholin Thomas, Bartholinus Anatomy. Made from the Precepts of his Father, and
from the Observations of all Modern Anatomists. Together with his own, published by Nich.
Culpeper and Abdiah Cole (London, Peter Cole: 1663) 87 (Orig. written in Latin 1641).
20 Many anatomical discoveries of the seventeenth century were interpreted within
a framework of circulating fluids or vascular secretions and described as vessels, tubes,
ducts, or containers. Cf. Orland B., “The Fluid Mechanics of Nutrition: Herman Boerhaave’s
Synthesis of Seventeenth-Century Circulation Physiology”, in Orland B. – Spary E. (eds.),
“Assimilating Knowledge: Food and Nutrition in Early Modern Physiologies”, Special Issue
of Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (Cambridge), 44
(2012); (Epub 2011, Dec. 2). On the doctrine of vascular secretion Ruestow, E.G., “The Rise of
the Doctrine of Vascular Secretion in the Netherlands” in Journal of the History of Medicine
and Allied Sciences 35 (1980) 265–287.
450 barbara orland

medicine, religion, art, and literature reflected the ambigious relationship

between both fluids.21
Beyond what could be observed in everyday life, medical textbooks,
midwives’ manuals and doctoral dissertations of the Early Modern period
relied heavily on ancient authors. Ancient beliefs about menstruation
and lactation were not merely illustrations but were employed as proven
knowledge confirming the truth of the theory. The author most often
quoted was Aristotle; he, in fact, was among the first to describe mother’s
milk as a further concoction of menstrual blood. Disagreeing with Empe-
docles’ assumption that blood was turned into a white liquid very similar
to pus by a process of putrefaction, Aristotle had argued in the Generation
of Animals:
In the natural course of events, no menstrual evacuations take place during
the suckling period, nor do women conceive then; and if they do conceive,
the milk dries up, because the nature of the milk is the same as that of the
menstrual fluid, and Nature cannot produce a plentiful enough supply to
provide both; so that if the secretion takes place in one direction it must fail
in the other, unless some violence is done contrary to what is normal.22
The theory of lactation in the Hippocratic corpus was less evident, as will be
described below. But the author of the Hippocratic treatise On the Nature of
the Child, who had imagined some kind of communication between breasts
and uterus, held a view very similar to Aristotle’s theory. The text stated
that women who have excessive menstrual flows can expect a great deal of
milk once the flow has stopped, while, conversely, women whose menses
are slight in quantity will provide their infants with insufficient ­nutriment.23
In any case, the ancient medical and philosophical knowledge also gave

21 Examples can be found in: Zorach R., Blood, Milk, Ink, Gold. Abundance and Excess
in the French Renaissance (Chicago-London: 2005); Verdier Y., Façon de dire, façon de faire.
La laveuse, la couturière, la cuisinière (Paris: 1979); Schreiner K., Maria. Leben, Legenden,
Symbole (Munich: 2003); Fissell, Vernacular Bodies; Gélis, History of Childhood; Bloody or
red milk feature among the main causes of disease cited in livestock-related cases of witch-
craft. Cf. Hickey S., “Fatal Feeds? Plants, Livestock Losses and Witchcraft Accusations in
Tudor and Stuart Britain” in Folklore 101, 2 (1990) 136.
22 Aristoteles, De generatione animalium 4.8, 777a15. The difference is marginal, argues
Longrigg, because both philosophers believed that blood was the agent of nutrition and
that milk was a surplus residue of blood. Longrigg J., Greek Rational Medicine. Philosophy
and Medicine from Alcmaeon to the Alexandrians (London-New York: 2003) 74.
23 Cf. Lonie I.M., The Hippocratic Treatises “On Generation” “On the Nature of the Child”
“Diseases IV” (Berlin-New York: 1981) 19, 52. As one of the early modern texts discussing
the Hippocratic views, see Anonymous, The Art of Nursing. Or, the Method of Bringing up
Young Children according to the Rules of Physick, for the Preservation of Health, and Prolong-
ing Life (London, John Brotherton: 17332) 16–30.
 white blood and red milk 451

evidence for the simple supposition that the different liquids that flow
through a body are more or less balanced in quantity. Because menstrual
blood was said to be necessary for conception, lactation held back the
chances of becoming pregnant, and this notion found its material expres-
sion in the fact that the menstrual blood failed to appear.
The prolongation of the period of lactation thus could be considered
as an adequate auxiliary in balancing pregnancies. As a method widely
used in seventeenth century, the contraceptive effect of breast-feeding
was one of the reasons why husbands forbade their wives to breast-feed
if a son had not yet been born.24 Another argument was that a woman
with an infant at her breast will miscarry, because nature did not intend
lactation and conception to occur at the same time. Logically, pregnancy
could have adverse effects on the nursling too. The woman’s milk would
become inferior in quality and diminished in quantity, or, as Luther put
it in the sixteenth century, ‘the child at the breast would have only skim
milk since the one in the womb had taken the cream’.25
The doctrine of the interrelation between bleeding and lactating became
relevant to practice with respect to its pathological manifestations; many
anomalies and illnesses were viewed as defects in the economy of fluids.26
First, a woman’s milk, like her menstrual blood, could take irregular paths
(aberratio lactis) – from the breasts to the stomach, to the mouth, or to the
bladder and be excreted there as a whitish liquor. Doctors identified many
periodic discharges of fluid, from either a male or a female person, as men-
struation (e.g. haemorrhoids) or, vice versa, as milk secretion.27 Textbooks
documented cases and stories by hearsay, telling of milk moving inside to
other locations, expelled during bleeding or instead of urine, tears, or sweat

24 Cf. Crawford P.M., Blood, Bodies and Families in Early Modern England (Harlow:
2004) 61.
25 Crawford, Blood, Bodies 147; Anonymous, The Art of Nursing 17.
26 The description of cases that could illustrate the concept can be found in seven-
teenth and eighteenth-century treatises as well. Cf. Chamberlen Peter, Dr. Chamberlain’s
Midwife’s Practice. Or, a Guide for Women in that high Concern of Conception, Breeding, and
Nursing Children. In a plain Method, containing the Anatomy of the Parts of Generation.
Forming the Child in the Womb. What hinders and causes Conception. Of Miscarriages and
Directions in Labour, Lying-inne, and Nursing Children (London, J. Clowes: 1665) 63–64;
Rowley W., A Practical Treatise on Diseases of the Breasts of Women (London, F. Newberry:
1772) 21–23; Duden, The Woman beneath the Skin 108–109.
27 If a man was plethoric (naturally disposed towards an excess of humours), then
nose-bleeding, haemorrhages, or lactating could be beneficial to him. Numerous stories
of menstruating or lactating men circulated through the medical world. Pomata G., “Men-
struating Men. Similarity and Difference of the Sexes in Early Modern Medicine” in Finucci
V. – Brownlee K. (eds.), Generation and Degeneration. Tropes of Reproduction in Literature
and History from Antiquity through Early Modern Europe (Durham-London: 2001) 109–152.
452 barbara orland

and as a vaginal juice, called flux alba. Until well into the eighteenth cen-
tury, stories of migratory menstruation, the flow moving periodically from
the ordinary passages to the breasts, were similarly reported.28 A woman
in childbed whose milk had stopped might have feared the outbreak of the
menses or a bleeding elsewhere. Others were able to lactate although their
menstruation had always been deficient. Continued lactation without any
sign of returning menstruation, lactation in aged women, or milk-giving
women without pregnancy or a new-born baby: bodily experiences of the
connection existed in practically all types of manifestations.
Similarly, every suppression, displacement, and return of milk into the
blood flow would consequentially lead to plethora, a thickening of the
humours and, if it became chronic, to inflammation and fever. Lack of
milk (defectu lactis) as well as a surplus of milk (abundantia lactis) were
therefore viewed as an important cause of the corruption of humours, and
milk-fever probably was one of the most-discussed illnesses of women in
childbed.29 Therapies likewise were intended to manipulate the whole
flow of the humours, even if the cause of the problem lay in corrupted
milk. After she succeeded in evacuating the milk through stool and urine,
a French woman in child-bed in 1769 reported an improvement of her
condition.30 But therapies such as bloodletting or treatments with emet-
ics or vesicants were also applied to the effusion of milk. Milk cures, for
instance, were supposed a reasonable supplement to blood letting; both
fluids were occasionally combined in medical remedies.31

28 Even as late as the 1760s, Gerard van Swieten (1700–1772) reported the case of a
women whose menstrual blood was expelled every month through her breasts. Originally
reported by Ambroise Paré in 1585, the same story was repeated by Cornelis Stalpart van
der Wiel (1620–1702), who, furthermore, knew of a woman aged forty whose blood burst
out of her nipples when she raged in a violent fit of anger. Swieten Gerard van, Commen-
taries upon Boerhaave’s Aphorisms Concerning the Knowledge and Cure of Diseases (Edin-
burgh, Charles Elliot: 1776), vol. VIII, 250.
29 Cf. Staehelin Johann Jacob, De lactis defectu positiones [. . .] pro summis in arte medica
honoribus ac privilegiis doctoralibus, rite solenniterque consequendis, publico examini submitti
[. . .] (Basel, Iacob Bertschi: 1669); Küeffer Wilhelmus Christianus, Galaktologian seu disser-
tationem de lacte (Strasbourg, [s.n.]: 1672); Lehmannus Christianus Godofredus, Dissertatio
inauguralis medica de defectu lactis [. . .] sub praesidio Georgii Wolffgangi Wedelii [. . .] pro
licentia summos in arte medica honores, insignia et privilegia Doctoralia, more maiorum, rite
impetrandi (Jena, Christophorus Krebs: 1699); Heymans Isaacus, Dissertatio medica inaugu-
ralis de aberratione lactis, et morbis ex ea provenientibus, quam annuente summo numine, ex
auctoritate rectoris magnifici Bavii Voorda (Leiden, Theodorus Haak: 1781).
30 Pilloud S. – Louis-Courvoisier M., “The Intimate Experience of the Body in the Eigh-
teenth Century. Between Interiority and Exteriority”, in Medical History 47 (2003) 470.
31 The best type of milk to drink was a woman’s milk, especially if sucked directly from
the breasts. Cf. Orland, “The Fluid Mechanics of Nutrition”.
 white blood and red milk 453

Sympathetic organs

Purported signs of the complex interdependence of the two fluids seemed

to offer direct evidence of the sympathy between women’s generative
organs. Until around 1650, the standard argument was that the blood ves-
sels in the womb, which gradually become enlarged during pregnancy,
are connected with those passing through the chest, so that after delivery
nourishing substances can be transferred to the breasts to be utilised in
milk secretion. In Andreas Vesalius’s Fabric of the Human Body one finds
a detailed description of this process:
These vessels that travel upwards are the ones that take origin from the
larger trunks of the great artery and the hollow vein as these are about to
proceed through the groins into the leg [. . .] Though they do not come forth
from the same root as the veins that go to the uterus they lie so close to the
uterus and are such near neighbors of it that it is believed that the blood
that gathers here in the veins of the uterus is able to be taken up by the
vessels and carried upwards or that they can receive in their orifices blood
from the vessels that descend under the breast bone and can transmit it to
the veins and arteries of the uterus.32
No part of the body was considered to be as much in concert with the
womb as the breasts. In his dissertation De mammis et lacte from 1727,
Georg Friedrich Gutermann (1705–1784), physician in Kaufbeuren and
the father of Sophie La Roche, summarised four reasons for this corre-
spondence that were discussed in the older medical literature. The first
reason cited was the topographical anatomy and the immediate proxim-
ity of the two organs; the second pointed to the connection between the
venae mammariae and the vena epigastriae anastomosing with each other
(a view that so far had not been proved by autopsy).33 Other physicians,
thirdly, held that the nerves were the connection between both organs.
But it was only the fourth argument that the author supported to some
extent: both organs serve as nature’s instrument for feeding the infant.

32 Vesalius Andreas, On the Fabric of the Human Body. A Translation of De Humani Cor-
poris Fabrica libri septem, Book V. The Organs of Nutrition and Generation, tr. William Frank
Richardson in coll. with John Burd Carman (Novato CA: 2007) 205–207 (Orig. written in
Latin 1543). See also Riolan Jean, Les oeuvres anatomiques de Me. Iean Riolan, conseiller,
medecin, et professeur du roy en anatomie et en pharmacie, reveuës et augmentees d’une
cinquiesme partie en cette édition (Paris, Denis Moreay: 1629), vol. III, 484–485.
33 For a long period anatomists who agreed with Galen had claimed that a hole exists in
the sternum, the breastbone located in the center of the thorax, that served as a pathway
for the veins. Cf. Stolberg M., “A Woman down to her Bones: The Anatomy of Sexual Dif-
ference in the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries”, Isis 94 (2003) 274–299.
454 barbara orland

Because the child is accustomed to being nourished by its mother’s blood,

he argued, it is unable to suddenly switch from that liquid to more solid
nourishment; milk is thus intermediate between blood and solid food.34
Ideas about communication shaped concepts of the structure and func-
tion of the organs involved. For example, the breasts were described as
organs involved in nourishment and reproduction. As Helkiah Crooke
(1576–1648) explained in his well-known Mikrokosmographia of 1615,
during pregnancy, ‘they swell proportionably as much as the womb [. . .]
and moreover the infant is lodged on that side (of the womb) where the
brest growes greater’. Composed of spongy, smooth, moist flesh, and filled
with veins, arteries, nerves and glands, the breasts were the ‘Magazine’
or ‘Storehouse of Meat’, he stated, ‘wherefore their substance like that of
a sponge is very rare or porous, that they might bee able to receive the
greater quantity of liquor’.35
Accordingly, the womb’s food likes and dislikes corresponded with the
stomach’s work as well as the breast’s task. Great care should be taken
in choosing food for pregnant women. Because pregnant and breast-
feeding women have good appetites, one should provide whatever they
ask for to eat but never too much. ‘For when the Nurse is high fed, the
Womb swelling with Liquor assumes a Furiousness, and gives no small
Taint to the milky Liquor in the Breasts’, argued Italian physician Bernar-
dino Ramazzini (1633–1714).36 Pregnant women therefore had to be more

34 Gutermann Georg F., Dissertatio inauguralis medica de mammis et lacte, in qua sta-
tus tam naturalis, quam praeternaturalis, hujusque therapia rationalis (Tübingen, Joseph
Sigmund: 1727) 12–14.
35 Crooke Helkiah, Mikrokosmographia. A Description of the Body of Man, together with
the Controversies and Figures thereto Belonging / Collected and Translated out of all the best
Authors of Anatomy, especially out of Gasper Bauhinus and Andreas Laurentius (London,
W. Iaggard: 1615) 157–158. The glands, too, were described as small acorns able to absorb
and secrete the humours.
36 Ramazzini Bernardino, Health Preserved. In two Treatises, I. On the Diseases of Artifi-
cers [. . .] (London, John Whiston, and John Woodyer: 1750) 142; Muralt Johannes, Kinder-
Büchlein Oder Wolgegründeter Unterricht / Wie sich die Wehe-Muttern / und Wartherinnen
gegen schwangern Weibern in der Gebuhrt; gegen denen Jungen Kindern und Säuglingen
aber noch der Gebuhrt zuverhalten haben Muralt (Zurich, Gessner: 1689) 157–160. Many
physicians argued that diseases in nursing women resulted from the suppression of the
menses. Bleeding should resemble the menstrual purgation. After bleeding, the nurse
should drink whey, the milk product that was generally said to be the best medication for
blood purification. Wittich Johannes, Vade Mecum. Das ist. Ein Künstlich New Artzneybuch,
so man stets bey sich haben und führen kan, In fürfallender Noth sich Hülff daraus zuerholen,
wieder allerhand Kranckheit deß Menschlichen Leibes, vom Häupt an biß auff die Fußsolen
[. . .] In gewisse Capitel und richtige Ordnung gebracht [. . .] Auch zum Anfang ein unterricht
gesatzt, wie man durchs gantze Jahr gute Gesundheit erhalten möge. Sampt eines vornemen
erfahrnen Mönchs Experimentlein (Leipzig, Bartholomaeus Voigt: 1600) 2–3.
 white blood and red milk 455

careful than others when it came to the so-called non-naturals (meat

and drink, sleep and watching, exercises and rest), for a wrong diet could
corrupt the blood as well as the milk and harm the unborn as well as
the born.37
Several other precarious situations could result from the communion
of womb, stomach, and breasts. If a nurse swallowed a hair with her meal,
it could pass to her breasts, causing the disease ‘Trichiasis’ or ‘Hair in the
Nipple’, as the famous Danish professor of anatomy Thomas Bartholin
(1616–1680) reported.38 Midwife Jane Sharp (1641–1671) noted that women
are in danger of going mad when blood comes forth at their nipples. Care-
ful observation of the nipples should be a midwife’s task: ‘By the colour
of the nipples the state of the womb is perceived; if the Paps look pale or
yellow that should look red, the womb is not well’.39 The condition of the
breasts further indicated the date of birth, the sex of the unborn child,
and its state of health: ‘If the right breast swell and strut out the Boy is
well, if it flag it is a sign of miscarriage, judge the same of the Girle by the
left breast, when it is sunk, or round and hard, the first signifies abortion
to be near’.40 Highly controversial among physicians was the question of
sexual intercourse. Should nursing women abstain from embracing their
husbands? If sexual intercourse puts an end to menstruation, then intense
bodily excitement might reduce all milk secretion, ‘[. . .] for Copulation
raises a certain Motion in the Womb, upon which depends the Breeding
of the Milk’.41 To sum up, the sympathy between the organs and the anal-
ogy between flows and fluids complemented each other. Far from being
beneficial, this system of organic relations most often was treated as the
cause of diseases.

37 The Hippocratic theory of abortion was cited as evidence. A failure in food supply as
well as a mother’s continued menstruation during pregnancy could result in abortion. In
both cases the foetus could die of starvation. Cf. Lonie, The Hippocratic Treatises 245. On
the Galenic theory of the relationship between the maternal nourishment and foetal com-
plexion, Cf. Prosperi L., “Les fraises d’Eve. Le désir alimentaire féminin d’après le discours
médical français au début de l’epoque moderne” in Duhart Frédéric (ed.), Anthropologie
historique du corps (Paris: 2006) 253–267; Fildes V.A., Wet Nursing. A History from Antiquity
to the Present (Oxford: 1988) 9–11.
38 Bartholin, Bartholinus Anatomy 87.
39 Sharp Jane, The Midwives Book, or the Whole Art of Midwifry discovered, ed. by Hobby
E. (Oxford: 1999) 102 (Orig. written in 1671).
40 Sharp, Midwives Book 103.
41 Ramazzini, Health preserved 144.
456 barbara orland

Embryonic nutrition

Yet the unique physiological features of women, and especially the rela-
tion between menstruation and lactation, were not central only to an
understanding of women’s state of health. Next to be considered was the
role the two phenomena played with respect to the formation of the off-
spring. The belief that conception and menstruation were related had an
impact on ideas about embryogenesis. Blood was generally considered
to be the ultimate nutritive substance. It flowed throughout the body,
bringing fresh material and the heat of the heart even to the smallest and
most peripheral parts of the body. Concerning the formation of the foetus,
however, it seemed obvious that the nutritive and generative functions of
blood were intermingled. No other sphere of physiology could illustrate
as vividly what Aristotle had described as the proper functioning of the
vegetative soul: generation, growth, and nutrition of plants and animals
(including human beings) are governed and preserved by one and the
same soul, which is the most elementary principle of life.42
Until the middle of the seventeenth century most medical writers
argued that maternal blood provides the raw material for nourishing the
unborn child (after the vis plastica of the semen and the innate heat of
the womb had caused foetal development).43 The argument was originally
developed by Aristotle, who described the catamenia as the female con-
tribution to generation. Semen affected the menstrual blood in a specific
way:
The action of the semen of the male in ‘setting’ the female’s secretion in the
uterus is similar to that of rennet upon milk. Rennet is milk which contains
vital heat, as semen does, and this integrates the homogeneous substance
and makes it ‘set’. As the nature of milk and the menstrual fluid is one and
the same, the action of the semen upon the substance of the menstrual fluid
is the same as that of rennet upon milk. Thus when the ‘setting’ is effected,
i.e., when the bulky portion ‘sets’, the fluid portion comes off; and as the
earthy portion solidifies membranes form all round its outer surface.44
The subtlety of the Aristotelian theory of generation and the many contro-
versies about the impure state of menstrual blood prompted physiologists
to seek an understanding of this idea in all its details. According to Helkiah

42 On the crucial role of the ‘vegetative soul’ in Galenic physiology, see Roger, The Life
Sciences 56–57.
43 Cf. Roger, The Life Sciences 41–44.
44 Arist. GA 2.4, 739b20.
 white blood and red milk 457

Crooke, many questions had to be answered: Which parts of the embryo

are produced by the seed and which by the menstrual blood? Can blood,
which is generally impure and poisonous, be a nourishing material?45 If
women’s heat is naturally weak, as most scholars would have agreed on
the basis of Aristotelian biology, how can a woman transform her blood
into embryonic organs?46 Conceptualising the role of menstrual blood
as that of essential embryonic food led to many ideas, among which the
evaluation of different parts of the disposable blood seemed to be most
persuasive.47
Another theory, which Crooke considered to be quite obscure, was
traced back to the Hippocratic acknowledgment of two prenatal foods,
blood and milk.48 According to Hippocrates, he argued, the foetus was
nourished during the first months of life with nothing but pure blood.
But when the unborn child grows and begins to move in the womb, some

45 If menstrual blood kills herbs, makes trees barren, or dogs mad, then it is impossible
to imagine a healthy food derived from it, noted Jean Fernel. Not until the foetus has
developed its own liver to clean and prepare pure blood from its mother’s raw material, he
goes on, can maternal blood be appropriate for the foetus. Forrester, “The Physiologia” 589.
Hieronymus Fabricius ab Aquapendente, who also believed in the impurity of menstrual
blood, came to the conclusion that monthly blood is bad because ‘it is packed in and does
not readily exude’, but the blood in the pregnant uterus ‘moves and flows continually
and readily oozes out. The result is that the blood is not bad’. Fabricius ab Aquapendente
Hieronymus, The Embryological Treatises of Hieronymus Fabricius of Aquapendente (Ithaca
NY: 1942) 291. Another solution of the problem was to argue that only the purest part of
the mother’s blood is used. Crooke noted that a pregnant woman often has a ‘greenish
pallid’ complexion because she lacks her purest blood, which was needed for her infant.
Crooke, Mikrokosmographia 317.
46 Aristotle had argued that women have less “vital heat” and therefore will be smaller
and weaker than man. Because of her colder metabolism, a woman consumes food less
quickly, thus leaving residues of blood which is necessary for the nutriment of the off-
spring. On Aristotle and women, among many others I found helpful: Föllinger S., Differenz
und Gleichheit. Das Geschlechterverhältnis in der Sicht griechischer Philosophen des 4. bis 1.
Jahrhunderts v. Chr. (Stuttgart: 1996).
47 Jacob Rueff differentiated between three parts of the menstrual blood, one which
the foetus extricates, a second part needed for the replenishment of the placenta; only the
third and impurest part would remain in the womb and be discharged post partum. Rueff
Jacob, De conceptu et generatione hominis, lib. primus (Frankfurt, Petrus Fabricus: 1580) 9.
A summary of the debates around 1600 is given by Riolan Jean, Les oeuvres anatomiques
935–943.
48 Crooke, Mikrokosmographia 317; see also Rueff, De conceptu 10; C[hamberlayne]
T[homas] et alii, The Compleat Midwifes Practice, in the most weighty and high Concernments
of the Birth of Man. Containing perfect Rules for Midwifes and Nurses, as also for Women in
their Conception, Bearing, and Nursing of Children. From the Experience not onely of our
English, but also the most accomplisht and absolute Practicers among the French, Spanish,
Italian, and other Nations [. . .] (London, Nath. Brooke: 1656) 69. Mary Fissell identified the
authors as a group of four London doctors. See Fissell, Vernacular Bodies 63.
458 barbara orland

blood will be directed to the breasts and converted into milk. Part of this
remains in the breasts, another part comes back to the womb, as if the
blood was circulating (which, in 1615, was unimaginable). Hippocrates
was obviously wrong, Crooke consequentially concluded, because there
is neither a need to feed the embryo with milk nor an instrument with
which to do so.49
In contrast to blood, milk as a foodstuff would require embryonic diges-
tion. Yet one of the most authoritative embryologists of the sixteenth cen-
tury, Hieronymus Fabricius ab Aquapendente (1537–1619), had stated that
the subordinate functions of the digestive organs did not yet function
before birth. Using the analogy between uterus and liver, he had argued:
For just as the liver continually furnishes and supplies blood to the ani-
mal through the veins, and the heart pours out heat through the arteries to
strengthen and perfect all natural processes, so, too, the uterus of a pregnant
woman, as if it were the liver and heart, supplies and transports all these
elements into the entire fetus through the veins and arteries.50
For him, there were several possible ways for the child to be nourished.
First, it could suck the mother’s blood directly out of the veins of the
womb. Second, the mother’s blood could be sent through the larger vessel
of the umbilical cord to the placenta (foetal liver); from there, the arteries
could distribute the fresh blood throughout the child’s entire body or send
it back to be stored. Milk, however, was not among the possible nourish-
ments he discussed.
But why, then, does the maternal body begin producing milk during
pregnancy? Even more important was the question of why men, virgins
and post-menopausal women sometimes have milk in their breasts. Is
there any evidence to support the assumption that milk can be gener-
ated before, or even without, conception? Does this mean that milk is
not produced in the breasts from the uterine material sent to them, but
instead is derived from a substance other than menstrual blood? Why do

49 The original text of Hippocrates’ description of the mammary glands helds: ‘Women
produce milk, men do not. Women’s nature is fine with regard also to the glands, like the
rest of the body; and they change the food which they draw into themselves into milk.
It goes from the womb to the breasts for the child after birth as nourishment, which the
omentum squeezes out to parts above it, if it has an excess, cramped by the foetus’. Craik
E.M. (ed./tr.), The Hippocratic Treatise On Glands (Leiden-Boston: 2009) 81.
50 Fabricius, The Embryological Treatises 281.
 white blood and red milk 459

women menstruate at all, and why does the monthly bleeding stop during
pregnancy?51
Early modern definitions of the menses are far from clear. A variety of
bloody emissions could have been interpreted as menstrual blood, and
different terms described the physiological phenomenon of bleeding,
among them ‘monthlies’, ‘ordinaries’, ‘flowers’, or ‘menses’. ‘The plethora
of terms available to describe menstrual blood’, argued Cathy McClive,
‘suggests that perceptions of the type of flow were heavily dependant on
the circumstances and condition of the body when it flowed’.52 In spite of
all the inconsistencies that envelop the history of menstruation, one can,
according to Michael Stolberg, roughly distinguish between three different
models of early modern perceptions of menstruation: the cathartic, the
plethoric and the iatrochemical model. Until the late sixteenth century
the cathartic theory of menstruation dominated discussions. Menstruation
served primarily as a means of freeing women from the poisonous, mor-
bific, impure matter that constantly accumulated in the female body.53 By
about 1600, this set of explanations had been largely replaced by the new
‘plethora model’. In a healthy woman, medical writers now declared, men-
strual blood usually would not be poisonous or unhealthy. Non-pregnant
and non-lactating women had to get rid of this blood at regular intervals
because of its sheer volume. Although this explanation was substantiated
by evidence from everyday experience, it raised another question: why
then did plethora frequently occur in men, too? At this point iatrochemi-
cal ideas entered the debate, Stolberg argues; a surplus of blood was not
only found in female bodies. Instead iatrochemists relied on the notion
of a specific menstrual ‘ferment’ that drove the blood or humours into
intense commotion every month, stretching and expanding the vessels
involved to their utmost limits.54 While in the plethora model, the vessels
gave way at the point of least resistance, fermentation asserted that the
impure material was sufficient to cause fermentation or effervescence.

51 Crooke, Mikrokosmographia 193–196; see in the same manner Bartholin Bartholinus

Anatomy 87.
52 McClive C., “Menstrual Knowledge and Medical Practice in Early Modern France,
c. 1555–1761” in Shail – Howie, Menstruation 77.
53 ‘Due to her colder and more humid constitution, woman constantly accumulated
crude, peccant, excremental matter in her body. In the case of conception, it served as the
substrate for the powerful semen, but when no conception occurred, the ‘expulsive faculty’
of the uterus got rid of it via menstruation’; Stolberg, “The Monthly Malady” 304.
54 Stolberg M., “Menstruation and Sexual Difference in Early Modern Medicine” in
Shail – Howie, Menstruation 94.
460 barbara orland

These three explanations, however, do not answer the questions raised

by Helkiah Crooke. Crooke, a well-known member of the Royal College in
London, had absolutely no doubt that the menses provided the primary
material of milk production. With reference to the female anatomy, he
also considered it to be in principle conceivable that virgins and other
non-pregnant women could generate milk. Because of the great abun-
dance of blood in female bodies and because women have veins in the
chest after the age of fourteen – veins that ‘water the dugs’ – and glands
that can boil and alter the blood, disorders can develop. However, cases
of lactating men could not be explained in this way.
Male lactation, Crooke went on, could only be explained if Hippocrates
was right about ‘a double generation of Milke [. . .] and a double nature
thereof’. Crooke referred to the Hippocratic treatise On Glands, in which
lactation is explained by the swollen womb that presses against the stom-
ach because of the growing child. If this pressure occurs while the stom-
ach is filled with the fatty parts of food and drink then this material will be
squeezed out into the omentum and the flesh.55 In other words, according
to the Hippocratic theory two kinds of milk existed, but only one of them
can be found in the male body. If the ‘breeding of the humoral mate-
rial’ (including a final concoction in the breasts) is completed, the milk
is ‘perfectly white, sweete, and moderately thicke, and fitte to suckle an
Infant’; the other milk, which could also be found in men’s bodies ‘is white
indeed because it beareth the colour and forme of the part from whence
it floweth, but it hath neither the true nature of a nourishing Chymus or
humour, nor the sweetnes nor the power or vigour of nourishment, and
therefore it deserveth the name of Milke, not by his quality or specificiall
forme, but onely for his colour, for it is thinne and waterish, altogether
unprofitable to nourish an Infant’.56 While the former originated from
uterine blood that was brought from the womb to the mammary glands,
by ‘expression and refluence’ and ‘attraction’, the latter is a milky fluid or
chyle produced during the process of digestion in the stomach, which only
occasionally will be directed to the breasts. A ‘true’ and ‘perfectly con-
cocted’ milk, Crooke concluded, will not be ­generated before conception,

55 Crooke, Mikrokosmographia 194. The Hippocratic writers compared the process with
the use of large quantities of oil for smearing a hide; the pressure of the womb functions
like squeezing the absorbed oil. The fatty substance in a woman’s chest, warmed, sweet-
ened and whitened, is squeezed into the breasts. In case of a pregnancy this would happen
as soon as the embryo had started to move. Cf. Lonie, The Hippocratic Treatises 13.
56 Crooke, Mikrokosmographia 149.
 white blood and red milk 461

but sometimes from the breasts a thin and raw milk could flow, made of
the residues of the proper nourishment of the breasts.
Crooke knew very well that his view could be contested, and he him-
self introduced into the discussion one of the main objections. Why does
nature allow two kinds of milk to be produced, and why is the infant not
nourished by the same food both during and after pregnancy? Crooke dis-
missed both objections rather easily by referring to the common theory
of digestion. Chyle, or the raw milk, was the product of digestion. If the
unborn child were to be fed with chyle, he argued, it would require a
functioning digestive apparatus that would enable its body to prepare
and perfect the nourishing substances. After birth, in contrast, infants
would be unable to thrive on blood, a possibility which some authors
found inhumane and beastly anyway. Since blood is hotter than milk, it
would become an unpleasantly bitter food during the different steps of
­digestion, a process which he labelled with the term concoction. Milk as
a cold ­liquid would instead keep its sweetness during the different stages
of this process.57

The business of concoction

Thus, Crooke was only able to clarify the question of why milk was pro-
duced prenatally by referring to the physical process of concoction. What,
then, is concoction? What convinced him that concoction occurs? The
understanding of the prenatal processes of growth creates the need for
an excursus on concoction as the literally physical expression of bodily
matter transformation. Once again, we have to take a multi-layered con-
cept into consideration. Historians who have engaged with early mod-
ern medical theories of digestion and alimentation tend to interpret the
term ‘concoction’ in a clear physiological sense and to describe it as a
synonym for the stomach’s role in digestion.58 This is beyond doubt the
way in which most authors during the Early Modern period translated it
(digestion by heat or pepsis). Many also used it as a synonym for the four
kinds of digestion (in the stomach, in the liver, in the arteries, and in the
peripheral parts of the body).59

57 Crooke, Mikrokosmographia 196.

58 See e.g. Schoenfeldt, Bodies and Selves 8–29.
59 A detailed description of concoction as digestion and nutrition can be found in
Albala K., Eating Right in the Renaissance (Berkeley-Los Angeles: 2002) 54–62.
462 barbara orland

But for Crooke and his generation, concoction could also take the mean-
ing of a vital force performing different physical actions. It was the visible
part of the vegetative soul’s power to transform one body into another
and, in doing so, to take the step from crudity to perfection. This power
or faculty did not assume a definite shape, but usually occured in varying
forms, including attraction, retention, maturation, gestation, ripening and
expulsion.60 This much wider definition of the term concoction originally
comes from Aristotelian physics. For Aristotle the paradigmatic instances
of concoction in the living body were the transformation of food first into
blood, and then into all the other homoeomerous parts of the animal;
similarly, ‘surplus’ blood undergoes further concoction, which turns it into
milk, fat, menstrual fluid, or semen.61 Thus, Aristotle not only explained
digestion of food in a narrower sense but saw every kind of matter trans-
formation in living beings in terms of concoction. Organ-formation, foetus-
differentiation or the complex manifestations of spontaneous generation;
all counted as ‘concoction’.62
In consequence, the innate heat of the living being was not the only
agent that initiated alterations of matter, when something new came out
of what already existed. Such processes could also be promoted by extra-
neous heat (e.g. taking a bath, the sun). The existence of any kind of natu-
ral heat was decisive:
Concoction is a process in which the natural and proper heat of an object
perfects the corresponding qualities, which are the proper matter of any
given object [. . .] concoction ensues whenever the matter, the moisture, is
mastered, for the matter is what is determined by the natural heat in the
object.63
In 1616, before he became famous, William Harvey (1578–1657) noted the
confusion among authors trying to explain concoction in more detail. In
his anatomical notebook he wrote:

60 Crooke mentioned that ‘the Physitians of old time have beene a great difference
among themselves, whether the Guttes have onely an expulsive faculty, or all those foure
which serve as Hand mayedes to Nourishment, the Drawing, Reteyning, Assimilating, and
Expelling’. Crooke, Mikrokosmographia 161.
61 See for the whole paragraph Freudenthal G., Aristotle’s Theory of Material Substance.
Heat and Pneuma, Form and Soul (Oxford: 1995) 22–30; Lloyd G.E.R., Aristotelian Explora-
tions (Cambridge: 1996), ch. 4, The master cook.
62 Cf. Lloyd, Aristotelian Explorations 100.
63 Aristoteles, Meteorologica 4.2, 379b12–34.
 white blood and red milk 463

Some consider it liquefaction; some grinding and cutting and special attrac-
tion by individual parts, others a kind of putrefaction and fermentation;
others a distillation through descent and retort. All have spoken partly cor-
rectly, partly incorrectly, because it is not something wholly of itself alone.
Therefore philosophically (for this is a philosophical dispute). Coction is
change of the whole substance with generation and corruption. Chyle and
blood from food and drink mixed. Chyle is first.64
Although concoction was still a poorly understood process, he went on,
one could indeed compare it to a distillation in ‘a hypothetical retort in
which it is liquefied by the heat of the liver’. Concoction – or, in the con-
crete case, digestion – can be compared with what the alchemist does in
his laboratory. The food is broken down in the same way as all composed
material is broken down, and one should not compare this process with
the process of putrefaction as some did, because the food ‘has acquired a
better form’.65
Obviously, the problem of early modern physiologists was that Aris-
totle’s explanation itself lacked clarity. On the one hand, and especially
with respect to generation, the transformation of matter was frequently
accompanied by putrefaction and humidity. What rotted was merely the
residue of still usable matter that could become the object of a concoc-
tion. With the aid of ripening, boiling, or roasting, the natural heat would
perfect this raw material and transform it into something new. But Aris-
totle’s concoction could also mean the opposite, a kind of inconcoction,
due to coldness, and resulting in species that are in a raw or unprocessed
state.66 Here the transformation took place only in a deficient manner,
either because the fire was inadequate or because there was too much
moisture in the material to be roasted. Inconcoction, in some sense, was
the opposite of ripeness or perfection. Failures, immaturity, incomplete
degrees of ripeness etc. could always be the result of the whole process of
matter transformation; inconcocted materials were merely parboiled or
scorched. In any case, a bad concoction could never be corrected later,
which explains why many early modern diseases resulted from digestive
disorders.

64 Harvey William, Lectures on the Whole of Anatomy, an Annotated Translation of

Prelectiones Anatomiae Universalis, tr/an. O’Malley C.D. (Berkeley-Los Angeles: 1961)
83–84.
65 Harvey, Lectures 85.
66 Anatomist Thomas Bartholin discusses with reference to Aristotle whether the body
fat is a blood excrement congealed by cold. Bartholin, Bartholinus Anatomy 4.
464 barbara orland

Every description of nutrition, consequentially, reflected a multi-staged

process taking place in different locations and with a variety of effects.67
Digestion, as a physiological process of food processing, began with chew-
ing and swallowing of food in the mouth and continued with the transfor-
mation to chyle of this chewed, masticated, papescent food (or chymus)
in the stomach by way of grinding, acid fermentation and heat in the
stomach.68 The beginning of concoction within the stomach would then
be perfected in the guts, the mesenterium, the pancreas, spleen and liver,
affiliated with each other by a host of vessels that carry the chyle. The
chyle was inserted into the veins that surrounded the stomach and the
entire gut, the ‘mouths’ of which end in the mesentery and the ‘coat’ that
enclosed all of the digestive organs.69
The third step was sanguification in the liver, where chyle was turned
into blood, which meant that, on the one hand, the thicker cream of the
nutritive liquor was saturated with the red moisture of the liver. On the
other hand, chyle’s whey was separated to yield urine (which then passed
to the bladder).70 The final step was called assimilation (or nutrition)
and took place in every part of the body. Concoction, therefore, was not
completed with the production of new blood. All parts of the body were
involved in transforming substances into a final stage that was needed
to maintain life. Blood itself was the raw material that had to be further
concocted in order to produce several other substances. Secretions as well
as residues, excrements or intermediate substances thus were the result
of this process. Chyle, in fact, was produced from the nutritive material in
the last stage of digestion before being passed up to the liver, where the
process called sanguification took place.

67 Cf. Albala, Eating Right 54–60.

68 According to Bartholin the process of fermentation of the ingested food comes first,
before concoction by heat. The reason is that hard things must be broken into pieces,
which cannot possibly be done by the natural heat of the stomach alone. Bartholin, Bar-
tholinus Anatomy 21.
69 Diseases were caused by destructions in the abdominal vessels, because: ‘[. . .] it
often happens, that by reason of the intemperancy of men, abundance of humours flowing
through so many Vessels, the pores which carry the Chyle are obstructed or [. . .] stopped,
and the Juyce being putrified, it causeth feavers’. Vesling Johan, The Anatomy of the Body of
Man. Wherein is Exactly Described every Part thereof, in the same Manner as it is Commonly
Shewed in Publick Anatomies (London, Peter Cole: 1653) 15 (Orig. written in Latin 1647).
70 When it came to the heart, the new blood was heated and mixed with air and
became the lighter-coloured arterial blood that travelled through the arteries. Details can
be found in Wear, Knowledge and Practice 171–175.
 white blood and red milk 465

Coming back to Hooke’s interpretation of the Hippocratic analogy

between chyle and milk, it now becomes comprehensible that chyle was
only considered to be ‘milk’ insofar as it looked like barley cream or milk.
The term chylus (from the Greek chylos, Latin succus) as such was the
synonym for the masticated food turned into a fluid state. Like menstrual
blood, chyle had to be ‘twice-concocted’ within the mammary glands in
order to become real milk. However, if milk was made of chyle it must
necessarily have been colder than blood, because the nutritive liquor in
this case was not brought to the heart but would directly pass from the
stomach via the guts and the omentum to the upper part of the body. This
however meant a reduction of concoction resulting in a colder substance.
With respect to the problem of male lactation, the question now seems to
be slightly different: Could it be that the content of the digestive system
was directed to the breasts?

Chylification and ‘White Milk’

At the beginning of the seventeenth century, a theory of milk production

that differed from the one inherited from the ancients was quite unthink-
able. Milk was made from blood; only in the case of male lactation and
other non-natural states could physiologists accept the Hippocratic idea
that the milky fluid found at different places in the lower belly sometimes
appears in the breasts. Half a century later, things had changed radically.
Most thinkers now felt that the idea that milk was not generated from
blood, but from chyle, was at least worthy of consideration. But by the
turn of the eighteenth century, it seemed as if the old theory had been
abandoned completely. ‘Milk is part of the Chyle, which by the Glands of
the Breasts is separated into the Lacteal Tubes, for the Nourishment of the
Child’, was now seen as state-of-the-art knowledge.71 Milk was supposed to
be a derivative of chyle, or in the words of Herman Boerhaave (1668–1738),
the most influential teacher of early eighteenth-century medicine, milk

71 Groeneveld Joannes, The Grounds of Physick. Containing so much of Philosophy, Anat-

omy, Chimistry, and the mechanical Construction of a humane Body, as is necessary to the
Accomplishment of a Physitian. With the Method of Practice in common Distempers. Extracted
from the most eminent Authors, both antient and modern (London, W. Taylor, J. Osborn and
J. Pemberton: 1715) 32 (Orig. written in Latin 1714). The opinions of the ancients in this case
have to be considered as absurd, the physician and chemist Louis Lémery argued in his
treatise on food. Lémery Louis, Traité des aliments (Paris, Pierre Witte: 1702) 274.
466 barbara orland

was that animal part which ‘has felt the vital forces of the body, mixed
with the blood, passed thro’ the arteries and the veins, and been soon
separated again. And this can be no other than chyle from vegetables,
turned to milk, and separated in the breasts’.72
The radical reorientation was the result of a new anatomical knowledge
of the 1630s that, among other things, led to a revival of the old debate
about the ‘uterine milk’ as an alternative food for the unborn child.73 In the
middle of the seventeenth century, an increasing number of anatomists
and physiologists challenged the function of the amniotic fluid, which
from the perspective of the sixteenth-century physiologists had been con-
sidered a waste humour, the embryo’s sweat and urine, held under the
amniotic membrane in order to envelop and carry the foetus (its allantoic
coat).74 Now, the watery fluid was compared to milk whey. As the physi-
cian and anatomist Walter Needham (1632–1691) asserted in the first main
treatise on the issue in 1667, in the later months of ­pregnancy the foetus
can take the milky fluid into its stomach.75 Reminding his ­colleagues that
milk had been observed in the infant’s breast at birth, he asked where it
might have come from, if not from uterine milk. Many embryologists fol-
lowed his argument, and some held that blood and milk should serve as
food.76 Others, like Anton Deusing (1612–1666) or Thomas Wharton (1614–
1673), taught that menstrual blood played no role at all in nourishing the
foetus. Nor did it change into milk after parturition as the old school of
medical knowledge had taught. Milk itself was the foetus’s food.77
William Harvey was probably the first to develop this argument. In
his treatise De generatione animalium published in 1651, he stated as an
indisuptable fact that milk in its purest form is the embryonic food. Har-
vey was an enthusiastic ovist, who gleaned most of his empirical knowl-
edge on embryology from studying the hen’s egg. His eyes fixed on the

72 Boerhaave Herman, A New Method of Chemistry. Including the Theory and Practice of
that Art. Laid down on Mechanical Principles, and accommodated to the Uses of Life (Lon-
don, J. Osborn and T. Longman: 1727) 180.
73 Another effect was an increasing trend to locate bodily functions in the organs,
which I cannot treat in detail here.
74 Cf. Forrester, The Physiologia 585; Riolan, Les oeuvres anatomiques 941–942.
75 Needham Walter, Disquisitio anatomica de formato foetu (London, Gulielmus God-
bid: 1667).
76 An overview is given in Needham J., A History of Embryology (Cambridge: 1959)
158–159.
77 Cf. Deusing Anton, Exercitatio physiologico-medica de nutritone animalium. Publico
examini subjecta in illustri (Groningen, Bronchorst: 1660); Wharton Thomas, Adenographia.
Sive glandularum totius corporis descripto (Amsterdam, Joannis Ravenstein: 1659) 38–41.
 white blood and red milk 467

white of this egg, he browsed through the ancient literature for arguments
that could prove his main hypothesis: the notion that the albumen is the
equivalent of milk. In the ovi albus liquor of Pliny, the ovi candidum of
Celsus and, perhaps most importantly, Aristotle’s comparison of the for-
mation of the foetus with the clotting of milk, Harvey found a wealth of
evidence in the literature for his hypothesis that the ‘cold, sluggish, white
fluid of the egg, of different thickness at different places (thinner at the
blunt and sharp ends, thicker in other situations)’ is the embryo’s one and
only food.78 Like the chick in the egg nourished first by egg white, and
later, when this is consumed, by the yolk or by milk, the human unborn
child, too, should be nourished by nothing but milk. The thinner and
purer part of milk, which is imbibed by the the umbilical vessels, supplies
the ‘primo-genital parts’; the rest, like milk, could be sucked by the older
foetus with its mouth and concocted in its stomach.79

The milk veins

But the question of milk circulating through the body was not only a
theme for embryologists. ‘We all live by our own milk’ should become
the basic theorem of physiology, long into the eighteenth century.80 Inde-
pendent of age, sex or social status, every body was supposed to be nour-
ished by a whitish fluid quite similar to milk, since the ‘passages of the
milk transport’ lay open to the eyes of the anatomist, as Thomas Willis
(1621–1675), one of the influential members of the Oxford club of medical
chemists, put it.81 ‘There are no convenient wayes or conduits, by which
Blood may be, in a due quantity, imported into the Paps, there to be whit-
ened into Milk’, was how another well-known British naturalist, Walter
Charleton (1619–1707), summarised the recent findings of anatomy.82 Not

78 Harvey William, The Works of William Harvey (London: 1847) 211–212.

79 More on Harvey’s theory of embryonic nutrition can be found in Needham, A History
of Embryology 115–116.
80 Van Swieten, Commentaries upon Boerhaave’s Aphorisms (1766), vol. XIII, 199.
81 Willis Thomas, Dr. Willis’s Practice of Physick, being all the medical Works of that
renowned Physician. Containing these Ten Several Treatises (London, T. Dring, C. Harper
and J. Leigh: 1681) 148. But then the logical consequence of this new view was the question:
why do pregnant and women in child-bed suppress the menstrual blood? Willis discussed
this question at length, arguing amongst others that the growing belly consumes more
nutritious humour.
82 Charleton Walter, Natural History of Nutrition, Life, and Voluntary Motion containing
all the New Discoveries of Anatomist’s and Most Probable Opinions of Physicians, concerning
468 barbara orland

blood-vessels but chyliferous vessels transport the nutritive material to

the breasts where it will be converted into a milk that can serve as the
perfect nourishment of the child.
The passages referred to here were Gaspare Aselli’s (1581–1626) so-called
milk veins or lacteals (vena albae et lacteae), one of the fundamental dis-
coveries of the early 1620s. Later generations of medical historians would
retrospectively celebrate this event together with William ­Harvey’s for-
mulation of the theory of blood circulation as the ‘wonders of anatomy’.83
Aselli’s De lactibus sive lacteis vasis quarto vasorum mesaraicorum genere
appeared in 1627, Harvey’s Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis in 1628.
Both authors, who knew nothing about one another (Aselli, professor
of anatomy in Padua, died in 1625, and his work was published posthu-
mously), had already been working on these questions for years. Har-
vey promulgated his views about the circulatory system over a period
of nine years, especially in his anatomical lectures held in Oxford. Aselli
first observed the existence of the lacteal vessels when he dissected a dog
in 1622 but did not want to publish his discovery immediately. He first
sought further proof and in fact found evidence that lacteals existed in a
variety of quadrupeds.84
Among the multiple consequences of both discoveries, the more
unspectacular and little-known effect was a considerable impact on pre-
vailing views of nutrition. One of the assumptions that led William Harvey
to his discovery of blood circulation resulted from knowledge about the
role of the liver as the ‘factory of blood’ (sanguificationis officina). Like his
contemporaries, Harvey had believed (in keeping with Galen’s teachings)
that all of the juice of the ingesta (chyle) can pass through the veins of
the mesentery and from there to the liver. He also knew that fresh blood
could only flow in one direction because of the valves in the heart and the
large veins. Hence, he calculated that the quantity of blood discharged by

the Oeconomie of Human Nature. Methodically delivered in Exercitations Physico-anatomical

(London, Henry Herringman: 1659) 20.
83 Cf. Aselli Gaspare, De lactibus sive lacteis venis, ed. with an introduction by P. Fran-
ceschini (Milan, Episteme: 1972). On the history of Aselli and the lymphatic system see
Rothschuh K.E., Geschichte der Physiologie (Berlin etc.: 1953) 55; Mani N., Die historischen
Grundlagen der Leberforschung. Die Geschichte der Leberforschung von Galen bis Claude
Bernard (Basel: 1959), vol. II, 86–90; Drinker C.K., The Lymphatic System, Lane Medical
Lectures (Stanford: 1942).
84 Two editions in 1627 and 1628 were not widely mentioned; the spread of the dis-
covery appears to have been fairly slow. It was not until the third edition of Aselli’s dis-
sertation was published in 1640 that the question of chylous vessels was put high on the
physiologists’ agenda.
 white blood and red milk 469

the heart into the arteries in a given period and the quantity of ingested
material must be more or less equivalent. However, the quantity of blood
infused into the arteries was much larger than the portion of fresh blood
supplied by the ingested food. Among the many examples he drew on
as evidence to substantiate his point was the physiology of milk produc-
tion in the mammae, ‘for a cow will give three, four, and even seven gal-
lons and more in a day, and a woman two or three pints whilst nursing a
child or twins’, if blood and food were balanced.85 The comparison was a
cunning rhetorical strategy that challenged the idea of a balance between
blood and milk. A simple mathematical sum could illustrate what seemed
logically impossible. The flux of blood could not be supplied by way of
nutrition, a telling argument for Harvey’s theory of circulation. But it was
not Harvey’s intention to revise and reformulate the old theories of blood
formation in the liver.
With respect to the anatomy of the guts and the splanchnic flows –
especially the passage from chyle to the blood – Gaspare Aselli’s discovery
of the lacteal veins became highly significant. Aselli had argued that such
veins originated in the intestines, where they received and conveyed the
products of digestion, the chyle. Aselli had unhesitatingly labelled these
veins milk vessels (venas lacteas). Physical evidence once again had con-
firmed that any kind of white fluid must be milk, which could not be
engendered only at one location inside the body. The idea of blood circu-
lation strengthened the old assumptions about materials moving within
the body. Galen had located the product of the first concoction in the
stomach, yet medical practitioners following the Hippocratic theory held
that, as in the case of lactating men, the white liquor travelled through the
body. The lacteals now seemed to be evidence that a complex network of
channels existed, sucking and secreting milk and serving as passages from
one organ to the next. Thus, the identification of blood circulation was
supposed to be applicable to other natural flows inside the body.
The crucial point was the location of the lacteal vessels and ‘the journey
of the chyle’.86 Aselli himself believed that the milk veins ended in the liver.
Harvey, after learning that Aselli had postulated the existence of the milk
veins, opposed this view. He also held that it was not necessary to seek a
different channel for transporting chyle to the liver. It was obvious, he said,
that chyle was carried from the intestines via the ­mesenteric veins. But in

85 Harvey, The Works of William Harvey 53.

86 Charleton, Natural History of Nutrition 16.
470 barbara orland

1649 the French anatomist Jean Pecquet (1622–1674) ­demonstrated that the
lacteal veins (which he supposed to be a system of vessels) terminate in a
peculiar reservoir, which he named the thoracic duct.87 In consequence, the
milk-white liquor did not go to the liver but instead found its way via the
lacteals and thoracic duct to the right chamber of the heart. Thus, another
doctrine was challenged and the question was raised as to exactly where
and how the white juice of digestion was converted into blood.
Within a very short time, several anatomists detected other veins,
some with a milky, but even more with a watery, content. The nutritive
juice became a ‘hot topic’ for research, as well-known anatomists like
Olof ­Rudbeck (from 1652), Thomas Bartholin (in 1653), and subsequently
a whole generation of anatomists developed a new description of what
might be called experimental resorption by mechanical forces.88 The
nutritive mash and fluid of the stomach is pressed into the milk veins by
contraction of the intestine muscles; from there it flows by way of suction
into the vena mesenterica, the lower surface of the liver, the portal vein,
and into the inferior vena cava. Ultimately, this new fascination with the
digestive ­process would lead to a comprehensive description of the lym-
phatic system.89 However, more than one and a half centuries would pass
before these ideas would become basic concepts of physiology, but that
is another story.

The hydraulic body of experimental physiology

Harvey’s blood circulation and Aselli’s milk veins challenged – albeit

unintentionally and only in the long run – existing theories about the
manufacture of blood and milk. Both discoveries promoted an epistemol-
ogy of circulation that changed the ‘humoral body’ into a ‘hydraulic body’.
Indeed, it was not until the 1640s and 1650s that anatomists became aware
that a fourth kind of vessel (beside arteries, veins, and nerves) existed.
Nevertheless, it is obvious that the emerging mechanical concept of cir-
culation changed the art of anatomical dissection. It marked the birth of
experimental physiology.90 Together with the Cartesian explanations of

87 Mani, Die historischen Grundlagen 88.

88 Cf. Mani, Die historischen Grundlagen 87–90.
89 Cf. Drinker, The Lymphatic System 48–56.
90 See in general Davis, Circulation Physiology; Brown, The Mechanical Philosophy; The
Cartesian body concept is explored by Des Chene D., Spirits and Clocks. Machine and Orga-
nism in Descartes (Ithaca-London: 2001).
 white blood and red milk 471

the body machine and the rival doctrines of the physical (iatromechani-
cal) and chemical (iatrochemical) schools of physiology, notions about
fluids underwent radical transformations.
From the 1640s on, as vivisection and new technologies of observation
and experimentation (e.g. the use of ligature, chemical analysis of fluids
or the microscope) gained ascendency, the ‘old’ physiology collapsed,
and fundamental notions about the humoral body were translated into
a physiology of the hydraulic body. This meant, on the one hand, that
specific pre-existing descriptions of the fluid and solid parts of the body
were reformulated, as for example veins and arteries became tubes, pipes,
channels, capillaries, siphons, ducts, and so on, while organs were trans-
formed accordingly into tanks, containers, receptacles, and reservoirs and
served as transient spaces or passages. The term humour was gradually
abandoned, and was replaced with strictly empirical terms such as fluids,
juices, liquors. Bodily fluids were heterogeneous fluids, composed of par-
ticles of differing size and shape. Fluidity, hence, was a question of the
equivalence of the shape of pores and fluid particles.91
In light of a new anatomical knowledge of channel networks, the
mechanism of secretions or discharges became rather different to that
proposed by humoral theory. The inflammatory potential of the breasts,
for instance, was no longer due to their absorbency, which enhanced their
ability to soak up harmful humours. Rather it was a result of the defec-
tive anatomy of channels, the permeability of ducts, and the motion of
particles in fluids. Glands became sieves with holes of a particular size
that allowed them to separate the material needed from the blood. Vessels
were likewise ‘capable of encompassing, directing, changing, separating,
collecting, and secreting liquids’.92 Many diseases now were caused by fer-
ments or had to be deduced from chemically-studied processes like ebul-
lition, effervescence, coagulation or ‘orgasms of the Blood, on which most
Inflammations, Tumours, Pains, and Fluxes of Humours, depend’.93

91 The size of particles became extremely important for the understanding of the pro-
cess of flow. For instance, if larger particles blocked smaller pores or if several different
shapes could not pass through a given pore, this would result in material changes that – in
the worst case – led to the corruption of the fluids involved. Moreover, not only size and
shape but also the position of the particle (thicker or thinner) became crucial, since a cube
could only pass through an exactly-sized square hole. See Orland, “The Fluid Mechanics
of Nutrition”.
92 Boerhaave Herman, “Oration on the Usefulness of the mechanical Method in Medi-
cine” in Boerhaave’s Orations (Leiden: 1983) 102.
93 Floyer Sir John, The Preternatural State of Animal Humours described, by their Sensible
Qualities (London, Michael Johnson: 1696), preface.
472 barbara orland

Also important was the insistence that vital motions and transforma-
tions of matter should be perceived as a ‘legitimate object of mechani-
cal science’.94 Herman Boerhaave argued in 1703 that the influence of
liquids on the body could never have been explored in the same way
without knowledge of mechanics. The mechanics (in the sense of hydrau-
lic engineering), mathematical reasoning, and iatrochemistry of the last
half century, Boerhaave pointed out, could contribute to the theoretical
insights from physiology, and should be viewed as indispensable aids
for practicioners. After decades of physiological experiments and sharp
controversies between the various schools of mechanical philosophy, the
iatrochemical followers of Paracelsus and Helmont, those who sought to
revive Epicurean atomism, and the advocates of microscopic studies of
the subvisible particles of the body, the ideal Boerhaavian body – which
in a way was a synthesis of all these different intellectual developments –
seemed to resemble a network anatomy, a system of fluids in communicat-
ing vessels. In the Boerhaavian model, the body was a hydraulic machine,
and its vital functions that resulted from the interaction of solids and flu-
ids could be demonstrated experimentally.

Epilogue

By the turn of the eighteenth century, physiological research had changed

its focus, experimental methods, and instruments. In contrast to humoral
physiology, the hydraulic body concept called for a knowledge that prefer-
ably had resulted from technological innovations and experimental dem-
onstrations. The urge to categorise organs, vessels and fluids according
to a new rational system of hydromechanics became apparent in all cen-
tres of physiological research throughout Europe. These new perspectives
posed powerful challenges for the humoral system of the body. As tradi-
tional theories of organic sympathies and antipathies were abandoned,
new analogies based on experimental evidence arose. From the late sev-
enteenth century on, most learned physicians agreed in recognising the
merits of experimental experience and accepted the view that there exists
no anatomically detectable connection between uterus and breasts, and
that one cannot explain the whitening of blood into milk. The centuries-
old concept based on the Galenic and Hippocratic theory of humours and

94 Boerhaave, “Oration” 92.

 white blood and red milk 473

informed by Aristotelian biology seemed to have disappeared. Many phy-

sicians claimed that medical practice should no longer be based on ‘false
conjectures of Antiquity’.95
Among many other traditional views, the belief that milk is menstrual
blood directed to the breasts lost its power of persuasion. The analogy
between menstruation and lactation had outlived its usefulness. Blood and
milk were no longer equally important nutriments, and milk no whitened
menstrual blood. Most learned physicians would argue that milk is similar
to chyle, the intermediate product of digestion. Yet, despite a radical rhet-
oric of discovery and innovation, in medical practice the older humoral
theory – which was widespread, plausible, and well-established – lingered
on, in particular because it could be easily understood by practitioners
and lay persons. For the broader public, the notion of an affinity between
blood and milk was still accepted and survived well into the nineteenth
century. People were used to experiencing and describing their internal
bodily processes in terms of fluid dynamics; the blood/milk-analogy was
just one example of a body concept characterised by the flows and inter-
plays of airs, vapours, liquids, and more solid parts. Thus, one could inte-
grate part of the new physiological theories without eliminating the old
concepts. Practitioners such as Johann Storch instead combined the old
authoritative knowledge and common narratives with the new theories
of hydromechanical physiology. Storch wrote in 1750: ‘Milk and blood, in
fact, are so close that one rightly can call milk a white blood [. . .] notwith-
standing that we have named blood a red milk’.96

95 French physician Jean-Baptiste Denis in 1762, as quoted in Roger, The Life Sciences
150.
96 ‘Die Milch ist in der That dem Blut so nahe verwandt, daß man sie mit Recht ein
weißes Blut nennen mag [. . .] gleichwie hinwiederum das Blut billig eine rothe Milch
heisset’. Storch Johann, Theoretische und practische Abhandlung von Kinderkranckheiten
(Eisenach, Grießbach: 1750), vol. I, 318.
474 barbara orland

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 PART THREE

sweat and skin

 THE “BODY WITHOUT SKIN” IN THE HOMERIC POEMS

Valeria Gavrylenko

Summary

This article focuses on the affected body in the Homeric poems and on its rela-
tions with the so called ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ world, with psychic and physical ‘intru-
sions’ that threaten bodily integrity. The image of chrôs is an illustrative example
of how problematic any differentiation between the exterior and the interior may
be. Chrôs represents a perfect model of the affected body with no (human) skin,
if the skin is seen as an envelope, an external body part detachable from the
whole body (that is animal derma and rhinos), and a barrier between the ‘outer’
and the ‘inner’, between surface and depth. When pierced, consumed, liquified,
softened in pain, fear, suffering and joy, or penetrated by spears, the Homeric
hero’s chrôs constitutes a kind of unity with the ‘inner organs’. This unity con-
sists in the similarity of texture of organic entities and chrôs, and seems to elimi-
nate any difference between the ‘outer’ and the ‘inner’ body. Subject to various
forms of deformation, open to any influence, Homeric chrôs could be described
as ‘body without skin’, while derma and rhinos have not yet definitively become
the human skin of the heroic body.

The ‘corporeal’ theme is one of the most important in Homeric epic.

Although it is treated by contemporary scholarship in various ways, the
subject remains open for further investigation. Homeric language pos-
sesses a rich vocabulary with regard to the ‘body’ and the ‘corporeal’, and
the reader finds a range of diverse terms for ‘body’, none of which match
contemporary notions of the human body. Perhaps for this reason, one
could say that the notion of the body is beyond Homer’s understanding,
a proposition that would be both true and false. The most radical view
on the problem could be formulated as being that there is no ‘body’ in
the Homeric epics, and there is no ‘not-body’.1 This briefly summarises
research over the last fifty years on the Homeric hero’s ‘not-body’ – ­psychic
processes, (organs of) consciousness, identity, ‘I’, soul, etc.2 The difficulty

1 To be more precise, ‘in Homer there is no clear body – one soul dichotomy’, Renehan R.,
“The Meaning of ΣΩΜΑ in Homer: A Study in Methodology”, California Studies in Classical
Antiquity 12 (1979) 269–282, 279.
2 For an overview of the state of Homeric studies in this area, see Clarke M., Flesh and
Spirit in the Songs of Homer. A Study of Words and Myths (Oxford: 1999).
482 valeria gavrylenko

of distinguishing between ‘body’ and ‘not-body’ is, in other words, a dif-

ficulty of perceiving the difference between the so-called psychic/mental
and somatic phenomena ‘within’ the Homeric man. Both are more or less
‘corporeal’/’physiological’ on the one hand, and ‘mental’ on the other. My
purpose is not to demonstrate either the existence or the absence of the
concept of the ‘body’ in Homer (nor that of the concept of soul or spirit).
I would instead aim at a description, one that is both delicate – as delicate
as is the subject itself – and accurate, of the matter that is too crudely
called the ‘body’, which in Homer is represented in a much more sophis-
ticated way.
I will pay particular attention here to the Homeric word chrôs, which has
remained until recently overshadowed by sôma, demas, melea and guia,
words which are commonly interpreted as ‘body’. Statistically, in Homer
chrôs occurs most frequently and is the most fruitful field to be explored.
Scholars often prefer the bodily plurality represented by melea and guia,
embodied by the live warrior’s body. Such a plurality is opposed to sôma
and nekus/nekros, the dead body or corpse that is the manifestation of the
hero’s acquisition of his bodily unity. This paradigm of a fragmented body
in Homer was first noted by Bruno Snell in his understanding of Homeric
man as an aggregate of discrete parts.3 Sôma, which is never used in the
poems to refer to the living body, is only a later interpretation of bodily
joints and sinews, melea and guia.
A recent study on the subject by the Swiss scholar Guillemette Bol-
ens4 developed in a detailed way Snell’s ideas about the plurality of the
Homeric body, whilst at the same time introducing a differentiation, or
rather two kinds of ‘body logic’: one of the joints, called ‘articulate’, and
another of the envelope. When the Iliad represents heroic deaths through
detailed depictions of injured body parts where disrupted joints and ten-
dons play a crucial role, the priority is to be given, according to Bolens,
to the ‘articulate body’ logic (‘logique du corps articulaire’). The view that
perceives the body as a unit or ‘envelope’ is more common in later Greek
culture, of which Plato is a brilliant spokesman.5

3 Snell B., The Discovery of the Mind in Greek Philosophy and Literature (New York: 1982
[1946]).
4 Bolens G., La logique du corps articulaire. Les articulations du corps humain dans la
littérature occidentale (Rennes: 2000).
5 Bolens G., “Homeric Joints and the Marrow in Plato’s Timaeus: Two Logics of the
Body”, Multilingua 18, 2/3 (1999) 149–157.
 the “body without skin” in the homeric poems 483

The view of Homeric man as constituting multiple parts – an assump-

tion about the absence of a notion of the ‘body’ in epic and, consequently,
about the use of a range of words (some of them used in the plural) that
can now be interpreted as ‘body’ – may partially be explained by the
nature of the poems and the processes of composition, performance and
diffusion in which they were re-created. The Homeric poems were com-
posed in the context of an oral culture ‘from the early second millennium
into the middle of the eighth century in the first millennium’.6 Performed
by court singers, aoidoi, for the military aristocracy in palaces or, later,
by rhapsodes in front of a wider public, they existed in quite a fluid and
mobile form. The Homeric epic was brought together and fixed in writing
for the first time after the middle of the sixth century BC. Orality and the
later introduction of literacy played significant roles in the composition
of the Iliad and the Odyssey which, according to the analysts, represent
an amalgamation of the texts created at different places and different
times. Chronology and geography thus make the poems multiple, in form
as well as in content. This fact leads to both the epic hero and the body
being represented by multiple images. Bolens strongly links orality and
corporeality. According to her, mobility is a crucial factor both for the
oral culture and the body image typical for this culture. Oral tradition
forms an articulate body where bodily members and joints translate the
idea of mobility.7
While Snell’s theory remains, in its multiple variations, predominant,
Homeric language still encourages the questioning and transgression of
the dichotomies mentioned above. First of all, because our modern struc-
ture of thought and understanding of the body reduces a diverse Homeric
corporeal lexicon into a rather pale spectrum of meanings, some of the
meanings of the words are retained, while others remain neglected. In my
opinion, the study of chrôs as one of the Homeric ‘untranslatables’ may
demonstrate the diversity and interpretative difficulty that Homeric lan-
guage and epic perception of the body is apt to show. At the same time, I
would stress that this study does not intend to push aside the idea of body
as an aggregate in Homer, but rather to illustrate, through analysing chrôs
(and its ‘family’), the multiplicity of bodily images in epic, among which
the body-aggregate is not necessarily the most dominant. The ‘body’ can

6 Nagy G., Homeric Questions (Austin: 1996) 42.

7 Bolens G., “The Limits of Textuality: Mobility and Fire Production in Homer and
Beowulf ”, Oral Tradition 16, 1 (2001) 107–128.
484 valeria gavrylenko

be assessed with different criteria, beyond multiplicity and unity or life

and death (chrôs mixes these last two notions, creating a sense of mors
incerta in Homeric epic). We could use, for instance, criteria of depth/
surface or interior/exterior, which, as we shall see, are themselves vague
(this is crucial and inevitable for Homeric poems) and often contradicted
by the ways chrôs is used in the poems.8 In this paper I will demonstrate
the reversibility and frequent indistinguishability of bodily surface and
depth manifested by chrôs, through showing its semantic proximity to
flesh, sarx, and its difference from derma and rhinos, skin (of an animal)
separable from the (animal) body, and finally its liquidity, common both
for chrôs and the internal ‘organs’.
I will often equate chrôs with the ‘body’ in my analysis, with the fol-
lowing important proviso: it is ‘body without skin’, the quotation marks
stressing the conditionality of any term that we use in our analysis of
Homeric understanding of the ‘body’, a concept that is absent in the
Iliad and the Odyssey due to the abundance of terms used to denote the
body. Homeric language, with its semantic flexibility, allows this equation
between chrôs and the body. It is our own notion of the ‘body’, incompat-
ible with Homeric assumptions about it, which acquires, due to this inten-
tional equation, unexpected semantic nuances. In answer to the question
‘Is there a (concept of) body in Homer?’ my answer would be ‘yes’: chrôs,
‘body without skin’.

Between sarkes and derma (rhinos)

Homeric chrôs is usually understood as ‘skin’, or ‘envelope’, ‘surface’, the

‘outer boundary of the human body’. These terms are used by a number
of influential modern scholars: B. Snell, J.-P. Vernant and G. Bolens. How-
ever, such an interpretation of chrôs as an exterior was first proposed by
the Pythagoreans and, after centuries of transmission of Homer and criti-
cal work on him, firmly integrated into contemporary academic thought.
According to the Pythagoreans, chroia is a surface, a bodily exterior.9

8 In terms of methodology, I consider it necessary to underline this semantic flexibility

of the Homeric lexicon, its ‘contradictoriness’ and persistent transgression of those ines-
capable (because these are our analytic instruments) criteria with which a modern scholar
treats historical and cultural phenomena.
   
9 Pseudo-Plutarchus, Placita philosophorum 883C4–5 οἱ Πυθαγορικοὶ χροιὰν ἐκάλουν τὴν
ἐπιφάνειαν τοῦ σώματος.
 the “body without skin” in the homeric poems 485

At the same time, it is also interpreted as ‘body’, ‘flesh’, and sometimes

‘colour’. Indeed, 72 cases in the Iliad and 44 in the Odyssey10 problema-
tise any distinction within the concept of chrôs between flesh and skin,
between surface and depth. If some occurrences suggest that chrôs is close
to the modern notion of skin as surface (which has now become problem-
atic as well), others invite the reader to feel its apparent depth.
In this regard, it is useful to refer to Galen, who provides a summary
of what appears implicit in Homeric poems: ‘The Ionians give the name
chrôta to the fleshy part of our body: skin (derma) and muscles (mues), in
addition to the membranes and internal organs (splanchna). What relates
to the bones is not called chrôta’.11 The syncretical character of chrôs is
therefore evident: it is body and skin together, and what is important is
not the opposition of surface to depth, but rather a sort of affinity of chrôs
to the fleshy parts of the body, an affinity that allows us to identify it as a
‘body without skin’ because derma, mentioned here by Galen, is not yet
‘appropriated’ by the human body in the Homeric epic.12
Homeric depictions of chrôs suggest that there is no constant mean-
ing of the word, and that it changes from context to context, oscillating
between ‘opposites’ – surface and depth. Chrôs is sometimes as ‘thick’ as
to reach the bones: antikru chroa te rêksô sun t’oste’ araksô, ‘I will tear
your body and at the same time break your bones’ (Il. 23.673). In some
cases, however, ‘depth’ or ‘superficiality’ are not so evident: amph’ osteo-
phi chrôs in Od. 16.145; chroa kalon eni gnamptoisi melessi, Od. 13.398, 430;
amphi peri chroa inesin êde melessin, Il. 23.191. Following these examples,
it is difficult to say whether flesh or skin are to be understood by chrôs,
but – and this seems to be more important – it might not be a concern
for the poet(s), because the term is interchangeable with sarx and is never

10 Homerus, Ilias 04.130, 137, 139, 237, 510; 5.337, 354, 858; 7.207; 8.43, 298; 9.596; 10.575;
11.352, 398, 437, 457, 573, 574; 12.427, 464; 13.25, 191, 241, 279, 284, 340, 440, 501, 553, 574, 640,
649, 830; 14.25, 164, 170, 175, 187, 383, 406, 456; 15.315, 316, 317, 534; 16.504, 761, 814; 17.210,
571, 733; 19.27, 33, 39, 233; 20.100; 21.70, 168, 398, 568; 22.286, 321, 322; 23.67, 191, 673, 803,
805, 819; 24.19, 414; Odyssea 2.376; 4.749, 750, 759; 5.455; 6.61, 129, 220, 224; 11.191, 529;
13.398, 430; 14.24, 506; 15.60; 16.145, 175, 182, 210, 457; 17.48, 58, 203, 338; 18.172, 179; 19.72, 204,
218, 232, 237, 263; 21.412; 22.113; 23.95, 115, 237; 24.44, 156, 158, 467, 500.
11 Galenus, In Hippocratis librum de fracturis commentarii 2.9 (18b.435.7–10 K.) ‘Χρῶτα
καλοῦσιν οἱ Ἴωνες‚ ὃ ἦν τοῦ σώματος ἡμῶν σαρκῶδες‚ ἐν ᾧ μάλιστα γένει τὸ δέρμα καὶ οἱ μύες
εἰσὶν‚ ἐφεξῆς δὲ οἱ ὑμένες καὶ σπλάγχνα․ τὸ δὲ τῶν ὀστῶν γένος οὐκ ὀνομάζουσι χρῶτα’.
12 Jackie Pigeaud draws on the Galenic view of Ionian chrôta and its profoundness,
stressing (and at this point his position is in line with the understanding of chrôs by con-
temporary scholars) that chrôs is a ‘superficial body’. See Pigeaud J., “La peau comme fron-
tière”, Micrologus. La pelle umana. The Human Skin 13 (2005) 23–53, 28.
486 valeria gavrylenko

associated with derma and rhinos, which in the poems designate mostly
animal skin or hide.
The functionally synonymous nature of different words used to describe
similar phenomena in the identical passages helps to locate chrôs upon or
around the warrior’s bones and limbs, and to define its ‘anatomical’ char-
acteristics. Such is the case of sarx, sarkes which enters into a functional
synonymic relationship with chrôs in the passages just mentioned, with
an uncertain meaning of chrôs. Chrôs is similar to sarx when sarx, sarkes
is opposed to the bones: ou gar eti sarkas te kai ostea ines echousin, ‘joints
do not wear flesh and bones any more’, Od. 11.219; sarkes de peritrome-
onto melessin, ‘flesh trembled around the members’, Od. 18.77; the Cyclops
Polyphemus was so hungry as to eat not only the internal organs of the
flesh, enkata te sarkas, but bones full of marrow as well, ostea mueloenta,
Od. 9.292–293. Chrôs, close in meaning to ‘flesh’ and ‘meat’, is thus inter-
changeable with sarx.
Apart from sarx, there is a curious correlation between chrôs and
derma, rhinos. This time, they are not functionally synonymous. Usually,
derma and rhinos are used not in relation to the human body, but to the
‘non-human’. According to Pigeaud, ‘derma c’est la dépouille, la peau de
l’écorché. En général, il faut le dire, une peau de bête. Un synonyme de
derma est rhinos’.13 Derma, derived from the verb derô, in most cases
means the hide of an animal.14 Derma is distinctive due to the fact that
it can be detached from the whole animal. It can then be processed and
used as an element of armour, clothes, and bedding. The same can be
said of rhinos. Il. 16.341 offers the only exception in the Iliad. Here derma
is applied to the human ‘écorché’: decapitated by Peneleos, Lyco’s head
hangs to one side; only derma holds it.15 In the Odyssey, derma is still
used for the detached and sometimes processed skin of animals. Again,
as in the Iliad, there is an exception in the Odyssey concerning the use
of derma. This exception does not change the meaning of derma; it only
transfers it to the human body. Od. 13.429–432 depicts Odysseus’ transfor-
mation by Athena where the hero is shown covered with the derma of a
very old man (palaiou gerontos), while his own chrôs is dried up:

13 Pigeaud, “La peau comme frontière” 23–24.

14 Hom. Il. 6.117, 9.548, 10.23, 177; Od. 2.291, 4.436, 440, 782; 8.53; 13.436; 14.24, 50, 519;
22.362.
15 ἔσχεσε δʼοἶον | δέρμα, παρηέρθη δὲ κάρη.
 the “body without skin” in the homeric poems 487

So saying, Athene touched him with her wand. She withered the fair flesh
(chroa) on his supple limbs, and destroyed the flaxen hair from off his head,
and about all his limbs she put the skin (derma) of an aged old man.16
Scholars debate whether the goddess indeed transforms Odysseus or only
dresses him with an old man’s skin, quite a popular motif in ancient lit-
erature. Gregory Nagy accepts the ‘metaphorical’ interpretation of such
scenes, which for him represent ‘the traditional theme of equating one’s
identity with one’s “hide” ’.17 Nagy then argues that the Greek sakos,
‘cowhide-shield’, ‘besides meaning “body” [. . .] is also regularly used to
designate “person, self, one’s own self” ’.18 A different position is adopted
by C.M. Bowra concerning the problem of ‘complete’ transformations of
mythological characters (such as Actaeon). According to him, ‘derma is
not the same as demas’.19 I would add that derma evidently is not the
same as chrôs either. A good example of such an imbalance or difference
is Heracles, a superhero who wears the lion’s hide and is skinless at the
same time, that is, fatally defective.20
It is clear that the derma of an old man is alien to Odysseus’ body (chrôs).
In its meaning, it is identical to other occurences of derma as an animal
hide, an envelope, a body part which may be detached from the body.
In this context it is worth mentioning another metamorphosis experi-
enced by Athena’s protégé. In book 16, Odysseus meets Telemachus, and
just before the son recognises his father, Athena transforms ‘old’ Odysseus
into an essence of youth and divine beauty. Telemachus exclaims:
Of other sort thou seemest to me now, stranger, than awhile ago, and other
are the garments thou hast on, and thy chrôs is no more the same (Od.
16.181–182).21
A.T. Murray’s translation of chrôs as colour omits the play on words cre-
ated by the previous scene of Odysseus’ transformation in book 13, a play

16 ‘ Ὣς ἄρα μιν φαμένη ῥάβδῳ ἐπεμάσσατʼ Ἀθήνη․ | κάρψεν μὲν χρόα καλὸν ἐνὶ γναμπτοῖσι
μέλεσσι‚ | ξανϑὰς δ̕ ἐκ κεφαλῆς ὄλεσε τρίχας‚ ἀμφὶ δὲ δέρμα | πάντεσσιν μελέεσσι παλαιοῦ ϑῆκε
γέροντος . . .’
17 Nagy G., Greek Mythology and Poetics (Ithaca-London: 1990) 264.
18 Nagy, Greek Mythology 264.
19 Bowra C.M., Greek Lyric Poetry. From Alcman to Simonides (Oxford: 1961) 100.
20 On Herakles’ kairotic skinlessness related to his ‘disease(s)’ see the illuminating
article by Staden H. von, “The Mind and Skin of Heracles: Heroic Diseases” in Gourevitch
D. (ed.), Maladie et maladies, histoire et conceptualisation. Mélanges en l’honneur de Mirko
Grmek (Geneva: 1992) 131–150.
21 ‘Ἀλλοῖός μοι‚ ξεῖνε‚ φάνης νέον ἠὲ πάροιϑεν‚ | ἄλλα δὲ εἵματ’ ἔχεις‚ καί τοι χρὼς οὐκέϑ’
ὁμοῖος’.
488 valeria gavrylenko

between the chrôs of the hero and the derma upon (or around, amphi)
him. J.-P. Vernant is more precise: for Telemachus, Odysseus reappears
‘with totally different skin’.22 Because Telemachus is ignorant about the
former metamorphosis of the stranger with the old derma around him, he
wrongly equates derma with chrôs, taking it for the stranger’s ‘own’, and
for this reason he calls it chrôs instead of derma. J. Pigeaud emphasises
this nuance that chrôs is ‘co-née avec son porteur; je veux dire qu’on ne
peut pas la revêtir comme le derma’.23
Synonymous with derma, rhinos (pl. rhinoi) designates an animal hide,24
a material from which shields are made (usually oxhide). However, one
can see how rhinos is flayed or torn off the human body. In Il. 5.308, a
rock thrown by Tydeus at Aeneas ‘tore the skin away’.25 In the Odyssey
the number of similar cases increases: rhinoi, slightly wounded or torn off
the bodies by stones, rocks, weapons, are used to designate the human
skin: 5.426, 435, 14.134, 22.278. In Od. 12.45–46 rhinoi rot around the bones
of victims who had died listening to the song of the Sirens. To the scholi-
ast, these are skins: ‘skins putrefy around the bones’.26 Then, akrên rhinon
touched by the javelin in Od. 22.278 is understood as the ‘outer surface’
(skin) of the body.27
Other examples (cf. Il. 23.673 and Od. 5.426; Od. 12.46, and 16.145) dem-
onstrate the interchangeability of rhinoi and chrôs. Both ‘skin’ and ‘body’,
or ‘flesh’ could be read there. At the same time, those several occurrences
in the Odyssey of rhinos designating not exclusively animal skin, but also
human skin detached or torn from the heroic body (Od. 5.435, 14.134,
22.278), allow us to offer a hypothesis about the appearance of the human
skin in the Odyssey. If the Odyssey, a younger poem than the Iliad, pres-
ents more examples of rhinos as the human skin, then it indicates a shift
in Homeric assumptions about the human body, a change of a body logic
in the redaction of the Odyssey which consists in the body’s acquisition
of its ‘own’ skin.
Although the Odyssey presents only slender evidence for the birth of
the concept of human skin, which complicates the development of my

22 Vernant J.-P., Mortals and Immortals. Collected Essays (Princeton-New Jersey: 1991) 39.
23 Pigeaud, “La peau comme frontière” 28.
24 Hom. Il. 4.447, 7.474, 8.61, 10.155, 262, 334, 12.263, 13.406, 804, 16.636, 20.276, Od. 1.108,
5.281, 12.395, 423. Ῥινός, ῥινοί are used for the nose and nostrils as well: Il. 13.616, 19.39.
25 ‘ὦσε δ’ ἀπὸ ῥινὸν τρηχὺς λίθος’.
26 Scholia Graeca in Homeri Odysseam Q ad 12.46 ‘περὶ δὲ τὰ ὀστέα τὰ δέρματα σήπονται’.
27 Scholia in Odysseam V ad 22.278 ‘τὴν ἔξωϑεν ἐπιφάνειαν τοῦ σώματος’.
 the “body without skin” in the homeric poems 489

initial proposal, it is important that it is articulated here in the context of

my analysis of chrôs as ‘body without skin’. I see here no contradiction,
just as there is no contradiction in the case of ‘skinless’ Herakles covered
with the lion’s hide, and also because the Homeric epic is not a system of
coherent representations, but a ‘network’ of their multiple disruptions and
strata. It shows the body not only in flux with the world but also in flux in
time. Rhinos as the human skin is here only the seed of a concept which
does not, however, enter into circulation even within the Hippocratic Cor-
pus, where it is rarely used. Therefore, the human skin that emerges in
the Odyssey does not overshadow chrôs, but, on the contrary, makes its
skinlessness more obvious.
Chrôs, sarx and derma/rhinos form a curious triangle of intricate
relationships. However, chrôs seems to prevail in this ‘chrôs-family’.28 If
derma and rhinos sometimes designate the human skin in Homer, they
are mainly associated with animal hide. And yet, even when applied to
the human body, rhinos, when opposed to the bones (as in Od. 12.45–46),
may be too close to sarx in meaning to claim its purely ‘dermatological’
(in the Homeric sense of derma) meaning. Moreover, a number of spatial
prepositions like amphi and peri depict chrôs as an envelope, a cocoon,
an exterior of the body. But this image of a cocoon, a container, is insepa-
rable from another one where the prepositions antikru and dia visualise
chrôs as the fleshy body with depth and surface fused together.
Chrôs represents depth and exteriority of the body at the same time.
But modern scholars stress its exteriority, thus following the Pythagore-
ans’ understanding of the Homeric man. Bruno Snell argues:
[. . .] chrôs is the skin, not the skin as an anatomical substance, the skin
which can be peeled off – that is [. . .] derma – but the skin as surface, as the
outer border of the figure of man, as the foundation of colour, and so forth.
In point of fact, however, chrôs is often used in the place of ‘body’.29
For J.-P. Vernant too the significance of chrôs is focused on its superfi-
ciality: ‘l’enveloppe extérieure, la peau, la surface de contact avec soi et
avec l’autre, comme aussi la carnation, le teint’.30 The terms themselves
used to explain chrôs – in particular, surface – should not be taken for

28 An allusion to the ‘thumos-family’ of Michael Clarke in his monograph Flesh and
Spirit in the Songs of Homer. A Study of Words and Myths (Oxford: 2000).
29 Snell B., The Discovery of the Mind in Greek Philosophy and Literature (New York:
1982) 6.
30 Vernant J.-P., L’Individu, la mort, l’amour. Soi-même et l’autre en Grèce ancienne (Paris:
1989) 11.
490 valeria gavrylenko

granted, but should be used with greater precision. It is possible to accept

the idea of Snell and Vernant about superficiality and exteriority of chrôs
only if an important nuance is taken into account: its depth, pointed out
already by Galen. I also agree that chrôs is a border, an area of contact
with the outer world which implies that there is a distinction, a disrup-
tion, between the human and the outer world. Chrôs is exactly what estab-
lishes this difference. But in the Iliad, and often in the Odyssey, this border
is depicted as eliminated. That is, chrôs exists only in the state of dis-
ruption between the human and the world, the state of intrusion of one
into another. It is intrusion and violation of borders that give birth to this
fleshy body.
Concerning the ‘self’ and ‘other’ to which Vernant appeals, these
notions and the distinction between them seem somewhat anachronistic,
perhaps even modern-eurocentrist. It is barely possible to demonstrate a
direct textual correlation between chrôs, ‘self ’, and ‘other’ in the Homeric
poems. This is primarily because in epic there is no equivalent or no
(single?) word for ‘self’, a point which has itself become the subject of a
vast body of research. I would not venture to engage with the problem of
Homeric ‘self’/’other’ in its relation to chrôs. To me, the use of this notion
here would necessitate different conceptual vocabulary and analysis on
another level. Besides, when I use the terms ‘hero’ or ‘human’, ‘outer’ or
‘external’, I would not substitute any of them by ‘self ’ and ‘other’.
Nicole Loraux’s views are close to my own understanding of the heroic
body represented by chrôs. It is irrelevant for Homer, she argues, to dif-
ferentiate between skin and flesh within the term chrôs. What makes a
difference is bodily openness and vulnerability. The heroic body is a body-
wound which appears just at the moment its life is threatened. In fact, the
danger to which chrôs is subject creates and engenders this body-wound.
There is no body (chrôs) until it is penetrated, cut, dismembered, dried
out, wasted away, mutilated, and so forth.31
Such an approach invites us to perceive chrôs as a tangible substance
that always finds itself not only in a superficial contact with, but also in
a profound mixture with, the ‘outer’ world. This circumstance, too, may
explain the absence of the Homeric notion of the human skin if its func-
tion is to serve as a barrier, a border, a cover protecting the body from
outside influences. In Homeric epic this function is performed by the

31 Loraux N., The Experiences of Tiresias. The Feminine and the Greek Man (Princeton:
1995) 96–97.
 the “body without skin” in the homeric poems 491

animal hide (derma, rhinos) as the heroic body is generally deprived of

his own ‘hide’.
Epithets accompanying chrôs, chroa emphasise its specific subtlety, or
delicacy: leukon (Il. 11.573, 15.316), terena (Il. 4.237, 13.553, 14.406), kalon (Il.
5.858, 11.352, 21.398, 22.321, 23.805, Od. 19.263).32 The idea of the vulner-
ability of the living heroic body is even further condensed in the word
trôtos, used once for Achilles’ body in Il. 21.568.33 If the live body of the
Homeric hero is trôtos, then empedos denotes the dead body of the most
prominent heroes whose bodies are to be preserved safe and sound before
the funerary rituals are performed (e.g., Il. 19.33, 39). Chroa leirioenta, used
for Ajax’s body in Il. 13.830, is commonly interpreted as ‘delicate flesh’,34
‘desired’, or ‘lily-like’, but these translations ignore one specific nuance
which will be discussed below.
Chrôs is said to be neither of stone nor of iron. Because it is human
and easy to penetrate it is not insensitive (Il. 4.510).35 It is with the cut-
ting gesture sanctioned by the war, temnein (a verb from which the noun
anatomê, ‘dissection’, is derived)36 that these qualities of the body are dis-
covered. Spears are tamesichroa, ‘cutting the flesh’ (Il. 4.511, 13.340, 23.803).
In cutting the victim they violently violate the bodily boundaries (in order
to overcome a military crisis).37 Spears are eager to sate themselves with
chrôs (Il. 11.574, 15.317),38 like the warriors desire to slash the bodies of one
another with pitiless bronze (Il. 13.501, 16.761).39 Spears in parallel with cruel
pains penetrate, or go through the human body (Il. 11.398, 20.100),40 dent
the flesh (Il. 8.298, 15.315).41 The heroic body is disrupted and deformed

32 Another epithet, ἱμερόεις, charming, desired, is used for the divine body of Hera in
Il. 14.170.
33 In Homer Achilles is not yet represented as ‘imperfectly invulnerable’. This is prob-
ably the product of a post-Homeric culture. It would be more convenient to describe the
Homeric Achilles as perfectly vulnerable. For the hero’s ‘imperfect invunerability’ see Bur-
gess J., “Achilles’ Heel: The Death of Achilles in Ancient Myth”, Classical Antiquity 14, 2
(1995) 217–244.
34 Segal C., The Theme of the Mutilation of the Corpse in the Iliad (Leiden: 1971) 9.
35 ‘οὔ σφι λίθος χρὼς οὐδὲ σίδηρος’. Scholia Graeca in Homeri Iliadem (scholia vetera) bT
ad 4.510 ‘πρὸς ἀνθρώπους καὶ τρωτοὺς ἡ μάχη’. Scholia in Iliadem (scholia recentiora Theodori
Meliteniotis) (e cod. Genevensi gr. 44) on the ‘λίθος: τὸ σῶμα ἀναίσθητος’.
36 Staden H. von, “The Discovery of the Body: Human Dissection and its Cultural Con-
texts in Ancient Greece”, Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine 65 (1992) 223–241, 230.
37 Staden, “The Discovery of the Body” 230.
38 ‘λιλαιόμενα χροὸς ἆσαι’.
39 ‘ἵεντ᾽ ἀλλήλων ταμέειν χρόα νηλέϊ χαλκῷ’.
40 ‘πρὶν χροὸς ἀνδρομέοιο διελθέμεν; ὀδύνη δὲ διὰ χροὸς ἦλθ᾽ ἀλεγεινή’.
41 ‘πάντες δ᾽ ἐν χροῒ πῆχθεν’.
492 valeria gavrylenko

equally and in the same way (as the use of identical epic formulas show)
by weapons, natural decay, and strong emotions.42 In numerous instances
in both the Iliad and the Odyssey, chrôs and other bodily parts are tortured
by grief, terror, and pain. Although this topic has already been thoroughly
investigated, researchers deal mainly with the ‘organs of consciousness’:
thumos (breath, life), phrenes (diaphragm, lungs), prapides (diaphragm,
heart), kêr (heart), kradiê (heart), etc. Much less attention is paid to the
body itself. Meanwhile, the Homeric texts are rich enough to be analysed
with a view towards emotional intrusions and their effect not only upon
the internal ‘organs’ but on the whole body as well.

The liquid body

Some difficult passages in the Iliad and the Odyssey touch upon the cor-
poreal transformations produced by emotions on the body. In particular,
the manifestation of the ‘effect of liquefaction’ that results is sometimes
found in Homer. When Penelope is listening to the story the stranger tells
her about Odysseus, she pours out tears and her body melted (Od. 19.204).43
Somewhat later, Odysseus the stranger, whom Calypso asked earlier not to
waste his aiôn (Od. 5.160–161),44 persuades Penelope not to waste away her
beautiful chroa, not to melt her thumos weeping so much (Od. 19.263–264).45
Têkô is a verb that expresses the corporeal changes of a hero overwhelmed
with grief and suffering. In Od. 2.376, Telemachus fears that his mother may
hurt or dry out (iaptê) her beautiful chroa crying for him. So Odysseus at
Alcinous’ palace is melting while he listens to the song of Demodocus about
the Trojan War (Od. 8.521–522).46 He sheds excessive tears from beneath his
brows, and his cheeks are wasted away in grief (acheï phthinuthousi), just
like those of a woman mourning near her dying husband (8.530–531). Têkô,
iaptô, phthinuthô describe one and the same process in which the whole
body is involved. It is the liquefaction and desiccation that are the result of
bodily liquid loss. The body têketai – ­attenuates, decays, liquifies – together

42 For instance, the body of Laertes, in grief for his son, has dried out, and withered
around the bones (Od. 16.145 ‘φθινύθει ἀμφ᾽ ὀστεόφι χρώς’). The text correlates with the
­sepsis of corpses of the Sirens’ victims in Od. 12.45–46 ‘πολὺς δ᾿ ἀμφ᾿ ὀστεόφιν θὶς | ἀνδρῶν
πυθομένων, περὶ δὲ ῥινοὶ μινύθουσιν’.
43 ‘ῥέε δάκρυα, τήκετο δὲ χρώς’.
44 ‘μηδέ τοι αἰών | φϑινέτο’.
45 ‘μηκέτι νῦν χρόα καλὸν ἐναίρεο μηδέ τι θυμὸν | τῆκε πόσιν γοόωσα’.
46 ‘Ὀδυσσεὺς ̸ τήκετο‚ δάκρυ δ’ ἔδευεν ὑπὸ βλεϕάροισι παρειάς’.
 the “body without skin” in the homeric poems 493

with its thumos when a hero is seized with grief and pain (achos, ponos,
goos). Pain may attack the phrenes too, together with a warrior’s flesh.47
Apart from the thumos and phrenes, the êtor (heart) can be ‘consumed’,
‘wasted away’ as well (Od. 19.136).48 As Eustathius of Thessalonica explains,
when grieving inside, beautiful chrôs is affected as well.49 The whole hero
softens and melts, liquifies into water.
Tears and grief may take the place of any food for the Homeric heroes,
as they themselves become a source of nutrition. As Dominique Arnould
explains,
Non seulement les yeux, les joues, la peau semblent fondre dans la chaleur
des larmes – image liquide parallèle à δάκρυα θερμὰ χέων et au thème de la
source des larmes [. . .] – mais encore le héros jeûne, nourrit ses larmes de
sa propre substance, et se rassasie lui-même de larmes.50
Cheô is once applied to Priam’s noos (mind) which spilled, chutô, in awful
fear (Il. 24.358). Its flow, similar to that of tears and moisture, can be also
associated with the flow of death (Il. 13.544 = 16.414, 580) and darkness
(Il. 5.696 = 16.344 = 20.421, Od. 22.88) experienced by the Homeric heroes.
The texture of internal ‘organs’, ‘organs of consciousness’, undergoes
changes in cases where the verb iainein introduces an emotion which is
not named in the epic but is identified as pleasure or joy. Although iainô
has less to do with liquefaction than têkô and phthinô, there is allusion
to it when the verb is applied to water and wax (Od. 10.359, 12.175). Its
more evident meaning is, according to van Brock, ‘échauffer, ammollir
par la chaleur’, ‘apaiser, conforter, contenter’.51 Thumos, êtor, kêr, phrenes
become warm and soft, iainein (in joy, but the word ‘joy’ is not used) .52

47 Cf. Od. 8.541 ‘ἄχος φρένας ἀμφιβέβηκεν and 8.530 ἄχεϊ φϑινύϑουσι παρειαί’.
48 ‘κατατήκομαι ἦτορ’.
49 Eustathius Thessalonicensis, Commentarii ad Homeri Odysseam 1.104.8 ad 2.376 ‘οὖ
πάσχοντος ἐντὸς‚ ἰάπτεται καὶ ὁ καλὸς χροῦς’.
50 Arnould D., “Τήκειν dans la peinture des larmes et du deuil chez Homère et les
tragiques”, Revue de philologie, de littérature et d’histoire anciennes 60, 2 (1986) 267–274, 269.
The article offers an analysis of the effect of liquefaction/dessication that emotions have
upon the heroes in Homer and in Greek tragedy. Arnould also finds a number of parallels
between Homer, the tragic poets, and the Hippocratics demonstrating the similarities in
perception and conceptualisation of the ‘physiology’ of emotional life. For a more detailed
study of pain and suffering in Homer, see Mawet F., Recherches sur les oppositions fonction-
nelles dans le vocabulaire homérique de la douleur (autour de πῆμα‑ἄλγος) (Brussels: 1979).
51 Brock N. van, Recherches sur le vocabulaire médical du grec ancien. Soins et guérison
(Paris: 1961) 255.
52 ἰαίνειν: Il. 23.598, 600, 24.321, 24.119 = 147 = 176 = 196, Od. 15.165, 379, 23.47; Od. 4.840;
Od. 22.59; Il. 19.174, respectively.
494 valeria gavrylenko

There is one case where iainomai corresponds not to a particular place in

the body but to the ‘whole’ person, who softens and becomes warm in joy
(Od. 19.536),53 which parallels the melting of the ‘whole’ Odysseus in his
sufferings in Od. 8.521–522.54
When both flesh (skin) and internal ‘organs’ are liquified, they consti-
tute a kind of bodily unity where there is no evident difference between
the inner and outer body, or the depth and surface of the body. They are
all melted together simultaneously. With the fluid bodily texture, any dis-
tinction between the exterior and the interior of the body is eliminated,
which offers an image of a body-flux, of a one-dimensional body.
It seems to me likely that the Pythagorean and Platonic allegorical inter-
pretations of Homer derive from this image of a liquid body. However,
their reading of Homer is infused with morality, and their body figures in
opposition to the soul. Félix Buffière offers some Platonic expressions on
the liquid body, such as: ‘Or notre corps est “matière”. De plus c’est une
matière tout impregnée de liquide (hugron), comme les îles baignées par
la mer’.55
In the Hippocratic texts we find the conceptualisation, as Arnould
shows, of Homeric intuitions about the physiological and psychological
processes in the human body, particularly their effect of liquefaction upon
the body.
Homeric texts imply the idea of fluidity of the heroic body, an idea
articulated by the epithets that describe chrôs, such as leirioeis and terên.
Leirioeis, used not only for the flesh in Homer and in Greek poetry, is tra-
ditionally understood as ‘lily-like’. There are lily-like voices (Homer), lily-
like flowers from the sea (Pindar), and lily-like eyes (Bacchylides).56 Rory
Egan’s analysis of the epithet’s semantics demonstrates its association
with ‘moist’, ‘liquidity’, ‘dew’.57 The Greeks may say ‘moist voice’ or ‘liquid

53 ‘καί τέ σφιν ἰαίνομαι εἰσορόωσα’.

54 These observations demonstrate once again that the archaic Greeks ‘did not con-
struct any definitive barrier between physical suffering and intense emotional suffering’,
Harris W., Restraining Rage. The Ideology of Anger Control in Classical Antiquity (Cam-
bridge, MA: 2001) 340.
55 Buffière F., Les mythes d’Homère et la pensée grecque (Paris: 1956) 461. It is the isle
of Calypso that illustrates the image of liquid body which ‘imprisons’ the soul of wise
Odysseus.
56 Egan R.B., “Λειριόεις κτλ. in Homer and Elsewhere”, Glotta 63 (1985) 14–24, 19–20.
57 As leirioeis and leirios are also used in Greek literature to describe the cicada’s voice
and behaviour, Egan evokes some curious facts pertinent to my study of a ‘body with-
out skin’ and a ‘liquid body’ in Homer: ‘These insects congregate on trees from which
they draw liquid in vast quantities, allowing some of it to ooze from the holes which they
 the “body without skin” in the homeric poems 495

voice’; the metaphor is typically Homeric, although to us it may sound

unusual. The metaphor makes the invisible voice tangible. The song of
cicadas is a perfect image of palpability and density of the invisible mat-
ter. Why is human flesh ‘lily-like’ and how is it related to liquidity? The
case of Ajax’s leirioenta chroa threatened by Hector’s spear in Il. 13.830
needs some explanation:
[. . .] we can make satisfactory sense of ‘lily-like’ or ‘white’ in this case,
although the context does not dictate that sense here either. Could the skin
(or flesh) of Ajax, then, have been called “moist” or “fluid” or “dewy” by Hec-
tor? There are any number of imaginable reasons for answering that ques-
tion in the affirmative – the reference could be to perspiration, for example
or (proleptically) to the blood which the spear will draw, or to the moistness
of the flesh which the spear will ‘bite’ [. . .].58
Moreover, from Vivante’s point of view, the lily and its imagery, unlike
other flowers, are related not to a colour, but to density, softness, and
depth or thickness. The beauty of the Homeric hero’s body has little to do
with elegance: ‘in order to appreciate leirioeis, we must give up the notion
of anything refined or exquisite. This beauty is of a different kind. It is
hardly a matter of taste. It consists in a vital fullness’59 and moistness.
In the Homeric poems the softness of chrôs is constantly underlined.
Another epithet, terên, also merits attention. It is used for ‘wounded, man-
gled, threatened’60 flesh. Terena chroa, for Eustathius, ‘concerns the whole
flesh from its surface to the bones. For the latter are not soft (moist) or
delicate. Thus chroûs as well as chrôs is apparently a visible (open) [part]
of flesh in the human’.61 The etymology of terên associates the epithet
with the moistness of leirioeis, and with the fullness and bloom of thaleros

have punctured in the plant. They almost immediately excrete most of the ingested juice
in similar quantities after having altered its physical and chemical properties somewhat.
Observers speak of a fine mist descending from the trees and of a sweet viscous substance
dampening the leaves and branches of the tree and the ground below. The substance
excreted by cicada [. . .] is known as “honey-dew”, a poetic term which happens to be the
normal scientific one as well’ (18–19).
58 Egan, “Λειριόεις κτλ․” 22.
59 Vivante P., The Epithets in Homer. A Study in Poetic Values (New Haven-London:
1982) 118.
60 Vivante, The Epithets in Homer 117.
61 Eustathius, Commentarii ad Homeri Iliadem 1.738.26–29 ad 4.237 ‘Τέρενα δὲ χρόα τὴν
ὅλην σάρκα λέγει ὡς ἐκ μέρους τοῦ προφαινομένου ἐξ ἐπιπολῆς πρὸς διαστολὴν τῶν ὀστῶν․
ἐκεινα γὰρ οὐ τέρενα ἤτοι ἁπαλά․ ὥσπερ δὲ ὁ χροῦς‚ οὕτω καὶ ὁ χρώς τὸ προφαινόμενον δηλοῖ
τῆς κατ’ ἄνθρωπον σαρκός’. There is a surprising contrast between the delicacy of the flesh
and the ability of the wounded heroes to carry heavy spears (which could weigh up to
8 lbs) in their fragile bodies.
496 valeria gavrylenko

used for tears. Terên as synonymous to thaleros refers to tears in Il. 3.142,
16.11, 19.323; Od. 16.332. It is applied also to leaves being crushed. Vivante,
­wondering what tears, leaves and flesh hold in common, supposes it to be
their softness and tender texture, with an explicit tinge of fluidity: ‘[. . .]
what the epithet brings out is the thing itself – the effluence, the lymp-
hous drop’.62 The moisture which terên contains makes plants smooth; a
vital liquid indicated by terên makes the flesh smooth and firm as well.
Blood, tears, pain, heat of the sun, and sea salt are the ‘agents’ of bodily
transformations which result in the loss of vital liquid, a loss that ­threatens
life. For Richard Onians, this fluid is aiôn that oozes with tears from the
body.63 Interestingly, aiôn is never mentioned in the epic depictions of
the very moment of death, although it is closely related to it.64
The Homeric vocabulary generates a perception (not to say vision) of a
body that is distinctly tactile, even liquid, open to physical forces as well
as ‘emotions’.
Apart from the verbs discussed previously revealing the liquidity of the
bodily texture, there is a wide range of predicates which condense the
idea of chrôs’ fragility, its openness, its potential for being easily pierced/
consumed (either by dogs and spears, pain, grief, or destroyed by sep-
sis). By and large, these are the verbs: amenai, to feed, satiate (Il. 11.574,
15.317, 21.70, 168); anaspaô, to pull, draw out (Il. 13.574); antitoreô, to stab,
drive through (Il. 5.337); daptô, to lacerate (Il. 5.858, 13.831, 21.398); diercho-
mai, to pass through, pierce (Il. 20.100); edô, to consume, torture, destroy
(Il. 4.237); eirgô, to defend, restrain; detach, cut off (Il. 11.437); harpazô,
to seize, grasp (Il. 16.814); helkô, to draw, pull out (Il. 11.457); epaurein, to
touch (Il. 11.573, 13.649, 15.316); epigraphô, to scratch, touch slightly (Il.
4.139, 13.553); karphô, to dry out (Od. 13.398, 430); komizô, to receive (Il.
14.456, 22.286); melainô, to darken, blacken (Il. 05.354, cf. Od. 16.175); oideô,
to swell (Od. 5.455); outazô, to wound, hit (Il. 12.427); pêgnumi, to jab (Il.
8.298, 15.315); rêgnumi, to pierce, break, claw (Il. 23.673); sêpô, to putrefy
(Il. 19.27, 24.414); skellô, to dry out (Il. 23.191); temno, to hit, wound, cleave,

62 Vivante, The Epithets in Homer 117.

63 Onians R.B., The Origins of European Thought: About the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the
World, Time, and Fate (Cambridge: 1954) 203 ‘It is this liquid from the eyes which Homer
calls αἰών and three times says “wastes” or “flows down” as husband or wife weeps, yearn-
ing for the other’.
64 Bremmer J., The Early Greek Concept of the Soul (Princeton: 1983) 74 ‘because death is
expressed as the departure of the aiôn (v.685; 7.224) or the deprivation of the aiôn (xxii.58).
Achilles is afraid that the maggots will defile the dead body of Patroclus “for the aiôn has
been slain out” (xix.27)’.
 the “body without skin” in the homeric poems 497

sever (Il. 13.501, 16.761); trepomai, to change (colour), turn (Il. 13.279, 284,
17.733, Od. 21.412–413); ôchraô, to become pale (Od. 11.529, cf. Il. 3.35).
Although verbs for the ‘protection’ of the body are present in the
Homeric texts as well, in epic descriptions of the body (chrôs), connota-
tions of deformation (of any kind) and destruction prevail. Penetration
is thus constitutive for the heroic body as it stays in permanent physical
mixture with objects. It is through constant deformation and penetration
that birth is given to chrôs, a matter that curiously combines its openness
to and distinction from external influences.

Anointing. To fit the form

It is important that chrôs be washed and anointed ‘richly with oil’, espe-
cially when a hero sheds abundant terena dakrua: there is a danger hidden
in the excessive loss of the bodily fluid that is corporeal vitality. Water and
oil have to return vital moistness to the body and keep it firm and intact
(empedos). In Homer, the hygienic procedures of washing and anointing
are quite frequent. There are many instances when heroes express their
desire to wash themselves or advise others to be washed and anointed.
The formulas chroa kalon aleipsamenê, lip’ aleipsen, lip’ elaiô, used vari-
ously throughout the Iliad and abundantly in the Odyssey, indicate the
importance of this everyday cosmetic practice, essential both for women
and men, mortals and immortals.65 Aleiphô, chriô, used to describe the
Homeric heroes’ hygiene, are those actions that help to reanimate the
body, because elaion and aloiphê infused into the body impregnate it with
vital substance.66
The care of the body is applicable to divine bodies as well. Observ-
ing how Hera, for instance, washes, anoints, and dresses herself in Il. 14,
one would not notice any crucial difference between the mortal and
the immortal bodies, particularly in the ‘texture’ of their flesh. Homer
sounds minimalistic enough in his representations of the divine bodies.67

65 The bath of Odysseus at Alcinous Od. 6.219–220; at Circe’s palace, 10.450; at home,
19.320, 505; Penelope and the treatment of her face: 18.172, 179, 192–193 where a divine
(Aphrodite’s) unguent is used; Hera’s perfumed oil, Il. 14.170–172, etc.
66 Onians suggests that Aeschylus could use the verb χρίω in the sense of ‘penetrate,
pierce’, Onians, The Origins 211.
67 Kirk is aware of the ‘Homeric tendency to minimise many of the more carnal aspects
of the gods’. See Kirk G.S. The Iliad. A Commentary (Cambridge: 1990) 96.
498 valeria gavrylenko

­ xcluding their huge sizes, the gods seem to be like humans, especially
E
when they are wounded and suffer from pain, like Ares or Aphrodite.
However, a remark on Ares, whose case is extraordinary, is important
here. Eustathius offers an extensive comment on talaurhinos Ares’ skin:
For the rhinos of the other warriors is not firm, nor tough, nor impenetrable,
but obviously soft and delicate. According to what the poet says, the chrôs
of the men who struggle is not stone, nor iron, if they cover themselves with
iron; but the rhinos of this warrior, of Ares [. . .] is firm, even the strongest, as
if he were covered with derma [. . .] Talaurhinos, for the ancients, is [used]
instead of brave, powerful.68
The human chrôs and that of the gods are equally vulnerable, trôtos.69 In
his Protreptic, Clement of Alexandria paraphrases the Homeric expression
about Achilles, trôtos chrôs [. . .] thnêton de he phas’ anthrôpoi, in Il. 21.568–
569, substituting trôtos for thnêtos, mortal, and applying it to the gods of
the Greeks: ‘[. . .] it remains for me to bring before you those amatory and
sensuous deities of yours, as in every respect having human feelings. |
“For theirs was a mortal body.” ’70 If it is possible to wound a god, if the
divine flesh may be pierced and the penetration is painful, therefore, the
gods are mortal.
Besides the living divine and human bodies, there are the fallen heroes
whose bodies require care before they are burnt in the funeral fire. When
the dead Sarpedon, Patroclus, and Hector are washed and anointed, their
bodies remain intact, untouched by flies, worms and dogs, by the sun with-
ering the flesh, by any decay, harm and outrage.71 Thetis treats Patroclus’
dead body so that it might be ‘sound always, or better even than it is’.72
Apollo keeps the body of Hector away from every violation, pasan aeikeiê,
and covers him with the golden aegis in order that Achilles may not tear
his body while dragging him. The dead heroes seem to be much stronger

68 Eustathius, Commentarii ad Homeri Iliadem 2.74.13–75.15 ad 5.289 ‘τοῖς μὲν γὰρ ἄλλοις
πολεμισταῖς ὁ ῥινὸς οὐ τάλας ἐστίν‚ ἤτοι καρτερικός‚ οὐδὲ ἀτειρής‚ ἀλλὰ δηλονότι τέρην καὶ
ἁπαλός. κατὰ γὰρ τὸν ποιητὴν εἰπεῖν τοῖς μὲν μαχομένοις ἀνδράσιν ὁ χρὼς οὐ λίϑος οὐδὲ σίδηρος,
εἰ καὶ σιδήρῳ καταφράττονται, τούτῳ δὲ τῷ πολεμιστῇ Ἄρεϊ [. . .] τάλας ἐστὶν ὁ ῥινός, ἤγουν
στερρότατόν ἐστι τὸ ἐπιπολάζον αὐτοῦ καὶ ὡς οἷον δέρμα ἐν ἐπιφανείᾳ προκείμενον [. . .] Ἔστι
δὲ τὸ ταλαύρινος κατὰ τοὺς παλαιοὺς ἀντὶ τοῦ εὔτολμος, ἰσχυρός’.
69 Cf. Aphrodite and Ares wounded by Diomedes: Il. 5.335–346 and 5.855–861.
70 Clemens Alexandrinus, Protrepticus 2.36.1 ‘Τούτοις οὖν εἰκότως ἕπεται τοὺς ἐρωτικοὺς
ὑμῶν καὶ παθητικοὺς τούτους θεοὺς ἀνθρωποπαθεῖς ἐκ παντὸς εἰσάγειν τρόπου. “Καὶ γάρ θην
κείνοις θνητὸς χρώς” ’ (Translated into English by Schaff Ph.).
71 Sarpedon Il. 16.678–680; Patroclus 18.344–351, 19.33, 38–39; Hector 23.186–191, 24.19–
21, 414.
72 Il. 19.33 (Translated by Murray A.T.).
 the “body without skin” in the homeric poems 499

and firmer than during their brief lives.73 Chrôs empedos is, thus, a state
of body in which flesh does not decay, oude [. . .] chrôs sêpetai (Il. 24.414).
It is sôma aphthoron74 opposed to the living trôtos chrôs. Here is a curious
inversion: empedos is applied to the corpses of the fallen heroes75 whom
we thus may call immortal mortals, while trôtos correlates with the living
bodies not only of mortals, but of immortals as well, and in this case the
gods are represented as mortal immortals.
If one searches for a hypothetically similar bodily experience in cultures
beyond Homer, it is possible to juxtapose distant discourses and compare
Homeric chrôs with, for instance, a ‘schizophrenic’ experience of the body
as described by the Russian phenomenologist Valery Podoroga:
In the schizophrenic experience of the body between what we have come to
consider the Outer, that is, what is located outside of us, beyond the borders
of our body [. . .] and that which we have come to consider the Inner, only
my body, experience, passion [. . .] which surrounds our ‘I’ [. . .] there is no
intermediate membrane; more exactly, the skin surface which separates the
Inner from the Outer and preserves their tense unity is absent. Perhaps the
skin surface exists [. . .] however, it does not separate the bodies, but, on
the contrary, enhances their physical interfusion and mutual penetration.76
Even if one looks back in time towards the Middle Ages and early modern
Europe, one will find the same amorphous and vague bodily boundar-
ies, including interpenetrations (and fear of interpenetrations) with the
environment. Galenism had a strong influence in Europe throughout this
period, not only on medical thought, but also on the popular mental-
ity. It probably played a particular role in the elaboration of an image of
the ‘infiltrated’ body. This is the body that consists of porous and highly
penetrable envelopes, the permeability of which results in a low resistive
capacity of the human being in face of danger (such as plague or other
illnesses and harmful influences).77

73 An important exception is the scene of the mutilation of Hector’s dead body by the
Achaeans. While the Achaeans admire his marvellous figure and appearance, they pierce,
one after another, his body with spears, and at this point become astonished when they
reveal that Hector’s body is much softer to the touch (Il. 22.370–374).
74 Scholia D in Homeri Iliadem ad 19.39.
75 The word ἀσκηϑής has a similar meaning, used for the living heroes in the major
sense of coming back home ‘safe and sound’: Il. 10.212, 16.247, Od. 5.26 = 144 = 168, 9.79,
11.535, 14.255. For a brief discussion of the word see Bowra C.M., “Homeric Words in Arca-
dian Inscriptions”, Classical Quarterly 20 (1926) 168–176, 171.
76 Подорога В., Феноменология тела. Введение в философскую антропологию
(Moscow: 1995) 28.
77 The subject is investigated in particular by Vigarello G., Le propre et le sale, l’hygiène
du corps depuis le Moyen Age (Paris: 1985).
500 valeria gavrylenko

Such a close, almost anatomical, study of the Homeric body (chrôs)

makes it possible to assume that Homer does not have a developed
­concept of human skin. Chrôs is usually interpreted as skin, flesh, body,
and colour. But, as most occurences show, skin as an anatomical part
of a hero is initially absent as long as derma and rhinos are associated
mostly with the animal hide which has its quality of detachability from
the rest of the body and plays the role of a barrier and protection for the
living Homeric bodies. The epic body represented by chrôs appears in the
texts at the very moment its life is at stake. In the Iliad it is the context
of war: in the Odyssey it is mainly psychological sufferings described as
physical processes. Being constantly subject to any imaginable means of
deformation and destruction, physical and psychic (both hardly distin-
guishable one from another), chrôs constitutes a particular concept of
Homeric body, a ‘body without skin’ with depth and surface fused. It is
flesh trembling in fear together with the ‘organs of consciousness’, a liquid
mass flowing together with thumos in streams of tears of grief and longing;
it is a penetrated, chopped, devoured-by-war slab of meat. In contrast,
the destructive powers may be neutralised and the disintegrated bodies
restored ‘richly with oil’, in life or in death. This is no argument against
my hypothesis, but rather additional proof for it, for anointing is penetra-
tion and deformation of the body too. The Homeric poems explicate the
condition where the epic body finds itself and which by no means sug-
gests that heroes lack their ‘self’.78 This is the condition of a mixture, of a
mutual penetration of objects and other bodies.

78 The problem of mixture of bodies, whether it is absolute or partial, would go on to

be discussed and resolved by the ancient Greek philosophers in different ways (e.g. Stoics
and ­Peripatetics).
 the “body without skin” in the homeric poems 501

Selective bibliography

Arnould D., “Τήκειν dans la peinture des larmes et du deuil chez Homère et les tragiques”,
Revue de philologie, de littérature et d’histoire anciennes 60, 2 (1986) 267–274.
Bolens G., “Homeric Joints and the Marrow in Plato’s Timaeus: Two Logics of the Body”,
Multilingua 18, 2/3 (1999) 149–157.
——, La logique du corps articulaire. Les articulations du corps humain dans la littérature
occidentale (Rennes: 2000).
——, “The Limits of Textuality: Mobility and Fire Production in Homer and Beowulf ”, Oral
Tradition 16, 1 (2001) 107–128.
Bowra C.M., Greek Lyric Poetry. From Alcman to Simonides (Oxford: 1961).
——, “Homeric Words in Arcadian Inscriptions”, Classical Quarterly 20 (1926) 168–176.
Bremmer J., The Early Greek Concept of the Soul (Princeton: 1983).
Brock N. van, Recherches sur le vocabulaire médical du grec ancien. Soins et guérison (Paris:
1961).
Buffiere F., Les mythes d’Homère et la pensée grecque (Paris: 1956).
Burgess J., “Achilles’ Heel: The Death of Achilles in Ancient Myth”, Classical Antiquity 14,
2 (1995) 217–244.
Clarke M., Flesh and Spirit in the Songs of Homer. A Study of Words and Myths (Oxford:
2000).
Clemens of Alexandria, Protrepticus: ed. Mondésert C. (1949), Le protreptique, Paris.
Egan R.B., “Λειριόεις κτλ. in Homer and Elsewhere”, Glotta 63 (1985) 14–24.
Eustathii Commentarii ad Homeri Iliadem pertinentes, vols. 1–4: ed. Valk M. van der (1971–
1987), Leiden.
——, Commentarii ad Homeri Odysseam, 2 vols. in 1: ed. Stallbaum G. (1825–1826), Leipzig
(repr. Hildesheim: 1970).
Galen, Opera omnia: ed. Kühn C.G., 20 vols. (Leipzig: 1821–1833).
Harris W., Restraining Rage. The Ideology of Anger Control in Classical Antiquity (Cam-
bridge, MA: 2001).
Homer, Ilias: ed. Allen T.W. (1931), Oxford.
——, tr. Murray A.T. (1999), Iliad, Loeb, Cambridge, Mass.
——, Odyssea: ed. Mühll P. von der (1962), Basel.
——, tr. Murray A.T. (1995), Odyssey, Loeb, Cambridge, Mass.
Kirk G.S., The Iliad. A Commentary. Volume II. Books 5–8 (Cambridge: 1990).
Loraux N., The Experiences of Tiresias. The Feminine and the Greek Man (Princeton:
1995).
Mawet F., Recherches sur les oppositions fonctionnelles dans le vocabulaire homérique de la
douleur (autour de πῆμα-ἄλγος) (Brussels: 1979).
Nagy G., Greek Mythology and Poetics (Ithaca-London: 1990).
——, Homeric Questions (Austin: 1996).
Onians R.B., The Origins of European Thought: About the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the
World, Time, and Fate (Cambridge: 1954).
Pigeaud J., “La peau comme frontière”, Micrologus. La pelle umana. The Human Skin 13
(2005) 23–53.
Подорога В., Феноменология тела. Введение в философскую антропологию (Moscow:
1995) = Podoroga V., Phenomenology of the Body. Introduction into Philosophical Anthro-
pology (Moscow: 1995).
Pseudo-Plutarch, Placita philosophorum: ed. Mau J. (1971), Plutarchi Moralia, Leipzig
[vol. 5.2.1].
Renehan R., “The Meaning of ΣΩΜΑ in Homer: A Study in Methodology”, California Stud-
ies in Classical Antiquity 12 (1979) 269–282.
Scholia D in Iliadem, ed. Thiel H. van (Cologne: 2000).
Scholia Graeca in Homeri Iliadem (scholia vetera): ed. Erbse H. (1969–1988), Berlin, [vols.
1–5, 7].
502 valeria gavrylenko

Scholia Graeca in Homeri Odysseam: ed. Dindorf W. (1855), Oxford (repr. Amsterdam:
1962), 2 vols.
Scholia in Iliadem (scholia recentiora Theodori Meliteniotis) (e cod. Genevensi gr. 44):
ed. Nicole J. (1891), Les scolies genevoises de l’Iliade, Geneva (repr. Hildesheim: 1966)
[vol. 2].
Segal Ch., The Theme of the Mutilation of the Corpse in the Iliad (Leiden: 1971).
Snell B., The Discovery of the Mind in Greek Philosophy and Literature (New York: 1982).
Staden H. von, “The Discovery of the Body: Human Dissection and its Cultural Contexts
in Ancient Greece”, Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine 65 (1992) 223–241.
——, “The Mind and Skin of Heracles: Heroic Diseases” in Gourevitch D. (ed.), Maladie et
maladies, histoire et conceptualisation. Mélanges en l’honneur de Mirko Grmek (Geneva:
1992) 131–150.
Vernant J.-P., L’Individu, la mort, l’amour. Soi-même et l’autre en Grèce ancienne (Paris:
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——, Mortals and Immortals. Collected Essays (Princeton-New Jersey: 1991).
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SWEAT. LEARNED CONCEPTS AND POPULAR PERCEPTIONS, 1500–1800

Michael Stolberg

Summary

This paper analyses the perception and interpretation of sweat and insensible
transpiration in early modern learned medicine and medical lay culture. Based
on Galenic physiology, sweat was thought to excrete superfluous serum, harmful
impurities and sometimes also fat, chyle or blood. Since sweat was closely associ-
ated with pollution and stench, its timely elimination seemed crucial, and physi-
cians and lay-people alike ranked the suppression of sweating among the major
causes of disease. Sudorifics and sweat baths were widely used in prophylaxis and
therapy. Excessive sweat carried the risk of losing too much vital matter, how-
ever. The copious sweat of consumptives, in particular, was taken as evidence
that their bodily substance was melting away. Constantly confirmed by the seem-
ingly naturally given, self-evident but inevitably culturally-framed experience of
the body in health and disease, and thus deeply rooted in the contemporary
bodily habitus, many of these notions and images remained alive in spite of new
anatomical findings and profound changes in medical theory.

Sweating ranks among the most basic, elementary bodily experiences.

Yet sweat is also heavily fraught with culturally-embedded images and
notions. For many people in western societies, sweaty armpits are a major
cause of embarrassment and can, at times, even seriously affect social
interaction. Antiperspirants and deodorants have developed into a multi-
billion dollar market. Saunas and steam baths are hailed as a powerful
means to ‘detoxify’ the body. Far more than one would expect from a
seemingly innocuous, bland, watery fluid, sweat is associated with shame
and embarrassment, with pollution and stench, but also with purification,
sexual attraction and masculinity.
Surprisingly, historians of medicine and the body have so far paid
hardly any attention at all to sweat.1 The following survey of early modern

1 For the only extant, and somewhat dated, historical survey of medical theories on
sweating see Renbourn E.T., “The Natural History of Insensible Perspiration: A Forgotten
Doctrine of Health and Disease”, Medical History 4 (1960) 135–152, and, primarily on the
topic of the sweat rash, idem, “The History of Sweat and the Sweat Rash from Earliest
Times to the End of the 18th Century”, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences
14 (1959) 202–227.
504 michael stolberg

­ eanings of sweating and transpiration and the theories and practices

m
surrounding them is thus a first attempt to chart still largely unexplored
territory. My analysis will draw, above all, on learned writing. I will sup-
plement this material, however, as much as possible with evidence from
patient letters, autobiographies and ethnographic accounts which give a
better grasp of the meanings of sweat in the medical culture and daily
lives of ordinary people. Inevitably, covering a period stretching over
three centuries with hardly any groundwork by other scholars to build
upon requires a certain degree of bold generalisation. Thus I will not be
able to analyse in any depth the subtle differences in the ways individual
authors understood sweat and, although I will mention new anatomical
and histological findings and new medical theories such as iatrochemis-
try, Stahlianism and vitalism, I will not make a systematic attempt to trace
their impact on different authors or their respective views on sweating.
This approach seems justified not only by the lack of extant research but
also by the fact that the medical understanding and the lay experience
of sweating emerge as remarkably stable throughout the period under
­consideration. And, it is hoped, this overview can entice other scholars
to look in greater detail at individual authors, theories, periods or issues
in this field.

The learned tradition

Sweat played a considerable, but not particularly prominent, place in early

modern medical writing. It was the topic of several dozens of ­medical dis-
sertations. Medical textbooks usually mentioned sweating, at least briefly.
Collections of medical observations, a very popular genre at the time, con-
tain stories of patients with more or less extraordinary types of sweat.
Early modern medical writing on sweat was based above all on Galen.
Galen, and early modern physicians with him, described sweating as an
excretion of thin, ‘serous’ humours. Somewhat surprisingly from a mod-
ern perspective, sweat was closely related to urine.2 Because, according to
Galen, both sweat and urine ultimately originated from the same matter,
both contained a certain amount of bile3 and both were, in their natural

2 Musitano Carlo, Opera omnia, seu trutina medica, chirurgica, pharmaceutico-chymica

(Geneva, Cramer and Perachon: 1716), vol. II, 392; Slevogt Johannes Adrian, De sudoribus.
Subj. J.G. Pilling (Jena, Werther: 1697) prooemium.
3 Galenus, De simplicium medicamentorum temperamentis ac facultatibus 10.14 (12.281 K.).
 sweat – learned concepts and popular perceptions 505

state, of a moderately pale colour.4 Sweat differed only in being more

thoroughly refined than urine and it was derived not only, like urine, from
the humours inside the vessels but also from those which had permeated
into the body’s substance.5 It was a product of the third and final step in
the concoction and assimilation of food, which took place in the various
parts of the body. Urine, in contrast, derived from the second stage in the
liver or mesenteric veins and flowed in large measure directly from there
to the kidneys. Parts of it also arrived in the rest of the body, however.
These parts and the mostly insipid and watery serous fluid which origi-
nated from the third stage of concoction could flow back to the kidneys
and leave the body via the bladder as urine – or they could pass directly
to the outside through the skin as sweat.6 Sweat was even sometimes said
to smell like urine.7
Like urine, sweat thus helped the body to get rid of superfluities and
waste and to maintain the blood pure and unvitiated.8 Sweat and urine
could also substitute for each other. Experience showed that increased
sweating was usually accompanied by a reduced urinary flow, and vice
versa.9 Slevogt even reported the case of a man who could not urinate
for eight days until the physician gave him medicine which made his
pores contract. In this manner, he reduced his sweat and reestablished
the ­urinary flow.10
Sweat (hidrôs) was closely linked to the notion of ‘occult’ or ‘insensi-
ble’ ‘perspiration’ or ‘transpiration’ (adêlon [aisthêsei] diapnoê). The term
can already be found in the work of Galen, who described ­insensible

   
4 Galen, De simpl. med. temp. ac fac. 10.14 (12.282 K.) ‘Sicut urina naturalis modice est
pallida, sic et sudor’.
   
5 Galen, De simpl. med. temp. ac fac. 10.14 (12.281 K.); idem, De sanitate tuenda 4.4
(6.251 K.) ‘Sudor quidem succorum, qui in universo corpore abundant, nota est; urina
eorum tantum, qui vasis continentur’.
   
6 Galen, De san. tuenda 4.4 (6.65f K.); Fernel Jean, “Physiologiae libri VII”, in idem,
Universa medicina (Geneva, Chouët: 1644, separate pagination) 230; Zwinger Theodor,
Physiologia medica, eleganti ordine conscripta, rebusque scitu dignissime, Theophrasti item
Paracelsi totius fere medicinae dogmatibus illustrata. Ed. by Jakob Zwinger (Basel, Henric-
petri: 1610) 629; cf. Guerin Dionysius, Daturne certum graviditatis indicium ex urina? Prop.
Guido Patin (Paris, Boisset: 16472), on the third stage of concoction: ‘duplex excrementum
per caeca cutis spiracula exspirat exsudatque sordes et sudor, eandem cum urina habens
materiam et eundem generationis modum’.
   
7 Schüler Arnold Christoph Friedrich, De sudore vitioso ingrato plerumque nobilium hos-
pite. Praes. J. Juncker (Magdeburg, Hilliger: 1756) 20.
   
8 Galenus, In Hippocratis librum de alimento commentarii 3.17 (15.322f K.).
   
9 Musitano, Opera 392; Boerhaave Herman, Lehrsätze der theoretischen Medicin. Ed. by
W.F. Cappel, part 2 (Helmstedt, Fleckeisen: 1790) 429.
10 Slevogt, De sudoribus 6.
506 michael stolberg

t­ ranspiration as in many ways similar to sweating. Its matter was so sub-

tle, however, that it could not be seen, which explained why it had no
name in ordinary language.11 It was expelled either through the numer-
ous pores in the flesh and skin or through the very substance of the softer
parts of the body.12 From the early seventeenth century, insensible per-
spiration or transpiration attracted considerable attention when Santorio
Santorio, based on his famous weighing experiments, claimed that the
quantity of insensible transpiration surpassed that of all other evacuations
taken together.13 Under certain conditions, the readers of Robert James’
Medicinal Dictionary learnt, it could even become visible: ‘If we look at
the shadow of a bare head, on a white wall, in a sun-shiny day, and in the
summer season, we shall perceive, very distinctly, the shadow of a flying
smoke, rising out of the head, and mounting upward’.14
The exact relationship between sweating and insensible transpiration
provided one of the few occasions for scholarly controversy in early mod-
ern writing about sweat. In his commentary on the Hippocratic Aphorisms
Galen had quoted Diocles of Carystos’ claim that visible sweat was pre-
ternatural – that is, pathological – except if it was due to violent physi-
cal movement, hot baths or summer heat. Under normal conditions, the
innate heat was strong enough to reduce the superfluous humours to such
fine, subtle parts that they escaped notice.15 Galen did not put forward
any specific argument against this idea, but he was sceptical.16 When sev-
enteenth- and eighteenth-century microscopists like Steno and Malpighi
arrived at a new understanding of the skin as a highly complex structure
containing numerous vessels and nerves as well as special glands,17 some
writers came to the conclusion that visible sweat was secreted by special
sweat glands in the skin, while insensible transpiration passed through

11 Galen, De san. tuenda 1.12 (6.67 K.); In Hippocratis aphorismos commentarii 1.15
(17B.420f K.).
12 Galen, De san. tuenda 1.12 (6.67 K.).
13 Santorio Santorio, Ars de statica medicina aphorismorum sectionibus septem compre-
hensa (Venice, Polus: 1614). The work was extremely popular and went through numerous
later editions and translations; on Santorio’s experiments see Dacome L., “Living with the
Chair: Private Excreta, Collective Health and Medical Authority in the Eighteenth Cen-
tury”, History of Science 39 (2001) 467–500.
14 James Robert, A Medicinal Dictionary, vol. II (London, Osborne: 1745).
15 Galen, In Hipp. Aph. comment. 1.15 (12.421 K.); rejecting Diocles’ view: Galen, In Hipp.
Alim. comment. 3.17 (15.322 K.); against Diocles but clearly missing his point Sebisch Mel-
chior, De sudore. Resp. J. Wepfer (Strasbourg, Welper: 1657).
16 Galen, In Hipp. Alim. comment. 3.17 (15.322 K.).
17 Slevogt‚ De sudoribus 10; on the role of microscopy see Wilson C., The Invisible World.
Early Modern Philosophy and the Invention of the Microscope (Princeton, N.J., 1995).
 sweat – learned concepts and popular perceptions 507

the fine terminal endings of the vessels and nerves or through fine pores
in the skin.18 Most authors, however, believed the matter of sweat and
insensible transpiration to be essentially the same. In their view, insensi-
ble transpiration reflected quite simply the excretion of the finer and more
volatile parts of serum, which heat had resolved into vapours.19 Whether
droplets of sweat became visible or not depended only on the quantity
and temperature of the fluid and on the speed at which the skin dried.20
As the Galenic description of sweat as a serous excretion already sug-
gested, sweat and insensible transpiration were both, like urine, closely
linked to another bodily humour: serum. The term was commonly used
in early modern medical writing to refer generally to the thinner, more
watery parts of the blood, which, according to some authors, could be
seen to separate from the red parts when blood was left sitting for a
while after blood-letting.21 This watery part of the blood was declared
as ­useful and necessary because it enabled the blood to flow more eas-
ily, ­especially through the narrower vessels. When this thinning fluid or
‘serum’ was too abundant or too crude or impure, however, parts of it had
to be ­evacuated.
The Latin term serum simply means ‘whey’, the watery residue from
making cheese. It thus also evoked images of a ‘colamen’ or ‘colamentum’,
that is, of a more or less active process of sieving or filtering the blood,
which left the coarser or more solid parts behind.22 Like the kidneys,
which were similarly said to act as a ‘sieve’ for the serum,23 the narrow
pores of the skin (or, as Aristotle had suggested,24 the narrow terminal
blood vessels leading towards skin) only let the very watery, subtle parts
of the blood pass through, retaining the coarser red parts.

18 Boerhaave, Lehrsätze 425f; Musitano, Opera 392f; Slevogt, De sudoribus 10.

19 Slevogt, De sudoribus 4; Wedel Johann Adolf, De transpiratione insensibili et sudore.
Subm. I.G. Cellarius (Jena, Muller: 1728); Herbst Johann Philipp, De noxia sudoris provocatione
praeservationis caussa suscepta. Praes. A.E. Büchner (Halle-Magdeburg, Hendel: 1750) 12f.
20 Slevogt‚ De sudoribus 10; similarly Schüler, De sudore vitioso 5: ‘sudor est auctior trans-
pirationis gradus, ubi serum per poros erumpens, mox peripheriam madidam reddit, mox
in veras guttas concrescit’. Baier Christoph Wilhelm, De sudore sanguineo. Praes. J. Jantke
(Altdorf, Vidua Meyeriana: 1737) 6.
21 Pinder Udalricus, Epiphanie medicorum (Nuremberg: 1506) 10 recto, referring to Ber-
nard de Gordon.
22 Cf. Galen, Definitiones medicae 72 (19.365 K.): ‘Sudor est tenuis et serosi qui in san-
guine est humoris colamen’. Cf. Slevogt, De sudoribus.
23 Savonarola, Michele, “De urinis”, in idem, Practica canonica (Venice, Valgrisius: 1561)
93 verso–94 recto.
24 Aristoteles, De partibus animalium 3.5, 668b.
508 michael stolberg

The physiology of sweating, like that of urination, thus provided an

area where to some degree ‘mechanist’ or ‘hydraulic’ notions had been
accepted since Antiquity. The amount of sweat (and insensible perspira-
tion) depended, above all, on three factors: firstly, the degree to which
the skin was loose or tight and the pores correspondingly widened or nar-
rowed (which, in turn, reflected the individual nature of the body and its
parts as well as the influence of external factors like cold and warmth);
secondly, the amount of superfluous or waste fluid in the body and its ves-
sels, which resulted from concoction or from a consumption of the parts;
and thirdly, the expelling forces, either the natural expulsive faculties or,
again in more mechanical terms, the increased movement and/or fluidity
of the blood and humours in the vessels which pushed the fluid into and
through the skin. The latter explained why increased bodily heat, hard
physical work as well as certain emotions all led to profuse sweating: they
caused increased movement of fluids and spirits in the body. Along simi-
lar lines, some early modern iatrochemical authors resorted to notions
of fermentation and effervescence with corresponding images of a rapid
expansion of fluids in the vessels which created sufficient pressure to push
the sweat through the pores.25

Varieties of sweat

This understanding of sweating as a process of ‘sieving’ the blood and of

separating the ‘serum’ helped explain why sweat, though mostly watery by
nature, could sometimes contain larger or coarser particles too, depend-
ing on the width of the pores, the quality of the blood and the strength
of the expelling forces. Sweat, like urine, was said to sometimes contain
fat. Among obese people, such fatty sweat was indeed said to be quite
frequent26 and, by increasing sweat and transpiration, obese people could
lose fat.27 Galen had famously claimed that he had made excessively fat
people grow slimmer by making them run fast, rubbing their skin and
bathing.28 Vice versa, as Thomas Short declared in 1727, the reason why
‘no age did ever afford more instances of corpulency than our own’ was

25 Renbourn, “History of Sweat” 217.

26 Schüler, De sudore vitioso 19f.
27 Ehrlich Johann Christian, De obesorum ad morbos mortemque proclivitate. Von fetter Leute
schwachen und kräncklichen Natur. Resp. B.L. Tralles (Halle-Magdeburg, Hilliger: 1730) 14.
28 Galen, De san. tuenda 6.8 (6.417f. K.).
 sweat – learned concepts and popular perceptions 509

that people had overly abundant blood ‘stor’d with oily parts, and not
sufficiently attenuated and discharged by perspiration’.29 And since ‘all
women perspire[d] less than men’ it was no wonder that they were par-
ticularly prone to plethora and obesity.30
Spectacularly, as Aristotle had already observed,31 sweat could also be
bloody.32 Georg Spörlin in Basel recounted the case of a 12-year old boy
whose ‘thin, liquid and serous’ blood, ‘inflamed with feverish heat’, was
driven through the skin, colouring his shirt and bed-linen with countless
bloody spots.33 According to the Gospel of Luke (22.44), Jesus Christ himself
had sweat dripping like blood in the Garden of Gethsemane. As with other
unusual and uncommon phenomena which, at first sight, seemed to go
beyond the order of nature,34 the topic allowed medical authors to dem-
onstrate their ability to explain such occurrences rationally as a perfectly
natural, physiological or pathological event. Sweat, they found, could be
bloody when the skin was very loose and the pores excessively widened;
or when the humours and spirits were subject to violent movement, as in
fever or strong passions; or when the body, as in cachectic patients, was
no longer able to perform the third stage of concoction properly, giving
rise to very thin, watery blood which could pass more easily through the
narrow terminal vessels.35
Sweat was also said to be milky and whitish at times, due to the excre-
tion of chyle which had not been sufficiently concocted in the liver.36 Bile
could be present in such amounts that the sweat even left visible yellow
stains on the clothes. Concomitant excretion of other matter with sweat

29 Short Thomas, A Discourse Concerning the Causes and Effects of Corpulency. Together
with the Method for its Prevention and Cure (London, J. Roberts: 1727) 9; for a more detailed
account see Stolberg M., “Abhorreas pinguedinem: Fat and Obesity in Early Modern Medi-
cine (c. 1500–1750)”, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
(in press).
30 Short, Discourse 37.
31 Arist. PA 3.5, 668b.
32 Alberti Salomon, Oratio de sudore cruento (Wittenberg, Lehmann: 1582); Baier, De
sudore sanguineo. Modern medicine acknowledges such phenomenona as ‘hematidrosis’
but premodern accounts of bloody sweating may well have to be taken in a much wider
sense, including what physicians today would consider as bleeding disorders.
33 Fabricius Wilhelm, Opera omnia quae extant (Frankfurt, Beyer: 1646) 602, letter “De
sudore sanguinolento” by Georg Spörlin, Basel, 9 June 1627.
34 Cf. Daston L. – Park K., Wonders and the order of nature 1150–1750 (New York: 1998).
35 Posner Caspar, De sudore Christi sanguineo. Subj. A. Buttner (Jena, Sengenwald:
1661); Sebisch, De sudore; Brotbeck Johann Conrad, Hidrologia sive sudoris theoria. Def.
L.T. Breüning (Tübingen, Welrin: 1660) 10f; Slevogt, De sudoribus 21.
36 Slevogt‚ De sudoribus 19; Schüler, De sudore vitioso 19f.
510 michael stolberg

could lead to a range of different colours, tinting the sweat blue, grey or
even blackish at times.37
More subtle admixtures made the taste and smell of sweat vary greatly.
Ordinary sweat, as common experience showed, stung the eyes and pro-
duced a salty taste in the mouth.38 Certain foodstuffs, like garlic, or drugs,
like moschus, were known to change the odour of sweat.39 In most cases,
however, sweating people quite simply emanated a foul, unpleasant
stench, men generally more than women.40 Stinking sweat was said to be
particularly common among old people and Jews and among people suf-
fering from cacochymia, fever, leprosy and scabies, all diseases associated
with foul, corrupt humours.41
The smell and consistency of sweat also depended on the site where
it was excreted and to the degree to which the site was exposed to fresh
air.42 On the head, Herman Boerhaave explained, sweat was fatty, on
the forehead more watery, under the armpits it was frequently some-
what viscous and it had the strongest smell on the feet where it tended
to thicken into blackish impurities, especially between the toes.43 Even
many young women who were otherwise quite pretty, Klein complained
in 1837, sweated from their armpits with a stench that was hard to bear,
and nothing stank worse than many people’s sweaty feet.44
Sweat could be thick and thin, sharp or mild, and it could also vary in
temperature. Some early modern writers described cold sweat as a par-
ticularly bad sign. It often suggested a weakness of the internal heat and
was observed in patients who suffered from dangerous fevers or who were
in pain or indeed in ‘agone’, at the brink of death.45
In view of the many variations of sweat, depending on bodily constitu-
tion, age, sex, way of life and disease, the examination of sweat could have
evolved into an important diagnostic tool. Galen had already recommended
that the physician should inspect the sweat and, if necessary, ask the
patient to describe its taste as well. He reported that some physicians even
tasted their patients’ sweat for that purpose.46 But no consistent tradition

37 Slevogt‚ De sudoribus 19; Schüler, De sudore vitioso 19f.

38 Schüler, De sudore vitioso 6.
39 Boerhaave, Lehrsätze 429.
40 Boerhaave, Lehrsätze 428.
41 Slevogt, De sudoribus 22.
42 Slevogt, De sudoribus 7.
43 Boerhaave, Lehrsätze 428.
44 Klein P.J.I.L., Quaedam de sudoris differentia in morbis (Berlin: 1837) 35.
45 Sebisch, De sudore (no pagination); Slevogt‚ De sudoribus 23.
46 Galen, De san. tuenda 4.4 (6.251 K.); idem, In Hippocratis librum de humoribus com-
mentarii 2.1 (16.217 K.).
 sweat – learned concepts and popular perceptions 511

of ‘hidroscopy’ or ‘sudoroscopy’ comparable to uroscopy ever developed.47

Presumably this was, above all, for practical reasons: in contrast to urine,
sweat was only rarely found to be coloured and it also could not easily be
collected and inspected, let alone put into a bottle and sent to a physician.

A salutary excretion

For medical practitioners and lay people alike, the ultimate purpose of
sweating remained largely undisputed. Like other bodily evacuations,
from faeces, urine and menstrual blood to tears and nasal discharge,48
sweating and insensible transpiration cleansed the body of superfluities
and of potentially harmful, dangerous, polluting matter. Sweat thus pre-
served health by keeping harmful substances from accumulating in the
first place and, in times of sickness, it provided one of the principal path-
ways through which Nature drove out the morbid matter. In the early
seventeenth century, Santorio’s experiments were seen to provide quanti-
tative proof of the sheer volume of fluid which was excreted every day in
this manner and further underlined the paramount importance of sweat
and, above all, insensible transpiration.49
Based on this understanding of sweating as a beneficial and purifying
excretion, the perception of sweat and sweating was somewhat ambiva-
lent. While the evacuation of sweat was in most cases highly welcome, the
potentially harmful matter which the body eliminated via sweating tended
to be described in quite negative terms. Sweat was associated with pollu-
tion and shame. When lay people mentioned sweat in their writings they
sometimes even added apologetic expressions like ‘salva venia’ or ‘salva
reverentia’, as they more commonly did in the case of faeces and urine
(but also, for example, when they mentioned pigs).50 The perception of

47 Rübel Johann Friedrich, Medicinische Abhandlung, wie man in denen Kranckheiten

aus dem Urin, Schweiß, und aus dem Stuhlgang ein richtiges Urtheil fällen soll (Augsburg,
Lotter: 1756).
48 Galen, In Hipp. Hum. comment. 2.1 (16.216f K.).
49 Santorio, Ars statica.
50 E.g. Stadt- und Universitätsbibliothek Frankfurt, Senckenbergarchiv, letter from
J.M. Schmidt, Mainz, 27 March 1725, describing a lack of sweating from hands and feet;
Universitätsbibliothek Jena, Ms. Prov. fol. 26 (16) 375 verso-376 recto, report on the death
of Anna Duchess of Saxony by the deacon J. Altenburger 1613, quoting the dying duch-
ess’ complaint ‘wie salva venia sie aus der Maßen die vergangene Nacht sehr geschweißt
hätte’; Kantonsbibliothek St. Gallen, correspondence of S. Schobinger, letter from Sister
Afra, 3 May 1632 about the illness of another nun: ‘thut Reuerentz die gantz Nacht nichts
dan schwitzen’.
512 michael stolberg

sweat is reminiscent in this respect of that of menstruation. Because men-

strual blood was considered as harmful and polluting, its copious evacu-
ation at regular intervals was of the utmost importance and suppressed
menstruation was regarded as a major cause of female pathology.51
The positive perception of sweating as a salutary excretion reflected
overarching notions and images of a salutary cleansing which we find
described for other bodily evacuations. It provides a particularly good illus-
tration, however, of the reasons why such notions and images remained
such a persistent feature of medical culture. After all, in contemporary
eyes, the healthy effects of sweating were constantly confirmed and vali-
dated by what physicians and patients took to be self-evident and self-
explanatory experience. One of the most common observations in this
respect was that of a ‘critical sweat’, especially in fevers.52 Patients suffer-
ing from an acute or intermittent fever frequently improved markedly or
at least felt relieved after copious sweating – which they took as a proof
that the body had successfully freed itself of the morbid matter.53 When
the ‘English sweat’ ravaged Europe in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth
centuries, it was widely believed among physicians and lay people alike
that only copious sweating for at least 24 hours could help get rid of the
poison and save the victims’ lives.54 Even long-standing, chronic diseases
sometimes improved after a ‘good sweat’. Johann Georg Bövingh, for
example, had boils and rashes all over his face and body when he was a
student of theology. Medicines were of no avail until finally, after half a
year of suffering, ‘Nature herself went to work, and evacuated an incred-
ible sweat’. His skin lesions healed and he was no longer ashamed to move
among people.55
Frequently patients and physicians also took the quality, the foul smell,
the bitter or sour taste or indeed the colour of sweat to provide direct

51 Stolberg M., “The Monthly Malady: A History of Premenstrual Suffering”, Medical His-
tory 44 (2000) 301–322, esp. 316f.
52 Cf. Sennert Daniel, Opera omnia (Lyons, Huguetan: 1656), vol. II, L2, c8 ‘vix febris
aliqua integre sine sudore finitur’; the notion was still alive in the nineteenth century (see
Klein, De sudoris differentia 9).
53 E.g. Institut für Geschichte der Medizin der Robert Bosch-Stiftung Stuttgart, Hah-
nemannarchiv B331341, letter from husband of the sick A. Schmidt, 29 December 1833,
reporting her subjective feeling of relief after sweating.
54 See e.g. Klump Anthonius, Eyn kurtz Regiment und Consilium für die erschrockenli-
chen schnellenn Kranckheyt, der englisch Schweiß genant (Freiburg im Breisgau, J. Juliacen-
sis: 1529).
55 Bövingh Johann Georg, “Die Lebensbeschreibung des Johann Georg Bövingh (1676–
1728)”, Bachmann E. (ed.), Rotenburger Schriften 48/49 (1978) 121.
 sweat – learned concepts and popular perceptions 513

sensory evidence of the harmful, corrupt nature of the waste or morbid

matter which the body eliminated by sweating. The destructive force
of that morbid matter could even be observed outside the body. Thus
a patient of Friedrich Hoffmann’s in the eighteenth century repeatedly
suffered from fever and rashes. ‘My sweat’, he wrote, ‘was sometimes so
acrid that it not only eroded the skin of my chest and temples and made
it sore, but it also made my shirt so brittle that when you touched it, it
ripped right away, as if vitriolic acid had been smeared on it’.56 The effects
could last for a long time. Even after repeated washing of her clothes, one
of Haller’s female patients felt ‘a horror’ all over her body and especially
under her arms, when she put on a dress which she had worn during her
sickness the previous summer.57
Such observations and the lay interpretation of sweating in general
were closely connected with a notion which medical historians so far seem
to have totally ignored, namely the notion of a space ‘between the flesh
and the skin’. The idea occurs quite frequently in early modern medical
literature and lay writing and was still widely found by nineteenth-cen-
tury ethnographers.58 According to this notion, waste or morbid matter
frequently accumulated ‘between flesh and skin’, ‘zwischen Fleisch und
Haut’, ‘entre chair et cuir’.59 From there, the accumulated matter could
eventually pass through the pores of the skin to the outside. In this sense,
some patients complained of an itch, a pricking or a burning ‘between
the skin and flesh’. Indeed, a patient of Samuel Tissot in the eighteenth
century even described an ‘undulation’ or ‘shuddering’ in his shoulders, a
feeling ‘as if my skin were peeling off’ or ‘like someone were blowing air
between skin and flesh’; in this way, he thought, his sweat was making
itself felt as it pushed to the outside.60

56 Hoffmann Friedrich, Medicina consultatoria (Halle, Renger: 1721), vol. I, 237–240,

­letter from an unidentified 63-year old patient.
57 Burgerbibliothek Bern, correspondence of A. von Haller, A94 21/26, letter from an
unidentified patient, ca. 1760.
58 Flügel D., Volksmedizin und Aberglaube im Frankenwalde (Munich: 1863) 52;
Brenner-Schäffer W., Darstellung der sanitätlichen Volkssitten und des medizinischen Volks-
­Aberglaubens im nordöstlichen Theile der Oberpfalz (Amberg: 1861) 25f, 58.
59 Pansa Martin, Köstlicher und heilsamer Extract der gantzen Artzneykunst (Leipzig,
Gross: 1618) 178; Staatsbibliothek Berlin, Ms.germ. fol. 421a, 313 recto-314 verso, letter from
Wulf von Closter (ca. 1576); Krafft H.U., Reisen und Gefangenschaft Hans Ulrich Kraffts,
ed. Hassler K.D. (Stuttgart: 1861) 222f. (‘zwischen Hautt und Flaisch’); Bibliothèque Can-
tonale et Universitaire Lausanne-Dorigny (BCUL), Fonds Tissot, letter from Mme Monget,
2 November 1776 (‘entre chair et cuir’).
60 BCUL, Fonds Tissot, undated account of M de Lihu’s disease, with a letter from his
brother, 26 April 1785; see also ibidem letter from Mme Arthaud, 1 September 1768; ibidem
514 michael stolberg

Suppressed sweat

This notion of a space between flesh and skin, where sweat and morbid
humours collected before they passed through the skin, also gave a very
concrete meaning to the widespread fear that sweating might be sup-
pressed. When sweat was retained too long between the skin and the
flesh, Martin Pansa warned, it turned foul and more acrid and salty, caus-
ing scabies, leprosy and other skin affections.61 Physicians and lay people
alike ranked a ‘suppressed’ sweat among the leading causes of illness and
death. Especially when a habitual, long-standing sweat was interrupted,
deadly dangers loomed. Thus even when a patient’s sweat gave rise to an
awful stench the physicians had to take great care not to unduly interrupt
or suppress it.62
Again the personal experience of patients and relatives confirmed such
notions. Thus Achatius Trotzberg, in 1578, asked Leonhard Thurneisser in
Berlin for advice because he had developed pain in his belly and limbs
about a year after his constant sweating from legs and feet had diminished.
He was confident that, if only his former sweat could be restored, his health
would improve again.63 Similarly, a patient of Tissot, some 200 years later,
found his habitually sweaty feet quite a nuisance. But when he carelessly
put fat on them during a long walk, he suffered terrible consequences.
Almost instantly, the transpiration decreased and never came back, and
from that same time his eyes started aching and his sight grew weaker
and weaker – a clear indication, from a contemporary perspective, that
the harmful matter which, until then, had been excreted from the feet
had now turned towards the eyes.64 In another case, F.C. Gotter’s father
developed heavy nosebleeding, vertigo and other head ailments after the
copious sweating from his feet had suddenly stopped after many years, for
some unknown reason.65

letter from Mme Chenou, 26 June 1793; Staatsbibliothek Berlin, Ms. germ. fol. 420b, 118
recto-119 recto, letter from Caspar von Hobergk, 9 March 1577.
61 Pansa, Extract 178; similarly Ettmüller Michael, “Collegium consultatorium”, in idem,
Opera omnia theorica et practica (Lyons: 1685) 142.
62 Klein, De sudoris differentia 38.
63 Staatsbibliothek Berlin, Ms. germ. fol. 422a, 5 recto, letter to L. Thurneisser, 15 June
1578.
64 BCUL, Fonds Tissot, letter from M Bruckner, 29 November 1789.
65 Gotter Friedrich Cornelius, Idionosologia, sive morborum, quos in se ipso expertus est,
enarratio (Erfurt, Heringius: 1735) 4f.
 sweat – learned concepts and popular perceptions 515

The most commonly described cause of a suppressed sweat was cold.

Cold, whether it affected the body from the inside or from the outside,
made the skin contract, narrowed the pores and vessels and thus dimin-
ished or blocked the evacuation of sweat through the skin. On this basis,
eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century physicians and patients still fre-
quently attributed diseases to drinking cold water, especially after physi-
cal exercise, or to careless exposure to cold air or water, for example a
walk in the cold moist morning air.66 Among ordinary people, the fear of
suppressing a healthy sweat apparently also resulted in a marked aversion
against fresh air in the sick-room.67 In nineteenth-century Germany, phy-
sicians still complained about patients and relatives who refused to open
the windows when they visited patients, in spite of what the physicians
perceived as a literally sickening stench. In the eyes of ordinary people,
exposing the patient even to a moment of cold draught could have deadly
consequences.68
Early modern learned physicians also pointed out other potential causes
of suppressed sweating. Abundant hair or, even worse, wigs blocked per-
spiration and caused fluxes, migraines, eye disorders and the like.69 More
commonly, dirt was said to obstruct the pores and to block the exit of
sweat and transpiration through the skin. In fact, at the time, medical
advice to keep the body clean was usually based not on fears of contagion
but on the need to keep the pores clean and permeable.70

Prophylactic and therapeutic sweating

The belief in the beneficial effects of sweating also lay behind its wide-
spread prophylactic and therapeutic use among ordinary lay people.
According to the physicians, patients suffering from fevers especially
were routinely kept very warm, often by several layers of heavy blankets.71

66 BCUL, Fonds Tissot, letter from Lieutenant Roussany, 10 June 1774.

67 Tissot Samuel Auguste, Advice to the People in General, with Regard to their Health, tr.
Kirkpatrick J. (London, Becket and de Hondt: 1765) 48f.
68 Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München Cgm 6774, collection of more than 200 Bavar-
ian medical ethnographies written around 1860.
69 Pansa, Extract 182; Jacquin [Abbé Armand Pierre], De la santé (Paris, Durand: 1762)
292; Hufeland, Makrobiotik 202–204.
70 Pansa, Extract 182–186.
71 Rötenbeck Johann Georg, De sudore praeter naturam (Altdorf, Meyer: 1676); Slevogt,
De sudoribus 13f; Carrère J.-B.-F., Handbuch der Krankenpflege (Strasbourg, Treuttel: 1787)
516 michael stolberg

­ ippolitus Guarinonius in Austria – whose often sarcastic account should

H
however be taken with a grain of salt – claimed that some patients went
even further and tried to cure their fevers by spending half an hour or
an hour lying on a slate in a warm bread oven, after the bread had been
baked, risking literally being roasted.72 The ‘people’ generally believed,
Samuel August Tissot observed in the 1760s, ‘that all distempers are cured
by sweat; and that to procure sweat, they must take abundance of hot and
heating things, and keep themselves hot’.73 Sweating also seems to have
been quite popular as a prophylactic, especially in the spring and fall,74
and, in Austria, according to Guarinonius, the common folk and many
from the higher ranks, too, took a sweat bath every Saturday.75 Different
types of bath could be used in order to force a good sweat: the heated air
of a ‘Laconian bath’, a ‘sudatorium vaporosum’, or simply warm water,
either in natural thermal baths or at home where people prepared baths
with river water and herbs.76
Eighteenth-century physicians like Tissot were increasingly critical of
such practices, as of other potent evacuatives, by which, they claimed,
patients were ‘with great probability taking pains to kill themselves’.77 But
sudorifics and the somewhat milder diaphoretics had long been a main-
stay of learned medicine, too.78 Birch bark, saffron, bezoar, wine and pep-
per were frequently used for this purpose, especially in fevers but also
in many other diseases. Frictions – that is, rubbing the skin – and warm
baths were also widely prescribed to promote sweating.79

The humoral economy of sweat

It is by far the beneficial effects of sweating that predominate in early

modern medical writing and lay accounts alike. But there was also

39; Mosse Marcus, De transpirationis et sudoris dignitate. Diss. medico-pathologica (Berlin:

1832) 22f.
72 Guarinonius Hippolitus, Die Grewel der Verwüstung menschlichen Geschlechts (Ingol-
stadt, Angermeyer: 1610) 898f.
73 Tissot, Advice 47.
74 Tissot, Advice 47.
75 Herbst, De noxia sudoris provocatione 5–7.
76 Eysel Johann Philipp, Disputatio inauguralis medica exhibens sudorifera. Subj. J.C. Pfau-
zius (Erfurt, Grosch: 1712), no pagination.
77 Tissot, Advice 47.
78 Pansa, Extract 178.
79 Brooke H., Hygieine. Or a Conservatory of Health (London, G. Whittington: 1650) 214f;
Eysel, Sudorifera.
 sweat – learned concepts and popular perceptions 517

another side to sweating. Like menstruation or haemorrhoidal bleeding,

sweating was, at times, excessive. When the body lost too much ‘serum’
in this manner, patients became exsiccated,80 and their blood and the
other humours thickened. Their movement became sluggish or it ceased
altogether, leading to stagnation and putrefaction.81
Excessive sweating, the physicians warned, also caused to a loss of subtle,
mobile vital spirits and of innate heat.82 Adolescents were at particular risk.
They were sometimes found to have their growth stunted from excessive
sweating.83 In spite of the widely-acknowledged risks of suppressed per-
spiration, in the seventeenth century, Francis Bacon even advised elderly
people, whose spirits began running lower, to use cold water in order to
keep their pores closed and thus to preserve the native heat and the radi-
cal moisture inside their bodies as long as possible.84 This fear of excessive
losses of native heat and radical moisture or, more generally, of precious
vital matter, due to sweating was supported, in particular, by the experi-
ence of consumption which was often associated with abundant and, in
particular, nocturnal sweat.85 To the physicians it seemed clear that this
often thick and viscous sweat resulted from a melting away of the body’s
own substance and made consumptives become thin and emaciated.86
The perception of sweating thus provides a striking illustration of the
precarious balance between excretion and retention, between openness
and closure, which characterised the early modern understanding and
experience of the body in many areas. There is, however, a second tension
inherent in the early modern perception of sweating and the skin. A perme-
able skin and open pores permitted a salutary excretion of harmful matter
but, once the pores were widened, matter could also move in the opposite
direction from the outside towards the innermost parts. Sometimes this
might be welcome, when restoring, balsamic substances were absorbed in

80 Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen, Ms. Meibom 86, letter from P. Püchler
about the sick Geheime Rätin von Brunnstatt, 4 Februrary 1679.
81 Tissot, Advice 48.
82 Pansa, Extract 178; Musitano, Opera 141: ‘nativi calidi aliquid dissipat, corpus dissolvit,
vires dejecit, labefacit’.
83 Wedel Georg Wolfgang, Physiologia medica quatuor sectionibus distincta (Jena, Biel-
kius: 1680) 189.
84 Bacon Francis, The Historie of Life and Death. With Observations Naturall and Experi-
mentall for the Prolonging of Life (London, Mosley: 1638) 182.
85 E.g. Library of the Wellcome Institute, London, Western Manuscripts, Ms. 6114, letter
from M Fasnacht [?], 4 May 1801.
86 Vater Christian, De sudore colliquativo. Def. G.F. Clauder (Wittenberg, Kreusig: 1715);
Büchner Andreas Elias, De sudore colliquativo. Def. G.C. Schlichter (Halle, Hendel: 1757).
518 michael stolberg

this manner,87 but much more frequently it was considered as life-threat-

ening. Far into the nineteenth century, corrupt, miasmatic air was feared
as a major cause of epidemic disease and open pores inevitably facilitated
its entry into the body. Indeed, for the very reason that sweat freed the sick
from morbid, corrupt matter, the mere presence of fellow human beings in
the same room or even just the same town could become a serious health
hazard. Without any direct physical contact, the subtle, vaporous excretions
from the sick might enter the bodies of others in their vicinity through the
skin.88 For similar reasons, health advice books warned against the effects
of dirty bedding and linen which affected the vital matter in the body with
a repulsive, hostile odour.89 Certainly when people became sick, common
folk, according to J.-B.-F. Carrère, generally considered it necessary to keep
sweating patients’ skin dry and to change their bed-linen, shirt and cap in
order to constantly remove the excreted sweaty matter.90

Conclusion. Change and continuity

There is some evidence of change in the early modern understanding and

perception of sweat, at least among learned medical authors and their
readers. Microscopy associated sweating more closely with glands and
other specific structures in the skin. Chemical analysis led to attempts to
attribute the variable consistency and smell of sweat to chemical ingredi-
ents such as sulphur or salt.91 The balance between the fears of suppressed
evacuation on the one hand and of excessive losses of vital matter on the
other shifted, in the long run, to a greater stress on economy and a growing
appreciation of a tight skin and of relatively closed bodily boundaries as a
safeguard of health. Cold air and cold water, which had long been feared as
major causes of a potentially fatal suppression of sweat, ­increasingly came
to be praised as invigorating and as strengthening the fibres instead.
Above all, however, the history of sweating is the story of a striking
persistence of notions and images of the body. The new chemical and
microscopic findings and the range of new medical theories of human
physiology and pathology which late seventeenth- and eighteenth-­century

87 Hufeland Christoph Wilhelm, Makrobiotik oder die Kunst das Leben zu verlängern
(Berlin: 18235) 202.
88 Stolberg M., Die Cholera im Großherzogtum Toskana. Ängste, Deutungen und Reak-
tionen im Angesicht einer tödlichen Seuche (Landsberg: 1995), esp. 102–116.
89 Pansa, Extract 182f.
90 Carrère, Handbuch 35.
91 Schüler, De sudore 6; Slevogt, De sudoribus 7.
 sweat – learned concepts and popular perceptions 519

physicians put forward seem to have had precious little impact on the
learned understanding of sweating and hardly any on that of ordinary lay
people. Indeed, to this very day the notion that sweat cleanses or ‘detoxi-
fies’ the body has remained a widely accepted part of our cultural heritage
and continues to shape many people’s experience of sweating as liberat-
ing, even though from the viewpoint of modern Western medicine this
makes little sense.
The history of sweating thus also illustrates a fundamental methodolog-
ical point, which is of considerable importance not only for writing the
history of sweating but for that of the body and medical theory in general.
It has often been observed that the imagery and practices associated with
the body in sickness and health tend to be particularly resistant to the
innovation and change wrought by new scientific theories or discover-
ies. Harvey’s theory of the circulation of the blood, for example, all but
destroyed the theoretical rationale of blood-letting as a mainstay of early
modern therapy. Patients and physicians were firmly convinced, however,
that they had experienced its liberating, salutary effects countless times. In
the end, rather than relinquishing this time-honoured practice, new rea-
sons were found to account for its unquestioned efficacy. Along very simi-
lar lines, early modern physicians and lay-people saw their deeply rooted
belief in the salutary effects of sweating and other bodily evacuations con-
stantly confirmed by daily experience. Numerous patients recovered after
copious sweating or after having taken a drastic purgative. In retrospect,
we may attribute this to the placebo effect and, above all, to the natural
course of the disease. Most patients get better, at least ­temporarily, no
matter what treatment they receive, especially in acute diseases like the
fevers so common at the time. To early modern patients and those around
them such improvement was, however, clear evidence that the natural or
artificial evacuation of matter had worked. This frequent observation vali-
dated, in turn, the underlying idea that the body was indeed threatened,
above all, by putrid, morbid matter which it had to expel.
It seems that prevailing notions and images of the body can in fact
become so deeply rooted in this manner that they shape the physical per-
ception of the body itself, and of its workings. Since historians have access
to physical experience generally only through the words which are used
to express it, the effects of culture on bodily sensation are ­notoriously
­difficult to pin down. But even patients’ written accounts leave little
doubt, for example, that early modern ‘hysterical’ women who complained
about their uterus rising up in their bellies and taking away their breath
experienced a physical sensation entirely unfamiliar to women today; or
that people, growing up with a very physical, somatic understanding of
520 michael stolberg

the emotions, thought they literally ‘sensed’ how their blood and spirits
withdrew to the inside of their bodies at the sight of something fright-
ful.92 Similarly, early modern people ‘sensed’ the polluting peccant mat-
ter pushing outwards when it collected ‘between flesh and skin’ and they
physically ‘felt’ hot vapours rise from their belly to their heads and faces,
when sweating was suppressed.
Inevitably, once learned medical concepts and the notions and images of
the body in sickness and in health which they carry with them have become
a deeply rooted and pervasive element of a culture in this manner, they
become a powerful force in their own right. New medical theories on the
body or on individual bodily phenomena like sweating will not be able sim-
ply to do away with such deeply ingrained and, literally, embodied notions
and images. After all, contemporaries, including the physicians as embodied
men of their time, ‘know’ these notions and images to be true, based on
what they take for their naturally given bodily perception and experience.
Medical historians tend to identify the dominant medical discourse
with the fairly coherent, logical theories expounded in medical textbooks.
The relationship between theory and the culturally framed lived body is,
however, a more complex and, above all, a thoroughly dialectical one.
New medical theories will only be accepted as meaningful if they suffi-
ciently accommodate established notions and images of the body, even
if that leads to some degree of tension or outright contradiction. Care-
ful analysis of the elaborate explanatory models and systematic theories
of learned physicians is thus only a first, though an indispensable, step
towards a full understanding of early modern concepts of sweating and
other bodily phenomena. The meanings of bodily phenomena like sweat-
ing in the daily lives of ordinary people and even in daily medical practice
are probably more fruitfully explored by looking at the semantic network
of terms, notions, images and accepted practices which developed around
them over the centuries.93 They provided the theories with flesh and
bones; they shaped what contemporaries perceived as a naturally given
physical experience; and they decided, to a substantial degree, on the lim-
its of plausible and acceptable medical innovation.

92 Stolberg, Homo patiens 233–239.

93 On the notion of ‘semantic networks’ see the classic paper by Good B.J., “The Heart
of What’s the Matter. The Semantics of Illness in Iran”, Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry
1 (1977) 25–58.
 sweat – learned concepts and popular perceptions 521

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 Of the fisherman’s net and skin pores.
Reframing conceptions of the skin in medicine 1572–1714

Mieneke te Hennepe

Summary

Between 1572 and 1714, existing conceptions of the skin as being porous were
reaffirmed by visual microscopic evidence. Platonic understandings of the skin
as a fisherman’s net were both reformulated in new vocabularies and reframed
by new findings in microscopic observations. In this paper I argue that the transi-
tion from macroscopic anatomy to microscopic anatomy changed the anatomical
views of the skin yet left medical practice in the European context intact. The
skin, as the ultimate layer of communication between the body and the world,
was seen as a porous tactile part of the body, capable of excreting noxious matter
in sweat. Moreover, historical conceptions and visualisations of the skin tell us
about changing concepts of the body, and ultimately about the way the body is
constructed. While the skin as a symbolic layer has been the subject of studies in
art and literature, little is known about the medical and physiological meanings
of skin in early modern history. This paper seeks to investigate the physiology of
the skin and thus deepen the history of the body as a changing subject of inter-
pretation and analysis, through comparisons of works by Girolamo Mercuriale to
early microscopic findings by such scholars as Nehemiah Grew and Antoni van
Leeuwenhoek.
‘our entire skin is as one pore’
Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, 16741

The skin as a bodily structure occupied anatomists, physiologists and sur-

geons in the past in many different ways. In the late seventeenth century,
microscopy introduced a new dimension. From being the most obvious
structure that needed no depiction, according to Vesalius, skin became a
target for such microscopists as Antoni van Leeuwenhoek and Nehemiah
Grew. What the microscope revealed was a skin that abounded in pores.
What did this mean for existing anatomical and physiological concep-
tions of the skin? How were medical perceptions of skin challenged by the
new natural philosophy? In this paper I argue that microscopic findings

1 Leeuwenhoek Antoni van, The Collected Letters of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, vol. I
(Amsterdam: 1939) 181: Letter 12, 18 oktober 1674.
524 mieneke te hennepe

c­ oncerning skin in the late seventeenth century were part of the refram-
ing of skin in a novel intellectual framework with surprisingly little effect
on medical practice or patient experiences. The way microscopic investi-
gations into the skin were discussed by physicians can tell us much about
the relationship between technology and medical practices, and about the
physiological understandings of skin throughout the period between 1572
and 1714. With the emergence of microscopic studies, existing (multiple)
understandings of the skin as a ‘fisherman’s net’ were reformulated in new
vocabularies and reframed by microscopic evidence and drawings. Here
I will focus particularly on the skin’s pores, which closely defined the inter-
play and exchanges of sweat and other substances between the body and
the outer world. Capable of expelling sweat and other matter from the
body, the pores could at the same time import air and other substances
into the body. As such, the pores of the skin symbolise one important yet
paradoxical role of the skin for the physiology of the healthy body: it is
at once a large structure for safeguarding the integrity of the body while
simultaneously being a layer of exchange and interaction between body
and environment.
Although the skin as a symbolic layer has been the subject of studies
in art and literature, little is known about the medical and physiological
meanings of skin in early modern history. Scholarly interest in the body
has in recent years brought the skin to the attention of interdisciplinary
groups and historians.2 Literary critics, psychologists, art historians and
others have begun to analyse the skin in our present culture and in psycho-
logical or bodily experience.3 By tracing the meanings and understandings
of skin in history, these scholars have relieved the skin of its self-evident
image. Literary scholar Steven Connor, for example, has underlined the
multiple readings of the skin in Western culture in his work The Book
of Skin (2004). By studying a wide variety of medical and literary texts,

2 For cultural histories of the body see Corbin A. – Courtine J.-J. – Vigarello G. (eds.),
Histoire du Corps, 3 vols. (Paris: 2005–2006). On the history of specific parts of the body see
Benthien C. – Wulf C. (eds.), Körperteile. Eine kulturelle Anatomie (Reinbek bei Hamburg:
2001). For recent work on the human body see for example Egmond F. – Zwijnenberg R.
(eds.), Bodily Extremities. Preoccupations with the Human Body in Early Modern European
Culture (Aldershot: 2003). On the depiction of skin in art see Fend M., “Bodily and Pictorial
Surfaces: Skin in French Art and Medicine, 1790–1860”, Art History 28 (2005) 311–339.
3 Anzieu D. The Skin Ego. A Psychoanalytic Approach to the Self tr. Turner C. (New
Haven, Conn: 1989); Joost T. – Everdingen J.J.E. van (eds.) Omtrent de huid. Cultuurhisto-
rische verkenningen (Amsterdam-Overveen: 1996); Benthien C., Skin. On the Cultural Border
between Self and the World tr. Dunlap T. (New York: 2002); Connor S. The Book of Skin
(London: 2004).
 of the fisherman’s net and skin pores 525

Connor emphasises the various cultural codifications of the skin from

complexion and disfigurement to scenes of religious anointing.4 Cultural
studies of skin have thus stressed the idea of the skin as a cultural subject
shaped by history. Similarly, a recent volume on the medically visualised
body discusses the bodily interior as ‘an historical, social and cultural con-
struct, constituted in the interchange between technology, knowledge,
representation and media’.5 In line with these analyses, this paper seeks
to investigate the physiology6 of the skin and thus deepen the history of
body and skin as a changing subject of interpretation and investigation.
Between 1572 and 1714, a shift from macroscopic anatomy to micro-
scopic investigations resulted in changing anatomical views of the skin.
Yet in medical practice the function of the skin as a medium in the move-
ments of bodily fluids remained much the same. I will discuss how the
skin was scrutinised and described while still retaining its bodily role as
a medium of exchange. I show how different authors at different times
were occupied with the skin, and with the pores of the skin in particu-
lar. First, I focus on Greek and Renaissance understandings of skin. As a
starting point I use one of the most important early discussions of skin
diseases by the Italian Girolamo Mercuriale of 1572, in which Galenic and
Platonic understandings of the skin were prominent (De morbis cutaneis).
I then turn to the microscopic investigations of the skin between 1665 and
1700 where I discuss exemplary works by the Dutch microscopist Antoni
van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723) and the London physician Nehemiah Grew
(1641–1712). Visual articulation of the microscopic make-up of the skin was
a crucial aspect of the inquiry into the functioning of the healthy body.
Furthermore, the attention paid to the pores of the skin exemplified the
interest in porosity expressed at the time in natural philosophy. Finally, I
look at the work of the English surgeon Daniel Turner (De morbis cutaneis,
1714), who integrated the microscopical anatomy of the skin as an explana-
tory framework for his practices relating to skin diseases and treatments.

4 Connor, The Book of Skin chs. 1, 3 and 7.

5 Vall R. van de – Zwijnenberg R. (eds.), The Body Within. Art, Medicine and Visualiza-
tion (Leiden: 2009).
6 My understanding of the term physiology here follows Andrew Cunningham, who
argued that, until 1800, physiology referred to a fundamental part of medical knowledge,
and later also to natural philosophy; depending on human anatomy in the search for
causes. See Cunningham A., “The Pen and the Sword: Recovering the Disciplinary Identity
of Physiology and Anatomy before 1800 I: Old Physiology – The Pen”, Studies in History and
Philosophy of Science Part C. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical
Sciences 33 (2002) 631–665.
526 mieneke te hennepe

Plato and the fisherman’s net

For physicians in Renaissance Europe, the framework for defining the role
of the skin in the healthy or diseased body was set by the Greek classics.7
For the Italian physician Girolamo Mercuriale (1530–1606), the diseased
skin was a subject for his book De morbis cutaneis, 1572.8 Mercuriale, ‘the
most eminent Italian Professor of medicine in the last quarter of the six-
teenth century’, edited the Opera omnia of both Galen and Hippocrates.9
In De morbis cutaneis, Mercuriale displayed his profound knowledge of the
classics such as Galenic teachings, Hippocratic texts and Aristotle. Relying
on a multitude of classical sources, he provided descriptions of such con-
ditions as baldness, scabies, exanthemata and leprosy. Drawing on Plato’s
Timaeus, Mercuriale defined the skin as a ‘fisherman’s net’ (nassulae pis-
catoriae) because of its purpose as a common bond holding together the
separate body parts in accordance with Hippocrates.10 According to Mer-
curiale, the skin had no other function other than receiving waste materi-
als, as Galen had taught.11
The analogy of the skin as a fisherman’s net (or fish-trap) is impor-
tant, as it refers to a conception of the skin as an inherently porous layer
of exchange. For the purpose of clarity, I want to turn briefly to Plato’s
Timaeus in order to understand how Mercuriale read this analogy.12 In

   
7 See Nutton V., “Greek Science in the Sixteenth-Century Renaissance”, in Field J.V. –
James F.A.L. (eds.), Renaissance and Revolution. Humanists, Scholars, Craftsmen and Natu-
ral Philosophers in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: 1993) 15–28; 16 and Cunningham A.,
The Anatomical Renaissance. The Resurrection of the Anatomical Projects of the Ancients
(Aldershot: 1997).
   
8 Sutton L.R., Sixteenth Century Physician and his Methods. Mercurialis on Diseases of
the Skin. The first book on the subject (1572) (Kansas City: 1986). On Mercuriale see also
Arcangeli A. – Nutton V. (eds.), Girolamo Mercuriale. Medicina e cultura nell’Europa del
Cinquecento (Florence: 2008).
   
9 Nutton, “Greek Science in the Sixteenth-Century Renaissance” 18.
10 Sutton, Sixteenth Century Physician 11. Original text in Mercuriale Girolamo, De morbis
cutaneis et omnibus corporis humani excrementis tractatus locupletissimi (Venice, Paulum
and Antonium Meietos fratres: 1572), 1 ‘Divinus Plato in Timaeo cutim nassulae piscatoriae
adsimilaverit, quod etiam adnotavit Galenus in commentariis in Timaeum’.
11 For Galen on skin see, for example, Green R.M., A Translation of Galen’s Hygiene
(De Sanitate Tuenda) (Springfield: 1951) 103 ‘And we deem it best in this to stretch the
massaged parts, for the purpose of expelling through the skin all the excrement which is
between the skin and the underlying flesh’; and 131 ‘Now obstruction [of the pores] occurs
from thin and thick excrements, when they go too abundantly to the skin’.
12 I acknowledge that Mercuriale’s reading of Plato’s Timaeus depends on the transla-
tions and commentaries available at the time. For practical purposes, however, I will trace
the idea of a ‘fisherman’s net’ here as discussed by J.M. Cornford in Plato’s Cosmology. The
Timaeus of Plato (London: 1937).
 of the fisherman’s net and skin pores 527

Cornford’s translation and interpretation of Timaeus, the porous role of

the skin in respiration is explicit: the body not only transpires through
pores all over the skin, but currents of air and fire also ‘thrust’ in a circu-
lar motion into the body.13 Plato on transpiration, discussing pores in the
skin, quotes Empedocles:
Thus do all things draw breath and breathe it out again. All have bloodless
tubes of flesh extended over the surface of their bodies; and at the mouths
of these the outermost surface of the skin is perforated all over with pores
closely packed together, so as to keep in the blood while a free passage is cut
for the air to pass through. Then, when the thin blood recedes from these,
the bubbling air rushes in with an impetuous surge; and when the blood
runs back it is breathed out again.14
Plato’s diagram of currents of air and fire in the body was described by the
classical scholar Cornford in 1937 as a ‘wheel or fish-trap’.15 According to
this concept, currents of air ‘sink into the body through its pores’; at other
times, the term ‘channels’ is used.16 What is clear, however, is how com-
plex the image of the skin as a fish-net or fish-trap was in Plato’s work.
Mercuriale assimilated the many ideas about skin into his 1572 work
on skin diseases. His descriptions of diseases resonate with the concep-
tion of the skin as a receptacle for waste and as a layer of exchange. He
directly referred to Plato’s Timaeus and to the comments on Timaeus by
Galen.17 As a layer of exchange, the skin was subject to different kinds of
diseases. Abnormalities of the hair, for example, resulted from abnormali-
ties of the pores through which waste material, which formed the hairs,
was expelled.18 If the pores became too narrow and closed up, the hair
would fall out.19 On the other hand, certain problems could be relieved
through manipulation of the skin pores by external treatment. Keeping
the skin pores open or purging the pores was dictated by Aristotle and

13 Cornford, Plato’s Cosmology 306.

14 Quote in Cornford, Plato’s Cosmology 306–307. Translation of Empedocles, Fragmenta
100 ‘ὧδε δ’ ἀναπνεῖ πάντα καὶ ἐκπνεῖ· πᾶσι λίφαιμοι | σαρκῶν σύριγγες πύματον κατὰ σῶμα
τέτανται, | καί σφιν ἐπὶ στομίοις πυκιναῖς τέτρηνται ἄλοξιν | ῥινῶν ἔσχατα τέρθρα διαμπερές, ὥστε
φόνον μέν | κεύθειν, αἰθέρι δ’ εὐπορίην διόδοισι τετμῆσθαι. | ἔνθεν ἔπειθ’ ὁπόταν μὲν ἀπαΐξηι τέρεν
αἷμα, | αἰθὴρ παφλάζων καταΐσσεται οἴδματι μάργωι, | εὖτε δ’ ἀναθρώισκηι, πάλιν ἐκπνέει’.
15 Cornford, Plato’s Cosmology 308–315. See also Longrigg J., Greek Rational Medicine.
Philosophy and Medicine from Almaeon to the Alexandrians (London: 1993) 135–141.
16 Cornford, Plato’s Cosmology 314. Plato, Timaeus 78d–78e.
17 See also Larrain C.J., Galens Kommentar zu Platons Timaios (Stuttgart: 1992).
18 Sutton, Sixteenth Century Physician 15. Cf. Galen on hair colour and pores; see Singer
P.N., Galen. Selected Works (Oxford: 1997) 252–253.
19 Sutton, Sixteenth Century Physician 16.
528 mieneke te hennepe

Galen, for example.20 Mercuriale’s De morbis cutaneis thus shows how

ancient theories on the function and workings of the skin were incorpo-
rated into sixteenth-century views on the diseased human body.
Authors of anatomical and medical texts had defined skin in different
ways.21 In the anatomical tradition of dissection, skin was not primarily
an object of physiological interest. Andreas Vesalius in De humani corpo-
ris fabrica (1543) expressed the understanding of skin as an in-between
structure, an intermediary.22 Defined as a ‘native tegument covering all
parts of the body’, skin was intermediate between ‘hardness and ­softness’,
between ‘sinew and flesh’, and between ‘bloodless’ and ‘abounding in
blood’.23 According to Vesalius, there was no need for a depiction of the
skin as ‘anyone who has ever performed a dissection, or assisted some-
one dissecting, will have no need of a picture, as these parts are the
same in all cases’.24 In dissection and artistic representations of the body,
the human flayed figure without skin – or écorché – was a common image.
In some cases, the skin of the écorché figured as part of the title page on
anatomical treatises.25 Besides offering a symbolic reference to classical
and Christian myths of flaying,26 the écorché also demonstrates the visual

20 Sutton, Sixteenth Century Physician 45. See also Green, A translation of Galen’s
Hygiene (De Sanitate Tuenda) (Springfield: 1951) 131–132 ‘Causes and treatment of constric-
tion of the pores’.
21 The historian Renbourn published two articles in which he described the histories of
sweat and insensible perspiration chronologically, from a somewhat positivist and anach-
ronistic view, often without providing page references to original works. However, his
articles do provide a first insight into the different ways of understanding skin throughout
the centuries. See Renbourn E.T., “The History of Sweat and the Sweat Rash from Earliest
Times to the End of the 18th Century”, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences
14 (1959) 202–227; Renbourn E.T., “The Natural History of Insensible Perspiration”, Medical
History 4 (1960) 135–152.
22 Richardson W.F. – Carman J.B., On the Fabric of the Human Body. Book II. The Liga-
ments and Muscles. A Translation of De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem (San Fran-
cisco: 1999) 140–145.
23 Richardson – Carman, On the Fabric of the Human Body 140. This intermediate state
is investigated by Vesalius in a macroscopic manner: observing the resistance of the skin in
different places of the body, or the differences in distribution of hair. Apart from the skin,
the derma in Greek, Vesalius differentiated the outmost cuticle, the epidermis.
24 Richardson – Carman, On the Fabric of the Human Body 140.
25 On the écorché and other aspects of skin in book culture see: Herzog August Biblio-
thek, Haut zwischen 1500 und 1800. Verborgen im Buch – Verborgen im Koerper (Wolfenbüt-
tel: 2004) and Connor, The Book of Skin 13–18.
26 For an extended analysis of flaying in the visual arts see Benthien, Cultural Border
63–94; and Bohde D., “Skin and the Search for the Interior: The Representation of Flay-
ing in the Art and Anatomy of the Cinquecento”, in Egmond F. – Zwijnenberg R. (eds.),
Bodily Extremities. Preoccupations with the Human Body in early Modern European Culture
(Aldershot: 2003) 10–47.
 of the fisherman’s net and skin pores 529

counterpart of Vesalius’ anatomical dissection of the skin [Fig. 1]. The very
act of auto-dissection of the skin emphasised the role of the skin as a mere
protective tegument, that can be removed like clothing.
For physicians like Mercuriale or the French physiologist Jean Fernel,
skin was of interest in the context of the formation of human anatomy and
in the movements of fluids.27 In Fernel’s Physiologia, he described how
‘narrow vents’ in the skin ‘give passage to exhalation from the inside’.28
He furthermore explained different movements of substances through the
skin, from ‘nutriment’ and ‘spirit’ provided by veins and arteries29 to the
exhalation of air, ‘thinner spirit’ or the entry of fluid.30 While Vesalius was
concerned with the macroscopic anatomical make-up of skin, Fernel dis-
cussed movements, respiration and formation of skin in the living body.
Other physicians and surgeons continued this role of the skin as an
intermediate layer of interchange between body and environment into
the early seventeenth century. The French surgeon Ambroise Paré (1509–
1590) described how use of the ‘true skin’ (derma) was to ‘keep safe and
sound the continuity of the whole body, and all the parts thereof, from
the violent assault of all external dangers [. . .], it is penetrated with many
pores, as breathing-places, as we may see by the flowing out of sweat’.31
This idea of porosity continued to play a fundamental part in consequent
anatomical and natural philosophical descriptions of the skin. In The His-
tory of Life and Death (1638), the philosopher Sir Francis Bacon (1561–1626)
considered how keeping air out of the body could extend life.32 The exclu-
sion of air from the body was achieved by ‘shutting or filling the pores’,
for example by using cold baths and applying binders such as resin, oint-
ments, oils or pomanders to the skin.33 In this way, the winter was kept
out and the spirits in, although suppressing sweat could be a cause of dis-
comfort, as well as introducing the possibility of the entrapped spirits in

27 Forrester J.M., The Physiologia of Jean Fernel (1567) (Philadelphia: 2003) 148–149. See
also: Fernel Jean, Medicina (Paris, Wechel: 1554) 56.
28 Forrester, The Physiologia of Jean Fernel (1567) 149.
29 Forrester, The Physiologia of Jean Fernel (1567) 149.
30 Forrester, The Physiologia of Jean Fernel (1567) 209.
31 Paré Ambroise, The Workes of that Famous Chirurgion Ambrose Parey translated out of
Latine and compared with the French by Th. Johnson (London, Th. Cotes and R. Young: 1634)
89. In the original French publication of 1579 Paré wrote ‘il faut entendre qu’il est poreux et
transpirable, ainsi qu’on peut voir par les sueurs’, in: Paré Ambroise, Les oeuvres ­d’Ambroise
Paré, conseiller et premier chirurgien du Roy (Paris, Gabriel Buon: 1579), LXXXIX.
32 Bacon Francis, The Historie of Life and Death. With Observation Naturall and Experi-
mentall for the Prologing of Life (London, I. Okes: 1638).
33 Bacon, The Historie of Life and Death 186.
530 mieneke te hennepe

Fig. 1. Gasparo Becerra, “Standing male écorché”, in Juan Valverde de Hamusco,

Historia de la Composición del Cuerpo Humano (Rome, Salamanca and Lafreri:
1556). Book II, Tabula I. Copper engraving. Image © Wellcome Library, London.
 of the fisherman’s net and skin pores 531

the body becoming ‘hot’.34 Natural constriction and opening of the pores
in winter and summer was mentioned by Fernel as early as 1567.35
The fishing-net metaphor was still in use in the early seventeenth cen-
tury. The English Galenist physician Helkiah Crooke (1576–1635) reminded
his readers in Mikrokosmographia (1616) how the existence of skin pores
as pin holes in the surface of the skin is evident in sweating and breath-
ing of air, which was why Crooke compared it to a ‘fish net’ in line with
Plato.36 Crooke derived the role of the skin pores according to their form
and size:
These pores are small and almost insensible, least otherwise there should
be too free a dissipation of the spirits, yet in some bodies they are narrower
or straighter, in some wider, and such do easily melt away in sweat, and
are less affected with inward causes: the other sweat very difficultly, and
because the excrements are retained, doe easily incurre diseases thereby.37
The porosity of the skin implied both dangers and opportunities for
treatment in medicine. Sixteenth-century authors in Italy, for example,
described the entrance of pestilence through the skin, while creating
openings in the skin could at the same time form a treatment to force
disease to exit the body.38 Helkiah Crooke also mentioned the use of saf-
fron and other diaphoretics or sweating remedies to ‘relax’ the pores.39
New mechanist philosophies around 1650 shifted the focus in anatomy
away from the purpose of the parts towards particles and actions by
contact.40 In De Homine (1664), René Descartes presented his mechani-
cal representation of the human body.41 Yet, as a physiologist explain-
ing movements of parts and body functions, Descartes still adhered to

34 Bacon, The Historie of Life and Death 192. On page 193 Bacon discusses one of the
‘discommodities’ of anointing with oil: ‘The fourth discommodity being of a subtler nature,
is the increasing of the detained spirits by shutting the pores [. . .]’.
35 Forrester, The Physiologia of Jean Fernel (1567) 291.
36 Crooke Helkiah, Mikrokosmographia. A Description of the Body of Man, together with
the Controversies and Figures thereto Belonging / Collected and Translated out of all the best
Authors of Anatomy, especially out of Gasper Bauhinus and Andreas Laurentius, by Helkiah
Crooke (London, W. Iaggard: 1616) 73.
37 Crooke, Mikrokosmographia 73.
38 Bohde, “Skin and the search for the interior” 31.
39 Crooke, Mikrokosmographia 73.
40 French R., “The Anatomical Tradition”, in Bynum W.F. – Porter R. (eds.), Companion
Encyclopedia of the History of Medicine (London-New York: 1993), vol. 1, 91.
41 Descartes René, De homine figuris. Et latinitate donatus a Florentio Schuyl (Leiden,
Hackius: 1664).
532 mieneke te hennepe

the idea of circulation of fluids through the pores of the skin.42 With the
introduction of the microscope, a novel anatomy of the skin was visually
unravelled. A different focus on porosity thus emerged.

Microscopic investigations and images of porosity

Between 1660 and 1700, microscopists produced a new flow of knowledge

about the minute details of the constitution of the skin. Historians of sci-
ence and medicine have shown how practitioners of natural philosophy
at this time scrutinised and described the natural world as created by
God.43 Microscopic investigations of the skin were part of this endeavour
to discover the body. The skin was now visualised by anatomists using the
microscope as a tool for experimental natural philosophy. New drawings
seemed to unveil the skin’s innermost secrets.
Microscopy was an important new way of investigating the anatomy of
the human body.44 Even the earliest accounts of microscopic observations
included descriptions of the skin. As early as 1656, Pierre Borel (1620–1671)
reported microscopic observations of ‘valves in pores, and the rough scali-
ness of the skin’.45 Some ten years later, in his De externo tactus organo the
Italian Marcello Malpighi (1628–1694) extensively discussed the anatomy
of the skin for the first time. He described the different components in and
between the layers of the skin using a microscope: nerves, glands, and the
source of skin colour. Although the anatomist Nicolas Steno had already
argued for the existence of sweat glands, Malpighi now noted the vessels
involved in the excretion of sweat. An image of the skin and its micro-
scopic structures appeared in 1685 [Fig. 2] in the atlas of the human body
by the anatomist Govert Bidloo (1649–1713). William Cowper (1666–1709),

42 I refer here to the first French edition, Descartes R., L’homme et un traitté de la for-
mation du foetus (Paris, Charles Angot: 1664) 26.
43 See for example Cunningham A. – Williams P., “De-centering the ‘Big Picture’: The
Origins of Modern Science and the Modern Origins of Science”, British Journal for the His-
tory of Science 26 (1993): 407–432.
44 On microscopy see Fournier M., The Fabric of Life. Microscopy in the Seventeenth Cen-
tury (Baltimore: 1996); LaBerge A. “The History of Science and the History of Microscopy”,
Perspectives on Science 7 (1999) 111–142; Ruestow E.G., The Microscope in the Dutch Republic.
The Shaping of Discovery (Cambridge: 2004); Wilson C., The Invisible World. Early Modern
Philosophers and the Invention of the Microscope (Princeton NJ.: 1995).
45 Ruestow, The Microscope in the Dutch Republic 81; Borel Pierre, Observationum
microcospicarum centuria (The Hague, Adriaan Vlacq: 1656), bound with De vero tele-
scopii inventore.
 of the fisherman’s net and skin pores 533

Fig. 2. Gerard de Lairesse, “Microscopical anatomy of the skin” in William Cowp-

er’s The Anatomy of Humane Bodies (Oxford, S. Smith and B. Walford: 1698).
Tabula 4. Copper engraving. Image © Wellcome Library, London.
534 mieneke te hennepe

using the same images in The Anatomy of Humane Bodies of 1698, wrote
that it represented ‘a Portion of the Cuticula or Scarf-skin, rais’d from the
Back of the Hand, and viewed with a Microscope’.46 He also indicated ‘The
Perforations or pores, whereby the Sweat is discharged’.47 For Cowper, as
a surgeon, the experimental natural philosophy of microscopy was part of
his anatomical investigations of the skin.48
During this time of firsts in microscopy, the way perspiration and other
matter passed through the skin became of particular interest for microsco-
pists. The existence and role of different types of glands, vessels and ducts
in the skin was a matter of discussion among contemporary anatomists,
as was the precise nature of the different types of perspiration (sensible
and insensible). The goal of the study was to find out more about the role
of the skin in the movements of fluids in the body. Cowper assumed that
the skin played a role in exporting and importing substances and fluids
between different parts such as the hair and glands. The most striking ele-
ments of Cowper’s account of the skin were his microscopic observations
of the hair which, apparently transparent, appeared ‘spongy’ when seen
under the microscope.49 Even solid structures turned out to be porous.
Clearly, the transition from macroscopic dissection to microscopic obser-
vation implied a shift in attention from the solid structures to the charac-
ter of the spaces in between:50 a shift towards the analysis of the nature
of transport through the skin and the nature and existence of the very
pores themselves. Edward Ruestow, a historian of science, noted how a
new Cartesian physiology loomed, with the microscopic discoveries of sev-
eral glands and searches for pores, ducts, vessels, valves and other means
of transporting bodily fluids.51 Similarly, Robert Hooke (1635–1703) studied
the pores in cork and solid materials such as marble in his Micrographia
(1665) [Fig. 3].52 With regard to the skin, the pores of Plato’s fisherman’s

46 Cowper William, The Anatomy of Humane Bodies (Oxford, S. Smith and B. Walford:
1698).
47 Cowper, The Anatomy of Humane Bodies text to the Fourth Table.
48 Wilson P.K., “William Cowper’s Anatomy of Human Skin”, International Journal of
Dermatology 31 (1992) 361–363.
49 Wilson, “William Cowper” 361.
50 Ruestow, The Microscope in the Dutch Republic 64.
51 Ruestow, The Microscope in the Dutch Republic 42, 45. Ruestow describes how the
Dutch Cartesian Theodoor Craanen seemed ‘to focus on the spaces in between [globules]
and the infinitely diminishing particles those spaces perhaps contained’ (64).
52 Hooke Robert, Micrographia. Or, Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies
made by Magnifying Glasses (London, J. Martyn and J. Allestry: 1665) 112ff: Observ. XVII. Of
the Schematisme of Texture of Cork, and of the Cells and Pores of some other such frothy
 of the fisherman’s net and skin pores 535

Fig. 3. Porous appearance of cork viewed under a microscope, in Robert Hooke,

Micrographia (London, J. Martyn & Allestry: 1665) Scheme IX, Fig. 1. Engraved
illustration. Image © Wellcome Library, London.
536 mieneke te hennepe

net came under microscopic scrutiny, especially since the holes in the net
proved to play an important role in the flows of fluids in the body.
Pictures of pores were first printed in 1684 when Nehemiah Grew com-
municated his observations on the skin pores in a publication in the
Philosophical Transactions.53 In this paper he made a direct connection
between microscopic observation of pores in the skin of the hands and
feet, and diseases. The fact that the skin contained pores was unquestion-
able for Grew: perspiration was clear proof of the fact that the skin con-
tained spaces for the excretion of sweat.54 The pores in the hands and feet,
however, he argued were special.55 Both the position and number of pores
were to be the subject of an anatomical investigation. Using an ‘indifferent
Glass’, Grew discovered how the pores were aligned on ridges and were
built like fountains, something that was explained in the accompanying
drawing [Fig. 4]. The role of the pores was to expel ‘noxious and perspi-
rable’ elements of the blood, the pores being a convenient open passage-
way. This expulsion of waste materials through the pores was stimulated
by using the hands and feet. Pain on the soles of the feet and palms of the
hands in some diseases fitted with this concept, according to Grew:
These Pores being thus made and secured, are a very convenient and open
passage for the discharge of the noxious and perspirable parts of the Blood.
Which by continual use of the Hands and Feet, are plentifully brought into
them. Whence it is, that the sweat of the Feet, in many people, is much more
offensive that that of any other part of the Body. And that many Hypochon-
driacal Men, and Hysterical Women, have almost a continual burning in the
soles of their Feet, and the Palms of their Hands.56
Using the microscope, Grew defined the visual and experimental explana-
tion for the existence of these pores. His findings were a source for many
physicians, surgeons and others who discussed the skin well into the eigh-
teenth century.

Bodies 93ff: Observ. XV. Of Kettering-stone, and of the pores of Inanimate bodies. Hooke
described the pores in cork as ‘the first microscopical pores I ever saw, and perhaps, that
were ever seen, for I have not met with any writer or person that had made any mention
of them before this’ (113).
53 Grew Nehemiah, “The Description and Use of the Pores in the Skin of the Hands and
Feet, by the Learned and Ingenious Nehemiah Grew, M.D. Fellow of the College of Physi-
cians and of the Royal Society”, Philosophical Transactions 14 (1684) 566–567.
54 Grew, “The Description and Use of the Pores in the Skin of the Hands and Feet” 566.
55 For more on Grew’s vitalism and teology see Garrett B., “Vitalism and Teleology in
the Natural Philosophy of Nehemiah Grew (1641–1712)”, British Journal for the History of
Science 36 (2003) 63–81. Specifically on pores see 68.
56 Grew, “The Description and Use of the Pores in the Skin of the Hands and Feet” 567.
 of the fisherman’s net and skin pores 537

Fig. 4. Pores of the skin of the hands positioned on ridges as depicted by Nehe-
miah Grew, in Philosophical Transactions Volume 14 (1684) 566. Engraving. Image
© Wellcome Library, London.

Yet not everybody agreed with Grew’s observations of the pores. The
findings by the Dutch microscopist Antoni van Leeuwenhoek on the skin
initially failed to correspond with Grew’s ideas. While van Leeuwenhoek
found an abundance of pores in many plant materials, as in the seeds of
the cotton plant, he could not agree with Grew on the nature of the pores
in the skin. A letter by van Leeuwenhoek was published in the same issue
of the Philosophical Transactions of 1684.57 In this letter he described his
findings on the ‘scales’ of the outer skin made using a microscope with a

57 Leeuwenhoek Antoni van, “An Abstract of a Letter from Mr. Antony Leewenhoeck
at Delft, dated Sep 17, 1683. Containing some Microscopical Observations, about Animals
in the Scurf of the Teeth, the Substance call’d Worms in the Nose, the Cuticula consisting
of Scales”, Philosophical Transactions 14 (1684) 568–574.
538 mieneke te hennepe

high magnification [see Fig. 5 for an example of a van Leeuwenhoek micro-

scope]. Ironically, he described how these scales resembled ‘fish-scales’ in
shape and ‘leye upon our body just as they do upon fishes’.58 Drawings
of these scales appeared in fact on the same image in the Philosophical
Transactions as the illustration of Grew’s skin pores [Fig. 6]. Furthermore,
van Leeuwenhoek stressed that his findings of the scales suggested that
there were no pores in the cuticula, but that the sweat oozes out of the
spaces between the scales.59 Thus, according to van Leeuwenhoek, the
body could be seen as ‘nothing but a pore’, because ‘the body may exhale
out of 20000 places in a quantity no bigger than what a [grain of ] sand
will cover’.60 For van Leeuwenhoek, the skin formed one continuous pore
all over the body.
The implications of the microscopic observation of the skin’s pores for
physiology, medical practice or even patient experiences are not straight-
forward. Andrew Cunningham showed how, before 1800, anatomy formed
a stepping stone for physiology as a thinking discipline, with physiology
being a discourse on the motions and grand functions of the human body:
respiration, nutrition, and so on.61 New anatomical knowledge of the skin
could thus imply a change in physiological thinking about the role of
the skin in the movements of fluids. But not necessarily. Similarly, the
responses to natural philosophy from medical practitioners around 1700
were diverse.62 John Pickstone wrote that the implications of mechanical
analogy for medicine in general were minor: ‘Some of the explanations
changed, but the practice of medicine remained much the same; its form
remained biographical and natural historical’.63
Records of patient experiences in the eighteenth century do show that
patients experienced the concept of porosity in their body image.64 First-

58 Van Leeuwenhoek, “An Abstract of a Letter” 572.

59 Van Leeuwenhoek, “An Abstract of a Letter” 573.
60 Van Leeuwenhoek, “An Abstract of a Letter” 574.
61 See Cunningham A., “The Pen and the Sword: Old Physiology – The Pen”.
62 Cook H. J., “The New Philosophy and Medicine in Seventeenth-Century England”, in
Lindberg D.C. – Westman R.S. (eds.), Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution (Cambridge:
1990) 397–436.
63 Pickstone J.V., Ways of Knowing. A New History of Science, Technology and Medicine
(Chicago: 2000) 107.
64 Patient experiences on skin are hard to come by for the period discussed in this
paper, 1572–1714. On eighteenth-century patient records see Duden B., The Woman beneath
the Skin. A Doctor’s Patients in Eighteenth-Century Germany tr. Dunlap T. (Cambridge: 1991);
and Pilloud S. – Louis-Courvoisier M., “The Intimate Experience of the Body in the Eigh-
teenth Century: Between Interiority and Exteriority”, Medical History 47 (2003) 451–472.
 of the fisherman’s net and skin pores 539

Fig. 5. Simple microscope made and used by Antoni van Leeuwenhoek. Leiden,
Museum Boerhaave, V7017.
540 mieneke te hennepe

Fig. 6. Scales of the skin resembling ‘fish scales’ as depicted by van Leeuwenhoek
published as illustration in Philosophical Transactions 14 (1684).

hand patient accounts of the eighteenth century, among many other

things, describe a body of porosity and movement. One patient wrote in
a letter how baths ‘in opening the pores of the skin, can also dilute the
lymph, making it flow easier and, as a result, encourage resolution’.65 The
skin was furthermore perceived as a place where diseases could mani-
fest as blockages, which the surgeon could remove by opening the ‘sweat
holes’.66 These descriptions very much continue the existing medical
manipulation of skin pores as points for the exchange of fluids by inhala-
tion and excretion, as described in sixteenth-century physiology by ­Fernel,
for example.
Nehemiah Grew’s microscopic conception of the skin’s pores was
adopted by physicians and surgeons to explain the body in health and
disease. Grew himself, in an anatomical publication of 1685, stressed how
the functioning of the pores in the skin might influence the balancing of
body fluids. When, as a result of cold, the pores suddenly constricted and
normal perspiration stopped, the redundant matter of the blood would
be discharged by the glands to the gut.67 Furthermore, the conception
and image of the pores drawn up by Grew survived in many sources, for
example in an abridged collection of the Philosophical Transactions in
1705.68 The London surgeon Daniel Turner (1667–1741), in his De morbis

65 Letter from a patient of Swiss physician Samuel Tissot, Monsieur Torchon Defouchet,
quoted on in Pilloud – Louis-Courvoisier, “The Intimate Experience” 469.
66 Duden, The Woman beneath the Skin 121.
67 Grew Nehemiah, The Comparative Anatomy of Stomachs and Guts (London, Printed
by W. Rawlins: 1681) 29.
68 Lowthorp John, The Philosophical Transactions and Collections, to the Year 1700, abridg’d
and dispos’under General Heads (London, Royal Society: 1705), vol. III, 9–10, figure 4–5.
 of the fisherman’s net and skin pores 541

cutaneis of 1714, combined the microscopic findings of Grew with a re-

examination of the Galenic non-naturals.69 In his book, Turner explained
the anatomy of the skin in line with the recent findings of Bidloo, Cowper
and Malpighi, among others. In turning to one of the important actions of
the body and skin, perspiration, he pointed to the microscopic proof for
the existence of tubes and vessels. Moreover, the ‘mechanism’ of the pores
was best described by Nehemiah Grew, according to Turner.70 Besides this
explanation on the nature and working of the pores and perspiration,
Turner then discussed the diseases connected with failure of perspira-
tion. Other diseases, such as the itch, could enter through the pores of the
skin, corrupting the ‘juices’ in the glands.71 Surgeons, as Turner indicated,
could manipulate the pores to help the body regain its balance. Turner
and his colleagues treated several different diseases by removing block-
ages, administering sweating remedies, or applying ‘Outward remedies’
or baths [see Fig. 7 and Fig. 8 for examples of treatments with vapour
baths].72 Thus, by the early eighteenth century, physicians and surgeons
like Turner had appropriated and integrated the microscopic findings
of the pores as a justification and explanation for their treatments and
understandings of body and disease.

Conclusions. The spaces in between

‘[. . .] I cannot but think the doctrine of the small pores of bodies, of no small
importance to natural philosophy’. Robert Boyle, 168473
Both Plato’s fish-net metaphor and the Galenic concepts of respiration
through the pores of the skin were replaced, not only in vocabulary but
also in explanation, by an interest in the permeability and porosity of the
skin, and of the body in general. In late seventeenth-century natural philo-
sophical experiments, the porosity of bodies was at stake. Robert Boyle
(1627–1691) demonstrated in his experimental programme how and why

69 Wilson P.K., Surgery, Skin and Syphilis. Daniel Turner’s London (1667–1741) (Amster-
dam: 1999) 69.
70 Turner Daniel, De morbis cutaneis. A treatise of diseases incident to the skin (London,
R. Bonwicke: 1714) 80.
71 Turner, De morbis cutaneis 33.
72 Wilson, Surgery, Skin and Syphilis 68.
73 Boyle Robert, Experiments and Considerations about the Porosity of Bodies (London,
S. Smith: 1684) 2.
542 mieneke te hennepe

Fig. 7. Jonas Dryander, Vapour baths apparatus. Frankfurt, 1547. Wood engraving.
Image © ­Wellcome Library, London.
 of the fisherman’s net and skin pores 543

Fig. 8. J. Harrewijn, Sweat treatment to cure syphilis in Steven Blankaart,

Venus belegert en ontset. Oft Verhandelinge van de pokken, en des selfs toevallen,
met een grondige en zekere genesinge. Steunende meest op de gronden van Car-
tesius (Amsterdam, Timotheus ten Hoorn: 1684), Tab. VI. Copper engraving.
Image © Wellcome Library, London.
544 mieneke te hennepe

the parts of the living animal body – membranes, skin, flesh and bones –
were full of pores.74 Boyle further argued, following Hooke, that even the
most solid bodies, like glass, metals and stone, are full of pores. In the
same way, experimental microscopic findings and observations served as
food for thought concerning the anatomical make-up of the skin and its
implications for the skin as a passageway for air, sweat and other matter.
It had already been observed that the skin served as a place for the excre-
tion of sweat and the existence of insensible perspiration,75 yet in the
light of the attention paid to porosity and microscopy, Boyle wanted to
provide experimental proof of the permeability of the skin. By squeezing
quicksilver through a piece of human skin from an arm, Boyle at this time
experimentally demonstrated the ‘porousness’ of the skin.76 This interest
in the porosity of the skin and the microscopic findings continued to be a
subject for discussion into the eighteenth century.77
Besides medical dictionaries, other popular sources also referred to the
microscopic observation of Leeuwenhoek’s scales and Grew’s pores. In the
enormously popular work The Microscope Made Easy (1742), for example,
Henry Baker (1698–1774) wrote a complete explanation for the amateur
of how to find the pores of the skin oneself [Fig. 9].78 Baker also referred
to van Leeuwenhoek’s calculations of the number of pores existing in
the body and combined this with the work of the French mathematician
Marin Mersenne (1588–1648):
To acquire some clearer Idea still of this prodigious Number of Pores by our
Conception of Time; let us reckon with Mersennus, that each Hour consists
of sixty Minutes, and each Minute of sixty Seconds, or sixty Pulsations of
an Artery: in one Hour there will then be three thousand and six hundred
Pulses; in twenty-four Hours eighty-six thousand and four hundred; and in
a Year thirty-one Millions five hundred and thirty-six thousand. But there

74 Boyle, Experiments 3. See also the review of this book in Philosophical Transactions
14 (1684) 702–703.
75 Boyle refers in his work to the observations of the Italian physician Santorio Santo-
rio (1561–1636) who in long-term measurements and sensitive weighing of body weight,
food intake and excrements revealed the concept of ‘insensible perspiration’. See Santorio
Santorio, Ars de statica medicina, aphorismorum sectionibus septem comprehensa (Venice,
N. Polus: 1614).
76 Boyle, Experiments 11.
77 Interpretations of skin and skin pores continued to change with the observations and
interpretations of new researchers. See for example the famous work by the physiologist
Haller Albrecht von, Dr. Albert Haller’s Physiology. Being a Course of Lectures upon the Vis-
ceral Anatomy and Vital Oeconomy of Human Bodies (London, W. Innys and J. Richardson:
1754), vol. II, 4–5.
78 Baker Henry, The Microscope Made Easy (London, R. Dodsley: 1742) 174.
 of the fisherman’s net and skin pores 545

Fig. 9. Scales of the skin reappear in a popular work on microscopy, in Henry

Baker, The Microscope Made Easy (London, R. Dodsley: 1744), plate XIII, Fig.III.
Copper engraving. Image © Wellcome Library, London.
546 mieneke te hennepe

are about sixty-four times as many Pores in the Surface of a Man’s Skin, and
therefore he must live sixty-four Years, e’er he will have a Pulsation for every
Pore in his Skin.79
This shows to what extent the microscopic view on the skin became part
and parcel of popular microscopic accounts, as well as of medical knowl-
edge. Even more importantly, the microscopic conceptualisation of the
skin’s pores was fully integrated with the physiological interests of the time,
being the pulsations in the living body. The popularity of Baker’s work on
the microscope is shown by the fact that by 1822 this very same quotation
about the pores of the skin appeared in other publications including the
popular weekly literary and scientific magazine The ­Kaleidoscope.80
I have argued here how the conception of the anatomy and physiol-
ogy of the skin was reconfigured in late seventeenth-century microscopic
investigations. From the ancients’ metaphoric understanding of a fisher-
man’s net, the skin was imagined as a scaly microscopic structure, yet still
permeated with pores. Microscopists not only provided a natural philo-
sophical explanation for the porosity of the skin; they also shifted the focus
from the integrity of the skin for the body to the mechanisms of excretion
and absorption. The nature of the passageway and its workings were now
elucidated in a microscopic imagination. Yet the integration of these new
findings did not by definition result in a complete turnaround in medical
concepts of the skin for clinical practice. Since anatomy was the stepping
stone for physiological writings, while the explanation changed, the role
of the skin in respiration and other body functions did not.
It was not until the nineteenth century that a whole new conception of
the skin as an anatomically compound organ with its own functions and
physiology emerged in modern medicine and the popular imagination
[Fig. 10].81 Anatomically, however, after the late seventeenth century the
skin would never again be viewed as it had been previously: the intimate
details of the internal make-up were henceforth always mediated by a
new tool – the microscope.

79 Baker, Microscope 174–175.

80 See The Kaleidoscope, or Literary and Scientific Mirror 2 (Liverpool: 1822) 69.
81 Hennepe M. te, “Depicting Skin: Microscopy and the Visual Articulation of Skin Inte-
rior 1820–1850”, in Vall R. van de – Zwijnenberg R. (eds.), The Body Within. Art, Medicine
and Visualization (Leiden: 2009) 51–65.
 of the fisherman’s net and skin pores 547

Fig. 10. Microscopical representation of the skin in a popular hygiene work, in

E. Wilson, Healthy Skin. A Popular Treatise on the Skin and Hair, their Preservation
and Management (London: 1953) Fourth edition, Fig. 10, page 24. Wood engraving.
Image © Wellcome Library, London.
548 mieneke te hennepe

Selective bibliography

Baker Henry, The Microscope Made Easy (London, R. Dodsley: 1742).

Benthien C., Skin. On the Cultural Border between Self and the World (New York: 2002)
[tr. Dunlap T.].
Boyle Robert, Experiments and Considerations about the Porosity of Bodies (London,
S. Smith: 1684).
Cornford J.M., Plato’s Cosmology. The Timaeus of Plato (London: 1937).
Crooke Helkiah, Mikrokosmographia. A Description of the Body of Man, Together with
the Controversies and Figures thereto Belonging / Collected and Translated out of All the
Best Authors of Anatomy, Especially out of Gasper Bauhinus and Andreas Laurentius, by
Helkiah Crooke (London, W. Iaggard: 1616).
Cunningham A., “The Pen and the Sword: Recovering the Disciplinary Identity of Physiol-
ogy and Anatomy before 1800 I: Old Physiology – The Pen”, Studies in History and Phi-
losophy of Science Part C. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical
Sciences 33 (2002) 631–665.
Grew Nehemiah, “The Description and Use of the Pores in the Skin of the Hands and Feet,
by the Learned and Ingenious Nehemiah Grew, M.D. Fellow of the College of Physicians
and of the Royal Society”, Philosophical Transactions 14 (1684) 566–567.
Leeuwenhoek Antoni Van, “An Abstract of a Letter from Mr. Antony Leewenhoeck at
Delft, dated Sep. 17, 1683. Containing Some Microscopical Observations, about Animals
in the Scurf of the Teeth, the Substance Call’d Worms in the Nose, the Cuticula Consist-
ing of Scales”, Philosophical Transactions 14 (1684) 568–574.
Mercuriale Girolamo, De morbis cutaneis et omnibus corporis humani excrementis trac-
tatus locupletissimi (Venice, Paulus and Antonius Meietos fratres: 1572).
Ruestow E.G., The Microscope in the Dutch Republic. The Shaping of Discovery (Cambridge:
2004).
Sutton R.L., Sixteenth Century Physician and his Methods. Mercurialis on Diseases of the
Skin. The First Book on the Subject (1572) (Kansas City: 1986).
Turner Daniel, De Morbis Cutaneis. A Treatise of Diseases Incident to the Skin (London,
R. Bonwicke: 1714).
Vall R. Van De – Zwijnenberg R. (eds.), The Body Within. Art, Medicine and Visualization
(Leiden: 2009).
Wilson P.K., Surgery, Skin and Syphilis. Daniel Turner’s London (1667–1741) (Amsterdam:
1999).
——, “William Cowper’s Anatomy of Human Skin”, International Journal of Dermatology
31 (1992) 361–363.
 PART FOUR

tears and sight

 VISION AND VISION DISORDERS.
GALEN’S PHYSIOLOGY OF SIGHT

Véronique Boudon-Millot

ὡς ὄψις ἐν ὀφθαλμῷ, νοῦς ἐν ψυχῇ

‘As sight is in the eye, so is the mind in the soul’
Aristotle, Topics 108a11.

Summary

The aim of this paper is to present the Galenic theory of vision to provide a better
understanding of the models according to which Galen represented the phenom-
enon of vision. Without neglecting the difficulties associated with the coexistence
of both the geometric and pneumatic theories of vision, this paper will focus on
the study of physiology and the predominant role of pneuma. First, I will briefly
outline the explanations of the phenomenon of vision given by both predecessors
and contemporaries of Galen. I will then explore Galen’s attachment to visual
pneuma and investigate to what extent this can be explained by his debt to Stoic
theories. Finally, I will study how, although there is a continual interchange
between theory and observation, Galen has committed a certain number of errors
which have been transmitted to posterity over a long period of time.

Although Galen showed great interest in the anatomy of the eye and in
eye diseases, he paid far less attention to what we call the physiology of
vision, if we mean by this the way in which images are formed on the
retina in order to reach the brain. Despite the fact that in the On Affected
Parts – his physiological treatise par excellence – Galen carefully tries to
distinguish seven different membranes (or layers, χιτῶνας) of the eye,1 and
despite devoting an entire treatise (now lost) to Diseases of the eyes,2 in

1 Galenus, De usu partium 10.1–2 (3.759–769 K.).

2 See Savage-Smith E., “Galen’s Lost Ophthalmology and the Summaria Alexandrino-
rum”, in Nutton V. (ed.), The Unknown Galen (London: 2002) 121–138. As E. Savage-Smith
remarked (132), Diseases of the eyes (τῶν ἐν ὀφθαλμοῖς παθῶν διάγνωσις), which Galen quotes
in De libris propriis (SM II, 97 = ed. Boudon-Millot V. (Paris: 2007) 140, 18) but is lost in
Greek, is Galen’s only known treatise devoted exclusively to eyes. However, it seems less
certain that the expression ὡς ἐν τοῖς ὀπτικοῖς δέδεικται λόγοις in De usu part. 8.6 (3.641.6 K.)
should be understood as a clear reference to a treatise on vision (vs. Daremberg Ch.,
Œuvres anatomiques, physiologiques et médicales de Galien (Paris: 1854), vol. 1, 544) which
Galen had written but which is now lost. This expression instead refers vaguely to all the
552 véronique boudon-millot

the end he only dedicates very few pages to the phenomenon of sight.
Therefore, we need to look elsewhere in the pages he dedicated to pathol-
ogy, in particular his On Affected Parts, for discussions which will enable
us to better understand the models according to which Galen represented
the phenomenon of vision.3
I would add here that, since the present study is dedicated to the physi-
ology of sight, I shall not address in any detail the geometric laws that
govern Galen’s theory of vision. These have been discussed in an earlier
study in which I analysed the optical diagrams which illustrate book X of
On the Use of the Parts.4 Moreover, Galen himself admits to having long
been reluctant to inflict such a discussion of Euclidean geometry on his
reader, who might be discouraged by its difficult nature. In the end it was
a dream about Asclepius that persuaded him to inform his reader about
the optical laws that can explain why the eyes, although two in number,
do not see double, or why we can see both an object and those objects
close to it, or why an object seems to change place according to whether
we are looking at it with the right eye on its own, with the left eye or with
both eyes simultaneously.5 Without neglecting the difficulties associated
with the coexistence of both the geometric and pneumatic theories of
vision, I wish to focus in this paper, in line with the theme of this volume,
on the study of physiology alone, and the predominant role of pneuma.6

passages where Galen discussed the topic of vision. See also 3.786.1 K. where the same
expression is found.
3 Greek doctors were primarily interested in the diagnosis and treatment of disor-
ders of vision, to the detriment of physiology, which they often neglected. The fragments
preserved in the papyri studied by Marganne M.-H., L’Ophtalmologie dans l’Égypte gréco-
romaine d’après les papyrus littéraires grecs (Leiden: 1994) perfectly illustrate this primarily
therapeutic stance, even if they do not completely ignore details concerning the circula-
tion of pneuma in the poroi (see, for example, Marganne, L’Ophtalmologie 71). The same
applies to the Pseudo-Galenic treatise Introductio seu medicus, in which ch. XVI (Περὶ τῶν
ἐν ὀφθαλμοῖς συνισταμένων παθῶν) is totally devoted ‘to the diseases which form in the
eyes’ (14.767–777 K. = ed. Petit C. (Paris: 2009) 77–86), apart from the mention of ‘a pas-
sage extending from the brain and the meninx to the eye’ and which, if broken, causes
complete blindness (ἀβλεψίαν τελείαν). Such was also the case for the medical papyri from
Pharaonic Egypt, studied by Th. Bardinet, which are mainly devoted to treatment and in
which we find the only mention of many types of recipes for ocular treatments (see Bar-
dinet Th., Les papyrus médicaux de l’Égypte pharaonique (Paris: 1995) 178–179).
4 Boudon-Millot V., “Illustrer les médecins grecs à la Renaissance: Les schémas d’optique
galénique”, in Boudon-Millot V. – Cobolet G. (eds.), Lire les médecins grecs à la Renais-
sance. Aux origines de l’édition médicale (Paris: 2004) 209–232.
5 Concerning the solution offered to these problems, see my article quoted in footnote
4, in particular pages 218–223.
6 On the difficulties in overcoming the contradictions between the pneumatic and geo-
metric theories and attempts to compromise between them, see in particular Siegel R.E.,
Galen on Sense Perception (Basel-New York: 1970) 94–117.
 galen’s physiology of sight 553

However, before we tackle the different passages in the Galenic corpus,

it will be useful to briefly outline the explanations of the phenomenon of
vision given by doctors and philosophers, both predecessors and contem-
poraries of Galen.

Doxography

While it could be said that philosophers’ theories of vision are not always
characterised by their clarity, I will endeavour here to make the subject
a little clearer.
Book IV of the Placita Philosophorum – a treatise ascribed to Plutarch
but that actually dates to a doxography of Aëtius, a compiler who wrote at
the end of the first or beginning of the second century BC7 and who dis-
plays a very large number of connections with Stobaeus and the Pseudo-
Galenic History of Philosophy – relates directly to our topic. Dedicated to
the soul, book IV begins with some general considerations (chapters 2–7),
followed by four chapters (chapters 9–12) concerning the theory of sensa-
tion as a whole, then eight further chapters relating to each individual
sense (chapters 13–20). Chapter 13, entitled ‘On vision, how we see’ (Περὶ
ὁράσεως, πῶς ὁρῶμεν) merits attention.8 The phenomenon of viewing is
the subject of various explanations, all of which have in common the for-
mation of images (εἴδωλα), or ‘shapes’, and the use of rays (ἀκτῖνες).9 A
first explanation, attributed to Democritus and Epicurus,10 explains vision
by the penetration into the eye of images projected by perceived objects
(κατ’εἰδώλων εἰσκρίσεις) and by the emission of certain rays (κατά τινων
ἀκτίνων ἔκκρισιν) which, having encountered the perceived object, return

 
7 See Pseudo-Plutarchus, Placita philosophorum XII2, ed. Lachenaud G. (Paris: 1993)
15–18.
 
8 See Ps.-Plutarch, Placita philosophorum IV, 13, ed. Lachenaud 154 = Diels H.,
Doxographi Graeci 403; Pseudo-Galenus, Historia philosopha 19.306–307 K.
 
9 As J. Jouanna rightly notes, “ ‘Soleil, toi qui vois tout’: variations tragiques d’une for-
mule homérique et nouvelle étymologie de ἀκτίς”, in Villard L. (ed.), Études sur la vision
dans l’Antiquité classique (Rouen: 2005) 52 ‘La vision dès l’époque homérique, suppose
l’émission d’un rayon lumineux qui part de l’œil humain ou le soleil, et se porte sur les
objets. Ce rayon lumineux est émis à la manière d’une arme de jet’. This leads Jouanna,
“Soleil” 55, to suggest the following etymology for ἀκτίς: ‘De même que ἄκων est une arme
de jet pointue que l’on lance, ἀκτίς est un trait pointu lancé par une source lumineuse,
d’abord le soleil, puis la lune, puis la foudre de Zeus ou une lampe dans la nuit. On pro-
pose donc de rattacher ἀκτίς au groupe des mots de la famille *ak- avec élargissement en
-t-, comme ἀκτή “la pointe” de terre qui s’avance dans la mer. C’est la notion de “aigu”,
“pointu”, qui est fondamentale’.
10 To which Stobaeus also adds the name of Leucippus.
554 véronique boudon-millot

to the eye (μετὰ τὴν πρὸς τὸ ὑποκείμενον ἔντασιν πάλιν ὑποστραφουσῶν

πρὸς τὴν ὄψιν).11 A second explanation, attributed to Empedocles,12 sup-
poses ‘a mixture of images and rays’ (Ἐμπεδοκλῆς τοῖς εἰδώλοις τὰς ἀκτῖνας
ἀνέμιξε) in a method which is not clarified any further.13 According to the
Pythagorean philosopher Hipparchus, ‘rays are projected from both eyes
and come into contact at their extremity with the external bodies, just like
hands coming into contact’.14 Finally, according to Plato, ‘there is conver-
gence of two light rays: one from the eyes is diffused into the air after a
certain distance because it shares the same property; the other, coming
from the external bodies, causes tension in the fluidic and malleable air

11 However, Lachenaud G., Placita philosophorum 290–291, notes that the present pas-
sage suggests rays emitted from the eye leaving and coming back, which seems incompati-
ble with what else we know about Democritus’ theory of vision, in particular Theophrastus’
testimony (De causis plantarum VI, 2, 3 = A 130; idem, De sensu 49–83 and above all 50–54
= 68A 135 DK) which reads: ‘Seeing is produced (ὁρᾶν μὲν οὖν ποιεῖ), according to him (sc.
Democritus), by the reflected image (τῇ ἐμφάσει). He explains it in his own way, since the
image (τὴν γὰρ ἔμφασιν) is not produced immediately in the pupil (οὐκ εὐθὺς ἐν τῇ κόρῃ
γίνεσθαι), but rather the air situated in the space between the viewer and the perceived
object is compressed and impacted by the visible object and the seeing eye, since every
single thing emits some kind of flow (ἀπορροήν)’. Thus, vision appears as the result of
a complex phenomenon produced by the meeting of flows generated by the perceived
object and the viewer, and the reflection of this combination in the eye. Aristotle, although
simplifying Democritus’ theory, also attributes to him the opinion that vision is a mirror
image formed by reflection (Sens. 438 a: ἀνάκλασις). Thus, rather than the rays going back
and forth between the eye and the perceived object, G. Lachenaud suggests that it is a
matter of the interaction between the rays emitted by the perceived object and those
emitted by the viewer. However, I would add that the Pseudo-Galenic Historia philosopha
(19.306.16 K.) distinguishes between the theory of the penetration of images (κατ’ εἰδώλων
εἴσκρισιν) attributed to Democritus and Epicurus, and the theory of the emission of rays
(κατ’ ἀκτίνων ἔκχυσιν), attributed to others (ἕτεροι), without being any more precise. Thus,
we are dealing with two different theories of vision, and only the first one is attributed to
both Democritus and Epicurus.
12 However, Diels H., Doxographi 403, following Stobaeus, attributed this theory to His-
tiaeus of Perinthus.
13 Bollack J., Empédocle, vol. 3, 2 (Paris: 1965–1969) 365, believes in particular that visual
rays stop short at the surface of the eye and that the flows play a crucial role. Aristoteles,
De sensu 437b26–35 notes that ‘Empedocles sometimes seems to think that man can see
because of light coming out of the eye’, as from a lantern, but he also sometimes explains
vision by emanations generated by the perceived objects.
14 Ἵππαρχος ἀκτῖνάς φησιν ἀφ’ ἑκατέρου τῶν ὀφθαλμῶν ἀποτεινομένας τοῖς πέρασιν αὑτῶν
οἷον χειρῶν ἐπαφαῖς περικαθαπτούσας τοῖς ἐκτὸς σώμασι τὴν ἀντίληψιν αὐτῶν πρὸς τὸ ὁρατικὸν
ἀποδιδόναι. On the Pythagorean theory of vision, see Haas A., Antike Lichttheorien. Archiv
für Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. 20, Heft 3 (Berlin: 1907) 353–362, who quotes Diogenes
Laertius, De clarorum philosophorum vitis 8.29 and Aëtius, Placita 4.13. Haas remarks
that Empedocles, Alcmaeon, Plato and the Stoics share with Pythagoras the idea of
‘vision rays’.
 galen’s physiology of sight 555

in-between, at the same time as the fire from the eyes. This is what is
meant by Plato’s light convergence (Πλατωνικὴ συναύγεια)’.
The theory of light convergence reported by Pseudo-Galen can be com-
pared to a passage in Plato’s Timaeus, where Plato discussed his theory of
vision, although there the term συναύγεια does not appear. Indeed, Plato
supposes the existence of a pure fire (πῦρ εἰλικρινές) contained within the
body and which flows smoothly and continuously through the eyes (διὰ
τῶν ὀμμάτων ῥεῖν λεῖον καὶ πυκνὸν ὅλον). Thus, in order to see, the eye needs
daylight to surround the flux which flows within it (ὅταν οὖν μεθημερινὸν
ᾖ φῶς περὶ τὸ τῆς ὄψεως ῥεῦμα). Since both daylight and the visual stream
are similar in their properties, they merge into a single entity to form a
homogeneous body in the visual axis of the eye which, after the encounter
and impact caused by the projection from external objects, ‘then trans-
mits the movements through the whole body, up to the soul, and provides
us with that sensation thanks to which we say that we can see’ (τούτων
τὰς κινήσεις διαδιδὸν εἰς ἅπαν τὸ σῶμα μέχρι τῆς ψυχῆς αἴσθησιν παρέσχετο
ταύτην ᾖ δὴ ὁρᾶν φαμεν).15
Aristotle is notably absent from the doxography of Pseudo-Plutarch’s
Placita philosophorum, whose theories, especially those discussed in his
On the Soul, remain curiously ignored. Nevertheless, Aristotle occupies an
original position in his assertion that ‘it is absurd to claim that vision is
exerted thanks to something coming out of the eye’.16 Indeed, Aristotle
rejects the Platonic opinion that vision is formed from fire and that the
eye is an organ from which light is emitted as if out of a lantern.17 He
asserts, on the contrary, that ‘it is colour which is visible’ (ὁρατὸν δ’ἐστὶ
χρῶμα), defined as a superficial coating of visible objects that is able to
stir transparent objects into movement (κινητικόν ἐστι τοῦ κατ’ ἐνέργειαν
διαφανοῦς), i.e. the object we can see (air, water or numerous solid
bodies).18 Put another way, and as Aristotle himself concludes, ‘colour
sets the transparent into motion, for example the air, and the latter in
turn sets into motion the sensory organ with which it is in contact’ (ἀλλὰ
τὸ μὴν χρῶμα κινεῖ τὸ διαφανές, οἷον τὸ ἀέρα, ὑπὸ τούτου δὴ συνέχους ὄντος
κινεῖται τὸ αἰσθητηρίον). Thus, sense is produced following the stimulation
of an organ, in this instance, the eye (πάσχοντος γάρ τι τοῦ αἰσθητηρίου

15 Plato, Timaeus 45b–d.

16 Arist. Sens. 438a.
17 Arist. Sens. 437b.
18 Arist. De anima 418a–b.
556 véronique boudon-millot

γίνεται τὸ ὁρᾶν).19 But this is not sufficient and Aristotle goes further in
asserting, in his On Sense and the Sensible, that ‘vision is not in the eye,
but in the person that sees’. By this he means that vision (like any sense)
cannot be reduced to a purely physical phenomenon and is primarily a
matter of the soul.
These different theories, a combination of philosophy and physiology,
have in common the idea that something is emitted by the eye during
the viewing process, even if they differ as to the nature of what is actu-
ally emitted: fire, or rays. However, Aristotle is an exception, and doctors
after him, especially during the Renaissance when there was great debate
on the modus visionis, readily contrasted the Galenic theory of emission,
which concerns pneuma (spirit) or rays (ἀκτῖνες), with the Aristotelian
theory of intromission.20

The Galenic theory of vision

We return now to Galen, or rather to the Pseudo–Galenic Medical Defi-

nitions, a treatise which J. Kollesch has shown not to be authentic, but
which had close links with the Galenic corpus, being written around the
same time.21 Definition 117, devoted to the topic which concerns us here,
distinguished between sight (ὄψις) as the power (δύναμις) of a translucent
(φανώδης, a hapax) and air-like substance (οὐσίας ἀερώδους), and vision
(ὅρασις), which is in motion (ἐνεργητική) and which is produced through
the eyes due to the lightly-flowing pneuma, which is particularly present
in the pupil area, thanks to which visual perceptions occur.22 The origins
of this ‘pneumatic’ theory are ancient.23 It was destined to achieve great

19 Arist. De An. 419a.

20 On this point, see the very well-informed paper by Katrien Vanagt 575 in this vol-
ume which shows that the Galenic emission theory, widely supported by doctors such as
the Italians Girolamo Capivaccio (1523–1589) and Casserius Placentinus (1561–1616), or the
Dutchman Johannes Heurnius (1543–1601), was already questioned by Hieronymus Fabr-
icius ab Aquapendente (1537–1619), before being displaced by the experiments of Plempius
(1601–1671) and his camera obscura.
21 Kollesch J., Untersuchungen zu den Pseudogalenischen Definitiones Medicae. Schriften
zur Geschichte und Kultur der Antike 7 (Berlin: 1973).
22 Pseudo-Galenus, Definitiones medicae 117 (19.379, 10–14 K.): Ὅρασίς ἐστιν ἡ γινομένη
διὰ τῶν ὀφθαλμῶν τῷ συγκεκραμμένῳ ἐν αὐτοῖς πνεύματι λεπτῷ μάλιστα κατὰ τὸν τῆς κόρης
τόπον τυγχάνοντι, δι’ οὗ αἱ ὁρατικαὶ ἀντιλήψεις γίνονται. See the commentary by Kollesch,
Untersuchungen 104–113.
23 See Wellmann M., Die pneumatische Schule bis auf Archigenes in ihrer Entwicklung
dargestellt, Philologische Untersuchungen 14 (Berlin: 1895) 142; Jäger W., “Das Pneuma in
 galen’s physiology of sight 557

success, and was not completely supplanted by Herophilus’ important

anatomical discovery in the third century BC of the optic nerves, which
he identified as sensory nerves whilst still continuing to call them by the
ancient name of πόροι.24 Galen himself, almost five centuries later, in his
On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato, while acknowledging the exis-
tence of these poroi, further explains the mechanism of vision on the basis
of the pneumatic theory, even if, as we will see, he is undecided about the
nature and the exact role of pneuma.
In book VII (chapter 4) of this work, Galen presents a relatively complex
explanation to account for the phenomenon of vision. Galen shows that
he thinks pneuma to be extremely important, and defines it as a ‘useful
beginning for the senses and the movements of body parts’ (καὶ διὰ τοῦτο
ἔφαμεν αὐτὸ χρήσιμον ὑπάρχειν εἰς τὰς τῶν μορίων αἰσθήσεις τε καὶ κινήσεις).25
Although he readily admits the existence and usefulness of pneuma,
which circulates from the brain to the nerves, its exact nature is left open
to debate. In particular, Galen questions whether there exists a pneuma
that originates from and remains in the nerves or, his second hypothesis,
whether the pneuma flows to the nerves from the brain, but only when
we are feeling or moving. A third hypothesis even goes so far as to negate
the existence of pneuma by claiming the existence of ‘a qualitative change
of the continuous parts’ (ἡ κατὰ ποιότητα συνεχῶν ἀλλοίωσις) that extend
from the brain to other parts of the body, i.e. change that occurs in the
parts of the body without involving any substance, a little like the light of
the sun, which is able to alter the surrounding air whilst the substance of
the sun remains intact and in the same place. However, Galen admits the
impossibility of choosing between these three hypotheses and modes of
transmission, and on this subject refers to his lost treatise On Demonstra-
tion, where he had already discussed them. Nevertheless, the question is
important because, Galen concludes, ‘it is something like that (i.e. some-
thing akin to these three hypotheses) which takes place during visual per-
ception’ (τοιοῦτον γοῦν τι καὶ κατὰ τὴν ὀπτικὴν αἴσθησιν). But nothing else is

Lykeion”, Hermes 48 (1913) 29–74; Verbeke G., L’évolution de la doctrine du pneuma du stoï-
cisme à Saint Augustin (Paris-Louvain: 1945) 193; and Kudlien F., “Die Pneuma Bewegung.
Ein Beitrag zum Themen ‘Medizin und Stoa’ ”, Gesnerus 31 (1974) 86–98.
24 See Staden H. von, Herophilus. The Art of Medicine in Early Alexandria (Cambridge:
1989) 205–206 and 238–239. According to Theophrastus’ testimony (Sens. 26 = Diels H.,
Doxographi Graeci (Berlin: 1879) 506–507), Alcmaeon of Croton (late fourth century) was
the first to suspect the existence of such intermediate passages (πόροι) between the sen-
sory organs and the brain, considered to be the central organ.
25 Galenus, De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis 7.4 (448, 6 de Lacy; 5.611 K.).
558 véronique boudon-millot

revealed on the subject except that, in the case of the optic nerves, a move-
ment of light pneuma is also produced (ἐπ’ἐκείνων τῶν νεύρων αὐγοειδὲς
φέρεται πνεῦμα). In reality, Galen’s attachment to the pneumatic theory
is certainly associated with the observation of the optic nerves, described
as ‘hollow’. Galen declares that observations derived from anatomy teach
that these nerves exhibit ‘clearly visible perforations both at their upper
ends and at their connections with the eyes’ (τρήματα ἐχόντων σαφῆ κατά
τε τὴν ἄνωθεν ἀρχὴν καὶ εἰς τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς ἔμφυσιν), which suggests that
something circulates within them.26
But Galen’s attachment to visual pneuma can also be explained by his
debt to Stoic theories, particularly those of Chrysippus, who affirms the
existence of both such a pneuma and rays emitted by the eye.27 However,
Galen does not agree with Chrysippus on the last point, since in a passage
of On Demonstration (lost in Greek but preserved in Arabic) he consid-
ers the existence of such rays emitted from the eye to be impossible.28 It
should be pointed out that Galen, even in the passage of On the Use of
the Parts where he discusses complex optical laws using notions inherited
from Euclidian geometry, carefully avoids talking about ‘rays’ and prefers
simple ‘straight lines’ (κατ’εὐθείας γραμμάς) plotted between the eye and
the perceived object.29 However, the way in which Galen endeavours to
reconcile this geometrical conception of vision with his pneumatic theory
is far from clear.30

26 Galen, De plac. Hipp. et Plat. 7.4 (448, 26–28 de Lacy; 5.612 K.).
27 Aët. 4.15.3 (= Pseudo-Plutarch 901D12–E6; SVF II 233 n° 866) Χρύσιππος κατὰ τὴν
συνέντασιν τοῦ μεταξὺ ἀέρος ὁρᾶν ἡμᾶς, νυγέντος μὲν ὑπὸ τοῦ ὁρατικοῦ πνεύματος, ὅπερ ἀπὸ τοῦ
ἡγεμονικοῦ μέχρι τῆς κόρης διήκει, κατὰ δὲ τὴν πρὸς τὸν περικείμενον ἀέρα ἐπιβολὴν ἐντείνοντος
αὐτὸν κωνοειδῶς, ὅταν ᾖ ὁμογενὴς ὁ ἀήρ. Προχέονται δὲ ἐκ τῆς ὄψεως ἀκτῖνες πύριναι, οὐχὶ
μέλαιναι καὶ ὁμιχλώδεις· διόπερ ὁρατὸν εἶναι τὸ σκότος. ‘Chrysippus says that we are able to
see due to the tension of the intermediary air when it is hit by the visual pneuma, which
spreads from its origin towards the pupil and which, when the surrounding air shares the
same nature, usually gives it a canonical shape when it encounters it; fiery rays are pro-
jected during vision, not dark or hazy ones. Thus, darkness becomes visible’.
28 See Strohmaier G., “Bekannte und unbekannte Zitate in den Zweifeln an Galen
des Rhazes”, in Fischer K.-D. – Nickel D. – Potter P. (eds.), Text and Traditio. Studies in
Ancient Medicine and its Transmission presented to Jutta Kollesch (Leiden-Boston-Cologne:
1998) 272: “Die Reder dessen, der behauptet, dass vom Auge Strahlen ausgehen, bis sie zu
dem Gesehenen gelangen, ist eine Unmöglichkeit, weil sich die Strahlen nicht bis zu den
Sternen ausdehnen können. Vielmehr wäre es besser zu sagen, dass die Gestalt der Sterne
und der gesehenen Objekte mit dem Gesichtssinn durch die Vermittlung des Leuchtenden
verbunden ist”.
29 Galen, De usu part. 10.12 (3.817.7–8 K.).
30 On this, see Siegel, Galen on Sense Perception 94–117 and my article (quoted n. 4),
“Illustrer les médecins grecs à la Renaissance” 209–232.
 galen’s physiology of sight 559

At the risk of simplifying a particularly complex theory, this mecha-

nism of vision can be summarised by the suggestion that the encounter
of πνεῦμα, originating from the brain and carried by the optic nerves, with
the surrounding air produces an impact which brings about the forma-
tion of images in the crystalline lens, considered by Galen as the principal
organ of vision.31 The retina also plays an important role in Galen, who
differs here from his predecessors by considering it not as a true layer,
but as a growth and an extension of the brain: ‘if you removed it and col-
lected it into a ball, you would believe you saw a piece of detached brain’.32
This part of the brain that connects with the eyes is then interconnected
with the pupil, through where the pneuma passes.33 The problem is that
all of this rests in large part on a theory that is naturally impossible to
prove. Indeed, Galen bemoans the fact that pneuma, being very thin and
very light (λεπτότερόν τε καὶ κουφότερον), easily escapes before a dissec-
tion can be started. Therefore, in contrast to the aqueous humour situated
between the crystalline lens and the uvea, it cannot be observed.34 Thus,
Galen finds himself confronted with the difficulty of accounting for a real-
ity that is, by its very nature, unobservable.

Reasoning and experience

Thus, in this continual interchange between theory and observation, the

different anatomical and physiological information collected by Galen
aims to confirm the existence of the circulation of pneuma. These observa-
tions, presented with all the necessary oratorical flourishes, are intended
to elaborate a theory of vision which, if not absolutely certain, is at least
perfectly plausible. Moreover, Galen describes what happens when we
see: according to him, it is likely (εἰκός) that the pneuma, having arrived
at the eyes and following its first impact with the surrounding air, merges

31 Galen, De usu part. 3.6 (3.760 K.): τὸ κρυσταλλοειδὲς ὑγρὸν τὸ πρῶτόν ἐστιν ὄργανον
τῆς ὄψεως.
32 Galen, De usu part. 10.2 (3.762.7 K.): σαφῶς ἂν δόξαις ἐγκεφάλου τι μέρος ἀφῃρημένον
ὁρᾷν. Thus, the retina, as an outer extension of the brain, is attached to the crystalline lens
and can usefully signal the sensations felt by it to the brain.
33 Galen, De usu part. 8.6 (3.644.2–3 K.): κατὰ δὲ τὴν κόρην συμφυής ἐστιν ἡ ἐν ὀφθαλμοῖς
ἐγκεφάλου μοῖρα (the part of the brain that connects with the eyes is attached to the
pupil).
34 Galen, De usu part. 10.5 (3.783.15–16 K.): ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ μὲν ὡς ἂν λεπτότερόν τε καὶ
κουφότερον ῥαδίως ἐκκενοῦται πρὸ τῆς διαιρέσεως.
560 véronique boudon-millot

with it and alters it according to its own particular nature, without being
extended over a great distance.35 From this point of view, the surrounding
air plays the same instrumental role between the eye and the perceived
object as the optic nerves do between the brain and the eyes; it appears
as a kind of prolongation, to the extent, as Galen readily writes in the On
the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato, that the eye is to the air what the
brain is to the nerves.36 Indeed, if we try to understand how we see, only
two hypotheses are possible: either the perceived object emits something
towards us, or it does not.37 To distinguish between these two hypotheses,
Galen, faithful to his method, resorts once more to anatomy and physiol-
ogy: since we see through the hole of the pupil (διὰ τοῦ κατὰ τὴν κόρην
τρήματος), if objects did emit something towards the pupil’s direction, it
would be impossible for a very large image (for example, that of a high
mountain) to enter the pupil, and it is just as inconceivable that such an
image could simultaneously reach a very large number of people, although
a mountain can obviously be seen by many people at the same time. Thus,
the only solution remaining (λείπεται οὖν ἔτι) is to assume that, when we
see, the surrounding air serves as an instrument in the same manner as
the nerve which is permanently in our body.
Without going into the details of a highly subtle theory and particularly
complex optical laws, I shall simply remark here that the effect produced
by the pneuma on the surrounding air when encountering it produces
a continuum (συνεχοῦς), which enables even remote objects to be per-
ceived.38 The conclusion, which is true for all sensory organs, is that all
the sensory abilities originating from the brain share their conveyance by
nerves to their appropriate sensory organs (διὰ τῶν νεύρων ἄχρι τῶν οἰκείων
ὀργάνων). However, the optic nerve is the noblest of all nerves because its
substance is close to that of the brain (ὁμοειδὲς δὲ καὶ κατὰ τὴν οὐσίαν τὸ
νεῦρον ὑπάρχον τῷ ἐγκεφάλῳ), because it has a visible hole, because it is

35 Galen, De plac. Hipp. et Plat. 7.4 (452, 25–28 de Lacy; 5.617 K.): οὕτως γοῦν εἰκός ἐστι
καὶ τὸ παραγιγνόμενον εἰς ὀφθαλμοὺς πνεῦμα κατὰ μὲν τὴν πρώτην ἔμπτωσιν ἐνοῦσθαί τε τῷ
περιέχοντι καὶ συναλλοιοῦν αὐτὸ πρὸς τὴν ἰδιότητα τῆς ἑαυτοῦ φύσεως, οὐ μὴν ἐπὶ πλεῖστόν γ’
ἐκτείνεσθαι.
36 Galen, De plac. Hipp. et Plat. 7.5 (460, 2–4 de Lacy; 5.625 K.): καὶ γίγνεται δὲ τοιοῦτον
ὄργανον αὐτῷ πρὸς τὴν τῶν αἰσθητῶν οἰκείαν διάγνωσιν οἷον ἐγκεφάλῳ τὸ νεῦρον, ὥσθ’ ὃν ἔχει
λόγον ἐγκέφαλος πρὸς τὸ νεῦρον, τοιοῦτον ὀφθαλμὸς ἔχει πρὸς τὸν ἀέρα.
37 Galen, De plac. Hipp. et Plat. 7.5 (452, 29–33 de Lacy; 5.618 K.).
38 This phenomenon is particularly significant for colour perception; see Boudon-
Millot V., “La théorie galénique de la vision: couleurs du corps et couleurs des humeurs”,
in Villard L. (ed.), Couleurs et vision dans l’Antiquité classique (Rouen: 2002) 65–75, par-
ticularly 71–74.
 galen’s physiology of sight 561

both soft and long, because once in the eye it is unattached, and because
it is very similar to the brain.39 Moreover, since it is an intermediary
between the brain and the eye, the optic nerve is peculiar in being softer
inside (since it is drilled and hollow in its centre) and harder on the out-
side (to ensure the safe passage of the pneuma).40
It is important to highlight that this theory of vision is presented by
Galen not as being certain, but only as probable (εἰκότως).41 It is thus
not surprising that Galen never stopped wishing to prove it to be true,
tirelessly trying to demonstrate this whilst treating numerous disorders
of vision, of different levels of severity, throughout his medical career.42
When Galen acts as a doctor rather than a theorist, it is to gather as much
evidence as possible to prove a mechanism of vision that, as a theorist, he
had only been able to present as probable.

Testing the facts. The theory of vision and pathology of sight

Typically for Galen, his interpretations risk being seriously distorted by his
theory, which is supported by anatomical and physiological data. He aims
to prove that pneuma circulates through the poroi to the eyes (φέρεταί τι
πνεῦμα διὰ τῶν πόρων τούτων ἐπὶ τοὺς ὀφθαλμούς);43 the proof, according
to Galen, is that when one eye is closed, the pupil of the other eye dilates
(εὐρύνεσθαι θατέρου τὴν κόρην) under the flow of pneuma, and when the
eye is opened again, the pupil of the other eye resumes its normal size at
once (παραχρῆμα πάλιν εἰς τὸ κατὰ φύσιν ἐπανέρχεσθαι μέγεθος). Moreover,
the rapidity of dilatation and contraction is a sign that the circulating
pneuma cannot be a fluid (οὐχ ὑγροῦ τινος ἐπιρρέοντος), but only an air-like

39 Galen, De plac. Hipp. et Plat. 7.5 (456, 21–25 de Lacy; 5.622 K.).
40 The optic nerve is also softer inside to preserve as much as possible the nature of
the brain with which it connects; see Galen, De plac. Hipp. et Plat. 7.5 (456, 25–28 de Lacy;
5.622 K.).
41 Galen generally uses cautious expressions when talking about vision: ἐγὼ μὲν οὐκ ἔχω
προχείρως ἀποφήνασθαι (De plac. Hipp. et Plat. 7.4 (448, 11 de Lacy; 5.611 K.); οὔκουν οἷόν τε
προχείρως ἀποφήνασθαι πότερον (448, 19–20); εἰκότως (450, 30); εἰκός ἐστι (452, 25); τοιοῦτον
γάρ τι πάσχειν ἔοικεν (454, 10); φαίνεται γοῦν ὅμοιόν τι πάθος συμβαίνειν (454, 23); εἰκότως δ’
ὡς ἔφην (460, 1).
42 According to Magnus H., Die Augenheilkunde der Alten (Breslau: 1901) 606–608,
Galen supposedly performed some forty different eye operations relating to the eyelids,
the conjunctiva, the cornea, the crystalline lens or the tear ducts.
43 Galen, De plac. Hipp. et Plat. 7.4 (450, 10–11 de Lacy; 5.614 K.).
562 véronique boudon-millot

substance (ἀλλὰ μόνης πνευματικῆς οὐσίας).44 In such a case, experience and

observation are indispensable for supporting the reasoning since, as Galen
declares, ‘reasoning (τῷ λόγῳ) does not prove on its own that the pupil is
dilated by pneuma, but it is still possible to demonstrate it experimentally
(δι’ἐπιτεχνήσεως) and to verify the reasoning using obvious facts’.45
From this point of view, Galen uses cases of people suffering from cata-
racts (τὸ τῶν ὑποκεχυμένων) in On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato
to provide some of his favourite examples, allowing him to clarify his
theory of vision. Indeed, although Galen was probably wrong about the
disease and the surgery it required,46 cataracts (ὑπόχυμα)47 are used on
several occasions as a model to explain and illustrate his theory of vision.
In this disease, patients maintain their visual ability if the hole of the pupil
(τὸ τρῆμα)48 in the healthy eye is sufficiently dilated to allow the addi-
tional pneuma to pass through; but those in whom such dilatation does
not occur lose their visual ability completely and, even if the cataract is
removed entirely (κἂν καλῶς κατάχθῃ τὸ ὑπόχυμα), are unable to see. Thus,
Galen understands this to be an irreversible process, whose origin, not
explicitly stated but nevertheless strongly implied, lies in the creation of
too much pneuma where both optic nerves converge and meet,49 leading

44 Galen, De plac. Hipp. et Plat. 7.4 (450, 17–18 de Lacy; 5.614 K.). Many similar examples
can also be found in De usu part. 10.5 (3.781 K.). See also the De sympt. caus. 1.2 (7.89
K.: Johnston I., Galen on Diseases and Symptoms (Cambridge: 2006) 207), which provides
exactly parallel observations on the pathological dilatation of the pupil.
45 Galen, De usu part. 10.5 (3.782.13–16 K.).
46 According to Daremberg Ch., Œuvres [. . .] de Galien (Paris: 1854), vol. I, 608 n. 1.
47 Amongst Greek doctors, cataracts (ὑπόχυμα, from ὑποχέω “to pour under, into some-
thing”) is not clearly distinguished from glaucoma (γλαύκωμα), since both designate quite
similar complaints, although glaucoma refers to incurable afflictions; see Marganne M.-H.,
“Glaucome ou cataracte? Sur l’emploi des dérivés de γλαυκός en ophtalmologie antique”,
History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 1 (1979) 199–214. We should also distinguish cata-
racts from other afflictions that form white spots on the eye, which in Latin are called albu-
lae; see Grmek M., “Albule oculorum: cataracte ou taies de la cornée?”, in Deroux C. (ed.),
Maladie et maladies dans les textes latins antiques et médiévaux (Brussels: 1998) 422–433.
The Stoic philosopher Chrysippus (SVF II 52 n. 178 = Simplicius, In Aristotelis Categorias
Commentarium 12b26, 401, l. 40–42 Kalbfleisch) was the first to mention cataract surgery in
the third century BC, a practice described in detail by Celsus in Tiberius’ time (De medicina
7.7.14a). Galen mentions cataract surgery in his De methodo medendi 14.3 (10.986–989 K.).
48 The Greek reads here τὸ τρῆμα for τὸ κατὰ τὴν κόρην τρῆμα, on the model of τῷ κατὰ
τὴν κόρην τρήματι (Galen, De plac. Hipp. et Plat. 7.4 (450, 15 de Lacy; 5.614 K.)).
49 On the optic chiasm, an anatomical system of optic nerves that Galen describes well,
see De usu part. 10.12 (3.813–814 K.) and the commentary of Marganne, L’Ophtalmologie
73–77. Galen understood the optic chiasm to be a meeting and union of two optic nerves
which come together and communicate before separating again, but without actually
crossing.
 galen’s physiology of sight 563

in turn to the obstruction of the optic nerve channels (ἐμπεφράχθαι τοὺς

πόρους τῶν ὁπτικῶν νεύρων) and then to a total loss of sight.50 This loss is
generally progressive, as in the case of a patient who, at the start, could
see a ‘great light in front of his eyes’ when he opened them wide in the
dark (a fairly common phenomenon, which Galen himself said he expe-
rienced), but which slowly decreased (κατὰ βραχὺ μειωθῆναι) before dis-
appearing completely, leading firstly to a weakening, and then complete
loss, of vision (καὶ τὴν ὀπτικὴν αἴσθησιν ἀμαυρουμένην ὁμοίως εἰς ἀπώλειαν
ἀφικέσθαι παντελῆ).51
Galen, in the On the Use of the Parts, again uses cataracts as an example,
this time to demonstrate that the crystalline lens is the principal organ of
vision (ὡς αὐτὸ τὸ κρυσταλλοειδὲς ὑγρὸν τὸ πρῶτόν ἐστιν ὄργανον τῆς ὄψεως).
His notion that the crystalline lens is the place where visual images are
formed is a clear error, and one that is often pointed out,52 but this does
not prevent him from claiming that: ‘What clearly proves it is the effect
produced by what doctors call suffusions (cataracts, ὑπόχυματα), when
they appear between the crystalline lens and the cornea (μέσα μὲν ἱστάμενα
τοῦ κρυσταλλοειδοῦς ὑγροῦ καὶ τοῦ κερατοειδοῦς χιτῶνος) and prevent vision
(ἐμποδίζοντα δὲ τὰς ὄψεις), until broken up by paracentesis (ἄχρι περ ἂν
τύχῃ παρακεντηθέντα)’.53
A little later in the same treatise, Galen again endeavours to demon-
strate that the pupil’s cavity is filled with pneuma by conducting various
experiments.54 Thus, he observes that in living beings, the eye is perfectly
stretched and full in all its parts but, in dead people, the eye is already
more wrinkled than in its natural state, even before dissection. Indeed, we
saw above that Galen thought that the pneuma escapes before it could be
observed. Similarly, Galen here repeats the following observation about
which he seems to be adamant: ‘if we close one eye and keep the other
open, we see that the pupil is enlarged, dilated and somewhat swollen’,
a further sign of the flow of pneuma into the single open eye. Similarly,
in elderly people, the cornea becomes wrinkled to the extent that some

50 This concerns a hypothesis formulated by numerous eminent doctors, which Galen

himself considers as probable (εἰκότως).
51 Galen, De plac. Hipp. et Plat. 7.4 (450, 31–36 de Lacy; 5.615 K.).
52 Ch. Daremberg, in his translation of the passage (Œuvres [. . .] de Galien (vol. 1, 608)
adds in a footnote that ‘Galien regarde à tort le cristallin comme l’organe essentiel de la
vue, puisque la vue peut être à peu près complètement rétablie après l’abaissement ou
l’extraction du cristallin dans l’opération de la cataracte’.
53 Galen, De usu part. 10.1 (3.760, 14–761, 1 K.).
54 Galen, De usu part. 10.5 (3.781 K.).
564 véronique boudon-millot

lose their sight completely, and others see poorly and hardly at all. This
is because the pneuma, which becomes increasingly sparse with age, is
disturbed by the accumulation of these wrinkles, which lie on top of
each other and form outside the pupil. Thus, all these observations help
to show that the cavity of the pupil is filled with pneuma (ὅτι πνεύματος
πλήρης ἐστὶν ὁ κατὰ τὴν κόρην τόπος).
Similarly, when discussing eye afflictions in On Affected Parts, Galen
insists that the doctor should only make rational diagnoses (λογικὰς
διαγνώσεις),55 i.e. not relying on sense alone, but on reason. Indeed, sight
disorders are deep afflictions, the origins of which cannot be precisely
pinpointed by observation and the causes of which must be identified
by reason. Apart from various traumas and readily identifiable cases of
paralysis due to motor nerve failure, which can also affect the movement
of the eye and eyelids, leading to severe squints, the loss of visual sensitiv-
ity can be explained, in all other cases, by the lesion of the optic nerve:
‘When vision is lost without any apparent damage to the eye, it is due to
the nerve that goes from the brain to the eye, either because it is inflamed
or afflicted by a scirrhus, or is damaged in some other way, either by the
flow of the humours, or by the obstruction of the passage that exists at its
centre’.56 In both these types of lesions, whether of organic or humoral
origin, the pneuma can no longer flow and pass through. A third case cor-
responds to its simple drying up, when ‘the light pneuma no longer arrives
or arrives in a very small amount from its origin in the brain’.57
Apart from these cases where the pneuma fails, other afflictions that
occur in the absence of a visible eye lesion can be explained by sympathy,
that is, through other afflictions and their effects on the eye.58 Thus, cer-
tain sight distortions (φαντάσματα), similar to those caused by cataracts,
are really produced by sympathy with an illness of the stomach opening,
not by an actual eye affliction. Indeed, poorly cooked food leads to harm-
ful humours which somehow reach into the brain. The accumulation of
bilious humour in the brain causes it to suffer something resembling ‘what
objects roasted on a fire experience’ (παραπλήσιόν τι πάσχει τοῖς ὑπὸ πυρὸς
ὀπτωμένοις), and the kind of smoke produced, seeping into the passages
leading to the eye, obscures sight and sometimes even produces visions.59

55 Galenus, De locis affectis 4.1 (8.217, 1–2 K.).

56 Galen, De loc. aff. 4.1 (8.218.3–8 K.).
57 Galen, De loc. aff. 4.1 (8.218.10–12 K.).
58 Galen, De loc. aff. 4.1 (8.221.15–18 K.).
59 Galen, De loc. aff. 4.1 (8.218.10–12 K.). Galen indifferently calls these visions by two
nouns: φαντασίαι and φαντάσματα.
 galen’s physiology of sight 565

Only an appropriate diet, in particular the taking of a bitter, aloe-based,

medication called picra (πικράν), can overcome such afflictions, rather
than an ophthalmic treatment, which in this instance plays no role.
Finally, other visions originate directly in the brain following its affec-
tion by certain forms of phrenitis, a type of mental illness that affects
intellectual judgement or the senses, or both. In the On Affected Parts,
Galen gives a famous example of this affliction, mentioning the case of
a Roman suffering from phrenitis who, from his home, as he could see
passers-by and be seen by them (οἷόν τ’ ἦν ὁρᾶσθαί τε αὐτὸν καὶ ὁρᾶν τοὺς
παριόντας), threw his glass vases out of the window one after the other
until, spurred on by the crowd, he also threw out his slave.60 Galen him-
self, afflicted with a burning fever in his youth, remembers thinking he
saw ‘dark twigs flutter about his bed’, which he unsuccessfully tried to
grab. However, although he was suffering from these kinds of visions,
his sense of judgment and intellectual abilities remained intact, since
he understood simply by listening to his friends’ comments that he was
afflicted by crocidismus and carphology (κροκυδίζει τε καὶ καρφολογεῖ), a
terminology that is still in use amongst modern doctors.61
Thus, the analysis of these two final cases confirms, were it still neces-
sary, that, other than vision disorders caused by sympathy and diseases
directly affecting the brain, all other defects of vision are directly attribut-
able to pneuma.
Following this analysis, and despite Galen’s efforts to collect together
the sum of ancient knowledge, it should be pointed out that the Galenic
physiology of sight rests on two major errors: the crystalline lens is not, as
Galen thought, the place where visual images are formed and, even more
importantly, the circulation of an optical pneuma (πνεῦμα ὀπτικόν) is not
the cause of vision. There is another major difficulty: Galen does not tell
his reader how to reconcile a geometrical theory of vision that involves
straight lines (γραμμάς) and not rays (a term whose use, we have seen, he
rejects),62 with an almost omnipresent pneumatic theory.63 Nevertheless,
this theory would be accepted in this form by most doctors who lived

60 Galen, De loc. aff. 4.1 (8.226.2–11 K.).

61 Galen, De loc. aff. 4.1 (8.227.3 K.). The verb κροκυδίζει means literally ‘to tear off strands
or flakes of wool from a fabric’ and καρφολογεῖ ‘to collect strands of straw’, two gestures
which can be observed in patients in a terminal phase.
62 See supra n. 28.
63 A possible solution would presume that these straight lines follow the path traced by
the pneuma emitted by the eye towards the perceived object. However, there is nothing in
Galen’s text that explicitly suggests this interpretation.
566 véronique boudon-millot

after Galen, whether Greek, Latin or Arabic, until the end of the sixteenth
century.64 As Vanagt has shown in her contribution to the present vol-
ume, the Galenic theory of vision would serve in the Renaissance as a
basis for the important debate on the modus visionis, either because his
defenders ingeniously competed to reconcile Galen’s propositions with
their own observations, or because the Galenic theory of pneumatic emis-
sion was gradually undermined by the discoveries of Plempius, Della Porta
and, finally, Kepler. However, the exceptional longevity of Galen’s theory
of vision cannot be explained only by the scientific authority which the
author enjoyed for so long. In a more subtle way, it is probably also due
to the mystery of the physiological process of vision, to the indisputable
complexity of the organ being studied, but also to the particular status
of the eye, which Georges Rodenbach called the window of the soul, an
expression to which Aristotle would have subscribed.65 By asserting the
retina to be part of the brain and defining the eye as the most divine
organ (τὸ θειότατον ὄργανον),66 Galen could not hope to solve the mystery
of vision, which he himself declared as being similar to that of the soul.
Thus, when in his On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato Galen prefers
to withhold his judgement on the nature of the mysterious pneuma, which
is at the heart of his theory of vision, he displays a certain caution simi-
lar to that observed in On my own Opinions concerning the nature of the
soul, knowledge of which he admits to possessing: not a certain knowl-
edge (βεβαίαν γνῶσιν), but only a probable one (ἄχρι τοῦ πιθανοῦ).67 And
Aristotle’s phrase, which appears in this paper, leaves no doubt that, just
as for Galen in the On the Best Method of Teaching,68 vision is to the eye
what intelligence is to the soul; the mystery of sight, like that of the soul,
with which it shares an immense and elusive fascination, constitutes one
of the biggest puzzles confronting human understanding.

64 See Siegel, Galen on Sense Perception 124–126.

65 Rodenbach G., Bruges-la-morte (Paris: 1892).
66 Galen, De usu part. 10.12 (3.812.15 K.).
67 Galen, De propr. plac. 14 (114,12 Nutton = Boudon-Millot, V. – Pietrobelli A., “Galien
ressuscité: Édition princeps du texte grec du On my own opinions”, Revue des Études grecques
118 (2005) 188 for the Greek text and 210 for the French translation).
68 Compare Arist. Top. 108a11 (‘ὡς ὄψις ἐν ὀφθαλμῷ, νοῦς ἐν ψυχῇ’, “as sight is in the eye,
so mind is in the soul”) and EN 1096b29 (‘ὡς γὰρ ἐν σώματι ὄψις, ἐν ψυχῇ νοῦς’) with Galen,
De optima doctrina 5 (106,12 Barigazzi; 1.52.1–9 K.): ‘εἰ δ’ ἐστι μὲν οἷός περ ὀφθαλμὸς ἐν σώματι,
τοιοῦτος ἐν ψυχῇ νοῦς’, ‘If the eye is in the body, so the mind is in the soul’.
 galen’s physiology of sight 567

Selective bibliography

Boudon-Millot V., “Illustrer les médecins grecs à la Renaissance: Les schémas d’optique
galénique”, in Boudon-Millot V. – Cobolet G. (eds.), Lire les médecins grecs à la Renais-
sance. Aux origines de l’édition médicale (Paris: 2004) 209–232.
——, “La théorie galénique de la vision: couleurs du corps et couleurs des humeurs”, in
Villard L. (ed.), Couleurs et vision dans l’Antiquité classique (Rouen: 2002) 65–75 [Serbian
translation under the title “Galenska teorija o vidu: boje tela i boje tecnosti”, Lucida
intervalla 28, 2 (2003) 32–43].
Craik E. (ed.), Two Hippocratic Treatises on Sight and on Anatomy (Leiden: 2006).
Fronimopoulos J. – Lascaratos J., “The terms glaucoma and cataract in the ancient
Greek and Byzantine writers”, Documenta Ophtalmologica 77 (1991) 369–375.
Grmek M., “Albule oculorum: cataracte ou taies de la cornée?”, in Deroux C. (ed.), Maladie
et maladies dans les textes latins antiques et médiévaux (Brussels: 1998) 422–433.
Hirschberg J., “Geschichte der Augenheilkunde”, in Gräfe A. – Sämisch Th. (eds.), Hand-
buch der gesamten Augenheilkunde 12 (Leipzig: 1899).
Jouanna J., “‘Soleil, toi qui vois tout’: Variations tragiques d’une formule homérique et
nouvelle étymologie de ἀκτίς”, in Villard L. (ed.), Études sur la vision dans l’Antiquité
classique (Rouen: 2005) 39–56 (= Chronique d’étymologie grecque 11, Revue de Philologie
80 (2006) 343 s. v. ἀκτίς).
Magnus H., Die Augenheilkunde der Alten (Breslau: 1901).
Marganne M.-H., “Glaucome ou cataracte? Sur l’emploi des dérivés de γλαυκός en ophtal-
mologie antique”, History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences I, 2 (1979) 199–214.
——, L’Ophtalmologie dans l’Égypte gréco-romaine d’après les papyrus littéraires grecs
(Leiden: 1994).
Mugler Ch., Dictionnaire historique de la terminologie optique des Grecs (Paris: 1964).
Savage-Smith E., “Galen’s Lost Ophthalmology”, in Nutton V. (ed.), The unknown Galen
(London: 2002) 121–138.
Siegel R.E., Galen on Sense Perception (Basel-New York: 1970).
 EARLY MODERN MEDICAL THINKING ON VISION AND
THE CAMERA OBSCURA.
V.F. PLEMPIUS’s OPHTHALMOGRAPHIA

Katrien Vanagt

Summary*

The ‘modus visionis’ was one of the most fascinating and fashionable topics in
early modern thought. It is well-known that early modern philosophers, math-
ematicians, artists, magicians and astronomers took a particular interest in vision
and discussed it extensively. Less well-known is that medical doctors too, debated
how vision occurred, trying to find a way out of the impasse created by the contra-
dictions between Aristotle and Galen. Although many of them explicitly claimed
to be following in the footsteps of Galen, their actual theories were often quite
different from his, being closer to Aristotle than is usually acknowledged.
I will argue that, by introducing the camera obscura as an explanatory model
for the functioning of the eye, V.F. Plempius’s aim was to resolve an ongoing
debate, in a spectacular and original way. He borrowed the innovations and
experiments of other fields of knowledge, but looked at them as a medical doc-
tor: by analysing the relevance of the camera for medical thinking he was able to
give such innovations a new meaning.

Introduction

In his famous Magia naturalis of 1589, Giambattista della Porta (ca.

1535–1615), Italy’s foremost magus and wonder-worker, writes that
. . . nothing can be more pleasant for great men, and scholars, and ingenious
persons to behold. That in a dark chamber by white sheets objected, one
may see as clearly and perspicuously, as if they were before his eyes, hunt-
ings, banquets, armies of enemies, plays, and all things else that one desires.
Let there be over against that chamber, where you desire to represent things,
some spacious plain, where the sun can freely shine [. . .]. you must counter-
feit Stags, Boar, Rhinocerets, Elephants, Lions, and what other creatures you
please. Then by degrees they must appear, as coming out of their dens, upon

* I would like to thank Fokko Jan Dijksterhuis, Helen King and the anonymous reviewer
for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.
570 katrien vanagt

the plain. The hunter must come with his hunting pole, nets, arrows, and
other necessaries, that may represent hunting [. . .]. Those that are in the
chamber shall see trees, animals, hunters faces, and all the rest so plainly,
that they cannot tell wether they be true or delusions.1
The camera obscura, as Della Porta showed, could be used as entertain-
ment; it was one of the many objects of wonder that amused early modern
European society.2 Large models were built for this and other purposes at
several courts in Europe, including the court in Dresden.3 Creating illu-
sions and wonder was indeed one of the characteristic features of court
culture, with its eagerness for spectacle and the display of knowledge, and
as such it forms part of the so-called tradition of ‘natural magic’.4
But the camera obscura had other functions too. Different kinds of
people, with different backgrounds, aims and agendas were involved in
experiments with the camera obscura. Artists were fascinated by the pos-
sibilities of using the camera as a drawing aid for reproducing an exact
copy of the world outside. Astronomers used it to observe solar eclipses
in order to protect their eyes against direct sunlight. Mathematicians and
philosophers relied on experiments with the camera to learn something
about the behaviour of light.5
Indeed, the camera was more than just an instrument for spectacu-
lar entertainment. Entertainment went hand in hand with learning, as
playing with the camera was a way of generating knowledge.6 To wonder
about the object of wonder, to wonder about its working and causes, was
a way of investigating nature. One of the prerogatives of natural magic –

1 Porta Giambattista della, Natural Magick (London, Thomas Young and Samuel Speed:
1658) 336.
2 On wonder and ‘praeternatural’ history, see Daston L. – Park K., Wonders and the
Order of Nature, 1150–1750 (New York: 1998).
3 The darkened room formed part of the Dresden Kunstkammer, see Dupré S., “Playing
with Images in a Dark Room: Kepler’s Ludi inside the Camera Obscura”, in Lefèvre W.
(ed.), Inside the Camera Obscura. Optics and Art under the Spell of the Projected Image
(Berlin: 2007) 59–74.
4 On Della Porta and natural magic, see Eamon W., Science and the Secrets of Nature,
Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture (Princeton-New Jersey: 1999) 194–
233.
5 For a concise historical sketch of the camera obscura, see Hammond J.H., The Cam-
era Obscura. A Chronicle (Bristol: 1981); for a deeper analysis of the optics involved in the
camera, see the contributions in Lefèvre, Inside the Camera part 2.
6 On the importance of play in Kepler’s experiments with the camera, see Dupré, “Play-
ing with Images”; on the status of play in early modern culture, see Findlen P., “Jokes of
Nature and Jokes of Knowledge: The Playfulness of Scientific Discourse in Early Modern
Europe”, Renaissance Quarterly 43 (1990) 292–331.
 vision and the camera obscura 571

compared to other types of magic – was precisely that the tricks and illu-
sions could be explained by natural principles. If this was so, it was in
great part thanks to the efforts of Della Porta, who, according to William
Eamon, ‘from his first juvenile effort to his last unpublished work, [. . .]
dedicated his life to establishing natural magic as a legitimate empirical
science’.7
It is thus not surprising that Della Porta himself recognised the philo-
sophical significance of his camera in claiming that it teaches not only
something about light – a claim already made previously by mathemati-
cians – but also something about the way we see and the working of the
eye.8 This idea was taken up in 1583 by Felix Platter (1536–1614), a well-
known physician from Basel, who explicitly refers to the eye as a camera
obscura in his anatomical work De corporis humani structura et usu.9 But
this was no more than a brief statement, without any emphasis or direct
explanation, and presented in the form of schematic tables. In 1604, the
analogy between the working of the camera and the eye was fully devel-
oped, not in a medical work, but in the astronomical treatise Ad Vitellionem
paralipomena by Johannes Kepler (1571–1630), at that time mathematician
and astronomer at the court of Rudolf II in Prague. He explored the cam-
era thoroughly, provided a detailed mathematical explanation of its effect
on the behaviour of light, and used those findings to elaborate a new the-
ory of vision.10 The Jesuit mathematician Christoph Scheiner (1573–1650),
in turn, took over Kepler’s principal innovation of the retinal image, but
adopted a more empirical and experimental approach to the problem in
his Oculus, hoc est fundamentum opticum of 1619.11 As the title of his work
suggests, he focused directly on the eye.

 
7 Eamon, Secrets 196.
 
8 Lindberg D.C., Theories of Vision from al-Kindi to Kepler (Chicago-London: 1976)
184–185.
 
9 The function of the uvea is ‘ut obscuram sic faceret oculi cameram’, (my italics). Plat-
ter Felix, De corporis humani structura et usu libri III (Basel, Ambrosius Frob.: 1583) 186.
10 Kepler Johannes, Ad Vitellionem paralipomena quibus astronomiae pars opticae tra-
ditur (Frankfurt, Claudius Marnius and Haeredes Ioannis Aubrius: 1604). For an analysis of
Kepler’s theory of vision, see Lindberg, Theories of Vision 178–208. On the epistemological
meaning of Kepler’s new optical theory, see Simon G., Sciences et Savoirs aux XVI e et XVII e
siècles, Histoire des sciences (Lille: 1996) 77–101.
 
11 Scheiner Christoph, Oculus, hoc est. Fundamentum opticum (Innsbruck, Daniele Agri-
cola: 1619). On Scheiner’s use of ‘experiments’ and ‘experiences’, the distinction between
them, and the historical significance of this, see Dear P., Discipline and Experience (Chi-
cago-London: 1995).
572 katrien vanagt

In the medical world, however, Platter’s suggestion of the eye as a dark

room was slow to find support. Medical doctors continued to discuss what
they called the ‘modus visionis’ without reference to the camera. It was
fifty years before the camera obscura appeared again in a medical work
as a means of explaining the physiology of sight. With the first edition
of Vopiscus Fortunatus Plempius’ (1601–1671) treatise on the eye in 1632,
the Ophthalmographia, the idea is developed in all its beauty and con-
stitutes the key to what Plempius proudly calls the new and true ‘modus
visionis’.12
This is not to say that physicians had no interest in the way vision takes
place. On the contrary, the so-called ‘modus visionis’ constituted one of
the central topics of debate among late sixteenth and early seventeenth-
century physicians, as I will briefly argue in the first part of this chapter.
Unlike David Lindberg, who argues that early modern medical theories of
vision were predominantly Galenic (with only a few exceptions), I believe
that the picture was far less homogeneous and that physicians were less
uniform in their beliefs than his account might suggest.13 Physicians were
aware of alternative responses to vision, and clearly often struggled in an
attempt to integrate them into their own physiological account of sight. I
will not be concerned here with the ancient theories of vision themselves –
I am glad to refer to the contribution of Véronique Boudon-Millot else-
where in this volume, who gives a brief account of the different theories
of vision in Antiquity and a detailed analysis of Galen’s ideas on vision
that constitute the basis of all early modern medical thinking of vision –
but with the reception of those theories within early modern medical
thinking.14 What I want to show is that, by introducing the camera as an
explanatory model for the functioning of the eye, Plempius’ aim was to
resolve an ongoing debate, in a spectacular and original way.
In the second part, then, I will discuss the introduction of the cam-
era obscura into medical discourse, analysing how Plempius presents the
camera and what he – as a medical doctor – finds important about it. I
will argue that Plempius, by staging the wondrous camera obscura as a

12 The full title of the first edition reveals Plempius’ ambitious project: Ophthalm-
ographia, sive tractatio De oculi fabrica, actione et usu praeter vulgatas hactenas, philoso-
phorum ac medicorum opiniones. Note that my references will be to the second edition,
published in Louvain in 1648, which was almost unchanged with respect to the first, apart
from the book on therapy.
13 Lindberg, Theories of Vision 175.
14 See the contribution of V. Boudon-Millot in this volume, 551–567.
 vision and the camera obscura 573

real deus ex machina, and explaining the natural causes responsible for its
working, tried to resolve contemporary questions on the ‘modus visionis’.
In order to do so, Plempius borrowed the innovations and experiments of
Kepler and Scheiner, but looked at them as a medical doctor. By explicitly
pointing at the relevance of the camera for medical thinking, he was able
to give these a new meaning.

1. The medical debate on the ‘modus visionis’

Intromission-extramission
At the heart of the medical discussion on the ‘modus visionis’ lay the
famous question about the direction of rays in vision, the so-called intro-
mission-extramission question: do we see by receiving something into
the eye or do we see by sending something forth? The discussion can be
traced directly back to Antiquity, where – stated very simply – Aristotle
stood for intromission, Plato for emission and Galen for a different version
of emission.15 Far from being resolved, the question remained very much
alive in early modern thinking.
At first sight, Lindberg seems right in stating that early modern medical
theories of vision were Galenic, since many physicians explicitly advo-
cated Galen’s extramission theory. However, a close look at the texts
themselves reveals that the choice of Galen was less evident than we
might have thought. They clearly disliked the idea of opposing Aristotle’s
view on vision. This rather unusual intrusion of Aristotle as an authority
within medical discourse has much to do with the nature of the question.
It was perceived to be essentially a philosophical issue, closely linked to
questions on the soul and heavily debated in commentaries on Aristo-
tle’s De anima.16 The main problem for physicians in the context of the
‘modus visionis’ was indeed the relation between medicine and natural
philosophy, each falling back on two different authorities.17 If ‘Aristotelian

15 Details about the different theories can be found in Boudon-Millot, this volume.
16 On the importance of Aristotle in Renaissance university learning, see Schmitt C.B.,
Aristotle and the Renaissance (Cambridge, Mass.: 1983).
17 On the relationship between medicine and natural philosophy, see French R., Medi-
cine before Science. The Rational and Learned Doctor from the Middle Ages to the Enlighten-
ment (Cambridge: 2003).
574 katrien vanagt

natural philosophy was known to and used extensively by Galen’,18 their

views on the ‘modus visionis’ were radically different. Galen had to be
reconciled with Aristotelian intromission. Physicians tried therefore, by
a variety of means, to enlist Aristotle into their own camp. Some, as I
will show, found a solution by ascribing emission to Aristotle. Others, in
order to remain closer to Aristotle’s opinion, stressed the intromissionist
component of Galen’s theory.
Take, for example, Girolamo Capivaccio (1523–1589), a prominent Ital-
ian physician. He refers to the question in the physiological part of his
Opera omnia, and explicitly chooses the Galenic extramission theory.
However, if we examine his argument in more detail, we will note that
his choice of Galen was less evident, and his actual theory less Galenic,
than his faithful reverence to Galen seemed to imply. Clearly concerned
that he was opposing Aristotle’s intromissionist theory, Capivaccio tries to
ascribe some extramission to Aristotle by relying on his Problemata (today
regarded as pseudonymous). If Aristotle seems to deny extramission, he
says, it should be understood as an extramission of the faculty. However,
he continues, Aristotle does agree with some extramission of rays when he
writes that the pupil is sparking off light just as a candle does.19
Capivaccio then claimed Galen’s theory to be the perfect compromise
between Aristotle and Plato, given that it incorporates both options: ‘it is
clear that vision is made both by intromission, and by extramission’, he
states.20 However, the way in which he introduces his final argument on
the question suggests that things may not be as clear as he has claimed.
He adds that we should know that vision must be considered in two
senses, ‘in order to take away all ambiguity’.21 What he means by this is
that we should distinguish between simply ‘seeing’, on the one hand, and
‘looking at’, on the other.22 And for seeing alone, ‘it is not necessary that
something is emitted’, he claims, thus explicitly contradicting the Galenic
theory. Instead of clearing up the argument, he thus seems to make it only

18 French, Medicine before Science 3.

19 Capivaccio Girolamo, Opera omnia, ed. Hartmannus J. (Frankfurt, E. Paltheniana-Iona
Rodius: 1603) 141 ‘Extramissionem videtur negare Aristoteles [. . .]: quod intelligendum de
extramissione facultatis, quae concedi non potest. Radiorum enim extramissionem etiam
Aristoteles statuit [. . .] ubi ait pupillam, id est spiritum animalem in pupilla contentum, ad
similitudinem candelae accensae in lucerna, lumen spargere, seu radios extramittere’.
20 Capivaccio, Opera omnia 141 ‘patet visionem fieri et intromissione, et extramissione’.
21 Capivaccio 141 ‘ut omnis tollatur ambiguitas’.
22 Capivaccio is opposing visio ‘simpliciter’ to visio ‘respective’, 141.
 vision and the camera obscura 575

more confused, and even more remote from the original Galenic theory
he had so emphatically claimed to be adopting.
Julius Casserius (1561–1616), professor of anatomy at the University of
Padua, approaches the problem in similar terms and calls the ‘visionis
contemplatio’ very ‘difficult’, both because of the intrinsic difficulties of
the question and because of the contradicting opinions between different
philosophers.23 What makes the question so difficult is that there is no
consensus between them.24 Again, the only way out, according to Cas-
serius, is to follow in the footsteps of Galen. Yet, despite his faithfulness
to Galenic teaching, he does not follow him slavishly. On the contrary,
he comes up with new arguments in favour of extramission and, even
more importantly, offers a very original interpretation of extramission
that bears little trace of the original Galenic view: extramission for him
no longer signifies an emission out of the eye, but rather an emission of
spirits within the eye from the crystalline humour to the pupil, where,
according to Casserius, the image of the outside world is formed. It is thus
extramission only in so far as spirits leave the crystalline humour. It is also
interesting that, as a medical doctor, he finds he is in the best position to
solve the philosophical problems: knowledge of the pathology of the eye
gave physicians, in their own view, a certain superiority over philosophers
in teaching them new and valuable elements relevant to the process of
seeing.
Not all physicians were professing Galen – at least formally – as the
prime Authority, however. Probably the best known example of a medical
approach to the ‘modus visionis’ can be found in the anatomical treatise
De visione of Hieronymus Fabricius ab Aquapendente (1537–1619), famous
for his role in the development of anatomical teaching at the University
of Padua.25 Fabricius too is troubled by the disagreement between the
classical authorities. Yet, in his attempt to reconcile them, he considers
not Galen’s theory, but that of Aristotle, as the best compromise, and thus
openly chooses intromission as the only valuable option.26

23 Casserius Julius, Pentaestheseion (Venice, Nicolaus Misserinus: 1609) 296 ‘Visionis

contemplatio quam sit ardua, quam variis difficultatum involucris implicita, nemo est,
qui ambigit, modo dissentientes et varias variorum philosophorum sententias’.
24 Casserius 296 ‘inter se philosophi digladiantur’.
25 Fabricius ab Aquapendente Hieronymus, De visione, voce, auditu (Venice, Franciscus
Bolzetta: 1600).
26 Fabricius, De visione 39–42.
576 katrien vanagt

Medical thinking on vision

Physicians introduced their own particular set of problems and questions
within the discussion on the ‘modus visionis’. Apart from the question of
the direction of radiation, other favourite points of discussion include the
presence of internal light within the eye. Many physicians believed that
the eye itself possessed some kind of light that was necessary in order to
see well.27 The seat of vision, too, was the subject of much controversy.
Early modern physicians are not so much interested in what happens out-
side the eye, as in what happens within the eye: what is the nature of the
eye (passive-active), the seat of vision, the role of the internal light and of
the visual spirits, how images are assimilated by the eye in order to pro-
duce vision and, last but not least, how we can explain defective vision.
This final point is important, and probably the most distinctive feature of
the medical theories of vision. Physicians had to fit their thoughts or theo-
ries within the medical – and thus therapeutic – discourse. They needed
to formulate a theory of vision that would not contradict the current (i.e.
traditional) ideas on the causes of disease and therapy.
That physicians’ ideas about the ‘modus visionis’ were closely linked to
their insights into ocular diseases – through the intermediary of pneuma
or visual spirits – is a direct heritage from Galen. As we can see in Bou-
don-Millot’s paper, in Galen’s system pneuma constituted the basis of his
entire visual theory.28 Following in the steps of Galen, for most of the early
modern doctors, the key to good sight lay in the spiritus visivus, because
they possessed the visual power and were supposed to carry the forms or
species from the world outside into the eye to produce vision. The state
of these spirits was therefore critically important for good sight, and, in
case of problems with sight, they would be the first ones to be blamed. As
spirits were thought to be generated by a whole series of bodily processes
out of the blood and the air, they formed the direct link between the
eyes and the body. Thanks to them, the condition of the eyes was made
directly dependant on the well-being of the entire body, as was necessary
within the holistic approach that had characterised medical discourse
since Antiquity.

27 See Vanagt K., “Suspicious Spectacles: Medical Perspectives on Eyeglasses, the Case
of Hieronymus Mercurialis”, in Helden A. van – Dupré S. – Gent R. van – Zuidervaart H.
(eds.), The Origins of the Telescope, History of Science and Scholarship in the Netherlands 12
(Amsterdam: 2010) 115–129.
28 Boudon-Millot, “Vision and Vision Disorders”, 556–559.
 vision and the camera obscura 577

Since new ideas always had to match the medical framework with its
spirits and visual power, it was more difficult for physicians to come up
with new insights into ocular physiology. Paradoxically, as the example
of Casserius shows, some early modern physicians appeared to view the
medical framework not as an obstacle, but as an opportunity to enrich
the question with additional information, and, in doing so, to resolve the
impasse. They adduced their knowledge of ocular diseases, as a supple-
mentary but strongly weighted argument in their (new) ideas on the
‘modus visionis’, and thus turned what we would suppose to be their dis-
advantage into their advantage.

Continuity and change

New elements made their entrance into medical thinking on vision: ana-
tomical observations were responsible for discovering new structures in
the eye and the brain, and optical thinking challenged the functions of
its parts by introducing new concepts into the theory of vision, such as
refraction.29 Yet the authorities from Antiquity remained inescapable
and still constituted the major reference point. It is striking that the phy-
sicians’ reverence for the authors themselves was greater than that for
their actual theories. They were not so much concerned about the origi-
nal context and meaning of the ancient texts and ideas on vision. More
important was that such texts could be interpreted in a way that fitted
their personal insights, updated with new elements. In fact, almost every
respected physician came up with new ideas, and thus with his own ver-
sion of ‘Galenism’, whether or not this was enriched with elements from
other fields of knowledge.
Sometimes the reference to Galen and his ‘extramission’ theory
appeared to be no more than an empty façade. It can thus be very mis-
leading to judge theories on the basis of certain names or concepts, as
the concepts may have changed meaning. To say that, generally speaking,
early modern vision was Galenic is thus to miss an essential part of the
argument. As we have seen, in some more extreme cases Galenic extra-
mission could almost come to mean its opposite: namely, intromission.

29 On the assimilation of optical concepts into anatomical discourse, see Vanagt K.,
“ ‘Hoe men zich voor brillen behoeden kan’ of de moeizame verspreiding van optische
kennis in vroegmoderne medische kringen”, Gewina 29 (2006) 26–40.
578 katrien vanagt

Instead, what was truly Galenic was the general medical framework, with
its reliance on spirits.
In short, early modern medical writings on vision testify that there was
a kind of an impasse between medical and philosophical reasoning, and
their authors tried hard to find a solution. This situation gave way to sev-
eral more or less visible – and at times highly original – cracks in the
traditional ‘modus visionis’, other than its essence: the intricate relation
between eyes and body through the intermediary of the spirits or, to put
it in another way, the dependence on the body by means of the spirits.

2. Plempius and the camera obscura

Plempius’ life
In modern literature, Vopiscus Fortunatus Plempius is mainly known for
his participation in some of the famous scientific polemics of his time,
such as the introduction of Cartesianism in academic teaching and the
circulation of the blood. First known as a detractor of William Harvey
(1578–1657), Plempius would soon turn into one of his most fervent and
early supporters; this famous ‘conversion’ story is often repeated by histo-
rians.30 As for Cartesianism, Plempius made a similar shift. While he first
openly advocated Cartesianism, after an investigation by the University
of Louvain concluded by prohibiting Cartesian teaching, he moved to the
opposite camp and banned Cartesianism from university teaching with
the same vehemence as he had deployed in the discussion on the circu-
lation of the blood.31 These and other polemics all date from the latter
period of his life, when he was a respected professor at the University of
Louvain. The Ophthalmographia, in which Plempius exposes his ideas on
vision, however, was conceived and constructed just before the start of
his academic career in Louvain. In order to grasp more fully the spirit in

30 On his role in the polemic on the circulation of the blood, see Greene M., ”The Heart
and Blood: Harvey, Descartes and Plemp”, in Voss S. (ed.), Essays on the Philosophy and
Science of René Descartes (Oxford: 1993) 324–336; French R., William Harvey’s Natural Phi-
losophy (Cambridge: 1994), ch. 8.
31 On Plempius’ relation to Descartes and Cartesianism, see Monchamp G., Histoire du
Cartésianisme en Belgique, Mémoires couronnés et autres mémoires 39 (Brussels: 1886); Lin-
deboom G.A., Descartes and Medicine, Nieuwe Nederlandse bijdragen tot de geschiedenis der
geneeskunde 1 (Amsterdam: 1979).
 vision and the camera obscura 579

which the Ophthalmographia was written, it is thus important to give a

brief sketch of those earlier years.
Plempius, born in Amsterdam in 1601 into a Catholic family, began his
education in the Southern Netherlands. Sent to a college in Ghent, he
then followed the Arts course at the Catholic University of Louvain. It is
worth mentioning that among his teachers there was the prominent phi-
losopher and mathematician Libert Froidmont (1587–1653), whose teach-
ings on optics profoundly marked Plempius and laid the basis for his ideas
on vision, as he himself acknowledges in his Ophthalmographia.32 For his
medical studies, however, Plempius returned to the North and enrolled
at the recently-founded University of Leiden, known for its rich botani-
cal garden and fine anatomical teaching. Some years later, attracted by
the fame of the anatomist Adriaan van den Spiegel (1578–1625), Plempius
embarked on a study trip to Padua and Bologna, where he finally obtained
his doctorate in medicine. In 1623, he was back in Amsterdam to start a
medical practice and was soon counted among the foremost physicians of
the city. He would stay there for ten years, until he was appointed profes-
sor of medicine at the University of Louvain. This marks the beginning of
an intensive academic career that would last until his death in 1671.33
I will focus here on the work of the younger Plempius, when he was in
his twenties, as a young intellectual and practising physician in Amster-
dam. It is in those early years that he was developing – and, as I will show,
literally constructing – his ideas on the physiology of sight, as published in
his Ophthalmographia. His social situation was quite different at that time
to that of his later career. Although he was probably aspiring to a uni-
versity position, he was still free of institutional boundaries.34 In Amster-
dam, Plempius was in close contact with some of the leading figures of
the cultural and scientific elite. Consider, for example, his connections
with Nicolaes Tulp (1593–1674), one of the ‘regenten’ of the city, influen-
tial physician and praelector of anatomy, immortalised in Rembrandt’s
well-known Anatomy Lesson; his relation to Jacobus Golius (1596–1667),
professor of Arabic and mathematics at Leiden University known for his

32 See Plempius’ letter to the reader in the first edition of the Ophthalmographia.
33 On Plempius’ life, see Tricot J.P., “Vopiscus Fortunatus Plempius”, Vesalius 6 (2000)
11–19; Lindeboom G.A., Dutch Medical Biography. A Biographical Dictionary of Dutch Physi-
cians and Surgeons 1475–1975 (Amsterdam: 1984) 1544–1546.
34 As to his academic ambitions, the first edition of the Ophthalmographia was dedi-
cated to the professors of medicine at the University of Leiden. The repeated references
to Froidmont may point in a similar direction.
580 katrien vanagt

immense collection of old manuscripts, with whom Plempius took les-

sons in Arabic; and his close friendship with René Descartes (1596–1650).
Through his friendship with Descartes, Plempius was indirectly linked to
the circle of French philosophers such as Isaac Beeckman (1588–1637),
Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc (1580–1637), Marin Mersenne (1588–1648)
and Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655). It is probably no coincidence that they
all placed a high value on sensory experiments, and that they were all
equally fascinated by vision. We know for instance that Peiresc’s active
interest in understanding and exploring the ‘modus visionis’ was stimu-
lated by his reading of Plempius’s Ophthalmographia.35 It is also impor-
tant to stress that Plempius was actively engaged in anatomy, not only
through public demonstrations and publications on the subject, but also
through his tireless dissection of bodies or bodily parts at home.36
The religious and political environment too was quite different in
Amsterdam than in his later years in Louvain. The protestant Dutch
Republic was then in its so-called Golden Age, and this prosperous envi-
ronment certainly influenced his ‘thoughts’ and ‘practices’. In fact, it is
very likely that the Dutch climate nurtured Plempius’ interest in natu-
ral history and empiricism, and his familiarity with the wondrous effects
of optical devices. Although in Amsterdam there was no court culture,
there were plenty of wealthy merchants, pharmacists and physicians
who – much like courtiers – participated in the contemporary interest in
collecting and creating natural wonders.37 Many of them had their own
natural historical collections, often impressive and well-known in other
countries, attracting visitors from all over Europe.38 Such collections often

35 On the connections between those French philosophers, see Cook H.J., “The New
Philosophy in the Low Countries”, in Porter R.-Mikulás (eds.), The Scientific Revolution
in National Context (Cambridge: 1992) 128–129. On their common interest in vision, see
Armogathe J.-R., “The Rainbow: A Privileged Epistemological Model”, in Gaukroger S. –
Schuster J. – Sutton J. (eds.), Descartes’ Natural Philosophy (London-New York: 2002)
249–257. On Plempius’ influence on Peiresc, see Bloch O.R., La philosophie de Gassendi.
Nominalisme, matérialisme et métaphysique, Archives Internationales d’Histoire des Idées
38 (The Hague: 1971) 6.
36 Plempius Vopiscus Fortunatus, Verhandelingh der spieren (Amsterdam, Jacob Aertsz.:
1630); Cabrolius Bartholomaeus, Ontleeding des menschelycken lichaems, tr. Plempius V.F.
(Amsterdam, Hendrick Laurentsz.: 1633).
37 Harold Cook has recently highlighted the relationship between the Dutch mercantile
state and the development of medicine, and gives an excellent contextualised account of
medicine in the Dutch Republic, Cook H.J., Matters of Exchange. Commerce, Medicine, and
Science in the Dutch Golden Age (New Haven-London: 2008).
38 On medical collections in Holland at the turn of the seventeenth century, see Swan C.,
“Making Sense of Medical Collections in Early Modern Holland: The Uses of Wonder”,
 vision and the camera obscura 581

included optical devices. The impressive ‘Cunstcamer’ of Christiaen Porret

(1554–1627), for instance, a French-born pharmacist in Leiden, included
optical devices, as can be deduced from the auction catalogue of his col-
lection that was printed in 1628, one year after his death.39 Of Constantijn
Huygens (1596–1687), we know that he possessed a camera obscura.40 We
should also bear in mind the high value that was placed on anatomical
dissection in the Republic: efforts by the curators of Leiden University
to attract the foremost anatomists; the construction of a proper anatomy
theatre; the popularity of the public dissections in Amsterdam; the popu-
larity and number of newly-published anatomical works.41

The Camera Obscura in the Ophthalmographia

The Ophthalmographia of 1632 consists of five books. It is in Book Two,
on the function (actio) of the entire organ, that Plempius explains his
‘modus visionis’. Plempius’s treatise is a work of erudition, displaying his
knowledge of all types of related sources on the subject, be they medical,
philosophical or mathematical, dedicated explicitly to a scholarly public
of both physicians and philosophers.42 This is very much the case when
he explains the ‘modus visionis’ in Book Two: after setting the scene, with
lengthy discussions on the essential concepts involved in the process of
seeing – such as lumen and species – he gives a critical overview of the
different opinions held among his predecessors, mainly philosophers
and opticians. He concentrates on the discussion on the ‘modus visionis’
within the medical world as well.43 What is important here, as discussed
above, is that for most of the early modern physicians – unlike Plempius
himself – the key to good sight lay in the visual spirits. Only in chapter 19
does the title finally promise that we arrive at the ‘true modus visionis’,
the one to which he had alluded in advance so many times. But Plempius
would not be Plempius if he did not precede his exposition yet again by a

in Smith P.H. – Schmidt B. (eds.), Making Knowledge in Early Modern Europe. Practices,
Objects, and Texts, 1400–1800 (Chicago-London: 2007) 199–213. She argues that the category
of wonder ‘helps substantially to account for the impact these collections may have had
and, indeed, for the ways in which they functioned philosophically’ (213).
39 See Swan, “Making Sense” 208.
40 Wenzel N., “The Camera Obscura II: Images and Texts”, in Lefèvre W. (ed.), Inside
the Camera Obscura. Optics and Art under the Spell of the Projected Image (Berlin: 2007)
13–30, 23.
41 Cook, “New Philosophy” 115–149.
42 See the letter to the reader in the first edition of the Ophthalmographia.
43 Plempius, Ophthalmographia 73–75.
582 katrien vanagt

refutation of some predecessors, this time those who introduced some

new elements, such as Platter. So, once more, he keeps his reader wait-
ing until, finally, aware of the reader’s increasing frustration, he directly
addresses himself to them: ‘But reader, in order not to keep you waiting
any longer, I will now come to the true modus [visionis]’.44
It is necessary to place so much emphasis on the structure of the book –
on all that precedes Plempius’ actual introduction of the camera – because
I believe that it forms an integral part of his argumentative structure. The
lengthy and contradictory discussions forced the reader to realise that
there was an impasse in the way of thinking on the ‘modus visionis’, and
made him long for a way out. When Plempius finally presents the camera,
the desired effect is that of a deus ex machina, not only because it will
serve to resolve the deadlock, but also because it is an utterly new and
spectacular element, borrowed from the magical and mathematical tradi-
tion but alien to medical discourse. Without those lengthy introductory
discussions, his camera would not have had the same effect.
After so many refutations and arguments, therefore, Plempius merely
invites his reader to enter with him into a dark room – camera obscura –
and to experience the marvellous spectacle: ‘enter with me into the cam-
era obscura’, he simply says.45 That his invitation is more than a rhetorical
procedure to gain authority for his experiment, but is a genuine exhorta-
tion to repeat the experiment, is clear not only because of his insistence
and the detailed instructions with which he describes the instrument, but
also because of the element of wonder, which, as I will argue below, forms
an essential part of his argument. He mentions many more details than
are strictly necessary to understand the working of the device, and insists
several times that there is no reason not to undertake the experiment:
making a camera obscura takes only a little effort, it does not cost any-
thing and the result is absolutely wonderful and spectacular.46 Rather than
a mere description of an event, it is a ‘how-to’ manual for his readers.
Plempius is aware of the difficulties that one will encounter when
transforming an ordinary room into a camera obscura, and suggests in
very concrete ways how to overcome them. Indeed, we should remem-
ber that the camera obscura was at first simply what its name suggests, a
darkened room, although by the mid-twenties smaller portable models

44 Plempius, Ophthalmographia 77 ‘Sed ne te suspendam diutius, verum modum expli-

care aggredior’.
45 Plempius, Ophthalmographia 77 ‘. . . ingredere mecum obscuram hanc cameram’.
46 For instance, Plempius, Ophthalmographia 78 ‘Atque haec omnia perpauxilla opera
tum nullis sumtibus potes experiri’.
 vision and the camera obscura 583

also circulated.47 Plempius urges his readers to close all doors and win-
dows well, and block any openings or cracks, so that no light at all can
enter into the room. Then one should make a very small opening in the
frame of the window. But one should be careful, if the wood is too thick,
and open it a little with a pickaxe.48 He also advises how to construct a
small roof above the aperture in order to prevent too much light from
entering.49
It may be surprising to find so many details, and to see a medical doctor
at work with hammer and axe, but this does not seem to hinder Plem-
pius. One gets the impression that the new type of physician that Plem-
pius embodies no longer has an aversion towards using his hands. On the
contrary, he considers this necessary in order to come to knowledge, as
his involvement with anatomical dissections also proves. I would even
argue that his involvement in dissecting activities constituted an impor-
tant step towards the type of experimental activities we encounter here
or, vice versa, that his experiments were closely linked to his anatomical
activities.50
This is important from a methodological point of view: Plempius
presents us with a new way of generating physiological knowledge. It is
known that anatomy generated physiological knowledge.51 But dissection
and reflection alone were no longer enough for generating physiologi-
cal knowledge: one needed to go a step further and undertake experi-
ments. Knowledge, even knowledge about the body, had to be unravelled
manually, by dissecting bodies, and had to be (re-)constructed manu-
ally, by conducting experiments. So, the generation of physiological

47 See Wenzel, “Camera Obscura” 15–24.

48 Plempius, Ophthalmographia 77 ‘Quod si fenestrae asser crassior sit, ita ut partes
foramen circumstantes opacae quoquo modo reddantur, dolabra vel alio instrumento
attenuetur, atque impedimenta auferantur, donec liber prospectus per foramen pateat ad
omnes res foris existentes, quae intus sunt exhibendae ad spectaculum’.
49 Plempius, Ophthalmographia 78 ‘suggrundia seu imbricamentum, foramini super-
addere’.
50 By the 1620s, dissecting bodies had become a common practice to investigate the
body, see Park K., “The Criminal and the Saintly Body: Autopsy and Dissection in Renais-
sance Italy”, Renaissance Quarterly 47 (1994) 1–33.
51 On the link between anatomy and physiology, see especially Cunningham A., “The
Pen and the Sword: Recovering the Disciplinary Identity of Physiology and Anatomy
before 1800. I: Old Physiology – The Pen, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part
C. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 33 (2002) 631–665
and idem, “The Pen and the Sword: Recovering the Disciplinary Identity of Physiology and
Anatomy before 1800 II: Old Anatomy – The Sword”, Studies in History and Philosophy of
Science Part C. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 34
(2003) 51–76.
584 katrien vanagt

knowledge requires a double process, one of de-construction and one of

re-construction.
Plempius furthermore suggests that his reader should undertake some
small experiments within their dark room in order to achieve the best
image, such as to moving the paper wall backwards and forwards, and
doing the same with the objects outside that one wants to see projected,
in order to explore what is the best size of opening (if it is too big the
image will be confused, if too small there will be insufficient light) and,
above all, he advises his readers to place a convex lens in front of the
opening. He explains briefly that the lens produces an infractio whereby
the species are brought back together so as to obtain a clearer image (‘veg-
etiores’). The inversion of the image, however, remains.52
That Plempius urges his readers to participate in and repeat his experi-
ments, to experience the experiments themselves, is also interesting from
a methodological point of view. Because for Plempius, to believe him – or,
to put it in more scholarly terms, ‘to credit him with authority’ – is not
enough.53 The whole power of Plempius’s argument lies precisely in re-
constructing and undergoing the experience, as he repeats several times.
He is convinced that whoever undergoes the experience will need no
further demonstrations. Only by reconstructing and repeating the experi-
ments, and exploring the conditions of image formation, thus assum-
ing for oneself the role of wonder-maker, will one realise that there are
actually no occult powers and no magic involved; except, that is, for
natural magic.
Words cannot describe the wonder of what happens in a camera, and
surely cannot produce the same effect as wonder itself. Think of the well-
known letter written by Constantijn Huygens to his parents about the
marvels of his camera: ‘it is not possible for me to reveal the beauty to
you in words’.54 For contemporary readers used to pictures and movies, it
might be difficult to appreciate what was so wondrous about the images
in a camera obscura, but early modern men were deeply impressed by
them. Apart from the repeated exclamations of Della Porta and Plempius
in their publications on the subject, one only needs to consider the more
disinterested testimony of Constantijn Huygens, in the letter to his par-
ents just quoted.

52 Plempius, Ophthalmographia 78.

53 See Shapin S. – Schaffer S., Leviathan and the Air-pump. Hobbes, Boyle and the Experi-
mental Live (Princeton etc.: 1985).
54 Letter of April 13, 1622, quoted and translated in Wenzel, “Camera Obscura” 23.
 vision and the camera obscura 585

Plempius’ experiments with the camera obscura show that he was

involved with experimental philosophy much earlier than his participa-
tion in the discussion on the circulation of the blood might suggest. It
is not Harvey who led Plempius into (dissection) experiments: it was a
method with which he had been familiar for a long time. With the conver-
sion story, he shows himself to be the ideal reader he had in mind when
writing his Ophthalmographia. For I want to suggest here that Plempius
is attempting a new methodology not only of generating, but also of pre-
senting physiological knowledge. The reader (the medical doctor) has to
participate, to think, and to act. He cannot passively consume and accept
what he reads, but has to check it for himself, as a way of assimilating, of
re-constructing. Plempius, in a way, tries to re-educate his readers, from
passive readers into active readers – and explorers. A telling example in
relation to this occurs in Book Three, when he is explaining how the dif-
ferent humours and layers of the eye directly participate in the process of
vision; he says, well, by now you are sufficiently well-instructed to know
by yourself what will be the function. And, as a matter of fact, he then
goes on to leave it up to the reader to find the answer.

The camera obscura and the modus visionis

After his instructions on how to build the camera and assuming that his
reader has by now experienced what it is about, Plempius comes to the
heart of his exposition: the comparison between the camera obscura and
the human eye. He sums up all the parallels: the small opening corre-
sponds to the pupil, the lens to the crystalline humour (nowadays called
the lens), and the wall or paper screen to the retina, the only difference
being that the screen in the eye is round, which provides an even better
image. And thus, he concludes emphatically, ‘just as we find a picture on
the wall of the camera obscura, vision is made by a picture (picturam) of
the visible things on the surface of the retina’, borrowing here the Keplerian
term pictura [Fig. 1].55 This might seem obvious to us, but to Plempius’s
contemporaries this was far less the case. The camera was less unambigu-
ous than we might think and was subjected to different interpretations.

55 Plempius, Ophthalmographia 78 ‘visionem fieri per picturam rei visibilis in albo sub-
ruso retinae cavae superficiei pariete’. On Kepler’s use of the terms pictura and imago, see
Dupré, “Playing with Images”.
586 katrien vanagt

Fig. 1. Comparison between the working of an eye and a camera obscura in

Christoph Scheiner, Rosa Ursina (Bracciano, Andreas Phaeus: 1630).

Wolfgang Lefèvre recently stressed that the conception of the eye as

a camera obscura ‘is a remarkable fact that should be considered in the
broader context of the emerging mechanistic anatomy and physiology.
As hydraulic machines served William Harvey (1578–1657) as models of
the blood circulation, or as pneumatic systems served René Descartes
(1596–1650) as models of enervation and muscle contraction, so the cam-
era obscura served as a model of the eye, a model that facilitated a new
understanding and further study of how vision works’.56 However, it is

56 Lefèvre, Inside the Camera 8.

 vision and the camera obscura 587

important to stress that the camera as such does not deliver a new the-
ory of vision. The meaning attributed to it and the disciplinary context
in which it is appropriated can be quite different, as some examples of
Plempius’ predecessors prove. Della Porta, for instance, maintained that
it was not the retina, but the lens, that was the actual site of projection,
acting as the screen in the camera, thus supporting the widely-accepted
view that the lens was the seat of vision. For him, the importance of the
experiment is that it provides conclusive evidence against the extramis-
sion theory of vision. The Jesuit mathematician Christoph Scheiner, in
turn, placed experiments with the camera at the core of his argument, just
as Plempius had done, but clearly ascribed a different meaning to them:
he adduced the camera to prove the existence of ‘species’.57
In contrast to his predecessors, for Plempius the camera obscura con-
stitutes the ultimate proof of the process of seeing itself. What is important
here is his insight that vision happens in a fully automatic way by a projec-
tion of images, without any intervention from the body – and this, purely
and simply by way of its architecture, by how it is built: a dark room with
a small aperture in the front. It is as simple as this; there is no mystery, no
need for further storytelling, as physicians loved to do. Any ‘construction’
that fulfils these basic conditions will provide the same spectacle. This
was the main message he wanted his reader to receive very clearly. He
leaves out the mathematical explanation and details about refraction,58 in
order not to be diverted from the basic and central idea for doctors: there
is no intervention of spirits whatsoever – a process which we could call
the ‘despiritualisation’ of the eye. The camera and the eye are one and the
same instrument.

A dissection-experiment
If the eye is a camera obscura, then we should, ideally, be able to see
the image projected in the eye. Johannes Kepler had suggested something
similar, but he thought it was impossible to realise.59 As an experienced
anatomist, Plempius showed it was possible and, once again, urged his

57 Scheiner, Oculus 125–128. On Scheiner’s use of the concept ‘species’ and how he relied
on the camera to attribute meaning to it, see Pantin I., ‘Simulachrum, Species, Forma,
Imago. What was Transported by Light into the Camera Obscura? Divergent Conceptions
of Realism Revealed by Lexical Ambiguities at the Beginning of the Seventeenth Century’,
Early Science and Medicine 13 (2008) 245–269.
58 While he gives some mathematical details on refraction in another part of his book,
at this point, he only wants to get straight to the main idea.
59 Kepler, Paralipomena 170.
588 katrien vanagt

readers to undertake the experiment for themselves. Take the eye of a

freshly slaughtered ox and cut away very carefully the layers (tunicas) at
the optic nerve until the vitreous humour becomes visible, he says. But be
careful that the fluids do not flow out. Cover the back of the eye with a
thin piece of paper or with the membrane from an egg, and place the eye
as such in the opening of the camera obscura, at the place where the light
enters. Then, with you yourself standing in the camera obscura behind
the eye, you will perceive on the back a picture that represents in a per-
fect way all objects of the world outside.60 The famous depiction of this
experiment may be seen in Descartes’ Discours de la méthode [Fig. 2].61
This is really the key moment in Plempius’ exposition, because the
dead eye – even more than the camera itself – provides, paradoxically, a
kind of living proof for the fact that the eye can function as an autono-
mous instrument, with no need for the body and its spirits. In a dead eye,
there are no spirits but, nonetheless, the image appears. This idea plainly
contradicts the current belief amongst physicians that visual spirits were
essential in the process of vision. For almost all physicians – even those
who believed in intromission – ascribed to the spirits an active role in the
process of seeing. The experiment also proves that vision takes place at
the back of the eye, in the retina, and not in the crystalline humour, again
contradicting the current belief amongst physicians.
Similar experiments had been carried out by Christoph Scheiner some
years before, and were known to Plempius.62 However, again, the context
was different, and the meaning he attributed to it was also different. Schei-
ner was interested in image formation itself, in the behaviour of light in
its way throughout the eye, but not in relation to the body. For Scheiner,
the importance of the experiment with the dead eye lies in the fact that
light rays cross, that inversion takes place, and that image formation takes

60 Plempius, Ophthalmographia 79 ‘Cape oculum bovis recens mactati, et in fundo

ad nervum opticum dextre tunicas aufer, ut magnam portionem humoris vitrei detegas,
sic tamen, ut nihil ejus effundatur: dein vitreum rursus papyro aut pellicula ovi tegito,
atque oculum si fenestrae foramini imponito e regione objectorum illuminatorum. Tu igi-
tur stans in cubiculo illo obscurato retro oculum, videbis picturam perfectissime omnia
objecta repraesentantem’.
61 It is probably no coincidence that Descartes describes the same experiment in strik-
ingly similar terms in his Discours de la méthode. I do believe that Plempius’s ideas on
vision were developed in close connection with Descartes. For details and arguments, see
Vanagt K., De emancipatie van het oog. V.F. Plempius’ Ophthalmographia en de vroegmod-
erne medische denkbeelden over het zien (S.l.: 2010).
62 Scheiner referred to this experiment in his Rosa Ursina (Rome, Andreas Phaeus:
1630) 110.
 vision and the camera obscura 589

Fig. 2. Illustration of the dissection-experiment. A man standing in a camera

obscura is looking at the image of an object projected on the back wall (i.e. the
retina) of a carefully dissected eye, placed in the opening of the camera in René
Descartes, Discours de la Méthode (Leiden, Jan Maire: 1637).
590 katrien vanagt

place on the retina. Plempius, on the other hand, realises that much more
is at stake than settling the question of intromission and the seat of vision;
what is crucial here is the idea of a fully automatic projection. Unlike his
mathematical predecessors, as a physician raised within a holistic medi-
cal tradition, he fully appreciates the meaning of this disembodied eye.
By dissociating the working of the eye from that of the body, he touched
upon the essence of medical thinking. As a philosopher, Plempius was
aware of the epistemological meaning of the device.

Conclusion

Plempius’ despiritualised view of the eye, and his reliance on instruments

and experiments borrowed from the magical and mathematical tradi-
tions, did not imply a radical break with the classical heritage. Like his
fellow physicians, Plempius was eager to place his ideas within the clas-
sical tradition and deliberately chose to follow in the footsteps of Aris-
totle. If Galen was explicitly dismissed and made the object of ridicule
by Plempius, Aristotle was venerated more strongly than ever. Plempius
took great pains to present the Keplerian theory of vision as a logical out-
come of Aristotle’s ideas. This is a remarkable fact, even more since we
know that Kepler insisted how far Aristotle’s theory of light and vision was
from his own in nearly all particulars, as he himself claims.63 Kepler, how-
ever, rightly suspected that Aristotelians would find a way to save their
master.64
The consequences of these new insights into vision turn out to be fun-
damental for Plempius’s ideas about the diseased eye and were to give a
new direction to his therapy. An analysis of the final book of the Ophthal-
mographia reveals that Plempius’s theory found a counterpart in the prac-
tice of medicine, or at least in his ideas about the practice of medicine: he
re-thought the different problems with vision in accordance with his new
theory and formulated therapeutic advice that would not contradict them,
leaving out most of the traditional advice concerning one’s way of life.65
Maybe the most telling example of this is his changing attitude towards

63 Kepler, Paralipomena 29–37.

64 Kepler, Paralipomena 37.
65 For an analysis of Plempius’s ideas on ocular diseases and therapy, see Vanagt, De
emancipatie van het oog.
 vision and the camera obscura 591

eyeglasses: only with the insight into the eye as a real camera obscura,
where the visual image is formed without the aid of visual spirits, could
physicians fully accept the use of eyeglasses and include them in their
therapies as the only remedy for problems with diminished vision.66

66 On the difficulty of giving eyeglasses a place within medical discourse, see Vanagt,
“Suspicious Spectacles”.
592 katrien vanagt

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THE TERTIUM COMPARATIONIS OF THE ELEMENTA PHYSIOLOGIAE –
JOHANN GOTTFRIED VON HERDER’S CONCEPTION OF
“TEARS” AS MEDIATORS BETWEEN THE SUBLIME AND
THE ACTUAL BODILY PHYSIOLOGY

Frank W. Stahnisch

Summary*

It has been consistently pointed out in the research literature that his own expe-
rience of interminable suffering would have led Johann Gottfried von Herder
(1744–1803) to develop ‘premature religious leanings’ during his later childhood
and early adolescence. But it is less well known that Herder’s university studies
had first taken him to the Medical Faculty of Königsberg, where he sought to
gather knowledge about his own illness and possible remedies. Because he could
not cope with the circumstances of the dissection course, he had to abandon his
classes in medicine and instead changed to studying theology and philosophy.
As Herder’s unpublished Blue Book shows, he closely followed Immanuel Kant’s
(1724–1804) exposé of the mathematical and physical sciences and developed
his own interpretations on contemporary physiology – notably of Albrecht von
Haller’s (1708–1777) Elementa physiologiae – to which Herder juxtaposed his own
considerations of the meaning of ‘tears’ for the human condition.

Introduction

The internal history of the scientific discipline of physiology – that is, the
concept-oriented as well as institution-focused historical scholarship – has
already attracted considerable attention.1 The detailed cultural picture,

* I am grateful to Helen King and Manfred Horstmanshoff for their valuable comments
on the NIAS conference-version of this paper, for providing additional reading materi-
als on the topic and for their experienced editorial hands. I also like to thank the two
anonymous referees who read the submitted manuscript for Brill and made very helpful
suggestions, as well as Peter Toohey for further intriguing thoughts on the final version of
this paper. Last but not least, I wish to thank Beth Cusitar for her thorough revision and
editing of the English language of the manuscript.
1 See, among others, Foster M., Lectures on the History of Physiology during the
Sixteenth, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Cambridge: 1907); Canguilhem G., La
formation du concept de réflexe aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris: 1955); Hall T.S., Ideas of Life
and Matter (Chicago: 1969); Rothschuh K.E., History of Physiology (Huntington, NY: 1973);
596 frank w. stahnisch

encompassing physiological theories, academic practices and lay assump-

tions, has however appeared as a research subject so far only in a very
limited sense.2 This gap becomes even more visible when early modern
developments in physiology are taken into account. Most of the current
scholarship has focused on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when
experimental physiology emerged on the scene as the most innovative
discipline in biomedicine. Everyone wanted to be physiological – that
is, scientific (wissenschaftlich).3 However, when we follow the term back
into the Early Modern period, as the present chapter intends to do, we
find many more, and very different, meanings of ‘physiology’.4 I shall take
the German theologian, philosopher and polymath Johann Gottfried von
Herder (1744–1803) as my case study.5 As I will show, ancient concepts
of physiology were much alive in public and scientific discussions of the

Schiller J., Physiologie et classification. Relations historiques (Paris: 1980) and the contribu-
tion of V. Nutton in this volume, 27–40.
2 Notable exceptions, for example, are: Lesch J.E., Science and Medicine in France. The
Emergence of Experimental Physiology, 1790–1855 (Cambridge: 1984); Coleman W. – Holmes
F.L. (eds.), The Investigative Enterprise. Experimental Physiology in Nineteenth-Century Med-
icine (Berkeley: 1988); Sarasin P., Reizbare Machinen. Eine Geschichte des Körpers 1765–1914
(Frankfurt: 2001); Stahnisch F., Ideas in Action. Der Funktionsbegriff und seine methodo­
logische Rolle im Forschungsprogramm des Experimentalphysiologen François Magendie
(1783–1855) (Münster-Hamburg-London: 2003) and Schmidgen H. – Geimer P. – Dierig S.
(eds.), Kultur im Experiment (Berlin: 2004).
3 See also: Bates D., “Why not call Modern Medicine ‘Alternative’?”, Perspectives in Biol-
ogy and Medicine 43 (2000) 502–518.
4 On the succession of empirical models see: Duchesneau F., La physiologie des lumières.
Empirisme, modèles et théories (The Hague: 1982), on the century-long structure and func-
tion debate: Debru C. (ed.), Essays in the History of the Physiological Sciences (Amsterdam-
Atlanta GA: 1995), and for the experimental tradition in physiology, see: Tansey E.M., “The
Physiological Tradition”, in Bynum W.F. – Porter R. (eds.), Companion Encyclopaedia of
the History of Medicine (London-New York: 1996) 120–152. An overview of major topics
in Early Modern Physiology and their cultural impact is given in: Rousseau G.S., “Nerves,
Spirits, and Fibres: Towards Defining the Origins of Sensibility”, in Brissenden R.F. – Eade
J.C. (eds.), Studies in the Eighteenth Century, vol. III, Papers presented at the Third David
Nichol Smith Memorial Seminar, Canberra 1973 (Toronto: 1973) 137–157; Rousseau G.S. (ed.),
The Languages of Psyche. Mind and Body in Enlightenment Thought (Berkeley-Los Angeles-
Oxford: 1990).
5 Herder’s interest in physiology has been explored from three directions: Erna Lesky
focused on Herder’s preoccupation with the brain sciences: Lesky E., “Gall und Herder”,
Clio Medica 2 (1967) 85–96, Wolfgang Pross traced Herder’s reception of Haller’s theory
of the physiological forces: Pross W., “Herders Konzept der organischen Kräfte und die
Wirkung der Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit auf Carl Friedrich
Kielmeyer”, in Kanz K.T. (ed.), Philosophie des Organischen in der Goethezeit. Studien zu
Werk und Wirkung des Naturforschers Carl Friedrich Kielmeyer (1765–1844) (Stuttgart: 1994)
81–99 and Michael Hagner has investigated Herder’s combination of physiological and
anthropological writings: Hagner M., “The Soul and the Brain between Anatomy and
Naturphilosophie in the Early Nineteenth Century”, Medical History 36 (1992) 1–33.
 “tears” as mediators 597

early Enlightenment.6 Nevertheless, their meanings and the analogical

models themselves had already acquired very different connotations from
those expounded in the physiology of Aristotle (384–322 BC) or Galen
(129–200/216 AD), in comparison with Herder’s representations of the
term. Yet Herder’s views should by no means be neglected as those of a
physiological, eclectic ‘layman’, because as a major cultural philosopher,
a medically-learned correspondent with natural historians, and a fervent
critic of various learned journals and Blätter,7 he exerted an enormous
influence on the general culture of his contemporaries.8
Herder’s views on contemporary physiology will be scrutinised here by
paying special attention to the subject of ‘tears’.9 It has frequently been
pointed out that Herder’s concern with subjects from medicine and illness
came from his own experience of chronic personal suffering. It was argued,
for example, that his personal biographical background determined his
‘premature religious leanings’ during his later childhood and adoles-
cence, as well as his preoccupation with a pastoral theory of suffering.10
It has gone almost unnoticed, however, that Herder’s first university
studies took him to the Faculty of Medicine at Königsberg (East-Prus-
sia) where he tried – not untypically for doctors in the long history of
medicine – to gain more knowledge about his own illness. However, the
thin-skinned student from Mohrungen (which is today Morąg, in Poland)
found himself incapable of coping with the atrocious circumstances of
the anatomical dissection course: he fainted and passed out while wit-
nessing his first dissection of a human body. As a consequence, Herder
dropped his medical courses after the first year and changed to the study
of theology and philosophy, being one of the famous pupils of Immanuel

6 See also: Craik E., The Hippocratic Treatise On Glands (Leiden: 2009) 11–13.
7 Stahnisch F., “Herders ‘anthropologische Physiologie’ und die ‘Hallesche Psychome-
dizin’: Zum Verhältnis von Körpervorstellung, Religion und Therapie im 18. Jahrhundert”,
in Sträter U. – Lehmann H. – Müller-Bahlke T. – Soboth C. – Wallmann J. (eds.), Die ‘Neue
Kreatur’. Pietismus und Anthropologie. Interdisziplinäre Pietismusforschungen. Beiträge zum
Zweiten Internationalen Kongress für Pietismusforschung 2005 (Tübingen: 2009) 821–834.
8 Zaremba M., Johann Gottfried Herder. Prediger der Humanität (Cologne: 2002) 159–186.
9 See also the introduction to the present volume.
10 Eva Schmidt, for example, deliberately included this interpretation from the obitu-
ary of the Weimar reform educator Johannes Daniel Falk (1768–1826) in her anthology
on Herder’s theological legacy: Falk J., “Weimar, Montag Nachmittags d. 19. Dzbr. 1803”,
in Schmidt E. (ed.), Herder im geistlichen Amt. Untersuchungen / Quellen / Dokumente
(Leipzig: 1956) 265–268, esp. 267. Haym R., Herder nach seinem Leben und seinen Werken
dargestellt (Berlin: 19542), vol. 1, 6f. and Zaremba, “Prediger der Humanität” 23–26 have
largely followed this perspective on Herder’s theological and philosophical intentions in
their biographical accounts.
598 frank w. stahnisch

Kant.11 Also in this period, he held a continuing interest in biology and

observed the recent progress made in surgery and medical sciences.12 As
is reflected in his still unpublished Blue Book – fittingly entitled ‘Ascetic
Things’ (Ascetische Sachen)13 – which he wrote in around 1762–1766 and
which became famous after his death, Herder went beyond Kant’s exposé
of mathematical and physical science. Over and above this, he introduced
his personal readings of the physiologists – notably, Albrecht von Haller’s
Elementa physiologiae corporis humani (1757–1766)14 – which he linked to
his own considerations of physical science and to theological, as well as
anthropological, meanings of ‘tears’. This is accurately reflected in many
of Herder’s writings, poems and sermons, where he deliberately intro-
duced his own experiences and perceptions, comparing them to the cur-
rent state of physiological knowledge.15
By drawing on Herder’s own publications, unpublished notes and con-
temporary sources on physiological theory and medical practice, this
article aims to map out the local context of the development of Herder’s
views about the physiology of tears at the cross-roads of personal suffer-
ing, intellectual and theological interests. As will become apparent later
in this article, the physiological problem of ‘tears’ emerges in specific peri-
ods, and it attracts different levels of public and academic attention. While
some earlier discussions did situate themselves in relation to the distant
past – and Herder’s physiological terminology reflects this – the interpre-
tation of physiology in general, and tears in particular, should be seen
as undergoing qualitative breaks with those trends that derived from the
Early Modern period and especially those that traced their roots to ancient
Greek and Roman medicine.16 While my focus here is on such changing

11 Nisbet H.B., “Naturgeschichte und Humangeschichte bei Goethe, Herder und Kant”,
in Matussek P. (ed.), Goethe und die Verzeitlichung der Natur (Munich: 1998) 15–43.
12 Zaremba, “Prediger der Humanität” 34.
13 Bound in a blue cover, Herder’s so-called ‘Blue Study Book’ consists of handwrit-
ten notices on natural history and philosophical metaphysics from his university time at
Königsberg between 1762 and 1766 (Capsule XX; AHN (Abteilung für Handschriften und
Nachlässe); it is kept in the Manuscript and Incunabula Collection of the Berlin State
Library; Culture Forum).
14 Cf. Haller Albrecht von, Anfangsgründe der Phisiologie des menschlichen Körpers (Ber-
lin, Christian Friedrich Voss: 1762).
15 See, for example, in: Stahnisch F., “ ‘Dieu et cerveau, rien que Dieu et cerveau!’: Johann
Gottfried von Herder (1744–1803) und die Neurowissenschaften seiner Zeit”, Würzburger
medizinhistorische Mitteilungen 26 (2007) 124–165.
16 Cf. Edelstein L., “The Relation of Ancient Philosophy to Medicine”, in Temkin O. –
Temkin C.L. (eds.), Ancient Medicine. Selected Papers of Ludwig Edelstein (Baltimore: 1967)
349–366, and more recently: Fögen T., “Tears and Crying in Graeco-Roman Antiquity: An
Introduction”, in Fögen T. (ed.), Tears in the Graeco-Roman World (Berlin: 2009) 1–16.
 “tears” as mediators 599

terminology, with technical terms being re-interpreted in ordinary lan-

guage and philosophical analyses given theological underpinnings, a new
approach to ‘Herder’s physiology’ can also help us reach a better under-
standing of the advances in history of physiology more generally. The
German polymath Johann Gottfried von Herder represents an extraordi-
nary example of a learned individual whose personal life and intellectual
work touched upon, if not centred on, an enduring occupation with under-
standing the meaning of tears and crying for the human condition.17 The
current case study offers a new and local interpretation of the broader pic-
ture of ‘physiology’, but not understood as the central discipline, since this
term was still problematic in the eighteenth century.18 Instead, together
with all the repercussions existing between physiological research, schol-
arly interest and the individual experience of health and illness, it should be
viewed as the ‘prime mover’ for the preoccupation with physiology.19 This
occurred not only among lay people but also in this professional eighteenth-
century philosopher who then acted as an important mediator for physi-
ological concepts among his contemporaries.
In the historical scholarship, there is a remarkable discrepancy with
respect to the knowledge available about Herder’s professional roles:
while there is plenty of literature on the ‘Weimar theologian’,20 the ‘school
reformer’21 and ‘Superintendent General’22 of the Princedom of Saxony-
Weimar, there is much less on his achievements in cultural anthropology,
general philosophy and, above all, on Herder as a prolific interpreter of the
biological and physiological sciences.23 Despite this imbalance in research
on Herder, I want to convey an image of him as a supreme scholar, book

17 See, for example, Minter C.J., “Literary ‘Empfindsamkeit’ and Nervous Sensibil-
ity in Eighteenth-Century Germany”, The Modern Language Review 96 (2001) 1016–1028,
esp. 1021–1024.
18 Cf. Duchesneau, “La physiologie des lumières” 141–170.
19 On the issue of great philosophers’ and scholars’ interest in medicine, as grounded
in their own illness, see Frank A.W., The Renewal of Generosity. Illness, Medicine, and How
to Live (Chicago: 2004) 3–9 and Charon R., “Bearing Witness: Sontag and the Body”, New
England Journal of Medicine 352 (2005) 756.
20 Köpke W., “Truth and Revelation: On Herder’s Theological Writings”, in Köpke W. –
Kroll S.B. (eds.), Johann Gottfried Herder. Innovator through the Ages (Bonn: 1982) 140–159.
21 Owren H., Herders Bildungsprogramm und seine Auswirkungen im 18. und 19. Jahrhun-
dert (Heidelberg: 1985).
22 Kessler M., Johann Gottfried Herder, der Theologe unter den Klassikern. Das Amt des
General-Superintendenten von Sachsen-Weimar (Berlin-New York: 2007).
23 The most comprehensive studies of the relation between Herder’s anthropological
and philosophical works have been published by Nisbet H.B., Herder and the Philosophy
and History of Science (Cambridge: 1970) and Pross W. (ed.), Johann Gottfried Herder. Werke
(Munich: 1984–2002).
600 frank w. stahnisch

collector and influential populariser of contemporary medicine and natu-

ral history; an activity situated in a particular local and personal context.
From his student days, he continued to communicate with leading aca-
demics and learned natural historians and later became a frequent guest
at natural history events at the University of Jena, rising to be a co-found-
ing member of its Society for Natural History and Science [Fig. 1].24
During this early period, and also in his later years at Weimar, Herder
frequently corresponded with cutting-edge scholars, natural historians
and contemporary physicians, a list of whom reads like the ‘Who’s Who
of eighteenth-century European science’: the Swiss reformed theologian
Johann Caspar Lavater (1741–1801),25 who developed his physiognomic
doctrine into a comprehensive research programme on psychological
character analysis, or Samuel Thomas von Sömmerring (1755–1830) of
Mainz,26 whose leading brain and nerve morphology Herder evaluated
strongly. Sömmerring’s doctrine was based on the assumption that human
neuroanatomy displayed functionally organised localizable centres, and
further held that nerve actions were the result of the exchange of ‘nervous
fluid’ between individual nerve sheets, functionally related brain parts as
well as the integrative action (sensus communis) of the brain’s ventricles.27
Other correspondents included Haller’s pupil, the physician Johann Georg
von Zimmermann (1728–1795) in Hannover,28 who acted as an important
populariser of his mentor’s theory of irritability and sensibility as well as
of empirically oriented medical practice, and the young Christoph Wil-
helm Hufeland (1762–1838),29 who was Herder’s own family physician in
Weimar. In addition, as a twenty-one year old Strasbourg student Herder

24 Stahnisch, “Herder und die Neurowissenschaften” 128f.

25 Dünzer H. – Herder F.G. von (eds.), Aus Herders Nachlass, ungedruckte Briefe von
Herder und dessen Gattin, Goethe, Schiller, Klopstock, Lenz, Jean Paul, Claudius, Lavater,
Jacobi und andern bedeutenden Zeitgenossen (Frankfurt: 1857), vol. 2, 10–209.
26 See, for example, Herder’s letter to Sömmerring on February 28th, 1785, in which he
discusses Haller’s physiological theory of nerve action and asks for Sömmerring’s judge-
ment: Dobbek W. (ed.), Herders Briefe (Weimar: 1959) 249–250.
27 This interpretation relates back to Aristotle’s introduction of the ‘sensus communis’
as a particular disposition of the psychê, which is shared by all human beings and respon-
sible for connecting the impressions from the individual sense organs within a coherent
and intelligible representation. See, in particular, Aristoteles, De anima 1, 1–2, 402a–402b
(Aristotle, De Anima (Über die Seele), in Karsch A. (ed.), III. Schriften zur Naturphilosophie
(Stuttgart: 1847), vol. 1, 1–2). See also the contributions by Kodera 143 n. 14 and Bidwell-
Steiner 666–667 in this volume.
28 Cf. Bonin D., Johann Georg Zimmermann u. Johann Gottfried Herder nach bisher unge-
druckten Briefen (s.n.: 1910).
29 See, for example, Gesche A., Sprache und die Natur des Menschen (Würzburg: 1993)
93f.
 “tears” as mediators 601

Fig. 1. Johann Gottfried von Herder, Certificate from the Society for Natural History
and Science, 1793.

met Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832),30 having been deeply influ-
enced by him as well due to his wider biological and geological interests.
As a result of Goethe’s proximity with Prince Carl August (1792–1862),
Herder received the influential position of theologian in the vibrant cul-
tural centre of Weimar,31 and this friendship with Goethe would continue
until his death.

30 Hahn K.-H., Briefe an Goethe. Gesamtausgabe in Regestform (Weimar: 1981) 164.

31 Ebersbach V., Carl August. Goethes Herzog und Freund (Cologne: 1998) 101–103.
602 frank w. stahnisch

As I have already suggested, it was in Herder’s student years in particu-

lar that his later interests in medicine and the natural sciences emerged.
I shall now consider these in more detail. Looking at Herder’s inaugural
lecture of 1765 as a new Instructor of the Cathedral School in Riga (Latvia),
Maryland-based literary scholar Simon Richter has strikingly mapped the
impressive multi-layered interests of this early-Enlightenment polymath.32
From his early years in Königsberg and the school appointment in Riga,
Herder taught and read widely in natural history, geography, European
history, mathematics, French language and culture, rhetoric and philoso-
phy. His knowledge and expertise in theology, the ancient languages and
ancient history went far beyond what could have been expected from a
contemporary clergyman. What he charmingly said about Haller’s learned
attitude, when he spoke about the latter’s ‘heavy weight of the [Bernese]
Alps on his learned shoulders’ (die Alpenlast der Gelehrsamkeit auf seinen
Schultern), also held true for Herder himself.33 The thematic intersections34
between natural history, philosophy and areas of aesthetics were a direct
expression of Herder’s urge to transcend and question discrete subject
boundaries.35 This tendency to blend together different fields of knowl-
edge also emerged later in his reflections on contemporary physiological
assumptions and, in particular, in his discussion of the ‘irritability’36 of
the bodily organs – a concept also central for apprehending the status of
‘tears’ in Herder’s thought. As the medical historian Richard Töllner has
pointed out, Haller’s example of the inherent vital and irritable disposi-
tion of the muscle fibres to act similarly serves the characterisation of
Herder’s views on the physiology of the tear glands: ‘In Haller, irritability
of the soul was one of the major traits of the discoverer of “irritability’s”
own character’.37
Interestingly, past research in medical history has not addressed the
question of how suffering might have influenced and changed the intel-
lectual views of this great philosopher and theologian, and investigations

32 Richter S., “Medizinischer und ästhetischer Diskurs im 18. Jahrhundert: Herder und
Haller über Reiz”, Lessing Yearbook 25 (1993) 83–95.
33 Herder J.G. von, “Briefe zur Beförderung der Humanität, Achte Sammlung”, in Suphan
B. (ed.), Sämtliche Werke (Berlin: 1883) 116.
34 This is of course also the title of the series in which this volume appears.
35 Richter, “Medizinischer und ästhetischer Diskurs” 85–87.
36 Cf. Pross W., “Haller und die Aufklärung”, in Steinke H. – Boschung U. – Pross W.
(eds.), Albrecht von Haller. Leben. Werk. Epoche (Göttingen: 2008) 415–460, esp. 441–448.
37 Töllner R., “Zur Deutung der ‘Fragmente Religioser Empfindungen’ ”, in Steinke H. –
Boschung U. – Pross W. (eds.), Albrecht von Haller. Leben. Werk. Epoche (Göttingen: 2008)
485–496, esp. 485; Engl. tr. F.W.S.
 “tears” as mediators 603

from general social and cultural history have only been reluctantly touched
upon in this context.38 This Weimar theologian and philosopher still pres-
ents many puzzles to today’s scholars; in particular, the means by which
he dealt with questions of health, disease and dying. As the latter part of
this article will argue, there is an intriguing perspective to be gained from
developing a pathographic understanding of Herder’s life. This perspective
does not only illuminate some paths of thought and his theological lean-
ings, but sheds further light on how he integrated contemporary medical
advances into the philosophical accounts in which he popularised such
advances. The next part of my essay, on Herder’s disease, explores this
perspective further by looking at the biographical landmarks in his life,
while trying to suggest how his suffering influenced his understanding of
human physiology and illness.

Herder’s disease: ‘Dacrocystitis congenita’ 39

Born with a functionally constricted tear duct of the right eye, from
early childhood onwards, Herder suffered immensely from recurrent and
chronic infections of this eye and the adjacent parts of his face. Quite
strikingly, as his early biographer, the idealist philosopher Rudolph Haym
(1821–1901), has pointed out, most of the portrait depictions show Herder
from the left side of his face [Fig. 2].40
In 1770, when Herder was twenty-six years old, he screwed up his cour-
age and sought the help of a renowned ophthalmic surgeon; he travelled
to the Alsatian capital of Strasbourg to consult with the local professor
of surgery, Johann Friedrich Lobstein (1734–1786).41 Lobstein first tried

38 An exceptional article is: Wapnewski P., “Herders Leiden”, in Dietze W. – Dahnke
H.-D. – Goldammer P. – Hahn K.-H. – Otto R. (eds.), Herder Kolloquium, Referate und Dis-
kussionsbeiträge 1978 (Weimar: 1980) 1001–1016. However, also Wapnewski did not address
the interplay between experiences of illness and the specific intellectual development of
Herder’s thought and belief system.
39 ‘Dacrocystitis congenita’ is characterised through recurrent infections of the nasal
tear duct caused by a congenital obliteration of the duct’s opening in the lower eyelid. Zink
C., “Dacrocystitis congenita”, in Zink C. – Engst R. – Kriwet V. – Schäbl H. – Spitzer T. –
Weimann A. – Wolters, J.-W. (eds.), Pschyrembel klinisches Wörterbuch mit klinischen
Syndromen und Nomina Anatomica (Berlin-New York: 1986255) 321. On the development of
major surgical treatment options in this condition, see: Werb A., “The History and Devel-
opment of Lacrimal Surgery in England and Europe”, Advances in Ophthalmic Plastic and
Reconstructive Surgery 5 (1986) 233–240.
40 Haym, “Herder nach seinem Leben” 108–117.
41 Wapnewski, “Herders Leiden” 1012–1016.
604 frank w. stahnisch

Fig. 2. Friedrich Rehberg, Johann Gottfried von Herder, before 1800. Archival records
of Johann Gottfried Herder, Goethe and Schiller Archive. Oil portrait on canvas.

blood-letting and, when this was unsuccessful, he then introduced a probe

into the tear duct which also was unable to open its lumen.42 The surgical
procedures were performed within the extended period of a three-month
stay, during which Herder consulted a number of doctors and received
additional physical treatment in the hospital as well as in the baths.
This medical journey had been pre-planned and organised by his friend
Goethe, who between 1768 and 1771 studied Law at Strasbourg University

42 For the new therapeutic options available at the time, as well as the restrictions
imposed on surgical intervention by the still prevailing humoral physiological model, see
Ruisinger M., “Der flüssige Kristall. Anatomische Forschung und therapeutische Praxis bei
Lorenz Heister (1683–1758) am Beispiel des Starleidens”, in Helm J. – Stukenbrock K. (eds.),
Anatomie. Sektionen einer medizinischen Wissenschaft im 18. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: 2003)
101–125, which presents the full array of surgical procedures used by the famous Helmstedt
surgeon Lorenz Heister (1683–1758).
 “tears” as mediators 605

and came to appreciate Lobstein’s expertise as a surgeon and anatomist

while taking medical classes during his first winter semester there.43 Lob-
stein then ventured to operate on Herder’s obliteration of the tear duct,
intending to widen the anatomical lumen underneath the tear sac (the
communication between the eye and nose). Following this procedure, a
highly painful and purulent condition developed, which – read in terms of
modern understandings of infection – developed into a clear dacrocystitis
of the annexes to the right eye.44 Goethe described the whole surgical
procedure, the punctuation of the ensuing fistula and cauterisation of the
infected red part of Herder’s eye in his 1811 novel ‘Out of my Life. Poetry
and Truth’ (‘Aus meinem Leben. Dichtung und Wahrheit’),45 while using
Herder’s own description:
A little channel was drilled into the [Herder’s] constantly blocked nose, but
the tears did not want to flow through the carefully crafted duct [. . .]. I was
told that my tear sac did not have a normal anatomical position. The sac
was pressed in a different direction, too hard, or even too much of a sac, or
what do I know? In short, now I have to sit still – under the hands of this
otherwise highly able surgeon – full of pain and impatience. I can only trust
and hope that the flexibility of my tear sac will later help me to cope with
the weather conditions and my eternal cold, which have both conspired
against me.46
Dr. Lobstein even ventured to use a newly invented technique: he sought
to widen the tear sac by pressing little wax sponges and gentian roots

43 Minor J.M. Le, “The chair of anatomy in the Faculty of Medicine at Strasbourg: 350th
anniversary of its foundation”, Surgical and Radiological Anatomy 24 (2002) 1–5.
44 Effective treatment of medical problems concerning the lacrimal glands and tear
ducts had to wait until more specific operations on the lacrimal glands became possible
through inventions such as the lacrimal probe of William Bowman (1816–1892) and the
canaliculus knife of Adolph Weber (1829–1915) around 1860. In fact, it would not be incor-
rect to say that modern dacryology and lacrimal surgery started only in the latter half of
the nineteenth century. See also: Werb, “The History and Development of Lacrimal Sur-
gery” 233–240.
45 Cf. Goethe J.W. von, Aus meinem Leben. Dichtung und Wahrheit. Zweite Abtheylung,
Book 10 (Tübingen: 1816).
46 ‘Man bohrte in die stets verstopfte Nase [Herders] einen Kanal, freilich wollten die
Thränen in den so geschickt gegrabnen Kanal nicht abfliessen [. . .], da mein Thränensack
anders liege, oder anders gedrückt sey, oder zu hart und zu sehr Sack sei, oder, was weiss
ich mehr? Kurz da muss ich unter den Händen meines sonst sehr geschickten Operateurs
noch dasitzen voll Schmerz und Ungeduld und auf die Flexibilität meines Thränensacks,
mit dem Wetter und ewiger Schnuppe gegen mich im Bunde sind, hoffen’. From Her­der’s
letter to Caroline Flachsland (1750–1809) in Darmstadt, on November 6, 1770, in Schauer H.
(ed.), Herders Briefwechsel mit Caroline Flachsland. Nach den Handschriften des Goethe- und
Schillerarchivs, vol. 39 (Weimar: 1928) 442f., Engl. tr. F.W.S.
606 frank w. stahnisch

into the opening while he continued his soundings. But this manoeuvre,
likewise, failed to deliver the anticipated result. The wound continued to
bleed and the tear sac was increasingly filled with a purulent substance
so that the duct once again became obstructed.47 For Herder, the phi-
losopher-patient, this cure eventually ended in a complete disaster – in
‘drooping’ and ‘annoyance’. As a sign of his own distress and also as a
souvenir of the suffering he had endured, Herder kept the surgical lead
rod with which his wound had so often been poked, for the rest of his life.
Following the disappointing outcome to his treatment, he left Strasbourg
in February 1771 and returned to Bückeburg, near Hannover, where he
held the position of chaplain to the court of Schaumburg-Lippe. Herder’s
dreadful experiences are well reflected in a letter of March 1771 to the mer-
chant’s wife, Amalia Rheinholdina Busch (1733–1792), in whose house in
Riga he had formerly educated the family’s four children while continuing
his theology studies and serving as the cathedral cantor:
Three weeks have turned into twice three months. One surgical incision and
one act of nose drilling developed into twenty surgical operations and two
hundred soundings of my tear duct. The result: My eye appears worse than it
had ever been; after all the pain, the costs, the disturbances, and the annoy-
ances, etc.! I now have enough material to write a tragically amusing story
[epopee] or a piece of ophthalmomachism [an ophthalmomachia].48
The continuation of this diseased condition of his right eye resulted in
great psychic distress for Herder throughout his whole life. Therefore, is it
surprising that even close friends, such as Goethe, perceived him as ‘sus-
picious’, ‘oversensitive’, often with ‘brusque reactions’, ‘anxious’ and with
a ‘depressing’ effect on others? In fact, Goethe himself states that Herder
exerted a quasi-magical influence on him, but he did not want to let him-
self be disturbed by Herder’s continuous lamentations and sometimes
outright hostile attitude, regarding it as explicable in terms of what he had

47 Today, conditions similar to Herder’s are treated through application of antibiotics

and additional surgical reconstruction of an artificial tear duct or by canaliculorhinostomia –
the insertion of a plastic tube into the mucosa of the internal nose: Patel B., “Management
of Acquired Nasolacrimal Duct Obstruction: External and Endonasal Dacryocystorhinos-
tomy: Is there a Third Way?”, British Journal of Opthalmology 93 (2009) 1438–1443.
48 ‘Aus den drey Wochen sind nicht blos zweimal drei Monathe, sondern aus Einem
Schnitt und Einer Nasenbohrung so sind wohl 20. Schnitte u. 200. Sondirungen etc.
geworden, u. endlich nach allen Schmerzen, Kosten, Unruhen, Verdrüsslichkeiten etc.
ist mein Auge ärger, als es war! Dass ich Materie gnug hätte, eine höchst tragischlustige
Epopee oder Ophthalmomachie zu schreiben!’. From Herder’s letter to Amalia Rhein­
holdina Busch in Riga, on March-28, 1771, in Hahn K.-H. (ed.), Briefe. Gesamtausgabe,
1763–1803 (Weimar: 1984), vol. 1, 323; Engl. tr. F.W.S.
 “tears” as mediators 607

undergone,49 ‘as his [Herder’s] illness increased, so did his tendency to dis-
agree vehemently, overshadowing and weakening his invaluable liveliness
and amiability. One could not approach him without strongly appreciat-
ing his mild character, but also one did not come back from him without
being greatly aggrieved [. . .]’.50 Not only his good friend Goethe and his
wife Caroline, but also other close friends, perceived that Herder’s health
was changed and influenced over long periods of depressive moods. This
can certainly be traced back to the enduring pain suffered as a result of
the congenital eye condition and his dreadful experiences with surgeons
and other physicians. It is striking to see that Herder himself mentioned
that he was suffering from a ‘hidden disease of the gall bladder’, which –
as a symptom taken from humoral pathology – fits well with his gen-
eral constitution, and he often saw new occurrences as a ‘relapse of his
illness’.51
As a consequence of his chronic eye disease and vulnerable constitu-
tion, beginning in the 1770s and continuing throughout his whole life,
Herder was a frequent visitor to the spas of Bad Pyrmont (Lower Sax-
ony), Carlsbad (Bohemia) and Aachen (in the Rhineland).52 It seemed
that the tranquillity of the spa hotels and the seclusion of these healing
places helped him to regain his mental equilibrium and recover from the
exertion of his office as Superintendent General. Like his friend Goethe,
Herder was a fervent supporter of therapeutic water cures, an apprecia-
tion that further developed through his personal acquaintance with the
great physician Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland of Weimar. They both met in
the duke’s residency of Thuringia and later, in 1787, as their pastor Herder
even presided over the marriage between Christoph Wilhelm and Juliane
Amelung (1771–1845). Young Hufeland, with his magnum opus of 1797,
‘Macrobiotics. The Art of Prolonging Human Life’ (Makrobiotik. Die Kunst,
das menschliche Leben zu verlängern), soon developed into one of the
most influential physicians and medical theorists of this time.53 Moreover,
he made great progress in promoting the healing effect of bathing, the

49 Goethe J.W. von, quoted in Wapnewski, “Herders Leiden” 1016.

50 Goethe J.W. von, quoted in Kohlhagen N. – Sunnus S., Eine Liebe in Weimar. Caroline
Flachsland und Johann Gottfried Herder (Stuttgart: 19942) 209.
51 Herder in his letter to Busch, in Hahn “Briefe: Gesamtausgabe” 67; Engl. tr. F.W.S.
52 Zunckel J.G., “Gedächtnisrede am Grabe Sr. Hochwürd. Magnificenz des Herrn Präsi-
denten von Herder gesprochen am 21sten Dezember 1803”, in Schmidt, “Herder im geistli-
chen Amt” 280.
53 Genschorek W., Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland. Der Arzt, der das Leben verlängern half
(Leipzig: 19866) 38–76.
608 frank w. stahnisch

vitalising and positively ‘irritating’ effect of cold water applications, and

he underlined the general ‘activation’ of natural healing powers through
hydrotherapy.54
As already indicated above, there are numerous suggestions that
Herder’s mood changes and sufferings were not really of an acute nature,
or were just reactions to a somatic illness. Concentrating on an earlier let-
ter from 1777 to his editor friend Johann Friedrich Hartknoch (1740–1789)
in Königsberg, a chronic ailment seemed to have affected Herder,55 exem-
plified by numerous ‘symptoms of the mind’. This included, among other
things, his prolonged dissatisfaction with his elections into public posi-
tions, his continuous personal bitterness over money troubles and his ten-
dency to seek refuge in the private context of his family. The noticeable
signs and symptoms displayed by Herder appear to represent an overarch-
ing psychosomatic disorder, apparently caused from ongoing depressive
resentment.56 Due to feeling deep-seated disappointment that he could
never be relieved of his early childhood disease, Herder often experienced
bouts of extreme bad temper that eventually, over time, diminished – in
later years only disturbed as a result of an ailment of the right hypochon-
driac region and individual episodes of ‘gall fever’.57

Herder’s interest in medicine and his reflections on the natural history

and physiology of his time

According to many Herder scholars, his academic interest in medicine and

preoccupation with themes from natural history and physiology started
with his initial university studies at the Königsberg Medical School.58 In

54 Wittern R., “Natur kontra Naturwissenschaft: Zur Auseinandersetzung zwischen

Naturheilkunde und Schulmedizin im späten 19. Jahrhundert”, Erlanger Universitätsreden
37 (1992) 7.
55 Kohlhagen – Sunnus, “Eine Liebe in Weimar” 214, Biedrzynski E., Goethes Weimar.
Das Lexikon der Personen und Schauplätze (Zurich: 1992) 199f.
56 Similar perspectives are still taken in recent research programs on tears and crying
as psychosomatic processes; see, for example: Vingerhoets A.J.J.M. – Bylsma L.M. – Rot-
tenberg J., “Crying: A Biopsychosocial Phenomenon”, in Fögen T. (ed.), Tears in the Graeco-
Roman World (Berlin: 2009) 439–475.
57 Falk J., “Nachrufe”, Zeitung für die elegante Welt (December 19th, 1803) 1241 and (Janu-
ary 3rd, 1804) 3.
58 See, for example, Häfner R., “ ‘L’âme est une neurologie en miniature’: Herder und die
Neurophysiologie Charles Bonnets”, in Schings H.-J. (ed.), Der ganze Mensch. Anthropologie
und Literatur im 18. Jahrhundert. DFG-Symposion 1992 (Stuttgart: 1994) 391–409, esp. 391–396,
 “tears” as mediators 609

1762, Herder had followed the Prussian regiment surgeon Johann Christian
Schwartz-Erla (ca. 1710–ca. 1769) from his home province of Livonia to the
East Prussian capital, where the latter practised for many years and where
he had held close ties to the Medical Faculty. Not only did Schwartz-Erla
try to find effective treatment for young Herder’s eye condition as well
as offering him the opportunity to study medicine, he also asked him,
in return, to translate his own surgical work into Latin. This was his first
contact with medical writing.59
Herder had already written back to his parents as well as to his for-
mer elementary school teacher Sebastian Friedrich Trescho (1733–1804) in
Mohrungen, saying that he was quite overwhelmed by the demands of his
changed life in Königsberg and the new burden brought by his university
studies. As we have seen, he therefore did not continue his medical classes
after the first year, instead changing to theology and philosophy. Like his
teacher Kant, he continued to be interested in natural history and in the
fascinating progress being made in medicine, physiology and surgery in
the early Enlightenment; this is reflected in his early study compilations,
the Blue Book (ca. 1762–1766) from Königsberg and also his later Brown
Book (1765).60 Both include many excerpts from Kant’s lectures as well as
Herder’s additional readings in natural history and physiology; for exam-
ple, the French naturalist George-Louis Leclerc de Buffon’s (1707–1788)
Histoire Naturelle of 1769, from which Herder quoted that ‘man, in general,
is not sufficiently aware about the interior of his own body’.61 While this
could have been a direct reflection upon his own ailment, it was also an
expression of Herder’s curiosity as to what the sciences of his day could
contribute to philosophical and anthropological thought more generally.
In the Blue Book, for example, Herder referred back to the Elementa
physiologiae of the Swiss-German physician and polymath Albrecht von
Haller and drew attention to the latter’s theory of ‘irritability’ (Irritabilität
or Erregbarkeit) and ‘sensibility’ (Sensibilität or Empfindlichkeit) as major

Stiftung Weimarer Klassik (ed.), Johann Gottfried Herder. Briefe, eds. Dobbek W. – Arnold G.
(Weimar: 1996), vol. 10, 250–253.
59 Haym, “Herder nach seinem Leben” 20f.
60 Herder’s so-called ‘Brown Book’, bound in a brown cover, is a compilation of hand-
written notes, on theological and philosophical matters in particular, and includes a num-
ber of considerations on natural history. Herder completed the ‘Brown Book’ later in Riga
in East Prussia (today Latvia) (in: Capsule XXI; AHN, of the Manuscript and Incunabula
Collection of the Berlin State Library; Culture Forum).
61 See in Capsule XXIX; AHN; 1, C; 1 f/b.
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physiological concepts to explain the functioning of the living body.62 Von

Haller, recognised by eighteenth-century scholarship as one of the major
theorists of the fibre doctrine of nerve action, also introduced a new con-
cept; that the structural properties of the nerves consisted in their ‘sensi-
bility’ to external stimuli (such as in the cranial nerves leading to annexes
of the eyes) and, of the muscles, that their ‘contractility’ (as in the small
muscles of the tear glands) lay in the ability to act and move both volun-
tarily and involuntarily. Moreover, from 1757, Haller also emphasised that
any nervous fluid, remaining after it had effectively instigated movements
in the body, could be reabsorbed from the organs’ periphery and the inner
cavities, while it was being transported back to the brain directly through
the fine nerve channels. Although structurally resembling the circulation
system with flow outwards through the arteries and back through the
veins, it would form a circulatory system of its own, with the tear gland
apparatus acting as one of its pressure valves.63 In addition, Haller points
out that the notions of ‘irritability’ and ‘life force’ had already acquired
great popularity in the enlightened circles of the period. Starting with his
famous experiments on irritability, using frogs as test animals, he claimed
to have identified the fundamental difference between the physiological
dispositions of individual body parts, for example the disposition of a
muscle to be irritable, and that of nerves to be sensible,64 a finding which
changed the views of those scholars of physiology who came after him. For
Herder, in particular, Haller’s demonstration of the substrate and function
of the tear glands proved to be highly stimulating for his own reflections
on the physiology and mechanism of tears and crying:
Still another cause [of crying] is the instance of a gentle passion, whether
it is united with great joy or deep grief. In the instance of joy, the tears
start to flow because of the great luck of a friend or during the medita-
tion of an example of great virtue [ein bewundernswürdiges Beispiel einer
Tugend]. If these instances are presented to highly sensitive persons, they
will immediately burst into tears. And that this also brings about deep sad-

62 Haller, “Anfangsgründe der Phisiologie”, vol. I, 314.

63 With the introduction of the concepts of ‘sensibility’ and ‘irritability’, Haller provided
a new physiological basis for the understanding of the vital function of the living bodies, a
development, which provided a decisive departure to the physicalist and mechanist tradi-
tion that had followed to René Descartes (1596–1650) also in medicine and biology. For
a more, in depth discussion, see: Steinke H., Irritating Experiments. Haller’s Concept and
the European Controversy on Irritability and Sensibility, 1750–1790 (Union, NJ-Amsterdam:
2005) 93–126.
64 Töllner R., Albrecht von Haller. Über die Einheit im Denken des letzten Universalgelehr­
ten (Wiesbaden: 1971) 173–182.
 “tears” as mediators 611

ness is likewise known to everyone [Und dass dieses die Traurigkeit bewirke,
ist Jedermann bekandt].65
As is reflected in Herder’s famous Blue Book, he not only followed the
course of Kant’s exposé of contemporary mathematical and physical sci-
ences but also brought in other concepts of leading physiologists – espe-
cially Haller’s Elementa physiologiae – concerning the functioning of the
body, alongside his own considerations of the meaning of ‘tears’ for the
human condition [Fig. 3].
It is precisely here – even though scholars like Richard Töllner have
also underlined the physico-theological views of the Bern physiologist66
– that the theologian-philosopher goes well beyond Haller’s substrate-
oriented physiology. Herder now asks a proto-psychosomatic question, as
in his 1800 essay ‘On the Meaning of Emotion’ (‘Zum Sinn des Gefühls’);67
namely, what were the physiological and psychological or anthropologi-
cal functions of tears and crying: were they an expression of the soul and
a direct effect of this non-physical entity? Would the soul reside in the
fibres of the body and was it also subject to physical sensibility?
These reflections were not of purely theoretical interest for Herder;
they also had considerable practical value and implications. For exam-
ple, he further speculated about the coming of a new medical profession,
that of a ‘physiologist of both the soul and the human body’ (‘Ein Physi-
ologe der Seele und des Körpers des Menschen’)68 which ‘[. . .] we do not
yet have. He [the physiologist of the soul and body] will then fully tell
us what it is to think and to hear! In all these three notions [in the pre-
ceding chapters Herder discussed ‘thought’, ‘body’, and ‘sensibility’], we
get the whole metaphysics of space, time and force’.69 Herder was quite
explicit about how such a future psychophysiology could work in practi-
cal terms. He developed this theme in his 1774 psychophysiological essay

65 ‘Noch eine andere Ursache [Weinen] beruhet auf eine zarte Leidenschaft, es mag
sich nun selbige mit der Freude, oder mit der Betrübniss vereinigen. So fliessen bei der
Freude über das grosse Glück eines Freundes, oder über ein bewundernswürdiges Beispiel
einer Tugend, so man lebhaft schildert, Personen von empfindlichen Sinnen, die Thränen
häufig in die Augen. Und dass dieses die Traurigkeit bewirke, ist Jedermann bekandt’.
Haller, “Anfangsgründe der Phisiologie”, vol. V, 741f., Engl. tr. F.W.S., and also Herder, Blue
Book 30f.
66 Töllner, “Fragmente Religioser Empfindung” 490.
67 Herder, J.G. von, Zum Sinn des Gefühls (1800), in Pross, Herder. Werke, vol. II, 241–
250.
68 Herder, J.G. von, Zum Sinn des Gefühls (1800), in Pross, Herder. Werke, vol. II, 244.
69 Herder, J.G. von, Zum Sinn des Gefühls (1800), in Pross, Herder. Werke, vol. II. Engl.
tr. F.W.S.
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Fig. 3. Johann Gottfried von Herder, Table of Notes on Physiology, Psychology and
Anthropology, ca. 1765.
 “tears” as mediators 613

‘On Perception and Emotion’ (‘Vom Erkennen und Empfinden’),70 where

he specifically receives, and uses, the Hallerian physiological doctrine of
‘irritability’, squaring this with the traditional notion of a healthy bodily
equilibrium in order to produce a detailed explanation of how the flow-
ing of tears occurs, and what this process means in terms of the wider
psychological context addressed:
Nature works in manifold ways, right up to the infinite. She changes her-
self in all grades possible, so that her general actions cannot be applied in
the full and necessary depth to all parts of the body [. . .]. We realise that
when one part of the body is mutilated, its fluids are attracted towards the
neighbouring, homogenous part, and they strengthen it considerably. That
is also the case with the genius [dem Genie] of sensibility and the internal
drives. Those organs, which nature neglects, wither, whereas all others will
continue to thrive.71
According to Herder’s physiological views, tears are interpreted as an ele-
ment of physical compensation of bodily fluids or the effect of scarcity
or overflow in other organs. This assumption derives from, and further
expands, Haller’s ‘overflow model of crying’, in which the tear glands are
affected by the irritability of the fibres that loosen the (muscular) valves
of the lachrymal glands so that the tears can freely run from the eyes:
Regarding the nature of this liquid [the tears], we only know a few things,
namely that it is clear and salty water, which completely evaporates when
it is brought into contact with fire. I [Haller] am not aware of a chemical
analysis of the tears, as it is barely possible to collect enough fluid from
the lachrymal glands to pursue such kinds of experiments. I have read,
however, that they can build crystals. It happens quite often that small
stones are formed in the tear ducts as in all the other aqueous liquids of the
human body.72

70 Herder, Johann Gottfried von, Vom Erkennen und Empfinden (1774), in Pross, Herder.
Werke, vol. II, 543–579.
71 ‘Die Natur arbeitet ins Mannichfalte, ins Unendliche; sie verändert mit allen Graden,
und kann also selten diese Tiefe über alle Organe erstrecken [. . .]. Wir sehn, wenn ein
Glied des Körpers verstümmelt wird, dass sich die Säfte wohl nach dem andern, nachbar-
lichen, ihm homogenen hinziehen und es ungewöhnlich verstärken; so gehts mit diesem
Genie an Empfindungen und Trieben. Die von der Natur versäumten, und im Verfolg
ungebrauchten Organe dorren, andre nehmen zu sehr überhand’. 572f.; Engl. tr. F.W.S.
72 ‘Wir wissen von der Natur dieser Feuchtigkeit [der Tränen] nur was weniges, näm-
lich, dass sie ein helles, doch salziges Wässerchen ist, welches im Feuer ganz und gar ver-
raucht. Ich [Haller] kenne keine chemische Auseinandersezzung der Thränen, da man
schwerlich sehr viel davon sammeln kann, als zu einem Versuche hinlänglich ist. Ich lese,
dass sie zu Kristallen angeschossen: und es geschieht nicht selten, dass sich wie in den
übrigen wässrigen Feuchtigkeiten des menschlichen Körpers, so auch ebenfalls in den
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For Haller, the tears thus displayed an important property in that they
could form a solid substance of the body, and could serve as primary ele-
ments to build up the individual fibres of the living body. This assumption
of a primordial character of tears, not only as excess body fluid but also
as physiological building blocks was, of course, still a continuation from
the tradition of humoral pathological views.73 Herder discussed humoral
views not only in his physiological reflections, but also in the letters to
his wife Caroline, where the extensive influence of the liver and the gall
bladder is emphasised. These signs can be seen as indicators for Herd-
er’s general constitution, a situation which may be referred back to the
contemporary medical theories of the day in which reinterpretations of
ancient humoral pathology were part of medical education right into the
mid-nineteenth century. Nevertheless, with the advent and progress of
organ pathology, a change in medical theory had occurred in that individ-
ual humoral conditions were now more strongly related to specific bodily
organs.74 It is not astonishing, then, to see Herder’s illness described as
often being ‘depressed’ and at the same time as being ‘short-tempered’,
suffering from ‘hardening of the liver’ and found to be ‘suffering from a
gall fever’ or from ‘gall cramps’ – in a sense being typical patterns of a
‘melancholic’, sometimes ‘choleric’ picture from humoral pathology.
What was decisive for Herder himself was the assumption of the funda-
mental physiological character of the bodily fluid of tears, which gave him
carte blanche to claim that they acted as mediators between, firstly, the
physiological function and morphological structure of the body. Secondly,
in accordance with Haller, their assumed primordial nature as ‘building
blocks’ of the body allowed Herder to introduce his conception of tears as
a tertium comparationis of the Elementa physiologiae, that is, as the miss-
ing link between bodily physiology on the one hand and human emotion

Thränen, Steine erzeugen’. Haller, “Anfangsgründe der Phisiologie”, vol. V, 739f.; Engl. tr.
F.W.S.
73 Following Galen’s comments on the Hippocratic De natura hominis, physicians
understood that the four humours (blood, phlegm, black, and yellow bile) made up the
essence of the body and that health depended on their balance. Pain is felt when one
of these humours is lacking or in excess in the body, without being compounded with
the other humours. When more of any one specific humour left the body, then the mere
process of this flow caused suffering. Tears, according to this model, were associated with
melancholy and as such with the abundance of black bile. See, for example, Grant M.
(ed.), Galen on Food and Diet (London-New York: 2000) 30f., Fögen, “Tears and Crying in
Graeco-Roman Antiquity” 4f.
74 Cf. Hess V., Von der semiotischen zur diagnostischen Medizin. Die Entstehung der
klinischen Methode zwischen 1750 und 1850 (Husum: 1993) 31–33.
 “tears” as mediators 615

on the other:75 Beyond the rather mechanistic interpretations of the

anatomia animata76 of the human body, as in Haller’s doctrine, Herder
stressed the psychophysiological dimension of tears as the paradigmatic
example for the workings of the soul in full concert with the physiologi-
cal actions in the human body (while relating to emotional states of joy,
fear, sorrow, and anger, and so on). Not only does the soul act, according
to Herder, when perceiving a sad or joyful situation, but it continues its
influences along a complete spectrum from ‘sensibility’ to ‘irritability’ –
especially conceiving and comparing emotions and bodily actions with or
without the influence of volition and human intentionality.
When creating his own idiosyncratic physiological theory, Herder
widely exploited the perspective of tears as mediators between physiol-
ogy, psychology and, for him, more often spirituality. In fact, he developed
it into a model which was based on a number of anthropological back-
ground assumptions,77 which sought to explain why certain people are
more prone than others to tears and crying. In the contemporary context
of ‘Sensitivity’ (Empfindsamkeit) this had become a decisive question in
determining devoutness, moral virtues, even the essence of humanity at
large. For Herder, people who cry and show their tears present a stronger
degree of receptivity to sensitive events. This condition further explained

75 In his primary discussion of the tertium comparationis, particularly in focusing on the
aesthetics of the sense impressions and the semiology of their meanings, Herder empha-
sised that there must be an overlapping quality, which two things need to have in common
and without which no comparison would be possible. In particular, Herder criticises Gott­
hold Ephraim Lessing (1729–1781) for having conflated the signs of poetry with the signs of
painting in the latter’s work of 1766 Laocoon. An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry
(Laokoon oder Über die Grenzen der Mahlerey und Poesie), in which Lessing reflected on
an adequate representation of pain and suffering through aesthetic means. It is particu-
larly in his attack on Lessing that Herder uses physiological background assumptions. For
example, he states that the physical materiality of bodies yields a point of comparison
between the sublime and physiological functions. Later in his argument, Herder accuses
Lessing of having mixed up the two aesthetic perspectives of painting and poetry, because
‘The signs of painting are natural. The relation of the sign to what is ostentatiously referred
to is grounded in the thing itself ’. The signs of poetry, however, are absolutely arbitrary,
according to Herder. The articulated sounds have nothing in common with the thing that
they represent. They are only accepted on the grounds of a mutually shared convention, so
that the nature of both is unequal and the tertium comparationis vanishes. Herder, Johann
Gottfried von, “Kritische Wälder. Oder Betrachtungen, die Wissenschaft und Kunst des
Schönen betreffend. Erstes Wäldchen XI. Herrn Lessings Laookon gewidmet (1769)”, in
Suphan B. (ed.), Herder – Sämmtliche Werke (Berlin: 1883), vol. 3, 239.
76 On the concept of the vital elements of morphological structures, as represented in
the figure of the anatomia animata, see Töllner, “Albrecht von Haller”, 137–140.
77 I have described this perspective elsewhere as Herder’s ‘anthropological physiology’;
see Stahnisch, “Herder’s ‘Anthropologische Physiologie’ ” 826f.
616 frank w. stahnisch

to him why pious prayer or the singing of a church song could give rise
to tears through an act of immersing oneself in eternal joy and deepest
grief – a perspective that the theologian in Herder was certainly most
interested in investigating. It is no coincidence, then, that both Herder
and Haller deemed tears physiologically basic to the irritability of specific
anatomical structures (the tear glands, the eyelids, or the adjacent facial
musculature etc.) such as Haller had described in his chapter on physi-
ology ‘On the Nature of the Tears’ (‘Über die Natur der Tränen’)78 of his
basic textbook – the Elementa physiologiae. However, Herder’s theological
understanding and sentimentalist ethics came to be much more strongly
related to the knowledge about the inner self and human emotions. Like
other theorists of ‘sensitivity’, he regarded a deep knowledge of the per-
sonal ‘heart’ and ‘feelings’ as providing the primary access to the highest
degrees of virtue and coercion with other human beings. Although tears
and crying were certainly important aspects of the individual being, his
or her emotional state was seen as a crucial determinant of human com-
munication in broad terms.
For Herder, tears could only be fully comprehended when they were
appreciated as a means to further understanding between individuals,
that is, as an expression of empathy (as: Mitfühlen) and a true sign of offer-
ing help and support. Sensitivity, in general, was the particular means by
which social virtues were supported and achieved and, in return, spiritual
development could likewise only be attained through introspection and
emotional experience. He thus understood the gentler emotions such as
love, tenderness, friendship, empathy and melancholy as particularly val-
ued for their social character, a dimension that is largely absent from his
physiologist contemporary, Haller.79

The philosopher-theologian as medical patient: A creative tension

Herder deliberately introduced his own experiences as a patient into

many of his academic writings, poems, and religious sermons, providing
subjective, if not objective instances of comparison with the state of con-
temporary physiological knowledge.80 When looking at Herder’s unpub-

78 Haller, “Anfangsgründe der Phisiologie”, vol. V, 741f.

79 Cf. Elferen I. van, “ ‘Ihr Augen weint!’ Intersubjective Tears in the Sentimental Con-
cert Hall”, Understanding Bach 2 (2007) 77–94, esp. 78f.
80 See also Wapnewski, “Herders Leiden” 1013–1016.
 “tears” as mediators 617

lished notes, philosophical publications and essays on contemporary

medical theory, it becomes clear that his views on the physiology of tears
were located at the cross-roads between intellectual and theological inter-
est, and personal suffering; also, that these views came out of numerous
encounters with contemporary physicians and natural historians.81
During his studies at Königsberg, it already appeared to Herder that the
acquisition of specific knowledge about the human physiological condition
could not be a question of mere reasoning and animal experimentation
alone,82 but ought to involve psychological assumptions as well. When
he changed to become a student of theology, these considerations were
increasingly embraced, in religious terms, and spelled out as examples
of a wider communication with God, expressed, for example, in Herder’s
poem ‘See the celestial physician with a quiet gaze’ (‘Schaut den himmlis-
chen Arzt mit stillem Blicke’), written in his student days:
See the celestial physician with a quiet gaze | the soul that passed away |
[open the doors for the Supreme]. The mother cries, oh! what moist tears |
[God displays wonders of his gentle deeds]; and [is] full of power and force.
| See, he [can] raise you to eternal [life].83
Even though the interpretation of God as having the highest capacity
for healing both the body and the soul was widely present in theological
views about health and illness – developed to a very high degree in con-
temporary views84 – it is Herder’s juxtaposition of the poem with excerpts
from natural history and medical treatises which represents the particular
physico-theological perspective. While the mention of the ‘mother’s moist
tears’ can be seen as in complete harmony with the figuring of literary
and theological sensitivity in the general context of Empfindsamkeit, the
eschatological perspective ‘on the wonders of [God’s] gentle deeds’ and
the recurrent image of ‘man as a mirror of God’ were directed towards the

81 Cf. Stahnisch, “Herder und die Neurowissenschaften” 129f.

82 For the individual physiological practices of eighteenth-century physiology, see:
Steinke, “Irritating Experiments” 49–92.
83 ‘Schaut den himmlischen Arzt mit stillem Blicke | die verstorbene Seele | [öffnet
die Türen dem Erhabenen]. Es weint die Mutter, o wie feuchte Tränen | [Er gibt Wunder
seines zärtlichen Tuns]; nur da Kraft in seiner Stärke [ist]. | Seht, er [kann] in Zukunft
[zum Leben] wecken | [Dich auch]’. Herder, “Schaut den himmlischen Arzt mit stillem
Blicke”, unpub., n.d. (ca. 1762/1763) (Capsule XX; AHN (Abteilung für Autographen, Hand-
schriften und Nachlässe); of the Manuscript and Incunabula Collection of the Berlin State
Library; Culture Forum).
84 See, for example, in: Viehmeyer L.A., “Abraham Wagner and George de Benneville:
Physicians of Body and Soul”, in Helm J. – Wilson R. (eds.), Medical Theory and Therapeutic
Practice in the Eighteenth Century. A Transatlantic Perspective (Stuttgart: 2008) 261–280.
618 frank w. stahnisch

general possibility of a physiologically and psychologically healthy being.

Following Herder, complete rejuvenation of the body parts and fluids –
and likewise psychophysical healing – was only possible through the pow-
ers of ‘the celestial physician’,85 which he further translated into a form
of procedural ethics, namely the rapprochement with the sick and suffer-
ing person – the homo patiens.86 This literary figure likewise bears strong
idiosyncratic similarities with the chronically-ill Herder, who had to cope
with recurrent infections of his eye and for whom the subject of ‘tears’
was more than just a theoretical issue during the Age of Sensitivity. Even
more so, crying and tears became a constant, even daily, individual health
concern for Herder – hence, more than everything else, tears became truly
‘an analogue, mirror and exterior imprint of the actions of the soul’.87
Previously, in his 1772 Essay on the Origins of Language (Abhandlung
über den Ursprung der Sprache), awarded the Prize of the Royal Prussian
Academy for the Arts and Sciences in Berlin two years previously, Herder
did not just reflect on human consciousness and the materiality of the
human body, but also transferred such theoretical considerations into a
medical account of health and disease. Placing the focus on the physi-
ological functions of bodily organs and the phenomenological unity of
the human individual, Herder based his theory on the current anthropo-
logical assumption of the ‘double nature of man’, which would later form
the background to his wider psychological and medical considerations.88
His notions were always oriented towards a holistic gaze, which he also
expected of the medical doctors of his time. In a way, this also tied in with
the programme of a new group of younger physicians, working around
1800, who stressed the need to observe a much tighter pathogenetic rela-
tionship between the physical and the mental health constitution of each
individual patient. Hufeland can be seen as one of the major protagonists
of this trend; in his magnum opus, Macrobiotics. The Art of Prolonging
Human Life, he emphasised that a stricter observation of the physiologi-
cal and psychological equilibrium was essential for preserving a healthy
body in general:

85 Herder, “Schaut den himmlischen Arzt” n.pag.

86 Stolberg M., Homo patiens. Krankheits- und Körpererfahrung in der Frühen Neuzeit
(Cologne: 2003).
87 Herder, “Vom Erkennen und Empfinden” 548.
88 See also: Ruprecht E., “Herders Gedanken Über die Seele und ihre Unsterblichkeit”,
in Poschmann B. (ed.), Bückeburger Gespräche über Johann Gottfried Herder 1979 (Bück-
eburg: 1980) 31–49.
 “tears” as mediators 619

Who can write about human life without considering the moral world, to
which each individual also belongs? [. . .] numerous instances clearly show
that the human being has been designed for a higher moral destiny. And this
makes for a most decisive difference between the nature of man and that of
an animal. Without any human culture in general and without the culture of
an individual person, man will constantly be in opposition with his nature;
and he will only develop into the most perfect human being, if he observes
[this double nature].89
Herder further claimed that the phenomenology of the patient’s condition
was tightly linked to the general context of language regarding both the
expression and the healing of an illness.90 This demand possibly origi-
nated in Herder’s own experiences with the physicians caring for him in
Königsberg, Strasbourg and Bückeburg (Westphalia), ‘those high priests
and nosy scholars, who arrive with their servants carrying swords and nee-
dles’. It seems unlikely that his own physicians paid to the psychosomatic
condition the amount of respect for which Herder himself had called, in
his essay ‘On Perception and Emotion in the Human Soul’ (‘Vom Erkennen
und Empfinden der menschlichen Seele’) of 1774:
Psychological Physiology is the most important part of universal wisdom,
because this discipline alone can give us access to the (innermost) sanctu-
ary of the soul [. . .]. Without all mysticism, and in the strictest philosophical
sense [im schärfsten philosophischen Verstande], the inner man is identical
to the outer man, through and through. The latter is only a shell for the for-
mer, and a priori [Albrecht von] Haller, [Richard] Mead [1673–1754], [ Johann
Georg von] Zimmermann are certainly his confidants more than all earlier
thinkers together; for a priori we know nothing about the soul.91

89 Hufeland, Christoph Wilhelm, Die Kunst, das menschliche Leben zu verlängern (Jena,
Akademische Buchhandlung: 1797) Vorrede, 16 ‘Wer kann vom menschlichen Leben
schreiben, ohne mit der moralischen Welt in Verbindung gesetzt zu werden, der es so
eigentümlich zugehört? [. . .] unwiderlegliche Gründe tun dar, dass schon das Physische
im Menschen auf seine höhere moralische Bestimmung berechnet ist, dass dieses einen
wesentlichen Unterschied der menschlichen Natur von der tierischen macht, und dass
ohne menschliche Kultur der Mensch unaufhörlich mit seiner eigenen Natur im Wider­
spruch steht, sowie er hingegen durch sie [die Doppelnatur] auch physisch erst der
vollkommenste Mensch wird’. Engl. tr. F.W.S.
90 Herder, “Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache”, in Pross, Herder. Werke vol. 2,
251–399, esp. 254f.; Engl. tr. F.W.S.
91 Herder, “Vom Erkennen und Empfinden” 563 ‘[Die] Psychologische Physiologie [ist]
der wichtigste Teil der Weltweisheit. Sie allein kann uns ins Heiligtum der Seele füh-
ren: [. . .] Ohne alle Mystik und im schärfsten Philosophischen Verstande ist der innere
Mensch dem äussern durch und durch einwohnend: dieser nur die Hülle von jenem, und
die [Albrecht von] Haller, [Richard] Mead [1673–1754], [ Johann Georg von] Zimmermann
sind mehr, als alle Grübler a priori, seine Vertrauten: denn a priori wissen wir von der
Seele nichts’. Engl. tr. F.W.S.
620 frank w. stahnisch

This discussion of Herder’s physiological views would not be complete

without emphasising his deep roots in theology and his central belief in
the eternal soul. With his metaphysical confession: ‘Yes, I find in language
and in the essence of God the direct cause, why nobody other than God
himself could have created it’, Herder – in contrast to Haller92 – was con-
vinced that the soul resides directly in the body; it could affect human
physiology at any moment and was explicitly subject to the worldly influ-
ences of God:
So here we have to stick with experience and clear notions, for both of
which it is enough to understand why they could not be complete. Here,
we find the forces of the soul [die Kräfte der Seele] distributed, as it were,
uniformly in all of the manifold actions of the vital body. Without particular
parts of our body, we feel, no rational thought can even be possible: [. . .]
The soul feels itself to be part of the body, and feels comfortable there [. . .].
Mens sana in corpore sano.93
From his perspective in ‘On Perception and Emotion in the Human Soul’,
where he argued for a functional meaning of the unity of body and soul,
Herder not only explained how he understood the existence of conscious-
ness itself, but also argued for an inseparable relation between the human
body and soul.94 In light of these theological interpretations, however, the
mortal body was no more than a ‘sheath of the mind’, an idea that he had
already expounded in his views on human evolution, and which figures
strongly in his best-known book, the Ideas on the Philosophy of the His-
tory of Mankind of 1784–1791.95 In Herder’s physiological thought, it also
comes as no surprise to find the newly-emerging interpretation of living
phenomena in an anthropological perspective. If we follow the recent

92 In modern terms of the philosophy of mind, although the positions of Haller and Herder
are not analytically clear cut, it is possible to align Haller’s views primarily with dualist theo-
ries of the mind-body relation. On the contrary, Herder argues more for an epiphenomenalist
theory of mind, based on an inherently universal assumption of the mind-matter relation-
ship. For the modern theories see, for example, Plantinga A., “Evolution, Epiphenomenalism,
Reductionism”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 68 (2004) 602–619.
93 Herder, “Vom Erkennen und Empfinden” 548 ‘Wir müssen hier also bloss bei der
Erfahrung und bei klaren Begriffen bleiben, von denen es genug ist, einzusehen, warum sie
nicht vollständig werden konnten. Da finden wir nämlich die Kräfte der Seele gleichsam
ausgebreitet in alle manichfaltige [!] Verrichtungen des organischen Leibes. Ohne gewisse
Teile, fühlen wir, kann unser Denken nicht vor sich gehen: [. . .] Die Seele fühlt sich im
Körper, und fühlt sich wohl [. . .]. Mens sana in corpore sano’. Engl. tr. F.W.S.
94 Herder here uses the famous Latin quotation that ‘a healthy mind is in a healthy
body’ from the tenth satire by the Roman poet Juvenal (ca. 55 AD–ca. 135 AD): Juvenalis,
Satyrae 10.356.
95 Herder J.G. von, qtd. in Unger R. (ed.), Gesammelte Studien. Zur Dichtungs- und Geis­
tesgeschichte der Goethezeit (Darmstadt: 1966), vol. 3, 25.
 “tears” as mediators 621

account of the cultural philosopher, Johannes Bierbrodt, then we must see

the whole period as a decisive break with traditional knowledge systems:96
this break was not found in earlier cosmological and naturalistic accounts.
The new way of thinking about the world was expressed in the emphasis
on physical anthropology, investigating questions about man’s relation to
animal physiology, or the general relationship between the mind and the
soul. In particular, an important trend in enlightenment and eighteenth-
century research was to investigate human behaviour within the con-
straints of the life world.
Herder’s anthropological assumption of the ‘double nature of man’ –
which he conceived as an inseparable physiological and spiritual unity –
diverged from the dominant academic discourse, as it continued to be
deeply entrenched in Christian theological thought.97 It also exhibited
the need for a substrate of communication between the anatomical fibres
of the brain and the nerves, and the ‘irritable’ and ‘sensible’ units of the
human physiology, such as the lachrymal glands. This substrate was seen
here as transcending the realm of living phenomena, explaining human
consciousness and the particular possibility of a spiritual communication
with God through tears and emotions. For Herder, the physiology of tears
was a prime expression of the special unity between sensitivity, emotion
and virtue and, as such, they were reliable and trustworthy a posteriori
signs of the existence and workings of the soul in the human body.

Conclusion

In this historical précis, I have sketched out how Herder’s personal inter-
ests – strongly shaped through his own biographical background and the
condition of his congenital tear duct disease – played right into his pre-
occupation with contemporary physiological theory. The new interpreta-
tions disseminated by the influential Weimar polymath became related to
general physiological theory, as well as to the specific discussion of tears,
in that they appeared to him as prime elements which allowed for a dis-
cussion both of the workings of the body and of the nature of human
emotions. Although he placed a great emphasis on the supremacy and

96 Bierbrodt J., Naturwissenschaft und Ästhetik 1750–1810 (Würzburg: 2000) vii.

97 See also Soboth C., “Tränen des Auges, Tränen des Herzens. Anatomien des Wei­
nens in Pietismus, Aufklärung und Empfindsamkeit”, in Helm J. – Stukenbrock K. (eds.),
Anatomie. Sektionen einer medizinischen Wissenschaft im 18. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: 2003)
293–315.
622 frank w. stahnisch

the observable actions of the soul, Herder certainly also shared, and even
relied on, Haller’s earlier physiological notion of ‘irritability’ as the basic
property of all living body structures. Nevertheless, he went one step fur-
ther. Herder integrated the concepts of ‘sensibility’ and ‘irritability’ as the
substrate of the soul, as central features of his ‘anthropological physiology’,
because ‘crying’, religious belief and gentle emotions found their expres-
sion in a primary physiological faculty. These basic physiological assump-
tions figured strongly in many of Herder’s metaphors, such as the ‘delicate,
irritable nerves’ (‘zarte reizbare Nerven’) or the ‘complete atony of the
vital functions’ (‘völlige Atonie der Lebensfunctionen’).98
Like Haller, who alluded to scholastic and Renaissance views about
tears as being secreted from the fluids of the anterior ventricles of the
brain,99 Herder linked his conception of ‘tears’ particularly to a discussion
of the brain as the pivotal organ of the human body and as a genuine tool
of the soul (Werkzeug der Seele). For him, this assumption paved the way
to consider the idea that tears acted as mediators between the sublime
and the actual bodily physiology. However, this step could hardly have
been taken without a hidden theological agenda, nor could it have come
out of the blue – Herder here was affected by the disease of his own tear
duct. His personal views about the physiology of the tears developed from
his own observations of the ‘psychosomatic’ interaction between depres-
sive moods and recurrent instances of crying. To these were added experi-
ences which he had had as a theologian of the ‘Age of Sensitivity’.100 For
the philosopher-patient Herder, the physiology of tears became a tertium
comparationis of the Elementa physiologiae as Haller had seen them. Tears
appeared at the intersection between fine meditations of the soul, the
rough human condition and the worldly materiality of human suffering.
It is in this context of the ‘double nature of man’ that Herder considered
tears and crying as an expression of the residential internal man in the
external and as mediators between the sublime and the bodily physiology.

98 See also the discussion of Herder’s position in contemporary cultural discourse about
women’s nerves and brains in: Stahnisch F., “Über die neuronale Natur des Weiblichen:
Szientismus und Geschlechterdifferenz in der anatomischen Hirnforschung (1760–1850)”,
in Stahnisch F. – Steger F. (eds.), Medizin, Geschichte und Geschlecht. Köperhistorische
Rekonstruktionen von Identitäten und Differenzen (Stuttgart: 2005) 197–224, esp. 205f.
99 Compare, for example, the doctrine on the morphological substrate of the ven-
tricles for the physiology of the senses and emotions in Johann Eichmann (= Dryander;
1500–1560), on which he expounded in Dryander, Anatomiae hoc est, corporis humani, dis-
sectionis pars prior (Marburg: 1537), Sig. g., iv.
100 Cf. Minter, “Literary ‘Empfindsamkeit’ ”.
 “tears” as mediators 623

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 PART FIVE

body and soul

 FROM DOUBT TO CERTAINTY.
ASPECTS OF THE CONCEPTUALISATION AND INTERPRETATION
OF GALEN’S NATURAL PNEUMA

Julius Rocca

For Jutta Kollesch

Summary*

The physician-philosopher Galen of Pergamum (129–ca. 216/217 AD) was one of

the foremost exponents of anatomical science. His achievements in this field, and
its influence, have been the subject of significant and abiding interest. In con-
trast, Galen’s functional anatomy or physiology has not, until relatively recently,
received comparable attention. This is unfortunate as Galenic physiology was not
only greatly influential, but was also, due to Galenism’s subsequent and relent-
less drive to codify, almost uniformly misrepresented from its inception. Much
of the secondary literature on the subject, with few exceptions, has also perpetu-
ated this distortion; specifically, that Galen conceived of a functioning tripartite
pneumatology. Whilst it is true that Galen does mention natural pneuma, he does
so only once, and in deliberately vague terms. However, Galenic physiology was
interpreted and transmitted as a fully operational tripartite system. The purpose
of this chapter is to present Galen’s physiology in its own terms, and to outline
aspects of its transmission focussing on the pivotal role of Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq in
particular. Such an examination is not only instructive in purely historical terms,
but should serve as a salutary reminder, by virtue of the length of its transmis-
sion, of the power and longevity of pneuma as an analogical model, especially in
non-experimental physiological systems.
Spiritus igitur sunt tres, primus naturalis qui sumit principium ab epate, secundus
vitalis a corde, tertius animalis a cerebro.
Isagoge Ioannitius, Articella 2 recto

* I am most grateful to the editors, especially Helen King, for their invaluable assis-
tance, and the anonymous referees for their constructive criticism. I would also like to
thank Peter Pormann for his helpful comments and allowing me to see his forthcoming
chapter in Medical Education in Late Antiquity, and to Vivian Nutton, for, as ever, insightful
advice and suggestions. Finally, I owe a debt to Jutta Kollesch, external examiner of my
doctoral thesis, to whom this chapter is humbly offered in appreciation.
630 julius rocca

Introduction

Robert Burton’s (1577–1640) The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), that mag-

nificent account of the human condition, cites a then-physiological com-
monplace regarding the number and function of pneumata or spirits,
which goes as follows:
Of these spirits there be three kinds, according to the three principal parts,
brain, heart and liver; natural, vital, animal. The natural are begotten in the
liver and there dispersed through the veins to perform those natural actions.
The vital spirits are made in the heart, of the natural, which (vital spirits) by
the arteries are transported to all the other parts: if the spirits cease, then
life ceaseth, as in a syncope or swooning. The animal spirits, formed of the
vital, brought up to the brain and diffused by the nerves to the subordinate
members, give sense and motion to them all.1
Yet within three decades, in 1649, in the Second Essay to Jean Riolan, Wil-
liam Harvey would write:
With regard to [. . .] spirits, there are many and opposing views as to which
these are, and what is their state in the body, and their consistence, and
whether they are separate and distinct from blood and the solid parts, or
mixed with these. So it is not surprising that these spirits, with their nature
thus left in doubt, serve as a common subterfuge of ignorance. For smat-
terers, not knowing what causes to assign to a happening, promptly say
that the spirits are responsible (thus introducing them upon every occa-
sion). And like bad poets, they call this deus ex machina on to their stage to
explain their plot and catastrophe.2
If, by the Early Modern period, a tripartite physiological pneumatology
had been a mainstay of Western medicine for almost eight centuries, then
the era also represented its terminus ad quem. Its progenitor was com-
monly held to have been the physician-philosopher Galen of Pergamum
(129–ca. 216/217 AD).3 The notion of three functioning Galenic pneumata
is a familiar story in a number of twentieth-century medical historical
texts.4 Yet Galen’s role in the shaping of one part of this triad, the natural

1 Burton Robert, The Anatomy of Melancholy (Oxford: 16385), vol. I, 1,ii,2.

2 Cited in Bono J.J., The Word of God and the Languages of Man (Madison: 1995),
vol. 1, 86.
3 A comprehensive overview is that of Hankinson R.J. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion
to Galen (Cambridge: 2008).
4 For an analysis see Rocca J., Genesis, Elaboration and Differentiation in Galen’s Pneu-
matologies (PhD. diss. Sydney: 1995), chapter 2.
 galen’s natural pneuma 631

pneuma, had already been called into question in 1895.5 Half a century
later, in 1951, Owsei Temkin’s seminal paper also pointed the way to a new
understanding of Galen’s handling of pneuma, pointing out that Galen
never conceived a tripartite pneumatic scheme. As will be shown below,
focussing on the status of natural pneuma in particular, such a scheme
was formally laid down, albeit not created, by the great Nestorian Chris-
tian physician, philologist and translator, Ḥunayn Ibn Isḥāq in the ninth
century. From his hands it passed, in an abridged, truncated form known
as the Isagoge, to Constantine the African, and filtered throughout the
West via the influential School of Salerno. It was Ḥunayn who, expand-
ing a single citation from Galen, where three pneumata are mentioned,
but only the psychic form unambiguously referred to, formally welded a
completely tripartite pneumatic template, which when combined with
Galen’s authority, reputation and influence, to say nothing of the ‘multi-
plicity of meanings’6 of the term pneuma (or spiritus), was largely respon-
sible for the particular physiological theorem it embodied becoming the
dominant paradigm in Western medicine until the Early Modern period.
Even today it is still sometimes referred to as Galen’s own construct. The
purpose of this chapter will be to examine the context of Galen’s single
citation of natural pneuma, provide an overview of his pneumatic physi-
ology, overview the later establishment of a tripartite pneumatic schema,
and conclude with some general remarks on medical pneumatology up
to the Early Modern period. In so doing, it will be seen how an attractive
and simple analogical model such as pneuma developed not only into
a major physiological paradigm, but one whose very adaptive capacities
made possible a number of physiological understandings, to say nothing
of its psychological, cosmological, and theological interpretations.7 Above
all, the concept of pneuma shows how, until the nineteenth century,
physiology still viewed itself as a discipline indissolubly wedded to phi-
losophy; to a principally narrative discourse which did not regard itself as
an experimental science.8

5 Wellmann M., Die pneumatische Schule. Bis auf Archigenes (Berlin: 1895) 65–84.
6 Bono J.J., “Medical Spirits and the Medieval Language of Life”, Traditio XL (1984) 91.
7 ‘Particularly during the sixteenth century spiritus was often central to discussions of
the imagination and of the “occult” origins of madness or acute psychological disorders.’
Bono, “Medical Spirits” 94.
8 See the important study by Cunningham A., “The Pen and the Sword: Recovering
the Disciplinary Identity of Physiology and Anatomy before 1800 I: Old Physiology – The
Pen”, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C. Studies in History and Philosophy
of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 33 (2002) 631–665.
632 julius rocca

Galen and the case of natural pneuma

The fifth chapter of the twelfth book of Galen’s masterwork of medical

theory and practice, On the Therapeutic Method, a work widely diffused
in Europe following Thomas Linacre’s 1519 Latin translation, is devoted to
a discussion of syncope. Embedded in this argument is the only mention
in the extant Galenic corpus of anything resembling a tripartite system of
pneumatic physiology, mirroring, so it has been assumed, Galen’s Platon-
ically-derived tripartite psychology of the soul. The citation is as follows:
Of the psychic pneuma (pneumatos psuchikou), we have clearly demon-
strated that for instance, the brain is its well-head, and it is watered and
nourished both by inspiration and by the retiform plexus. But in respect of
the vital pneuma (pneumatos zôtikou), the demonstration was not equally
as clear, yet it appears at any rate not unlikely for it to be encompassed
by the heart itself and the arteries and that it is especially nourished from
respiration but also by blood. And if there is also a certain natural pneuma
(pneuma phusikon), it should be confined to the liver and the veins.9
Here, Galen is very careful not to define any specific role for the natural
pneuma (pneuma phusikon). Its very existence is couched in deliberately
ambiguous language. In his discussion of syncope, from which the above
citation forms a part, Galen defines the term as a sudden collapse of our
powers or faculties (dunameis), and refers in general terms to a ‘pneu-
matic substance’, which, together with the particular temperament of the
solid parts of the organ concerned, constitutes its faculties. According to
Galen, it is the loss or alteration of this pneumatic substance, by external
poisons, bad external air, humoral dyscrasias, depletion of food or breath,
or abnormal psychic states, such as pain or sleeplessness, that can trig-
ger a syncopal episode. By qualifying his discussion on the pneumatic
causation of syncope in this way, Galen leaves his reader none the wiser
as to which particular pneuma he holds responsible. Since the nature of
Galen’s pneumatic physiology is, of course, ultimately theoretical, but is
also grounded in, and dependent upon, anatomical demonstration, this
ambivalence is quite intentional at least as far as the existence of a natural
pneuma is concerned, and which shall be noted below.

9 Galenus, De methodo medendi 12.5 (10.839–840 K.). Unless otherwise stated, Galen
is cited according to the edition of Kühn C.G. (ed.), Opera omnia (Leipzig: 1821–1833),
together with references to the critical editions (where these exist).
 galen’s natural pneuma 633

Galen’s analogical model in the above citation is nutritional: the psy-

chic and vital pneumata are described in terms of their sources of sus-
tenance and nourishment, whilst, tellingly, the natural pneuma is not.
Indeed, Galen goes on to state that correct attention to nutritional sources
helps in the treatment and prevention of syncope. Yet it is possible to
take this nutritional analogy together with the citation of three pneumata,
and by conflating both, ground the existence of natural pneuma in nutri-
tive terms. Later commentators undertook this step. For after all, Galen
describes in detail the processes of digestion and how their products are
converted to blood in the liver and the veins.10 It therefore seemed rea-
sonable to underwrite the functional capacities of the liver in pneumatic
terms. As Harris writes, ‘since the operative power of the psychic faculties
is the psychic spirit, and that of the vital faculties the vital spirit, it would
seem to be quite logical to assume that the ‘natural faculties’ are operated
by a “natural” spirit’.11 Galen’s terse and singular description of the natural
pneuma, therefore, was tailor-made for such speculative accretions, and
in providing ample opportunity for interpretation, systematisation and
codification, made possible the development of a fully-fledged tripartite
physiological pneumatology.

Galen’s pneumatic physiology

In On the Utility of the Parts, one of Western medicine’s masterworks of

teleological functional anatomy, and Antiquity’s largest surviving work of
its kind, Galen provides a concise and unambiguous account of where
pneumata are elaborated, and how many are employed:
The outside air (pneuma) which is first drawn in by the rough arteries
receives its first elaboration in the flesh of the lungs, its second in the heart
and the arteries, especially those of the retiform plexus, and then a final
elaboration in the ventricles of the brain, which completes its transforma-
tion into psychic pneuma.12

10 The role of the veins in the production of blood is stressed repeatedly in On the
Natural Faculties, whilst the liver is not specifically linked with blood production by itself
(De facultatibus naturalibus 2.9, 2.117 and 129 K.). The liver’s role in blood production is
however discussed in De usu partium 4.3 (1.197–198 Helmreich; 3.269–270 K.).
11 Harris C.R.S., The Heart and the Vascular System in Ancient Greek Medicine. From Alc-
maeon to Galen (Oxford: 1973) 352.
12 Galen, De usu part. 7.8 (1.393–394 Helmreich; 3.541–542 K.). The text is cited accord-
ing to the edition of Helmreich G., Galeni. De Usu Partium Libri XVII (Leipzig: 1907, 1909).
634 julius rocca

Galen’s detailed ventricular and nerve experiments are absolutely depen-

dent on a pneuma-based physiology, and his use of pneuma relies in its
turn on meticulously-delineated anatomical structures whose perceived
functions are elucidated according to a methodology of empirical inves-
tigation.13 Galen’s choice of pneuma is not entirely surprising. It has a
long pedigree in Greek philosophy and exerted a significant influence on
physical as well as psychological theories. In this respect, Galen’s often
violent duelling with his peers – past and contemporaneous ­– takes place
against a background in which the deterministic, qualitative, and teleolog-
ical aspects of pneuma theories are set against the indeterminism of other
matter theories – principally atomistic or particulate ones. Given Galen’s
strong teleological stance, his holding of any indeterminate matter theory
would have been out of the question. Pneuma is thus a perfectly suitable
choice. It is indeterminate, invisible, and, above all, malleable, and may
be defined and presented in a number of ways.14 Among the Presocratic
natural philosophers, Anaximenes apparently equated pneuma with the
outside air and identified it with the life-principle. Diogenes of Apollonia
seems to have made the first explicit equating of air with the soul and
intelligence. This life-giving air is distributed about the body in a carrier
system, the blood vessels. The air so distributed with the blood throughout
the entire body somehow enables cognition to take place.15 Pneuma in
the Hippocratic Corpus seems to broadly reflect its assumed role in phys-
iological processes. The anonymous author of The Sacred Disease holds
that certain blood vessels take in most of the outside air, distributing it
through the body. This breath cools the body and some also goes straight
to the brain, where it is responsible for intelligence and motion.16 These
texts presented certain general themes, which were capable of lending
themselves to further refinement: inspired air as the source of pneuma;
the vasculature as its carrier system, and, most significantly, the use of
air or pneuma to account for sensation and voluntary motion. It was the
Stoics who further codified pneuma. For them, pneuma was regarded

13 See Rocca J., Galen on the Brain. Anatomical Knowledge and Physiological Speculation
in the Second Century A.D. (Leiden: 2003) 49–78.
14 The locus classicus is Verbeke G., L’ Évolution de la doctrine du pneuma du stoicisme à
S. Augustin: étude philosophique (Paris: 1945) 206–220. See also Onians R.B., The Origins of
European Thought about the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time and Fate (Cambridge:
1951) 51, 54–56, 76–77, 168–172, 250–252.
15 For an analysis and translation of the relevant fragments, see Kirk G.S. – Raven J.E. –
Schofield M., The Presocratic Philosophers (Cambridge: 19912) 158–161, 442–450.
16 Hippocrates, De morbo sacro 16 (86 Grensemann; 6.390–392 L.); 7 (72 Grensemann;
6.372 L.).
 galen’s natural pneuma 635

either as a special compound of fire and air, and this explicit identifica-
tion is Stoic in origin (Stoicorum veterum fragmenta 2.310, 389, 439), or
as vital heat itself (Stoicorum veterum fragmenta 1.135). Pneuma could be
used to underpin a variety of explanations, from material causation to the
psychic attributes of the soul itself. On inspiration it provides the vital
force and psychic agency of the body, and operates as the fundamental
principle of coherence. And while Stoic terminology provided neither a
set of types of pneuma, nor an exposition of a specialised physiological
theory, Stoic pneuma was capable of alteration or change, and under later
Stoic embryology developed into a more formalised set of pneumatic dif-
ferentiae. According to Plutarch, Chrysippus maintained that pneuma
in the foetus was changed at birth by the outside air to become ‘vital
pneuma’, held to be the equivalent of soul (Stoicorum veterum fragmenta
2.806). This broad notion of pneumatic differentiation is one which Galen
will exploit. But the Stoics, unlike Galen, did not utilise the concept of a
qualitative change in pneuma. The pneuma of the growing Stoic embryo
is said to be natural (phusis). At gestation it changes its status, becom-
ing vital (Chrysippus ap. Plutarch, Stoic Self-contradictions 1052F). As the
human being grows, what is now referred to as psychic pneuma is held
to be responsible for consciousness (Stoicorum veterum fragmenta 2.716).
The mechanism behind these changes is ascribed to an alteration in the
tension (tonos) of pneuma, which accounts for the activities of the living
being (Stoicorum veterum fragmenta 2.393, 458). Yet although the Stoics
used the term psychic pneuma, and changes in its tensional state were
said to account for individual action, pneuma was not grounded in any
specific organ. But Stoicism’s role in the history of medical pneumatology
is crucial: it underwrote the transformation of pneuma from a purely gen-
eral principle of animation to one adaptable to more specialised physi-
ological needs, and thereby helped render more acceptable the notion of
pneuma as a physiological agent.17
By the Hellenistic period, then, a distinction appears to be being drawn
between natural pneuma (responsible for all life functions) and psychic
pneuma (responsible for all nervous actions). The great Alexandrian
medical pioneers, Herophilus and Erasistratus, according to Galen, also
regarded pneuma as acquired through respiration.18 Herophilus’s use of
pneuma is problematic in that he allegedly refers to the optic nerves as

17 See Rocca, Galen on the Brain 60–62.

18 Galenus, An in arteriis natura sanguis contineatur 2 (146–148 Furley-Wilkie; 4.706–
707 K.).
636 julius rocca

containing natural pneuma, and would appear not to have employed the
term psychic pneuma in any way.19 If this is so, then Herophilus may well
have felt comfortable regarding natural pneuma being used both as a
general as well as specific physiological principle. When psychic pneuma
entered the medical lexicon cannot be precisely known, although Galen,
in On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato, states that the distinction
between a vital pneuma (located in the heart), and a psychic pneuma
(located in the brain) was known to Erasistratus, Herophilus’s younger
contemporary.20 Erasistratus seems to have been more interested in the
physiological aspects of pneuma than his senior colleague. In De usu res-
pirationis (On the Use of Breathing), Erasistratus and his school are said by
Galen to have maintained that the pneuma in the heart was the source of
the brain’s psychic pneuma. Galen probably adapted this general Erasis-
tratean thesis when he discusses the transformation of vital pneuma (via
the heart) to psychic pneuma in the brain, via the elaborating agencies of
two other vascular structures there–the retiform and choroid plexuses–
rather than the meninges, as Erasistratus held.21 But the major point of
contention between Galen and Erasistratus lies in the latter’s regarding
pneumatic differentiation as a quantitative process, with pneuma becom-
ing increasingly finer.22 In contrast to this Stoic type of conceptualisa-
tion, Galen’s physiology is absolutely based on pneuma that is subject to a
series of qualitative changes, the better to highlight the functional capaci-
ties of the relevant organ in question. To what extent another Hellenistic
source of pneuma theory, that advocated by the so-called Pneumatist sect,
contributed to Galen’s understanding and deployment of pneuma, is dif-
ficult to determine.23
Galen never rules out an external source of pneuma; it does after all
play some part in the generation of psychic pneuma.24 Yet the main-
stay of Galen’s pneumatic physiology lies in a progressive elaboration of
pneuma-like material substrate by several discrete anatomical structures.

19 See Staden H. von, Herophilus. The Art of Medicine in Early Alexandria (Cambridge:
1989) 253–255.
20 Galenus, De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis 2.8 (164,13–16 de Lacy; 5.281 K.).
21 See Rocca, Galen on the Brain 38–40.
22 See Harris, The Heart 225.
23 As Nutton V., Ancient Medicine (London-New York: 2004) 206, comments, ‘the fluidity
of Pneumatist doctrines and the obvious tendency towards eclecticism manifested, among
others, by Agathinus and Archigenes place difficulties in the way of any clear estimate of
the extent and influence of Pneumatism’. The fundamental study of this sect remains that
of Wellmann. A new examination is a desideratum.
24 See Rocca, Galen on the Brain 224–234.
 galen’s natural pneuma 637

For Galen, the creation of psychic pneuma begins when inspired air
enters the lungs, which alter it.25 From the lungs, this ‘pneuma-like’
(pneumatôdes) substance enters the left ventricle of the heart where it
is fully elaborated into vital pneuma. This change is made possible by
innate heat within the left ventricle, acting in concert with altered venous
blood from the right ventricle. For Galen, innate heat was an indispensable
part of any elaborative process, whether of blood, humour or pneuma.26
The left ventricle is regarded by him as the chief repository for the body’s
innate heat (On the Utility of the Parts 6.16 (I.355,1 Helmreich; 3.487 K.)).
To emphasise the link between blood and pneuma, the left ventricle is
described by Galen as pneumatic (pneumatikê). It is where the yellow,
warm, and fine pneuma-like blood is generated and sent out to the rest
of the body via the arteries (Galen, On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and
Plato 6.8 (414,30–33 de Lacy; 5.572–573 K.). The ingredients required to
elaborate vital pneuma are therefore blood, the pneuma-like substance,
and innate heat, but how they are combined is not made explicit. The
entire process is, however, made analogous to coction (On the Doctrines
of Hippocrates and Plato 10.7 (528,11–14 de Lacy; 5.707 K.)). Galen’s vital
pneuma now has access to the arterial system, affording it entry to the
brain where it infuses the retiform plexus, a network of fine arteries at the
base of the brain, and the choroid plexuses, a cluster of veins and arteries
in the ventricular system. These complete the transformation of vital to
psychic pneuma.27 However, Galen also allows the ventricles to elaborate
a certain amount of outside air through the nasal passages, especially if
there is interruption to the supply of vital pneuma via the carotid arteries.28
The ventricles are the final repository of psychic pneuma, which then
continues through the nerves and thence to the rest of the body, pro-
viding sensation and voluntary motion. How these occur is never fully
determined by Galen, although the late text tellingly entitled On Problem-
atic Movements sees him wrestling with the problem from a number of
perspectives.29 Precisely how pneuma ultimately functions is a question
that Galen never resolves since it is insoluble with the epistemological

25 Galen, De plac. Hipp. et Plat. 8.8 (528,28–32 de Lacy; 5.707–709 K.).

26 See Durling R.J., “The Innate Heat in Galen”, Medizinhistorisches Journal 23 (1988)
210–212.
27 See Rocca, Galen on the Brain 219–224.
28 See Rocca, Galen on the Brain 224–234.
29 See the preliminary study by Debru A., “Galen on the Unclear Movements”, in
Nutton V. (ed.), The Unknown Galen (London: 2002) 79–85, and the critical edition and
translation by Nutton V., Galen. On Problematical Movements (Cambridge: 2011).
638 julius rocca

tools at hand. And Galen, to his credit, realises this. At most, he is able
only to interpret the results of his ventricular and nerve experiments as
seeming to reveal the presence of something that Galen and others call
‘psychic pneuma’.

Pneuma, governing powers, and the soul

Galen tells us that there are three sources (archai) which govern our ratio-
nal, spirited and desiderative selves, housed respectively in the brain, heart
and liver (On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato 7.3 (438,28–440,8 de
Lacy; 5.600–601 K.)).30 The brain is responsible for sensation and volun-
tary motion; the heart controls the source of warmth (via its control of
the innate heat within the left ventricle) and of pulsation in the arteries.
Thirdly, the faculty in the liver is responsible for nutrition. At the psychic
level, what appears to be the familiar Platonic tripartition of faculties is
delineated: the rational functions of the brain, and the spirited and appet-
itive drives centred around heart and liver respectively. Plato of course
never explicitly states that the desiderative power resides in the liver;
at Timaeus 70d–e, he locates it between the diaphragm and the navel.
Galen, however, makes the connection an explicit one in discussing the
duality of functions of the faculty in the liver: it is on the one hand con-
cerned with nutrition, on the other ‘the same power’ is responsible for
pleasures (On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato 7.3 (440,6–8 de Lacy;
5.601 K.)). This is a point repeated in On the Therapeutic Method (9.10,
10.635 K.) where the power or faculty of the liver is employed to account
for the psychological role of desire and the physiological one of nutrition
(and also reproduction). Any absolute necessity for a natural pneuma is
thereby avoided.
As with Aristotle, from whom he takes the term, Galen held that each
homoeomerous part of the body (that elemental component which, how-
ever divided, retains its fundamental property or properties), such as bone
and sinew, has a distinctive, innate or pre-existing power or ability (duna-
mis; On the Natural Faculties 2.3 (2.80 and 101 K.)). In terms of nutrition
alone, it might stand to reason – as it certainly did for later commentators –

30 A view Galen significantly reiterates in his last work, De propr. plac. 8.3 (180,15–17
Boudon-Millot – Pietrobelli; 82,9–10 Nutton).
 galen’s natural pneuma 639

that the natural pneuma should have some assigned role, since the liver
is Galen’s seat of nutrition, and of the end product of the nutritive pro-
cess, blood (On the Natural Faculties 3.13 (2.201 K.)). But Galen provides no
elaborative mechanism for a natural pneuma: the liver and veins are the
sites of blood, not pneumatic production. If, however, Galenists believed
it was Galen’s brief to give a physiological mirroring to the Platonic psy-
chological tripartition of the faculties of soul, then linking natural pneuma
to the desiderative power in the liver becomes inevitable. Galen, following
Plato, placed the three faculties or powers of the soul in the brain, heart,
and liver, and sought to provide an explanation for their psychological
effects in physiological terms.31 But having described the psychic pneuma
as the ‘first instrument’ of the rational soul, and housing these faculties or
parts, in the brain, heart, and liver, Galen does not follow this up by grant-
ing equal merit, much less attention, to the three pneumata. Neither does
Galen succeed in explaining precisely how vital and psychic pneumata
respectively act or influence the spirited and rational faculties, let alone
a putative natural pneuma the desiderative.32 Indeed, if Galen allowed
discussion of a natural pneuma, then he is committed to discussing the
mechanics of its relationship with the appetitive or desiderative power.
The reason for such hesitancy on his part is not far to seek. It is grounded
in Galen’s epistemological method of anatomical demonstration, in par-
ticular his detailed dissections and vivisections of the brain and nerves.
Galen also sought to demonstrate that the heart is the archê of the arter-
ies, and that the arteries contain largely blood, and not air, as Erasistra-
teans allegedly maintained. Galen also recognised the complexity of the
hepatic vascular architecture. In the sixth book of Anatomical Procedures,
he describes the structural divisions of the hepatic vein in each lobe to
that of a tree, from trunk to branch to twig to fragile shoots. As far as the
arterial part of the liver is concerned, May, somewhat wistfully, states:

31 See Lloyd G.E.R., “Scholarship, Authority and Argument in Galen’s Quod Animi
Mores”, in Manuli P. – Vegetti M. (eds.), Le opere psicologiche di Galeno: atti del terzo col-
loquio galenico internazionale, Pavia, 10–12 settembre 1986 (Naples: 1988) 11–42. See also
Hankinson R.J., “Body and Soul in Galen”, in King R.A.H. (ed.) Common to Body and Soul.
Philosophical Approaches to Explaining Living Behaviour (Berlin: 2006) 232–258.
32 Manuli P., “La Passione nel De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis”, in Manuli – Vegetti,
Le opere psicologiche di Galeno 185–214, suggests that the movement of the passionate part
of the soul is reflected in the expansion and contraction of the pneuma in the blood,
which is in its turn a somatic representation of what is occurring at the level of the psychic
faculty.
640 julius rocca

If only the hepatic artery could have been found to produce something on
the order of the rete mirabile before entering the liver! But lacking any ana-
tomical evidence, he was reduced to a mere suggestion that there might be
some such corresponding substance as a natural pneuma. All this, of course,
is pure conjecture.33
But anatomical demonstration in Galen’s hands conveys not only infor-
mation revealed by autopsia, but also involves a certain amount of experi-
mentation, the chief tools of which for Galen are pressure, ligation and
cutting. Even here, such experimentation is only achievable to a limited,
verifiable extent: pressure on the ventricles of a living animal subject, for
example, and the ligation and cutting of nerves yield repeatable results.
The retiform plexus, crucial to the elaborative physiology of psychic
pneuma, is indeed revealed by anatomy, but its function can only be
inferred, and that by analogous comparison to the testicular vasculature’s
apparent coction of semen.34 Far less certain, as Galen has indicated in
the quotation cited from On the Therapeutic Method, cited earlier, is the
demonstration as far as the heart and arteries are concerned. And the
liver, as Galen knows full well, is not accessible to complete anatomical
demonstration. Indeed, Galen admits that he is unable to perform any
such demonstrations on that organ (On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and
Plato 6.3 (372.32–374.8 de Lacy; 5.520–521 K.). The problem with an argu-
ment from anatomical inaccessibility is that the same question can be
raised with the two organs responsible for elaborating vital pneuma, the
lungs and the heart. Here, Galen cannot contrive a demonstration on
as rigorous a ground as he can with the brain and the nerves. But what
Galen can do is to at least provide a detailed anatomical exposition of
the lungs and the heart, and, inter alia, point to his experiments showing
that blood and pneuma are present in the arteries (On whether Blood is
Naturally Contained in the Arteries 8 (4.733 K; On Anatomical Procedures
7.16 (2.646–650 K.)). And apart from demonstrative inaccessibility, Galen
may also have been pondering the mechanism by which the liver and
veins could acquire natural pneuma.35 For here one may usefully cite an
aspect of the physical structure of the liver itself. It is an apparently solid

33 May M.T., Galen. On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body (Cornell: 1968) 49.
34 See Rocca, Galen on the Brain 212–214.
35 Manuli P. – Vegetti M., Cuore, Sangue e Cervello. Biologica e Anthropologica Nel
Pensero Antico (Milan: 1977) 241, n. 266, comment that Galen’s lack of knowledge of the
natural pneuma is in part motivated by the fact that he could not overcome the difficulty
of explaining just how the pneuma was acquired by the liver and veins. This, however,
assumes that Galen is thinking along the lines of the elaboration of vital pneuma in the
 galen’s natural pneuma 641

organ, formed, Galen states, from blood. Since Galenic (and indeed, much
of Greek) physiology characteristically is dependent on hollow structures
such as the ventricles of the brain, the chambers of the heart, the air-
filled passage of the lungs, the vasculature itself, the numerous channels
and ducts of the body, as well as the purported hollowness of the nerves
themselves, then the liver’s architecture may well have constituted insuf-
ficient grounds for pneumatic generation.
To insist on a connection between the three faculties of soul and a tri-
partite pneumatology is to run the risk of granting a greater credence to
natural pneuma (and to raise expectations as to what its function might
be) than Galen is willing to do. To grant that natural pneuma is (perhaps)
to be found in the liver and veins is one thing; to delineate its role quite
another. Galen avoids any commitment to a functional concept of natural
pneuma by restricting his references to the generalities of ‘governing pow-
ers’. Indeed, for Galen ‘the liver is the source of the type of power (duna-
mis) that is also present in plants’ (On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and
Plato 6.3 (374,9 de Lacy; 5.521 K.). The cost of this, of course, is to intro-
duce a tension between Galen’s essentially bipartite system of pneumatic
physiology and soul tripartition. It would be left to later commentators to
believe they could relax this tension by equating three pneumata with the
three faculties of soul.

Systematisation, codification and redaction. Galenism and the

elaboration of a tripartite pneumatic physiology

Given the importance Galen gives to a tripartite system of discrete

principles or powers that govern us and which are present in the three
principal organs, the brain, the heart and the liver, then by articulating
a fully-formed natural pneuma or spiritus naturalis, later commentators
could be said to have made an understandable interpretive interpolation.
In other words, it is entirely plausible to place under each organ’s gov-
erning power (dunamis) a respective pneuma. But when exactly did the
notion of a tripartite system of Galenic pneumatology arise? Or to put
it more narrowly, when was natural pneuma assigned an unambiguous
place in the liver and the veins and could thereby be seen as available

heart. In the latter case, the heart however is a convenient hollow-chambered structure
that the liver is not, and the cardiac elaborative analogy is thus non-transferable.
642 julius rocca

to be commanded by the liver’s governing power? Although such a role

for the natural pneuma appears as a consequence of the phenomenon
known as Galenism, there can be no conclusive answer to this question
as to when this happened and at whose hand. Any appeal to a putative
textual tradition (if indeed one existed) raises more problems than solu-
tions. It is perhaps better to see the gradual conceptualisation of natural
pneuma as in part a consequence of the post-Galenic period’s broader
medical and philosophical discussions concerning pneuma and its physi-
ological role, much as it would have formed in Galen’s own time.36 And
to further complicate matters, Galenism should not be interpreted as a set
of fixed schematics, despite its apparent adamantine structure; rather, in
Temkin’s words, it was more of a ‘changing silhouette’.37 Nevertheless, it is
possible to draw some tentative conclusions regarding natural pneuma’s
place in such a scheme.
It was inevitable that Galen’s enormous body of work would at some
stage be subject to some form of ordering, of codification and systematisa-
tion, to say nothing of editing such a notoriously prolix author. The result
of this was the evolution of Galen’s works into the medical philosophy
known as Galenism, which is usefully defined ‘as the process whereby the
theories and prejudices of a second-century doctor came to dominate
the whole world of medicine to such an extent that, in Greek at any
rate, the vast majority of medical texts to survive in full from Antiquity
are either by Galen; by followers of Galen; and by authors of whom he
approved, principally Hippocrates and the Hippocratic Corpus’.38 Galen,
as is well known, had himself composed introductory texts on various
subjects ranging from anatomy to therapeutics and also set out the order
in which his works be studied.39 But those who came after him realised
that far more was required. Thus the efforts of the first encyclopaedists,
such as Oribasisus of Pergamum and Paul of Aegina, who began what

36 Here one may note the mention of the pneuma in the Pseudo-Galenic Definitiones
Medicae (De def. med. 73–74 (19.365–366 K.), as indicative of this broad trend. See also
Harris, The Heart 240–241. This text, which probably dates to around the last quarter of the
first century AD, is written, as the title implies, in the style of a medical memorandum. For
a comprehensive analysis of this work, see Kollesch J., Untersuchungen zu den Pseudogale-
nischen Definitiones Medicae (Berlin: 1973).
37 Temkin O., Galenism. Rise and Decline of a Medical Philosophy (Cornell: 1973) xii.
Although partly dated, Temkin’s survey of this phenomenon remains unsurpassed.
38 Nutton V., ‘Galen in Byzantium’, in Grünbart M. – Kislinger E. – Muthesius A. –
Stathakopoulos D.Ch. (eds.), Material Culture and Well-Being in Byzantium (400–1453)
(Vienna: 2007) 171.
39 Galen clearly sets out this agenda in his On the Order of My Books (19.49–61 K.).
 galen’s natural pneuma 643

they saw as an essential redactive process. But the formal elaboration of

the Galenic oeuvre into Galenism took place in Alexandria, which, since
its Hellenistic foundation, had remained a leading centre of medicine.40
Medical studies in the late Alexandrian period, from the fourth century
AD until the Arabic conquest in 641, centred around a curriculum which
consisted of a representative sampling of the works of Hippocrates and
Galen in their original, as well as student handbooks or summaries.41 The
evidence for this is derived from later, Arabic sources.42 As far as Galen’s
texts were concerned, according to Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq, twenty-four were
read, and these were reordered to make the twelve books of the ‘Alexan-
drian Canon’ (other, later Arabic sources list sixteen). And again according
to Ḥunayn’s list, only the last 8 books of On the Therapeutic Method were
read (the later 16 book version of the Canon has it read in its entirety).43
In addition to this collection, a more accessible set of abridgments was
later laid down, the so-called Summaria Alexandrinorum.44 According to
Ḥunayn’s list of these Summaries, the first was Galen’s own synopsis of

40 For the background, see Wilson N.G., Scholars of Byzantium (London: 1996) 42–48.
For Alexandria in the second century AD, see Staden H. von, “Galen’s Alexandria”, in Har-
ris W.V. – Ruffini G. (eds.), Ancient Alexandria between Egypt and Greece (Leiden: 2004)
179–215.
41 See Temkin O., “Geschichte des Hippokratismus im Ausgehenden Alterum”, Kyklos.
Jahrbuch für Geschichte und Philosophie der Medizin 4 (1932) especially 51–74.
42 It is largely from later Arabic accounts such as Ḥunayn that the form and content
of the syllabus has been ascertained. On the curriculum see Iskandar A.Z., “An Attempted
Reconstruction of the Late Alexandrian Medical Curriculum”, Medical History 20 (1976);
Duffy J.M., Ioannis Alexandrini In Hippocratis Epidemiarum Librum VI Commentarii Frag-
menta, CMG XI.1.4, 9–11. Pormann, P.E., “Medical Education in Late Antiquity: From Alex-
andria to Montpellier”, in Horstmanshoff M. (ed.), Hippocrates and Medical Education,
Selected Papers Presented at the XIIth International Hippocrates Colloquium. Universiteit
Leiden, 24–26 August 2005. Studies in Ancient Medicine 35 (Leiden: 2010) 419–442, pro-
vides a succinct and lucid discussion.
43 See Lieber E., “Galen in Hebrew: The Transmission of Galen’s Works in the Mediae-
val Islamic World”, in Nutton V. (ed.), Galen. Problems and Prospects (London: 1981) 172–
173; Savage-Smith E., “Galen’s Lost Ophthalmology and the Summaria Alexandrinorum”, in
Nutton V. (ed.), The Unknown Galen (London: 2002) 126.
44 Savage-Smith, “Galen’s Lost Ophthalmology” 126–127, rightly stresses that these were
two separate compendia, which have sometimes been confounded with each other. On
the Summaries, see Garofalo I., “I Sommari degli Alessandrini” in Garofalo I. – Roselli A.
(eds.), Galenismo e Medicina Tardoantica Fonti Greche, Latine e Arabe, Annali dell’Istituto
Universitario Orientale de Napoli, Quaderni 7 (Naples: 2003) 203–231. Pormann P.E., “The
Alexandrian Summary (Jawâmi’) of Galen’s On the Sects for Beginners: Commentary or
Abridgement”, in Adamson P. – Baltussen H. – Stone M.W.F. (eds.), Philosophy, Science
and Exegesis in Greek, Arabic and Latin Commentaries. Bulletin of the Institute of Classical
Studies Supplement 83 (London: 2004), vol. 2, 11–33, comments that the traditional title of
“Alexandrian Summaries” is misleading.
644 julius rocca

On the Therapeutic Method, translated into Syriac.45 Whether any of the

late Alexandrian physicians who composed these works could also be
termed ‘Iatrosophists’ in the full sense of one who lectured on medicine and
philosophy has been called into question.46 Nevertheless, they did share at
the very least ‘a common ground in physiology’,47 and Galen’s own status
as physician-philosopher would not have gone unnoticed by them. Nor,
as shall be noted below, did medicine hesitate to borrow from philosophy
when it came time to write compendia and related pedagogic texts.
In the commentary on Galen’s On Sects for Beginners, ascribed to the
Alexandrian physician John of Alexandria (fl. ?600–650), of whom, in
common with his colleagues, very little is known, it is stated that we have
within us three faculties (virtutes), the animal, the vital, and the natural:
tres namque sunt virtutes in corpore nostro: animalis vitalis et naturalis.48
The physician Agnellus of Ravenna (fl. 550–700) in his lectures on Galen’s
On Sects, also posits the identical three virtues (virtutes autem sunt tres:
animalis, vitalis et naturalis).49 John’s Latin version nowhere mentions the
spirits, and it has been stated that the reason for this omission is that
the three spirits ‘are subsumed under ‘virtutes’, and do not require to be
singled out a second time’.50 However, in the extant Greek commentary
on the Aphorisms of Hippocrates by Stephanus (fl. late sixth–early seventh
century), ‘perhaps the last representative’51 of the Alexandrian school, two

45 Savage-Smith, “Galen’s Lost Ophthalmology” 128. On this synopsis see Garofalo I.,
“Una Nuova Opera di Galeno: La Synopsis del De methodo medendi in Versione Araba”,
Studi classici e orientali 47, 1 (1999) 9–19.
46 Roueché M., “Did Medical Students Study Philosophy in Alexandria?”, Bulletin of the
Institute of Classical Studies 43 (1999) 153–169.
47 Westerink L.G., “Philosophy and Medicine in Late Antiquity”, Janus 51 (1964) 169–
177.
48 Johannes Alexandrinus, Commentaria in librum De sectis Galeni IX: 50–51 Pritchet.
See also Duffy, Ioannis Alexandrini 11–12. The situation is further complicated since neither
Pritchet (nor Hankinson, R.J., “Notes on the Text of John of Alexandria”, Classical Quarterly
40 (1990) 585–591) make clear that there may be a discrepancy between the original of
John and the Latin version. It is argued by Nutton V., “John of Alexandria Again: Greek
Medical Philosophy in Latin Translation”, Classical Quarterly 41 (1991) 509–519, that the
original John may be recovered in those places where Agnellus of Ravenna (as copyist and/
or translator) and “Johannes Latinus” coincided. If correct, the original John contributes
nothing to the debate, and it is in the Latinus translation (or via an addition to the Greek
manuscript) where the insertion takes place. See also Sluiter I., “Two Problems in Ancient
Medical Commentaries”, Classical Quarterly 44 (1994) 270–275.
49 Westerink L.G. et alii (eds.), Agnellus of Ravenna. Lectures on Galen’s De Sectis. Are-
thusa Monographs VIII (Buffalo: 1981) 26 verso, 26.
50 Nutton, “John of Alexandria Again” 514.
51 Stephanus, Stephani Philosophi In Hippocratis Prognosticum commentaria III: ed.
Duffy J.M. (Berlin: 1983) [CMG XI.1.2] 13.
 galen’s natural pneuma 645

reasons for a healthy complexion are given: an abundance of ‘good blood’

due to the correct condition of the liver due to the ‘natural faculty’ (phusikê
dunamis); the well-balanced state of the ‘vital pneuma’ (zôtikon pneuma),
which is in turn due to the good condition of the ‘vital faculties’ (zôti-
kas dunameis).52 It would seem that for Stephanus, ‘faculty’ and ‘pneuma’
were regarded as distinct, although related, entities, at least as far as the
vital component was concerned. One might perhaps have expected a
similar pairing of natural faculty with natural pneuma, but this is not the
case. If so, then Ḥunayn may claim the laurels for placing the three spirits
on a firm foundation. But there are problems with this interpretation. For
if one turns again to John of Alexandria, but this time to the extant Greek
fragments of his commentary on Book VI of Hippocrates’ Epidemics, the
following is stated:
But we should remind the more advanced student of what we have said on
numerous occasions, namely that our body is composed of solids, fluids and
pneumas (ek pneumatôn); that the pneumas are the [psychic (psuchikôn)],
natural (phusikôn) and vital (zôtikôn).53
Admittedly, the mention of a psychic pneuma (rendered as animalibus) is
an addition made in the later Latin manuscript tradition.54 Yet it would
be strange indeed if so important an entity as psychic pneuma, strongly
endorsed by Galen himself, had been omitted in the Greek original. Be
that as it may, one can state, albeit tentatively, that at least the existence
of a natural pneuma may be accorded the status of a physiological given
by the end of the sixth century. For on the one hand, the Late Alexandrian
compilers were in all likelihood aware of Galen’s hesitancy in respect of
the natural pneuma; but codification and systematisation were part and
parcel of their work, and Galen’s doubts, could, for the sake of a systemic
balance in pneumatic physiology with respect to the three faculties, be
overridden without undue difficulty. In other words, Galen’s uncertainty
regarding the natural pneuma could, by a later explicit acknowledgement,

52 Stephanus, Stephani Atheniensis In Hippocratis Aphorismos commentaria CMG

XI.1.3.2 (120,4–10 Westerink). Stephanus does seem to have followed Alexandrian Galenic
syllabus (ibidem, 12). It is likely that Stephanus of Athens and Stephanus of Alexandria are
one and the same. Wolska-Conus W., “Stéphanos d’Athènes et Stéphanos d’Alexandrie:
Essai d’Identification et de Biographie”, Revue des Etudes Byzantines 47 (1989) 5–89, gives
a detailed discussion of this question.
53 Ioannis Alexandrini In Hippocratis Epidemiarum librum VI commentarii fragmenta
(102,1–4); tr. Duffy.
54 Duffy, Ioannis Alexandrini 102.
646 julius rocca

be turned into a systematic asset, and may even have been reckoned a
theoretical advance; that is, as a useful way of making Galen’s tripartite
set of powers or faculties seated in the three major organs dovetail with
pneuma’s physiological role in each organ. After all, Galen, when all is
said and done, did mention natural pneuma. It was a recorded datum in
the Galenic Corpus.
Nevertheless, it is without doubt that the existence of natural pneuma
received a further and arguably more profound validation in ninth-century
Baghdad, where, under the patronage of the ‘Abbāsid Caliphate, the great
Nestorian Christian physician, translator and commentator, Ḥunayn ibn
Isḥāq (808–873/77) cemented his place as a key figure in the transmission,
codification and amplification of Greek medical knowledge.55 Ḥunayn’s
linguistic and interpretative skills were formidable.56 In his Risāla (Epistle
or Missive), which records the 129 Galenic works he and his team of trans-
lators rendered into Syriac and Arabic, Ḥunayn records the efforts made
to obtain a good working copy of On the Therapeutic Method after examin-
ing an earlier Syriac version. Eventually, Ḥunayn was able to track down
a reasonable Greek text:
I had several Greek copies of the last eight treatises. I collated them and
authenticated one copy from which – to the best of my ability – I produced
a well-investigated and eloquent translation.57

55 On Ḥunayn see the two fundamental studies by Bergsträsser G., Hunain ibn Ishâk
und seine Schule (Leiden: 1913); idem, Hunain ibn Ishâq. Über die Syrischen und Arabischen
Galen-Übersetzungen, Abhandlungen für die Kunde des Morgenlandes XVII, 2 (Leipzig:
1925). A new study by Lamoreaux is forthcoming in the Middle Eastern Texts Initiative
series. See also Anawati G.C., “Hunayn ibn Ishâq”, in Gillespie C.C., Dictionary of Scientific
Biography (New York: 1981), vol. 15, suppl. 1, 230–234; Strohmaier G., “Galen in Arabic:
Prospects and Projects”, in Nutton V. (ed.), Galen. Problems and Prospects (London: 1981)
187–196. Strohmaier G., “The Greek Heritage in Islam”, in Boys-Stones G. – Graziosi B. –
Vasunia P. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Hellenic Studies (Oxford: 2009) 140–149, gives a
survey of the Greek heritage in Islam. On the medical background see Savage-Smith E.,
“Medicine”, in Rashed R. (ed.), Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science (London: 1996)
903–962; Jacquart D., “The Influence of Arabic Medicine in the Medieval West”, in Rashed
R. (ed.), Encyclopedia of the History of Arabic Science (London: 1996) 963–984; Pormann
P.E. – Savage-Smith E., Medieval Islamic Medicine (Edinburgh: 2007).
56 ‘Hunayn apparaît comme un homme exigeant, volontiers critique à l’égard de ses
prédécesseurs, soucieux de disposer d’un texte grec correct, s’appliquant à en render les
sens avec rigueur et precision’. Micheau, F., “Mécènes et Médecins à Bagdad au IIIe/IXe
Siècle. Les Commanditaires des Traductions de Galien par Hunayn ibn Ishâq”, in Jacquart
D. (ed.), Les Voies de la Science Grecque. Études sur la Transmission des Texts de l’Antiquité
au Dix-Neuvième Siècle (Geneva: 1997) 148.
57 Tr. Iskandar A.Z., “Hunayn the Translator”, in Gillespie C.C., Dictionary of Scientific
Biography (New York: 1981), vol. 15, suppl. 1, 236. See also Meyerhof M., “New Light on
Hunain ibn Ishâq and his period”, Isis 8 (1926) 692–693; Degen R., “Galen im Syrischen.
 galen’s natural pneuma 647

Thanks to the Late Alexandrian physician-commentators, the existence

of three functioning pneumata or spirits had been more or less posited,
and the notion of three virtues was a given, but it is Ḥunayn who extends
the number of natural things the physician should study from six to seven:
elements, humours, the faculties, and parts of the body, the tempera-
ments, the functions, and the spirits. Ḥunayn, to be sure, did not himself
devise the concept of three spirits or pneumata, but it would seem that he
took upon himself the task of formalising an already nascent tripartite sys-
tem, aware that he was following in the footsteps of his Alexandrian pre-
decessors. Having spent part of his time studying in Alexandria, Ḥunayn
would of course have been familiar not only with Galenic texts, but also
with the various ways in which they were taught and organised. Thus,
‘Galenism was therefore taught and studied through the prism of late
antique Alexandria’.58 It is through this prism that Ḥunayn’s own medi-
cal writings were filtered and constructed. Consider The Book of Questions
in Medicine for Students (or Scholars), or more simply, Medical Questions
(Masā’il fī al-tibb).59 This work, with additions by Ḥunayn’s linguistically-
gifted nephew Hubaysh, served as an introductory medical textbook or
set of summary notes to be learnt by heart.60 The format of the Medical
Questions attests to the influence of the late Alexandrian medical tradition
and in particular to the redactive methodology embodied in the Summa-
ria Alexandrinorum.61 Ḥunayn’s Medical Questions is a similar pedagogic
work employing the Greek philosophical method of diairesis, which was

Eine Übersicht über die Syrische Überlieferung der Werke Galens” in Nutton (1981) 131–166,
145. The Arabic translation of De methodo medendi is yet to be edited (Peter Pormann,
personal communication).
58 Pormann P.E., “Islamic Medicine Crosspollinated: a Multilingual and Multiconfes-
sional Maze”, in Akasoy A. – Montgomery J.E. – Pormann P.E. (eds.), Islamic Crosspollina-
tions. Interactions in the Medieval Middle East (Exeter: 2007) 83.
59 For a list of the versions see the commentary on the Arabic critical edition by
G. Moussa in Ghalioungui P., Questions on Medicine for Scholars by Hunayn Ibn Ishaq
(Cairo: 1980), xxxvi–xxxvii.
60 See Jacquart D. – Micheau F., La Médecine Arabe et l’Occident Médiéval (Paris: 1990)
46.
61 See Jacquart D. – Palmieri N., “La Tradition Alexandrine des Masa’il fi t-tibb de
Hunain ibn Ishaq”, in Garzya A. (ed.), Storia e Ecdotica dei Testi Medici Greci. Atti del II
Convegno Internazionale Parigi 24–26 maggio 1994 (Naples: 1996) 217–218. This method of
division of the parts of medicine is well attested in writers such as Agnellus of Ravenna,
John of Alexandria and Stephanus of Athens, and formed a vital feature in medical teach-
ing in Late Alexandria. See Duffy J.M., “Byzantine Medicine in the Sixth and Seventh Cen-
turies: Aspects of Teaching and Practice”, in Scarborough J. (ed.), Symposium on Byzantine
Medicine. Dumbarton Oaks Papers 38 (1984) 21–27.
648 julius rocca

utilised by the Late Alexandrian Commentators.62 It opens by asking into

how many parts medicine may be divided (two), and of what those parts
consist (theory and practice). And in the first chapter, three forces, the
natural, vital, and psychic are listed, together with their kinds and their
actions. At the end of the chapter, the following is written in regard to
the existence and number of the spirits or pneumata, the seventh of the
natural things:
How many are the spirits? Three: the natural spirit, the vital spirit, and the
psychic spirit. The natural spirit emanates from the liver, penetrates through
the veins into the whole body, and is servant to the natural forces. The vital
spirit emanates from the heart, penetrates through the arteries into the
whole body, and is servant to the vital forces. The psychic spirit emanates
from the brain, penetrates through the nerves into the whole body and is
servant to the psychic forces.63
Here is articulated in explicit terms a tripartite pneumatology, with the
‘forces’ being the analogue of the familiar motif of Galen’s faculties or
powers (dunameis) that govern us. Ḥunayn’s articulation of a natural
pneuma (rūh tabī’ī), vital pneuma (rūh hayawānī), and psychic pneuma
(rūh nafsānī) would become a mainstay of Arabic medical theory.64
Ḥunayn’s position as a translator, facilitator and above all, interpretive
mediator of Galenic works, and especially his specific knowledge of On the
therapeutic method, together with his cognisance of the various strands
of Late Alexandrian medical and philosophical exegesis, were key influ-
ences when it came to his own medical writing. The Questions in particu-
lar would also prove to be a text of enduring influence in the Western
mediaeval medical tradition and beyond. For by the early twelfth cen-
tury a Latin translation of an abridgement of Ḥunayn’s Questions, albeit
packaged under the Greek title of the Isagoge, made its appearance in
the West.65 Ḥunayn is not mentioned as its author, being replaced by

62 Agnellus of Ravenna makes use of this method of division as well, as seen in

chapter 5 of his lectures on Galen’s De sectis.
63 Ghalioungui, Questions on Medicine I, 10, 5.
64 See Pormann – Savage-Smith, Medieval Islamic Medicine 45.
65 ‘With a Hellenised title that disguises its origin, the Isagoge Iohannitii constitutes
the first translation of an Arabic medical text. By comparison with its model (Ḥunayn ibn
Isḥāq’s Masā’il fi t-tibb), the Latin version has many imperfections; it is a kind of anthology,
gathering from the Masā’il some clumsily cut extracts. The technical vocabulary is also
somewhat clumsy, showing on the part of the translator a great hesitation in the render-
ing of the most basic Galenic notions. This clumsiness is attributable more to the poor
quality of the existing Latin vocabulary than to an ignorance of Arabic’. Jacquart D., “The
Introduction of Arabic Medicine into the West: The Question of Etiology”, in Campbell S. –
Hall B. – Klausner D., Health, Disease and Healing in Medieval Culture (London: 1992) 188.
 galen’s natural pneuma 649

one ‘Johannitius’.66 The Isagoge was probably the first medical text trans-
lated from Arabic, and this translation was composed (1075–1085/90) by
a Tunisian Benedictine monk of Monte Cassino, Constantine the African
(fl. ca. 1070–1097).67 The Isagoge was one of five key texts of the twelfth-
century medical Canon (later, Articella) of the medical curriculum of the
famous, but by no means doctrinally monolithic, ‘school’ of Salerno.68 If
its influence has been perhaps exaggerated, for after all Salerno did not
invent the concept of a medical canon,69 it is nevertheless safe to say that
by Constantine the African’s time, it was ‘the leading center of medical
instruction, theory and literature’70 in the Latin West. In common with
Hunayn’s original, Constantine mentions the three forces (virtutes) to
which the spirits are subservient:
The first force – that is, the ‘naturalis’ – takes its beginning from the liver, the
second, which is the ‘zotica’, from the heart, and the other, which is from
the brain, [is] the ‘spiritualis’.71
Manuscripts of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, from which later
texts such as the Vulgate derive, lack this sentence describing the seat of
the forces, which Constantine’s text ‘alone of all manuscripts preserves’.72
Although the section mentioning the number and location of the spirits in

66 For an excellent discussion of the Isagoge’s textual tradition see Jacquart D., “À
l’aube de la Renaissance médicale des XIe–XIIe siècles: L’ ‘Isagoge Johannitii’ et son tra-
ducteur”, Bibliothéque de l’École des Chartes 144 (1986) 209–240, especially 231–237. See also
Gracia Guillén D. – Alvarez Vizcaíno A.J., “El Galenismo Medieval a Traves De La ‘Isagoge
Iohannitii’ ”, in López Férez J.A. (ed.), Galeno. Obra, Pensamiento, e Influencia (Madrid:
1993) 253–272.
67 See Newton F., “Constantine the African and Monte Cassino: New Elements and the
Text of the Isagoge”, in Burnett C. – Jacquart D. (eds.), Constantine the African and Ali
Ibn Al-Abbas Al-Maguis. The Pantegni and Related Texts (Leiden: 1994) 16–47, from whose
account the above has been drawn.
68 On the role of the ‘School of Salerno’ in Western medicine, the fundamental study
is that of Kristeller P.O., “The School of Salerno: Its Development and Contribution to
the History of Learning”, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 17 (1945) 138–194. For a criti-
cal re-evaluation of the evidence, see Jacquart D. – Bagliani A.P. (eds.), La scuola medica
Salernitana gli autori e i testi (Florence: 2007).
69 ‘The idea of an introductory canon in medicine did not originate at Salerno and need
not have been re-invented there’. Jordan M.D., “Medicine as Science in the Early Commen-
taries on ‘Johannitius’ ”, Traditio, 43 (1987) 129.
70 Kristeller P.O., Studies in Renaissance Thought and Letters III (Rome: 1993) 435.
71 Newton, “Constantine the African” 34. See also the discussion in Jacquart, “À l’aube
de la Renaissance médicale” 217–218; Jacquart D., “Les antecedents gréco-latins de l’Isagoge
Iohannitii”, in Vázquez Buján M.E. (ed.), Tradición e innovación de la Medicina Latina de la
Antigüedad y de la alta Edad Media. Cursos e Congresos da Universidade de Santiago de
Compostela 83 (Santiago de Compostela: 1994) 84–86.
72 Newton, “Constantine the African” 34. And see the important comparative table at
41–42.
650 julius rocca

liver, heart and brain is missing in Constantine’s translation,73 he renders

the subsequent destination of each of the three spirits as follows:
Also, the first of these moves into the veins which do not have pulse (non
habent pulsum) and the whole body, the second into the arteries (arterias)
and the third into the nerves (nervos), which seventh of the natural things
[meaning spirit] obeys the fifth of the natural things [meaning force], that
is, it [meaning force] is recognised or known in [the form of] spirit.74
This may be compared with the relevant section of Ḥunayn’s Questions,
cited earlier:
How many are the spirits? Three: the natural spirit, the vital spirit, and the
psychic spirit. The natural spirit emanates from the liver, penetrates through
the veins into the whole body, and is servant to the natural forces. The vital
spirit emanates from the heart, penetrates through the arteries into the
whole body, and is servant to the vital forces. The psychic spirit emanates
from the brain, penetrates through the nerves into the whole body and is
servant to the psychic forces.
Yet, while Ḥunayn had carefully bracketed each of the particular spirits
with its corresponding controlling force, in keeping with what he regarded
as Galenic tradition, this is not the case in the Isagoge; rather, the notion
of the forces has here been redacted to a general statement at the end of
the section concerning the spirits. Although it is stated that the spirits are
subservient to (paret) the forces, such a statement also carries the impli-
cation that the role of the forces is now subject to interpretive fortune;
or rather, the scope and status of pneuma could be allowed to increase.
For example, later manuscripts (the Paris and the Vulgate) both carry the
location of each individual spirit, but, critically, they both also lack the
section on the virtutes, which Constantine had translated.75
The Isagoge, of course, is not the whole story of Galenism’s tripartite
pneumatology, even though, as has been argued, it formed, in Salerno
at any rate, ‘the most important single work of the canon for theoreti-
cal medicine’.76 Constantine’s other significant contribution to medicine,
the so-called Pantegni, must also be considered. This work is a transla-
tion of the ‘Complete Exposition of the Medical Art’ by the tenth-century

73 On the varying textual omissions and discrepancies see Newton, “Constantine the
African” 34–35.
74 Translation and emendation by Newton, “Constantine the African” 34–35.
75 See the table in Newton, “Constantine the African” 42.
76 Jordan M.D., “The Construction of a Philosophical Medicine: Exegesis and Argument
in Salernitan Teaching on the Soul”, Osiris 6 (1990) 43.
 galen’s natural pneuma 651

physician and encyclopaedist ‘Ali ibn al-’Abbas al-Majūsī (Haly Abas). The
Pantegni would come to rival Avicenna’s Canon in influence.77 In the chap-
ter on the spirits (Theorica, IV,19,2–6), the three spirits are mentioned, and
their relationship to the faculties is unambiguously asserted:
Omnis ergo spiritus tripertius. Est enim naturalis, est vitalis vel spiritualis,
est et animalis. Naturalis nascitur in epate, unde per venas ad tocius corporis
vadit membra, virtutem naturalem regit et augmentat, actiones eius custo-
diens. Hic igitur ex perfecti sanguinis fumno nascitur, qui in epate mundi-
ficatus et digestus ex omnibus humoribus clare depuratur. Spiritualis qui et
vitalis spiritus dicitur in corde nascitur, vadens per arterias ad tocius cor-
poris membra, spiritualem virtutem seu vitalem augmentans atque regens
actionesque eius custodiens. Spiritus animalis in cerebri nascitur ventriculis,
per nervos tendens ad membra tocius corporis, unde animalis virtus regitur
et augmentatur actionesque eius custodiuntur.78
The potentiality of pneuma’s amplified role is directly addressed, for the
relationship between virtutes and spiritus has now been reversed. Here, the
virtues are subservient to the spirits, who now rule (regunt) them.79 More-
over, the physiology of the natural spirit in particular is also augmented,
being said to ‘arise from the fumes of perfect blood’ (ex perfecti sanguinis
fumo nascitur).80 Constantine’s translations indicate he was well aware of
pneuma’s role in physiology.81 These textual interpretive renderings would
form the template for subsequent interpretations of Galen’s pneumatol-
ogy throughout the Medieval and Renaissance periods; in particular, the
importance of the Isagoge itself on theoretical medicine, to say nothing
of its emphatic codification of a tripartite pneumatology, cannot be exag-
gerated.82 Moreover, the translations and editions of the Isagoge helped

77 See Jacquart D., “Medical Scholasticism”, in Grmek M.D. (ed.), Western Medical
Thought from Antiquity to the Middle Ages (Cambridge, Mass.: 1998) 204–205.
78 Cited in Burnett C., “The Chapter on the Spirits in the Pantegni of Constantine the
African”, in Burnett C. – Jacquart D. (eds.), Constantine the African and Ali Ibn Al-Abbas
Al-Maguis. The Pantegni and Related Texts (Leiden: 1994) 115.
79 See Newton, “Constantine the African” 35 n. 73.
80 See Burnett, “The Chapter on the Spirits” 108–110 for parallels with the Pseudo-
Galenic De spermate.
81 Mention should be made in passing of Constantine’s translation of Isaac Israeli’s De
febribus, which also describes a tripartite pneumatology. Cf. Burnett, “The Chapter on the
Spirits” 104.
82 The Isagoge’s discussion (chs. 9–13) of the functions of the soul, ‘is of obvious impor-
tance to medical theory but also to philosophical and theological anthropology. The topics
raised here figure ancient, patristic, and medieval works of very different genres, including
basic accounts of biology, moralising depictions of the passions, analyses of sensation, and
hexaemeral commentaries on Genesis. They offer a particularly clear case for studying
652 julius rocca

usher in a decisive shift in the Latin West towards ‘learned medicine’.83

The Isagoge, together with the Pantegni and their later redacted variants,
would find ready acceptance with student, commentator and the learned
public alike.84 Partly based on Galen’s own notions of powers or facul-
ties that govern us, these texts would help fix the notion of placing the
three faculties into a fully-defined relationship to the relevant pneuma or
spirit. They would also afford scope for the physiological role of pneuma,
particularly its natural form, to increase, and for pneuma’s latent power
to be realised.

Conclusion

To Galen’s later commentators, although not restricted to them, schema-

tisation was a feature that perhaps above all else, readily appealed. Galen
therefore, or at any rate his successive transfigurations, could be seen
(or rather was made) to possess a doctrine of three pneumata or spirits,
which existed in physiological and psychological symmetry with the three
faculties of the soul.85 Soul and body thus possessed a set of interfaces
whose physiological, psychological and theological interrelationships
would much exercise the history of medicine in the West until at least
the Early Modern period. The doctrine of spirits allowed great interpretive
scope. For example, in the hands of Jean Fernel (?1497–1558) of the medi-
cal school of Paris, Book IV of Physiologia (1542) gives Galen’s pneumatic

adjustments or dislocations in the hierarchy of learning’. Jordan, “The Construction of a

Philosophical Medicine” 43–44.
83 Riddle J.M., “Theory and Practice in Medieval Medicine”, Viator 5 (1974) 175 and
n. 78. As Jacquart and Micheau, La Médecine Arabe 102 note, ‘L’Isagoge constitue, en
quelque sorte, la colonne vertébrale de la science médicale médiévale: brièveté lui permit
d’être sue par cœur par les étudiants; son laconisme invita à chercher une information
complémentaire et à lui consacrer d’amples commentaries’.
84 Constantine the African, in particular, keyed the Pantegni to appeal also to a more
general educated readership. See Jacquart, “Medical Scholasticism” 236. Dante constituted
just such an erudite layman and may be cited as testifying to the spread of Latin medi-
cal learning throughout the Italian peninsula. In Vita Nuova, section II, he describes, in
psycho-physiological terms, the effect of meeting Beatrice for the first time by way of the
reaction of natural, vital and animal spirits to such a stimulus.
85 Of course, not everyone accepted a tripartite scheme. Giambatista da Monte, for
one, echoed Galen’s doubts on the inclusion of natural pneuma. See Siraisi N., Avicenna in
Renaissance Italy (Princeton: 1987) 338.
 galen’s natural pneuma 653

physiology a cosmological origin.86 Crafted within the wider background

of Renaissance Platonism, this conceptualisation of pneuma also reflects
the durability of the Stoic conceptualisation of pneuma or spiritus as an
aetherial element.87 It also acknowledges the strength of the pneumatic
concept as opposed to that of the corresponding faculties. It would be left
to William Harvey (1578–1657), a vigorous opponent of Fernel’s doctrine
of the spirits, a part of whose refutation was quoted at the beginning of
this chapter, to conceptualise a new understanding of the heart and the
vessels, and the crucial role of the ‘excellent endowments’ of the blood.
This, whilst not entirely eliminating the doctrine of the spirits, hencefor-
ward made them surplus to absolute physiological requirements.88 Not
that Harvey entirely abandoned the concept of spiritus; rather it could
now be better employed as a signifier of ‘a visible quality, or modality, of
matter: the liveliness or vitality of the blood, which imparts these same
qualities to the blood as a whole’.89 Moreover, neither Fernel nor Har-
vey abandoned the concept of physiology as fundamentally a discourse,
a meditative narration on the body of nature. For Fernel, as for Harvey,
‘physiology is a thinking discipline based on the active investigative disci-
pline of anatomy’.90 This is ‘physiology’ as Galen would have understood
it, with pneuma forming the conceptual functional theorem dependent
upon anatomical demonstration.
At one level, Galen’s citation of natural pneuma is no more than an
acknowledgment that, in his period, some physicians and philosophers
accepted its existence either as a general concept or specialised physi-
ological principle, and that a certain amount of unspecified pneuma
(pneuma simpliciter, as it were), was necessary in Galen’s system (and in

86 Siraisi N., The Clock and the Mirror. Girolamo Cardano and Renaissance Medicine
(Princeton: 1997) 159 ‘Essentially, Fernel maintained that in addition to the animal, vital,
and natural spirits of standard Galenic medical teaching, celestial spiritus of divine origin
flowed down from the heavens into the very substance of terrestrial things and were the
bearers of form. Within the body these special divine spiritus were the carriers of innate
heat and the source of all vital function’.
87 And see Bono, The Word of God 97–103. On the influence of Stoicism in medicine in
the Early Modern period, see Barker P., “Stoic Contributions to Early Modern Science”, in
Osler M.J. (ed.), Atoms, Pneuma, and Tranquillity. Epicurean and Stoic Themes in European
Thought (Cambridge: 1991) 135–154.
88 In this, Harvey was opposed by Francis Glisson (1598–1677), Regius Professor of
Physic at Cambridge, who ‘continued to give a major role to spirits, which were [. . .] a
fundamental part of his natural philosophy’. French R., William Harvey’s Natural Philoso-
phy (Cambridge: 1994) 304.
89 Bono, The Word of God 107.
90 Cunningham, “The Pen and the Sword” 648.
654 julius rocca

others) as an aid in explaining certain pathological phenomena – syncope,

for example, as has been discussed above. For, subsumed in a wider pro-
cess or discourse, pneuma need not be specialised. But for the heart and
the arteries, Galen (and, again, others) saw that a more specialised form
of pneuma was required. Even that, however, was but a precursor to the
most important pneuma of all – psychic pneuma, the medium by which
for Galen the rational soul operates. By contrast, natural pneuma remained
for him a physiological (and psychological) non-requirement. As has been
shown, for Galen to insist on such a connection between the faculties of
soul on the one hand, and the pneumata on the other is to run the risk
of granting a greater credence to natural pneuma (and in raising expecta-
tions as to what its function might be) than Galen is willing to do. For of
course, while it is one thing to allow that natural pneuma is perhaps to
be found in the liver and veins, it is another to delineate its function. Yet
from Galen’s singular mention of natural pneuma, an entire medical phi-
losophy was created, highlights of which have been sketched in the course
of this chapter. Galen’s pneumatic physiology, presented in its own terms,
is fascinating not only in what it reveals of the efforts of a highly-educated
medical scientist of the second century AD to determine how the body
functions in a descriptive sense, but for the ways in which this particular
legacy was subsequently interpreted under Galenism. In such readings,
inconsistencies and errors based on the sheer magnitude of the project
concerned were inevitable. But a tripartite systematisation of pneuma
seemed the appropriate foil to the corresponding triune faculties, and
an eloquent testimony to the ‘demands of symmetry’91 implicit in such
a scheme. Neither Galen nor later commentators should be censured for
using pneuma to elucidate concepts in functional anatomy. Nor should
they be castigated for its immensely long explanatory lifespan. After all,
pneuma itself was a component of a physiology that was itself regarded
as a branch of natural philosophy, and which, until the early nineteenth
century, ‘reached the truth by philosophising’.92 If nothing else, Galen’s
pneumatology, considered on its own or through later reification, serves
as a salutary reminder of the abiding potency of the analogical model in
non-experimental physiology.

91 Siraisi N., Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine (Chicago-London: 1990) 108.
92 Cunningham, “The Pen and the Sword” 648.
 galen’s natural pneuma 655

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 Metabolisms of the Soul.
The Physiology of Bernardino Telesio in Oliva Sabuco’s
Nueva Filosofía de la Naturaleza del Hombre (1587)

Marlen Bidwell-Steiner

Summary

Oliva Sabuco de Nantes y Barrera’s Nueva filosofía de la naturaleza del hombre is

a unique contribution to early modern physiological discourse. Over the last two
decades there has been some interest in her work, mainly by feminist scholars,
whose aim has been to defend the female authorship that had been disputed and
subrogated to Sabuco’s father. But this focus on the question of autoría has left
the analysis of the philosophical framework of the text largely neglected. Only
some of its highly intriguing metaphors have been discussed as isolated concepts
to underpin its female authorship. Such an approach fails to situate the text
within the most innovative aspects of Renaissance natural philosophy. In this
article, I will offer a close reading of the rhetorical apparatus of the Nueva Filo­
sofía to expose its gynocentric psycho-physiological framework, which elaborates
on new concepts proposed by contemporary Italian materialists. In particular, I
will suggest that, when considered against the backdrop of Bernadino Telesio’s
De rerum natura, Sabuco’s text forms a consistent model of the interplay of body
and soul. 

Unlike modern scientists and scholars, natural philosophers of the Renais-

sance were not forced to specialise; instead, they focused on a wide range
of issues which today comprise different fields, such as biology, metaphys-
ics, astronomy, to name but a few. Their overall aim was to develop a
system of principles that could be applied to all natural processes – in
human bodies as well as in environmental phenomena, such as gravita-
tion or tides.
At the end of the sixteenth century, one can trace a radical materi-
alistic orientation in natural philosophy which transforms the view of
the microcosm and of the macrocosm alike. The prerequisite for such an
epistemic shift can be seen in a stronger emphasis on empirical knowl-
edge formation in contrast merely to amending traditional strands. But
as modern readers, we must be cautious: empiricism in that period does
not yet imply conducting measurable series of experiments, but rather
searching for the most unbiased records possible of observations of natu-
ral phenomena. Consequently, the function of the senses becomes highly
662 marlen bidwell-steiner

important. In examining the microcosm, the interaction between body

and mind is reduced to exclusively natural processes.
In this article I will introduce a unique contribution to this discourse:
Oliva Sabuco’s Nueva filosofía de la naturaleza del hombre. Its unique-
ness relies on two features; the female authorship and a highly original
gynocentric model of the world, which is constructed using the elements
predominant in contemporary natural philosophy. The mere fact that a
woman of twenty-five was able to publish a philosophical text has raised
some academic interest, mainly among feminist scholars.1 However, the
philosophical framework of the text has been largely neglected. Due to the
almost complete lack of extant biographical data, with only scarce refer-
ences offered by the text itself, any reconstruction of its possible sources
relies on Sabuco’s line of argumentation alone.
In this chapter, I will suggest that the relevant metaphors of the Nueva
Filosofía form a consistent world model when considered against the
backdrop of Bernardino Telesio’s De rerum natura. The common aim of
these two dissident authors was to reformulate the traditional humoral
system into a concise and more convincing form. In this, they drew on
centuries of medical tradition of humoral pathology, which by the six-
teenth century had culminated in an almost overly elaborated intellectual
system. In doing so, not only did they follow certain recent medical find-
ings, but they also rediscovered classical and medieval sources of medical
philosophy. The ‘new Galen’ is just one example of this: during the Middle
Ages Galen’s medical textbooks were received through Arab commenta-
tors, but in the sixteenth century new critical Latin editions of the Greek
originals offered new readings.2 In the authors I am studying here, the

1 E.g. Waithe M.E. – Vintro M.E., “Posthumously Plagiarizing Oliva Sabuco: An Appeal
to Cataloging Librarians”, Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 35, 3–4 (2003) 525–540;
Waithe M.E., Oliva Sabuco de Nantes Barrera, in A History of Women Philosopher, II.
Medieval, Renaissance and Enlightenment Women Philosophers A.D. 500–1600 (Dordrecht-
Boston-London: 1989) 261–284; Otero-Torres D.M., “Oliva Sabuco de Nantes y la con-
strucción del estado: Nuevas topografías sociales e institucionales, feminismos, cuerpos
escrituras” in Zavala I.M. (ed.), La Página (Tenerife: 2000) 67–85; Otero-Torres D.M., “Texto
femenino/autoridad masculina: problemas de autoría en torno a La nueva filosofía de
la naturaleza del hombre (1587) de Oliva Sabuco de Nantes” in Calvo F. – Romanos M.
(eds.), Lecturas críticas de textos hispánicos. Estudios de Literatura Española del Siglo de
Oro (Buenos Aires: 2000) 107–113; Rivera-Garretas M.M., “Las prosistas del humanismo y
del Renacimiento (1400–1550)” in Zavala I.M. (ed.), Breve historia fememista de la litera­
tura española (en lengua castellana) (Barcelona: 1993) 83–131; Rivera-Garretas M.M., “Oliva
Sabuco de Nantes Barrera” in Zavala I.M. (ed.), Breve historia fememista de la literatura
española (en lengua castellana (Barcelona: 1993) 131–147.
2 Hankinson R.J. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Galen (Cambridge: 2008).
 metabolisms of the soul 663

combination of innovative methods and speculations based on a wider

range of texts resulted in a focus on bodily fluids, namely the spirits. These
subtleties of the human fabric offered a plausible model of explanation for
physiological processes otherwise difficult to explain, such as perception.
Interestingly, and in accordance with their materialistic focus, in the texts
of Telesio and Sabuco perception further acts as a metaphorical explana-
tion for intellectual operations. The two authors both emphasise a fluid
and permeable organisation of the body with one vital sap responsible
for such different activities as sight, emotional response, and cognition.
By hypothesising one spirit, or soul liquid, instead of three, they are thus
eroding the dichotomy between matter and mind, strongly in favour of
the former.
So far, their innovations are parallel. But whereas Telesio, in accordance
with the physiological tradition, assumes the most subtle quality for his
spiritus animalis, Sabuco refers to the crudest metabolic substance, the
chylos (Spanish: chilo) as ‘ur-liquid of life’.3 This discrepancy between the
two texts helps us to grasp Sabuco’s world model as a gynocentric inver-
sion of Bernardino Telesio’s physiological concepts, as I will show below,
after first outlining Telesio’s own highly innovative ideas.4

What Matters. Hot and Cold

Bernardino Telesio owes his status within the genealogy of famous phi-
losophers first and foremost to Francis Bacon, who called him the ‘first
of the moderns’.5 In fact, Telesio’s radicalisation, or to be more precise,
his radical simplification of cosmology and of physiology, paved the way
for empirical and mechanical conceptualisations which culminated in the

3 Waithe, A History of Women Philosopher, vol. II, 275.

4 In order to trace possible direct readings of Telesio’s work by Sabuco, I mainly used
the edition of his second De rerum natura iuxta propria principia (Naples, Iosephus Cac-
chius: 1570) by Roberto Bondì (1999) given the fact that the last edition was published in
1586 (Naples, Horatium Salvianum), a time when Sabuco’s own text was already in produc-
tion (ed. 1587). The quotes from Sabuco’s work are taken from the second edition (1588),
due to the fact that there is a copy of it in the National Library of Vienna, which bears
no marks of censorship. A comparison with the editio princeps at the National Library of
Madrid proved that it is technically identical with the first edition except for the author’s
amendment of a table of contents and some minor corrections.
5 Bacon Francis, The Works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban, and
Lord High Chancellor of England, eds. Spedding J. – Ellis R.L. – Heath D.D., 7 vols. (London:
1887–1901 [Repr. Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: 1963] 114).
664 marlen bidwell-steiner

so-called Scientific Revolution. It seems surprising, however, that his phil-

osophical innovations were so widely received, since he was never part of
the leading intellectual circles of contemporary Italy, but rather worked
independently on the periphery. After years of voluntary seclusion in a
Benedictine convent, he returned to his hometown of Cosenza where he
seems to have systematically deconstructed ancient texts from the Aris-
totelian and the Galenic corpus. Initially, his ideas were presented only
to his pupils of the Accademia Concentina, as he published the first edi-
tion of his De rerum natura iuxta propria principia (Rome, Antonio Blado:
1565) at the fairly mature age of 56. His further scholarly efforts can be
described as the reformulation, re-elaboration and extension of this opus
magnum with two more versions in 1570 and in 1586.
Today’s scientific community still disagrees about Telesio’s motives
for these textual revisions. Most of them refer to his concept of anima:
whereas the first edition deals exclusively with a material and therefore
mortal soul, the following editions tend to differentiate more and more
between an anima ex semine educta and an anima a Deo infusa. Some
scholars interpret these modifications as a consequence of Averroes’ heri-
tage: Mulsow, for instance, suggests that Telesio bases his argument on
the assumption of an anima mundi, but does not further develop it as it
becomes irrelevant due to the Fall of Man.6 Leen Spruit offers an interest-
ing explanation for the reason why Telesio argues for a divine soul. This
explanation is in line with Telesio’s own pragmatic argumentation: Spruit
states, that if human beings have a notion of immortality, there must be
something eternal that corresponds with it.7 Even if one agrees with such
subtle interpretations, Bondì’s conclusion that we should read the modi-
fications in Telesio’s psychophysiology as a concession to an ever more
rigid censorship in the Counter-Reformation seems, in my opinion, highly
plausible, considering Telesio’s overall argument.8
In any case, Telesio does not elaborate on metaphysical principles, but
rather puts emphasis on the material world. The core concept of his philo-
sophical edifice is a reduction of the Aristotelian fourfold qualities (heat,
cold, moisture, and dryness) to two antagonistic principles, heat and cold,

6 Mulsow M., Frühneuzeitliche Selbsterhaltung. Telesio und die Naturphilosophie der

Renaissance (Tübingen: 1998) 285.
7 Spruit L., “Telesio’s Reform of the Philosophy of Mind”, Bruniana & Campanelliana
3 (1997) 129.
8 Bondì R., Introduzione a Telesio (Rome-Bari: 1997) 123–135.
 metabolisms of the soul 665

with the former definitely being the more important one. To disregard
moisture and dryness as such is not all that revolutionary, as Galen had
already hinted at this possibility.9 The more striking innovation in Tele-
sio’s teleology is the interaction of these primary agents, cold and heat,
with matter. According to Karl Schuhmann, Telesio implies or even argues
that matter is, in fact, corporeal, and in postulating this “he participates
in that broad movement which eventually led to the ontological upgrad-
ing of matter”.10 This is a clear break with Aristotle, to whom matter as a
principle is incorporeal.11
In contrast, matter in Telesio’s view never diminishes or grows. It is
the most stable principle and can be characterised as not being in need
of anything, a feature that releases it from the Aristotelian idea of priva­
tion. Thus, the formal variety of our sensual world is not the result of a
destitute and appetitive matter, but rather it emanates from the battle
between heat and cold.
Telesio’s cosmology offers another important rejection of peripatetic
concepts by assuming that the supra-lunar world and the sub-lunar world
have identical components, albeit in varying degrees. I consider this to be
a further example of his far from metaphysical approach, since an anima
mundi loses its argumentative basis if heaven is only a more subtle struc-
ture of the same principles which can be found down on earth:
[. . .] indeed as any acting nature, whatever it is like, is never unaware of
its own character and never desists from acting, but fights and chases even
natures that are similar and akin to it in order that it may increase itself in
their foundations because it strives for the greatest measure of itself, con-
serving and diffusing itself as much as possible to produce itself in any sub-
stratum. Therefore as already stated, the acting principles of these things
appear to be heat and cold.12

 
9 Galenus, De elementis secundum Hippocratem (1.494–495, 142, I-6 K.); for further
explanations see Hankinson, Cambridge Companion 219.
10 Schuhmann K., “Telesio’s Concept of Matter”, in Accademia Consentina (ed.), Atti del
Convegno Internazionale di Studi su Bernadino Telesio (Cosenza 1990) 115.
11 Aristoteles, Physica 1.9.
12 Telesio Bernardino, De rerum natura (1999) 38 ‘qualiscunque enim existit natura
agens quaevis nunquam proprii ingenii oblita numquam agere cessat, sed vel similes cog-
natasque oppugnat deturbatque, ut in earum se ipsam sedibus amplificet qualiscunque
est talis esse servarique et diffundi amplius atque in subiectis produci omnibus summe
appetens summeque contendens. Quod igitur dictum est agentia rerum principia calor
esse et frigus videntur’.
666 marlen bidwell-steiner

From cosmology to physiology to psychology

Although Telesio technically rejects an epistemology that is based on

rhetoric, he sometimes uses analogies due to the lack of a better alterna-
tive. As a consequence, we can rediscover his cosmological principles in
his anthropology:
Also the existence of the spirit, the very foundation of Telesian psychol-
ogy, is impossible to prove directly by the senses, but must be inferred from
observed behaviour. Yet, it is necessary to postulate the existence of an ethe-
real and fiery substance in order to explain the phenomena of perception.13
In order to elaborate on Telesio’s model of the workings of the spirit, a
short summary of how psychophysiological processes were previously
conceived is necessary. Basically, certain Aristotelian qualities are linked
to a complex system of humours that form the temperament of the body.
More sophisticated physiological processes are fuelled by what today might
be referred to as ‘transmitter substances’, or, in the language of natural
philosophy, ‘spirits’ and ‘species’. In the first place, the ‘vital virtues’ (as
Nancy Siraisi termed the spirits in 1990) have the task of harmonising and
stabilising the body parts. However, these subtleties of the human fabric
serve as a plausible model of explanation for physiological processes that
are otherwise difficult to explain (i.e. perception). As such, they also act
as a mediator between the inside of the body and its environment, be it
nurture, climate, or passions.
The dominant concept can be traced back to a blending of Aristotelian
philosophy with Galenic medicine:14 during the processes of the human
soul, spiritus and species act as mediators between matter and form, albeit
in complex ways. The material environment irradiates species, a sort of
ray, to the sense organs, which in turn produce images or phantasmata in
the first faculty of the brain, the sensus communis. The term species refers
to a translation of the Aristotelian concept of eidos and therefore is analo-
gous to forma.15 Spiritus is a subtle vapour that carries the species and fuels
life processes throughout the organism. In the Galenic system, the spiri­
tus as a ‘transmitter substance’ has a tripartite structure, an idea which

13 Spruit, “Telesio’s Reform” 127.

14 Aristoteles, De anima; Galen, De elementis secundum Hippocratem.
15 For further definitions see Spruit L., Species Intelligibilis. From Perception to Knowl­
edge. Renaissance Controversies, Later Scholasticism and the Elimination of the Intelligible
Species in Modern Philosophy 2 (Leiden-New York-Cologne: 1995).
 metabolisms of the soul 667

corresponds to Aristotelian psychology: the spiritus naturalis resides in

the liver and is responsible for digestion and metabolism, the spiritus
vitalis can be localised in the heart and is active in all kinds of affections
and motions, and the spiritus animalis is situated in the brain and controls
higher activities of the soul, such as intellect.
In a clearly Aristotelian tradition of equating the soul with life itself,
Telesio endeavours to simplify the theory of its operations by emphasising
sensation. Hence, in accordance with the most innovative of contempo-
rary natural philosophers, he discards the conception of a threefold soul.
Instead, he establishes one single life sap that not only controls all activi-
ties in all creatures – an idea already expressed by others16 – but also acts
as the substance of the soul itself. This is already hinted at in the title of
one of his shorter texts, which were posthumously edited by his disciple
Antonio Persio: Quod animal universum ab unica animae substantia guber­
natur (Venice 1590). A similar position can be found in the other versions
of his opus magnum:
Even though they [the peripatetics] cannot demonstrate it, they cannot
claim that it is the instrument of the soul, but rather the substance of the
soul and even the soul itself, respectively this spirit which is present in all
things, a feature of the semen and of all its products with the exception of
bones and things similar to bones.17
Katherine Park points out the innovative quality of this reappraisal:
In Telesio’s De rerum natura (1586) spiritus appeared no longer as the instru-
ment of the organic soul, as it had been for Reisch and the rest, but as its
very substance – a position he attributed to Aristotle himself.18
Thus, he reverses the traditional model by asserting the substantiality of
the soul and the instrumentality of the body: what was formerly seen as
a sort of transmitter fluid changes into the materiality of anima, which
resides in the ventricles of the brain, from which location it operates
throughout the whole body via the nerves.

16 The most prominent exponents are Nicolas Cusanus, Jean Fernel, Girolamo Fracas-
toro and Miguel Servet among others.
17 Telesio, De rerum natura (1999) 168 ‘Id si non praestent ne ipsis quidem animae orga-
num, sed ipse animae substantia et anima ipsa videri debet, is nimirum spiritus qui e
semine eductus est rebusque e semine constitutis unis ossibus ossibusque similibus rebus
exceptis reliquis inest omnibus’.
18 Park K., “The Organic Soul”, in Schmitt C.B. – Skinner Q. (eds.), The Cambridge His­
tory of Renaissance Philosophy (Cambridge: 1988) 464–485.
668 marlen bidwell-steiner

Nevertheless, the soul-spirit is of the subtlest substance, which makes

the analogy to his cosmological model evident: for Telesio, the active prin-
ciple of heat is equivalent to light. Therefore, the hotter a being, the more
refined are its qualities. Moreover, heat is responsible for motion, and in
this context it becomes clear that life as heat is both spirit and motion:
‘Therefore one has to state that heat as a product of motion, which is a
product of heat’s own operation, is a product of the substance of heat’.19
In this passage one also can trace an apparent inconsistency in Telesio’s
text, as he normally considers heat as a principle, not as a substance. In
order to explain this contradictory formulation one needs to consider the
cosmic seat of heat: Heaven, or to be more precise, the Sun becomes one
of the two first bodies. In certain passages of his texts, Telesio uses the Sun
as homologous to the quality of heat in order to stress his assertion that
there are only these two creative elements. Together with Earth, where
cold and matter reside, Sun is the artifex of all things. All beings are made
out of the antagonistic forces of these two first bodies, their battlefield
mainly being the surface of the Earth.20
In order to follow Telesio’s explanation for the variety of things, it is
necessary to scrutinise his notion of heat. Heat is equated with light, and
as such it is very supple and versatile. Hence, motion and heat are closely
connected: in a way, the versatility of our sensual world is the product of
differently heated objects acting upon each other. The key paradigm of
this acting is tangibility: every transformation is a result of dilatation or
contraction following an agreeable or an objectionable touch. Heat acts
by dilating, moving, and rarefying things; cold acts by condensing and
keeping things stable. What is true for the outside world again applies
to psychophysiological processes: perception is a delightful or abhorrent
affection of the spirit by means of the senses – experienced as pleasure
or as pain.
Motion in general is a key concept of Renaissance natural philosophers.
They invested much effort into tackling the highly speculative twofold
Aristotelian system of energeia and dynamis. Telesio suggests that affec-
tions, understood as motions, are not unidirectional, since the spirit is
actively striving for movement by following its major aim of self-preserva-
tion. In the course of sensation, the spirit is pursuing its natural operation.

19 Telesio, De rerum natura (1999) 100 ‘Calor itaque a motu factus, a propria caloris
factus operatione, a caloris substantia factus videri debet’.
20 Telesio, De rerum natura (1999) 10–25.
 metabolisms of the soul 669

Thus, he uses the term actio to denote a push, a physical action of one
thing bearing upon another, and operatio for its inner operations.21 Conse-
quently, spirit as the “seed-soul” of all creatures is not a mere potentiality,
but rather an active substance: ‘Telesio believed that the soul comes to
grasp natural reality by means of physical interaction’.22 In this context,
it becomes evident that this peripatetic theory of species intellegibilis as
a phantasmatic and immaterial form is discarded: Telesio goes for the
real thing.
This approach also offers a new concept of memory; one which no lon-
ger serves as an ‘image library’ in the last ventricle of the brain, but instead
becomes genuine embodied experience. This brings us to a key topic that
has been covered most prominently in scholarly literature: Telesio’s the-
ory of cognition.23 Basically, there is a general agreement on the fact that
cognition functions analogously to sensation because, ultimately, there
is always some sort of external impetus. As an underlying aspect in this
specific spiritual operation, memoria is involved as the surplus negotiator.
In Telesio’s account, memoria becomes a bodily remembrance of a past
movement of the spirit.
In my opinion, this idea cannot be merely ascribed to Telesio’s over-
all ‘reductive strategy’.24 Instead, it nourishes his deep conviction that
abstract speculations are feeble. In contrast to Aristotle’s psychology,
Telesio faces the problem of errors in human cognition: false responses
can only be explained by assimilating actual stimuli with the ‘wrong’
embodiment of past experiences. However, the same framework offers a
materialistic model for human knowledge acquisition, as bodily recollec-
tion may modulate further responses. Once more, there are no eternal
forms or images involved, but everything is based on the materiality of
the unique physiological fluid.
Before confronting the original ideas of this Southern Italian philoso-
pher with those of his near-contemporary, the female Spanish writer Oliva
Sabuco de Nantes y Barrera, it will be helpful to recall the most important
items as key words: namely, heat and cold as acting natures; matter as

21 See Telesio, De rerum natura (1999) 18–20.

22 Spruit, Species Intelligibilis 201.
23 E.g. Kessler E., “Selbstorganisation in der Naturphilosophie der Renaissance”, Selbst­
organisation. Jahrbuch für Komplexität in den Natur-, Sozial- und Geisteswissenschaften
3 (1992) 15–29; Bondì, Introduzione a Telesio; Mulsow, Frühneuzeitliche Selbsterhaltung;
Boenke M., Körper, Spiritus, Geist. Psychologie vor Descartes (Munich: 2005).
24 Spruit, “Telesio’s Reform” 124.
670 marlen bidwell-steiner

stable nature; spirit as substance residing in the ventricles of the brain;

‘tactile’ motion as contraction and dilatation; and cognition as amplified
sensation.

The Upside-Down Philosophy of Oliva Sabuco de Nantes y Barrera

The reception of the Spanish writer Oliva Sabuco de Nantes y Barrera

attests to a well-known phenomenon in feminist studies: the loss of bio-
graphical data goes hand in hand with the appropriation of her highly
original work. The authorship of her Nueva filosofía de la naturaleza del
hombre (Madrid, 1587) was disputed and the work was attributed to her
father. In this case, the dubious strategies of a patriarchal scientific his-
toriography become more than evident due to the fact that the usurpa-
tion took place about 350 years after the first publication of her successful
text; two further editions had appeared during her lifetime and a further
six versions before the dispute, all under her name. A team of American
scholars has carefully reconstructed the circumstances of this act of pla-
giarism. They convincingly argue that the flimsy evidence of ‘rediscovered’
documents is totally unfounded.25 But their pioneer work of reconfirm-
ing the original authorship is not sustained by their English translation
of the Nueva filosofía, as this lacks a careful contextualisation of the basic
principles of Sabuco’s text. Fortunately, Gianna Pomata has recently pub-
lished a highly readable English translation of one core dialogue. But she
again treats the question of authorship as unresolved, although she does
not adduce convincing evidence for yet another examination of this vexed
question.26
In fact, no reconstruction of sources for, or influences on, Sabuco’s text
can be based on indisputable proof. Apart from the fact that she pub-
lished the Nueva Filosofía at the early age of twenty-five, her biography
remains obscure. There is no documentation on the precise date of her
death, and we know only a little about her intellectual upbringing. She
certainly spent her earliest years with the Carmelites. The widespread
assumption that the famous Spanish humanist, Simon Abril, was her
teacher is based simply on the fact that he was a native of the same city as

25 See Waithe M. E. – Vintro M. E., “Posthumously Plagiarizing Oliva Sabuco” 525–540.

26 Pomata G., Introduction, in Oliva Sabuco de Nantes Barrera. The True Medicine
(Toronto: 2010) 1–85.
 metabolisms of the soul 671

Sabuco, Alcaraz, where he taught for several years. In any case, the young
author would have benefited from a lively intellectual environment since
her father, a pharmacist, and her godfather, a physician, participated in
the local humanist culture.
Sabuco’s writing shows clear evidence of humanist influence: she
adopts an anti-scholastic attitude and postulates experiential knowledge
as superior to academic tradition. This popular humanistic strategy does
not allow for extended discussions of the positions in theoretical debates.
But although she only rarely quotes canonical sources such as the works
of Plato, Pliny’s Historia Naturalis and Aristotle’s natural philosophical
texts, her playful use of philosophical paradigms shows her as being fully
acquainted with the most contested issues of contemporary natural phi-
losophy.27 To grasp Sabuco’s line of argumentation and its references, we
must therefore turn to a close reading of her own text.
Sabuco’s eclectic cross-reading of physiological concepts reveals her
strategic intention to deconstruct the androcentric conception of the
world within its own terms of signification. To that aim, she reshapes peri-
patetic, Galenic, and Platonic ideas into a materialist and holistic model
of the body by means of rhetorical recombination. This strategy proves
that she is well aware of the materialistic branch of natural philosophy
that was particularly dominant in the Mediterranean at this time, even
though she only rarely quotes any contemporaries. In order to reveal the
systematic construction underlying Sabuco’s core tropes, it is necessary to
explore the most radical materialistic approaches of contemporary natu-
ral philosophy developed by Paduan Aristotelian philosophers, such as
Pietro Pomponazzi. Even so, the main features of her physiological inno-
vations and the specific quality of the constituents of her Nueva filosofía
are significantly close to Bernardino Telesio’s model.
Like Telesio, Oliva Sabuco puts much emphasis on the interface
between body and soul. One question associated with anima in early
modern texts concerns its presumed location within the human body. On
this point, Sabuco offers one of her strongest metaphors: in the Nueva
Filosofía, humans are described as Arbol del revés, a reversed tree. This

27 As Pomata discovered, Sabuco took most of the classical quotations from a very
influential text of Francisco Valles, who was head of the medical school in Alcalá and a
famous translator of Aristotle, Hippocrates and Galen. See Pomata, Introduction, 36–37.
I do not share the opinion that Sabuco was ‘competing with Valles’ because, in his Con­
troversiarum medicarum et philosophicarum libri X (Alcalà 1556), the latter pursues a very
different argumentation in line with scholastic rhetoric.
672 marlen bidwell-steiner

imagery outlines the full complexity of Sabuco’s reworking of the images

she inherited: the head as raíz, root, seems to indicate a close connection
between the human soul and the anima mundi, because as it is pointing
to heaven, it is prone to cosmic forces. This conception calls to mind the
Neoplatonic nodus mundi, an immaterial essence. In fact, Sabuco seems
to have borrowed the tree metaphor from Plato’s Timaeus.28 An almost
contemporary parallel can be found in Leone Hebreo’s Dialoghi d’Amore,29
where this exiled Portuguese physician too uses Neoplatonic ideas to con-
struct a clearly materialistic concept of the interplay between the soul and
the body.
Likewise, the Nueva filosofía does not engage in metaphysical specula-
tions. As in Telesio’s texts, Sabuco’s brain soul not only features sublime
intellect. In practical terms, the brain’s ventricles are the trading centre
for all vital processes. Sabuco reduces facultas, an independent capac-
ity, to being a quality of the heart and the liver. The latter works almost
mechanically: ‘[. . .] because the nature of the liver cannot err, it is learned
without a doctor’.30 Together with the heart and the spleen, the liver forms
the three ‘embers’ that support the brain as the unique animated organ
by stimulating the metabolism. Here, we find Telesio’s antagonistic forces
of heat and cold in the interior of the body, as heart, spleen, and liver
appear to be hot, enabling digestion, while the spirit itself remains cold
throughout the body. Consequently, Sabuco reduces the threefold spirit
to one single vital sap which she refers to alternately as espirito, sangre
blanco, and chilo (spirit, white blood, chyle).
Whereas in traditional humoral theory the term chylos was defined as
the earthiest of the humours, Sabuco re-signifies this substance of diges-
tion as a vehicle of the soul that holds the capacity of form. Thus, she
emphasises the important status of matter, which since Antiquity had
been metaphorically associated with the feminine. This reading is further
supported in her rhetorical programme, which is dominated by meta-
phors stemming from the source domain ‘mother’. In the following, I will
trace these female structural figures – natura madre/natura madrastra,
pia madre, and luna madre – in order to show further parallels, as well

28 Plato, Timaeus 90a–b.

29 Ebreo Leone, Dialoghi d’amore (Bari, Antonio Blado: 1535), ed. Caramella S. 1929: 87.
30 Sabuco de Nantes y Barrera Oliva, Nueva filosofía de la naturaleza del hombre, no
conocida ni alcançada de los grandes filosofos antiguos. La qual mejora la vida y salud
humana (Madrid, Pedro Madrigal: 15882) fol. 207l ‘porque la natural del higado, no sabe
errar, es docta sin doctor’.
 metabolisms of the soul 673

as illustrating the disagreement between Nueva filosofía and Telesio’s

physiology.
One important parallel between the two authors is the rejection of the
concept of privation, which is substituted by the representation of two
natural agents, albeit with a special twist in Sabuco’s text, to which I will
refer later:
[. . .] therefore any matter maintains friendship with its form and assumes it.
It assumes not the one of which it was deprived, but the one with which it
is in friendship. Therefore philosophers better call privation amicitia. They
certainly erred in postulating this principle, for there are only matter, amici-
tia and form, and the three of them stay mixed. Thus it takes as long as the
amicitia takes, which the matter maintains with this form.31
In this context, the concept of friendship seems to refer to Girolamo Fra-
castoro’s paradigm of sympathia, an ontological order in which all things
act according to their predisposition.32 But an allusion to friendship reap-
pears when Sabuco describes reproduction. Here she suggests a model of
‘love companionship’ that clearly defeats Aristotle’s idea of the predomi-
nance of the male contribution to conception:
[. . .] so the man will see, how much the companion, whom he takes as wife,
contributes to the perfection of his children. And the woman [will see the
contribution] of the companion, whom she chooses as her partner, since
out of two good materials results a good third one. Thus, the male and the
female partner each contribute their half. This is why Aristotle, very accu-
rately, compared children with a link that ties together the chain in the mid-
dle, as one half comes from the father and the other one from the mother, to
the child, and thus father and mother stay bound to their children.33
The comparison of metaphors of the same source domain, on two different
levels of text, helps further to uncover Sabuco’s objective. In her description

31 Sabuco, Nueva Filosofía fol. 250l–r ‘De manera que cada materia tiene amistad con
su forma, y aquella toma, y no otra de que es priuada, sino a la que tiene amistad: y mejor
dixeran los filosofos a la priuacion amicitia: y cierto erraron en poner este principio, sino
materia amicitia, y forma, y quedan todos tres en el mixto: y assi dura segun dura la amici-
tia, que tiene la materia a aquella forma’.
32 For further interpretations on this re-elaboration of Stoic concepts, see Boenke
74–120.
33 Sabuco, Nueva Filosofía fol. 171l ‘y así verá el hombre cuanto va en la compañera que
toma por mujer, para la perfección de sus hijos. Y la mujer cuanto va en el compañero que
toma por el semejante, que de dos materias buenas resulta tercera buena: pues el compa-
ñero, o compañera, ha de poner la mitad; por lo cual a los hijos comparó Aristóteles, y muy
bien a eslabón, que ata la cadena en medio, porque el padre puso la mitad, y la madre la
otra mitad en el hijo, y así quedan atados el padre, y la madre con los hijos’.
674 marlen bidwell-steiner

of the concrete bodily functions she constructs an egalitarian relationship

between women and men. Yet, when she outlines the metaphysical founda-
tions of such a proto-feminist approach, she opts for a gynocentric model,
and thus for the priority of the feminine. In doing so, she subverts the well-
known male strategy of proclaiming the inferiority of women.
As outlined above, the two naturae agentes in Telesio’s work are heat
and cold, their primary bodies being Sun and Earth. I consider that
Sabuco seizes a significant inconsistency in Telesio’s model in order to
construct a rhetorically congruent gynocentric psychophysiology: Tele-
sio thoroughly examines the actions of heat, yet the concrete workings
of the antagonistic cold are more or less kept in the dark. This becomes
even more complicated because its seat is Earth, which is also a residue
of matter. Furthermore, Telesio emphasises that the naturae agentes are
always intrinsically tied to their substrate, which makes the whole con-
cept slightly fuzzy:
[. . .] if, in fact, as it appears, the diversity and deformity of either only the
heat or only the matter is sufficient to constitute diverse beings, this is even
more the case, when all these diversities are united and associated; they
constitute an almost endless form of beings and some others that can be
judged as constituted from both natures.34
Sabuco further mingles the two principles of matter and cold to the extent
that matter becomes a formative nature, effected by cold. As natura
madre, Mother Nature, it maintains a sibling relationship with the princi-
ple of Sun; in Sabuco’s words, natura madrastra, nature as foster mother.
In the Nueva Filosofía, these sister natures take control of the dynamics
of (human) life:
For the natural or proper [movement] we already stated that it only has two
contraries that cause a major decrease: time and semen. This semen is the
end of the proficient stepmother nature and the principle of the emerging
mother nature. She gives this principle to the sister to put it in shape for the
conservation of the species that she herself cannot conserve, and she gives it
to her regret and detriment. And with this principle she pays back to the one
of the semen that which she obtained, but better, and in better shape.35

34 Telesio, De rerum natura (1999) 50 ‘nam si vel caloris solius vel solius materiae diver-
sitas difformitasve per se quaelibet ad diversa entia constituenda satis videtur, eo magis
simul copulatae coniunctaeque omnes inmueras pene entium species faciant, et quasdam
quae a natura utraque effectae constitutaeque videri possint’.
35 Sabuco, Nueva Filosofía fol. 235l–r ‘El natural (movimiento), o propio, diximos
que tenia dos contrarios solos que le causauan el decremento mayor, que son tiempo,
y simiente: la qual simiente es fin de natura madrastra perficiente, y principio de natura
 metabolisms of the soul 675

Mother Nature corresponds to the proper motion and the proper tempo-
rality of all beings and is, to some extent, equivalent to Telesio’s concept of
operatio. On a physiological level, Mother Nature is equated with humidi­
tas radicalis, a traditional term in natural philosophy, which Sabuco links
to the quality of her soul liquid, chilo. Like a real mother, natura madre
arranges adequate nurture for the species. In this context, Sabuco empha-
sises the ambiguity of the notion species: through the image of the shaping
of the human embryo, she points to the processing of natura madre for
the broader semantic field of corporeal shaping in more detailed contexts.
This is further elaborated on in the quality of the soul sap, which is very
versatile but principally always the same white brain liquid:
To say that sperm and milk are red blood that becomes white in its ves-
sels is ridiculous. What I told you about the white blood or the great work-
ing of the white brain liquid is not meant to scare you, doctor. Just look at
what it does when it falls into the female uterus, where it makes an entire
new animal with the irrigation and the nourishing of the menstrual blood.
Thus, it takes much more to make a totally new body than to expand what
already is [. . .].36
In Sabuco’s model, the operating of the spiritus is initiated by a physi-
cal impulse of the natura madrastra, either through affection or through
any other environmental influence. Like her Neapolitan precursor, Sabuco
visualises the act of sensation as a tactile process. Therefore, any physi-
ological reaction can be reduced to a delightful or an objectionable stim-
ulus, which she illustrates by referring to the very action of the brain.
Here, the next mother figure enters the scene: the inner brain membrane,
the pia mater, is metaphorically upgraded to a female sub-lunar primary
mover: ‘pia mater [pious mother] pursues unperturbed its office in secret
(which is to take and to give) [. . .] this the soul does with the movement
of the pia mater, who is the hand of the soul’.37

madre principiante: el qual principio da a la hermana para que lo ponga en forma para
conseruacion de la especie que ella no puede conseruar, y dalo a su costa y daño: y con
este principio que ésta el de la simiente le paga el que recibio mejor, y en mejor forma’.
36 Sabuco, Nueva Filosofía fol. 243 ‘Es cosa de risa lo que dizen, que la esperma y la
leche son sangre colorada, y que en sus vasos se buelue blanca: y desto que he dicho (señor
Doctor) desta sangre blanca, y sus grandes obras deste xugo blanco del celebro, no os
espanteys pues veys lo que haze caydo en el vtero de la hembra, que haze de nueuo todo
el animal con el riego y sustento de la sangre de menstruo, que mas es hazer el cuerpo
todo de nueuo, que aumentar lo hecho’.
37 Sabuco, Nueva Filosofía fol. 67 ‘La pía madre está firme haciendo su oficio, oculto
(que es tomar, y dar) [. . .] esto hace el ánima con el movimiento de la pía madre, que es
la mano del ánima’.
676 marlen bidwell-steiner

Like Telesio, Sabuco postulates two resulting movements: dilatation

and contraction. The substance of the brain, therefore, is pushed by its
enclosing integument. In her matter-of-fact style, the intertext for their
common emphasis on touch becomes more evident: the pia mater as the
hand of the soul is a clear reference to the theory of Anaxagoras, as out-
lined in Aristotle’s De Anima (431b29–31). However, Sabuco does not go as
far as Telesio in openly objecting to the Aristotelian model of species. In
her text, it appears as a sensual pictorial impression, which can be both
invigorating and harmful. Nevertheless, the reaction of the chilo is cast in
the same materialistic framework as in De rerum natura. When a harmful
species enters the organism, the chilo puts all its effort into getting rid of
the damage.
At this point, we find the core idea of disease in Sabuco’s text. The
pía madre pushes the chilo, which sinks through the anterior or posterior
nerve tracts to divert the injury. The first situation indicates an insignifi-
cant ailment, while the latter leads to a serious malady. The overriding
aim of Sabuco’s substance of chilo or sangre blanco is self-preservation,
which is also the key concept in Telesio’s epistemology.38 Hence, in the
situation of wellbeing, the chilo bubbles up to the vertex, from there to
nourish the whole organism by way of the nervous system.
The imagery in Sabuco’s sophisticated rhetorical strategy is the helix
that finds its anatomic counterpart in the spinal cord. In other words, in
the Nueva Filosofía, physiology is explained in terms of maelstrom move-
ments. The idea of a flowing concept of life is also important in Telesio’s
text(s), as it enables him to explain the variety of all things. Concerning
this concept, he even uses a metaphorical expression, although he gener-
ally tries to avoid figures of speech: ‘[. . .] Thus, the progress of any acting
nature is not [abrupt] saltation but a certain kind of flow [. . .]’.39 Sabuco
adopts the idea of an agile and fluid set of human processes, although in
a different semantic frame:
[. . .] likewise man knows its conditions and has these two movements, a
proper one and a violent one, just as [do the planets]. And the liquid rises
and falls off its root and rains as it does in the macrocosm with the humidity
or milk of the moon. This is why man never is the same nor can he stay in a
[specific] being as we cannot enter twice the same water of a flowing river.40

38 See Mulsow, Frühneuzeitliche Selbsterhaltung.

39 Telesio, De rerum natura (1999) 40 ‘naturae enim agentis cuiuscunque progressus
non saltus, sed quasi fluxus quidem existit’.
40 Sabuco, Nueva Filosofía fol. 134r ‘[. . .] y assi el hombre sabe a sus condiciones, y tiene
estos dos mouimientos, propio, y violento, como ellos, y sube, y abaxa el xugo de su rayz,
 metabolisms of the soul 677

This last quotation highlights the discrepancies between these two mate-
rialist physiologies by showing a clear-cut difference between the two
frameworks. As mentioned before, Telesio’s core principle for all vital
processes is heat. Sabuco, in her turn, adopts his principle of heat in close
relation to semen, but disregards its importance. In her overall concept,
the white soul substance chilo, or sangre blanco, assumes the quality of
cold which is linked to its cosmic seat, the moon:
Thus the air that encloses us and which we breathe is refined water and the
main nourishment of the root, that is, the brain [. . .] Avicenna says that the
humours increase with the waxing moon and likewise the brain in the skull
(which is the helmet) increases, and the water in the rivers and the sea. All
of this the nutritive mother moon does with its milk, the chyle of the world,
which is the water.41
Sabuco opts for a highly dissident position for, apart from the example
of Hippon, which had already been discarded by Aristotle for being too
devious,42 there are no other ‘cold models’ around. Why would she expose
herself to such a burden of proof? There are at least three good reasons
for such a claim. All are congruent with Sabuco’s use of rhetoric, which
is the common way of reasoning in the Early Modern period. In so doing,
she constructs a strikingly convincing line of argument, but at the same
time does not go as far as Telesio in developing a new philosophy. This
double bind is illustrated in her definition of the soul liquid: as already
mentioned, her chilo resides in the brain ventricles, a location which tra-
ditionally is conceptualised as cold. Taking this as a starting point, she
outlines a chain of analogies, which point to the doctrine of signatures, a
preferred intellectual mindset in her time.
In classical and early modern mainstream natural philosophy, not only
the brain is cold, but the same is also true for the uterus and, in a met-
onymic sense, for women. On a cosmic level this idea is extended to the
moon, which symbolically corresponds to ‘woman’. Sabuco puts great
emphasis on this context by using the mother tropes, with the nourishing

y llueue como en el macrocosmo con la humidad, o leche de la Luna [. . .] Y por esso el
hombre nunca es uno mismo, ni se puede retener en un ser como no podemos entrar dos
vezes en la misma agua de un rio que corre’.
41 Sabuco, Nueva Filosofía fols. 87–88 ‘De manera que el aire que nos cerca, con que
respiramos, que es agua rara, es el principal alimento de la raíz, que es el cerebro [. . .]
Dice Avicena, que los humores crecen con el aumento de la luna, y crece el cerebro en el
cráneo (que es el casco) y el agua en los ríos, y mar. Esto todo hace la luna madre nutriz,
con su leche chilo del mundo, que es el agua’.
42 Arist. De An. 405a30.
678 marlen bidwell-steiner

mother moon at the top. The soul liquid takes its qualities from rain and
air. The whitish and watery substance of chilo is easily built into the over-
all framework with cold as the guiding principle because its habitat, the
nervous system, is believed to be cold, too. Thus, Sabuco’s model has the
advantage that objects cold to the senses do not require a detailed expla-
nation, as can be found in Telesio’s assertions concerning the hotness of
gemstones.43 Furthermore, Sabuco is not encouraged to challenge peripa-
tetic cosmology, as she does not link the fundamentals of her physiology
to any supra-lunar forces.
However, the most convincing motive in introducing the moon as the
second primary body is that it provides a more solid foundation for an
epistemology in which two principles interact with matter. This becomes
obvious in a rhetorical twist, which characterises her overall argumenta-
tion, namely the trope of chiasm:
[. . .] moon and sun, [the latter as] father and [the former as] mother, gave
the qualities: two movements, a proper one and a violent one, like all the
stars and the skies. I say two movements: a natural or proper one with only
one major [cycle of] increase and decrease and only two contraries: time
and semen, and the violent daily one with countless contraries.44
Thus, while in Telesio’s theory cold and matter both share Earth as a seat,
Sabuco offers a triad with Mother Moon as the seat of the cold and Father
Sun as the seat of the heat. Earth remains the container of stable matter.
To summarise, by means of an astute combination of traditional natural
philosophy and the most innovative of contemporary trends, Oliva Sabuco
constructed a gynocentric model of the world. From today’s perspective,
this mother-cosmos has a rather esoteric twist. But its contextualisation
within early modern discourses on natural philosophy proves that Sabuco
had virtually no interest in magical explanations of physiology, such as
action at a distance (as, for example, outlined in Girolamo Fracastoro’s
proposition of the interaction between body and soul). In contrast, the
Nueva Filosofía offers a materialistic view with the core concepts of a sub-
stantial soul liquid in the brain, cold as a major principle, and touch as
an explanation for sensation. Its radicalism lies in the fact that Sabuco’s

43 Telesio, De rerum natura (1999) 88.

44 Sabuco, Nueva Filosofía fol. 233r ‘[. . .] y Luna y Sol, padre y madre, dieron las cali-
dades: Los mouimientos dos, propio, y violento, como de todos los astros, y cielos, digo
los dos mouimientos, el natural, o propio con un cremento, y decremento solo mayor, y
dos contrarios solos, tiempo, y simiente, y el violento de cada dia con muchos y muchos
contrarios’.
 metabolisms of the soul 679

approach gives prominence to what had been a neglected principle in

Telesio: coldness in interaction with matter. She thus implies that the
nurturing quality of the chilo is at the same time a formative force. This
results in a further twist of the Telesian version of Parmenides’ coupling
of active heat as an artifex and passive matter as a vessel. Taking this into
consideration, chilo as a metabolic humour proves to be the appropriate
wording for such an ‘alimental’ concept.
One might wonder at this point what happened to Telesio’s omnipo-
tent principle of heat in Sabuco’s account. As the analysis of the passages
above implies, heat is ‘incarnated’ in the foster mother as a principle rep-
resenting the external nature. Firstly, it is the seed, respectively the semen
that initiates a simile, an explanation close to Telesio’s concept. Further-
more, heat appears in sensual stimuli acting on the natura madre, which
encompass affection, climatic influences, and nutrition. In sum, natura
madrastra is necessary to activate the functions of every animated organ-
ism. This indicates that Sabuco adopts Telesio’s ideas of actio for heat, in
contrast to Mother Nature’s operatio. But we cannot conclude that action
ranks higher within the hierarchy of beings. This becomes evident in her
explanation of cognition. In principle, as in De rerum natura, the spirit
works by means of sensation but in the presence of memory. The discrep-
ancy between the two authors helps explain why Sabuco adheres to the
narrow notion of species: in her model, an incoming sensual form has to
be modulated by the cold spirit in the brain. If the soul liquid were hot,
the sensual input would melt away like a candle and could not be com-
pared to the impressions of memory in order to derive the sense:
[. . .] for the species mix and fuse, melting due to the alien heat, or they dis-
solve as wax forms melt with heat or they collapse completely.45
Another important modification of Telesio’s highly innovative philosophy
concerns the idea of time. In his account, Telesio claims that time is a cat-
egory of its own and independent of motion. In the Nueva Filosofía, time
is defined as a quality of the sun, but with fatal consequences: whereas
the natura madre, linked to the moon, aims at the preservation of the
organism, the natura madrastra, linked to the sun, is prone to error and
violence. And, finally, the starting point of life becomes the ultimate cause

45 Sabuco, Nueva Filosofía fol. 215 recto ‘porque las especies se mezclan, y confundense
derritiendose con el calor estraño, o se deshazen como se deshazen las formas de la cera
con el calor, o caen enteras con su forma’.
680 marlen bidwell-steiner

of death: ‘Soul gave us life. Soul kills us with its affections’.46 Like most
early modern texts, Sabuco’s way of dealing with such notions may seem
confusing at times: this is one of the few examples of anima as a heated
seed-soul, illuminated by the context of natura madrastra.

Conclusion

Bernardino Telesio and Oliva Sabuco both adopt a materialistic approach

that undercuts the hierarchy of beings. In Telesio’s case, the ontological
difference between animals and humans is blurred, as all vital processes
are dominated by the same principle. Sabuco uses his framework to fur-
ther balance out the hierarchy between men and women. As has been
argued for both authors, the common heritage for their original frame-
works is derived from Stoic and Epicurean philosophy.47 Telesio offers his
own view on the significance of classical influences in his reply to Fran-
cesco Patrizi’s objections regarding the second edition of his De rerum
natura. There, he points out that, in contrast to peripatetic paradigms,
he uses the theorems of Parmenides to sharpen and develop his own
philosophy.48
In this paper, I have offered a close reading of some key passages of
Oliva Sabuco’s Nueva filosofía in order to support my claim that her work
is influenced by the philosophy of Bernardino Telesio. As shown here,
Sabuco’s radical ideas are expressed in some intriguing metaphorical nar-
ratives that might be mistaken as a naïve proclamation of an unusual coun-
ter-model to patriarchal cosmology. In order to reveal Sabuco’s intentions,
it is necessary to decipher her rhetorical apparatus. When reduced to its
core signifiers, the framework of the Nueva filosofía can be identified as
a sophisticated and sometimes quite witty comment on the more radical
strands of contemporary natural philosophy in general. Moreover, I hope
to have shown that some of the elements of Sabuco’s physiology can only
be understood in the light of Telesio’s philosophy. Without Telesio’s inno-
vative substitution of the peripatetic triad of form-matter-privation with
two antagonistic forces acting on matter, Sabuco’s further insistence on
the quality of coolness would lack an epistemological frame. Her account

46 Sabuco, Nueva Filosofía fol. 257l ‘El anima nos dio la vida: el anima nos mata con
sus afectos’.
47 See Kessler, “Selbstorganisation in der Naturphilosophie der Renaissance”.
48 Bondì, Introduzione a Telesio 56–65.
 metabolisms of the soul 681

becomes intelligible only against the backdrop of Telesio’s insistent pos-

tulation of the two acting natures, heat and cold. Admittedly, there is no
tangible evidence for my claim of a direct influence of Bernadino Telesio’s
philosophy in the Nueva filosofía. But it seems unlikely that Oliva Sabuco
would have picked exactly the same topics, choosing to select cold for
further elaboration.
In all probability, Sabuco had worked with Telesio’s text. A vivid cul-
tural exchange existed between the Iberian Peninsula and Southern Italy,
as the Kingdom of Naples was governed by Spaniards throughout the
sixteenth century. Also, Telesio’s Latin works were available in Spain. A
late echo of his presence there comes in Benito Jerónimo Feijoo’s Teatro
crítico universal (1726–1739), a multi-volume collection of essays with a
clearly educational intention. Feijoo mentions Telesio in volume 4, dis-
curso VII, and in the same volume, discurso XIV, he wrote a chapter in
praise of Oliva Sabuco. Another piece of evidence for philosophical con-
cepts travelling between Spain and Telesio’s intellectual environment can
be seen in the fact that his pupil, Antonio Persio, wrote a treatise on the
same subject as the highly popular Spanish physician, Juan Huarte de San
Juan.49 At the moment we cannot definitely be sure which books Oliva
Sabuco had read and used. But to analyse her intricate text, I would argue
that we should situate her amongst the “first of the moderns”.

49 Persio Antonio, Trattato dell’ingegno dell’huomo (Venice, Aldo Manutio: 1576) and
Huarte de San Juan Juan, Examen de ingenios para las ciencias (Madrid: 1575).
682 marlen bidwell-steiner

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 “FULL OF RAPTURE”.
MATERNAL VOCALITY AND MELANCHOLY IN
WEBSTER’S DUCHESS OF MALFI

Marion A. Wells

Summary

In early modern medicine the pregnant woman becomes a particularly fraught

example of bodily fusion partly because she seems to exemplify the vulnerabil-
ity of one soul to another’s emotional perturbations: stories abound of women
‘imprinting’ their unborn children with the stigmata of their own unruly passions.
I will argue in this paper that in The Duchess of Malfi Webster’s portrayal of the
genesis of male melancholy within a story of transgressive pregnancy and child-
birth provides the conditions for an exploration of the passions that complicates
recent work on the humoralism of early modern psychology. Exploring the role of
maternal voice as a powerful ‘spiritual’ catalyst for emotional perturbation, I will
suggest that the maternal-foetal relationship acts as a model for a more broadly
conceived view of what I call the material relationality of the passionate subject.
Through its emphasis on the role of the imagination and the dynamic interplay
between subjects in the development of melancholy, the play offers an account
of melancholy as a complex psycho-physiological disorder not reducible to the
role of black bile in the body.

Introduction

When Bosola, one of the characters in Webster’s Duchess of Malfi (ca.

1614), addresses himself to the origin of the tears that he unexpectedly
produces at the death of the Duchess, he remarks: ‘This is manly sorrow: |
These tears, I am very certain, never grew | In my mother’s milk’ (4, 2, 353).
In Shakespeare’s Henry V, Exeter does attribute his tears to an irrepress-
ible maternal influence, in terms that ruefully acknowledge rather than
deny the impossibility of truly ‘manly sorrow’:
The pretty and sweet manner of it forced
Those waters from me which I would have stopped.
But I had not so much of man in me,
686 marion a. wells

And all my mother came into mine eyes

And gave me up to tears.
(Henry V, 4, 6, 28–32)1
Both statements evoke the fungibility of maternal and filial bodies in early
modern medical thought, suggesting not only the possibility of an emo-
tional as well as physical connectedness between mother and child but
also the seamless continuity between those two categories. Bosola’s ‘manly
sorrow’ is eventually identified as ‘melancholy’ – a diagnosis supported by
the tears themselves, which were a recognised symptom of melancholy.2
Like his employer, the Duchess’s brother Duke Ferdinand, whose more
florid displays of madness dominate the play, Bosola ends the play suffer-
ing from this most fashionable of early modern diseases.3 In studying the
play’s treatment of the aetiology of melancholy in these men I will tease
out the implications of Bosola’s anxious resistance to the idea of mater-
nal influence, suggesting that it dramatises not only Bosola’s but also
the play’s ambivalence about the nature and origin of his melancholy –
and of emotional perturbation more generally.4

1 Gary Taylor offers a tellingly misleading note on this passage in his edition of Henry V
(Oxford: 1982), suggesting that the ‘unmanly loss of control’ described here ‘is probably
related to the mother = hysteria’. The implications of this ahistorical slippage from the
‘mother’ (meaning ‘womb’) to the disease of hysteria are fully documented by Kaara Peter-
son in relation to similar notes on the well-known case of Lear’s ‘hysterica passio’. See
n. 50 below.
2 See Lange M., Telling Tears in the English Renaissance (Leiden: 1996), chapter 1, for a
useful discussion of the medical linkages between tears and melancholy in early modern
medicine.
3 For a discussion of the fashionable nature of melancholy in this period, see Babb L.,
The Elizabethan Malady. A Study of Melancholy in English from 1580–1642 (East Lansing:
1951) 3.
4 The editors of the recent work Reading the Early Modern Passions acknowledge that
‘the word emotion did not become a term for feeling until about 1660, around the time that
‘individual’ took on its modern meaning’; Paster G. – Rowe K. – Floyd-Wilson M. (eds.),
Reading the Early Modern Passions. Essays in the Cultural History of Emotion (Philadelphia:
2004) 2. Thomas Dixon usefully cautions against using the terms ‘passions’ and ‘emotions’
interchangeably, but notes that Descartes’ Passions de l’âme (1649) does seem to use the
term ‘émotions’ as a fairly broad umbrella term for the movements of the soul, and may
have influenced the Scottish philosophers’ development of the term ‘emotion’; Dixon T.,
From Passions to Emotions. The Creation of a Secular Psychological Category (Cambridge:
2003) 13. I am aware, then, of the terminological difficulties involved in talking about early
modern passions, emotions, and ‘psychological’ states in general, particularly since what
we think of as largely ‘mental’ states were irreducibly bound up with physical states in
the medical writing of the period. But since I regard this period as working flexibly with
a changing conception of mental states that draws on classical humoralism while moving
inexorably towards what Jacques Bos sees as an increasing emphasis on ‘individuality and
 vocality and melancholy in webster’s duchess of malfi 687

Bosola’s negative evocation of a material connection between his tears

and his mother’s milk rests on the widely accepted view of a pneumatic
system in which milk, sweat, tears, semen and other bodily fluids were
interchangeably produced from concocted and aerated blood.5 The fun-
gibility of a maternal body in which menstrual blood is converted into
breast-milk and then in grieving mothers into tears extends in Bosola’s
remark to the adult child, whose body experiences this fungibility vicari-
ously. It is the very vicariousness – the quasi-figurativeness – of this ‘psy-
chological’ fungibility that interests me. Bosola’s statement clearly remains
embedded in the humoral view of the early modern body so effectively
described by Gail Kern Paster and other recent scholars; but it also ges-
tures towards another view of emotional experience that emphasises not –
or not primarily – the humoral condition of the individual body in the
constitution of the emotions but rather the impact of external stimuli on
the material physiology of the sensitive soul.6 Taking my cue from the
work of scholars like Jacques Bos, who argues that ‘the humoralist model
for the interpretation of mental phenomena began to disintegrate in the
seventeenth century’, I will argue that Webster’s portrayal of the genesis
of melancholy within a story of transgressive pregnancy and childbirth
already provides the conditions for an exploration of the early modern
passionate subject that is subtly different in emphasis from much recent
discussion of the early modern emotions.7

transient passions,’ I will cautiously use the term ‘emotion’ here to refer to what I see
as Webster’s exploration of an understanding of mental experience that is demonstrably
not explicable solely in terms of humoral physiology. See Bos J., “The Rise and Decline of
Character: Humoral Psychology in Ancient and Early Modern Medical Theory”, History of
the Human Sciences 22 (2009) 2.
5 What we might call the ‘pneumatic’ body has been widely discussed in recent early
modern scholarship, notably in Paster G., The Body Embarrassed. Drama and the Disciplines of
Shame in Early Modern England (Ithaca: 1993) passim, but especially the introduction. Primary
sources for this material would include for example Helkiah Crooke’s Mikrokosmographia.
A Description of the Body of Man, together with the Controversies and Figures thereto
Belonging/Collected and Translated out of all the best Authors of Anatomy, especially out of
Gasper Bauhinus and Andreas Laurentius (London, W. Iaggard: 1615) 174 which details the
action of what he calls ‘transpiration’: the moving of the spirits around the body.
6 For a discussion of the role of the sensitive soul in early modern theorising of the
passions, see Solomon J.R., “You’ve Got to Have Soul: Understanding the Passions in Early
Modern Culture”, forthcoming in Pender S. – Struever N. (eds.), Reasoning Effects. Rhetoric
and Medicine in Early Modern Europe (Aldershot: 2012) 25–26. I profit in my own essay
from Solomon’s detailed reorientation of her analysis of the passions away from an exclu-
sive focus on the humours to include their various cognitive dimensions.
7 Bos, “Rise and Decline of Character” 44.
688 marion a. wells

A number of recent scholars, notably Gail Kern Paster and Michael

Schoenfeldt, have fruitfully explored the humoral bases of early mod-
ern conceptualisations of what we now think of as psychological states
(though of course it bears remarking that our ‘psychological’ catego-
ries have themselves recently been dominated by discoveries in brain
chemistry).8 In support of her argument for a humoral understanding
of the emotions Paster approvingly quotes Charles Taylor’s remark that
‘melancholia is black bile . . . black bile doesn’t just cause melancholy;
melancholy somehow resides in it’.9 But Taylor seems to be talking quite
generally in this chapter about ‘traditional’ examples of mind-body rela-
tionship, rather than a specifically early modern understanding of melan-
choly. The humour of black bile certainly is constitutive of melancholy
in the locus classicus for the study of the subject, the pseudo-Aristotelian
Problem 30. But by the time Thomas Willis writes his Two Discourses Con-
cerning the Souls of Brutes (1683), he is able to state unequivocally: ‘we
cannot here yield to what some Physicians affirm, that Melancholy doth
arise from a Melancholick humor’.10 Willis is in fact far more interested
in the chemical nature of what he considers a ‘distemper of the Brain and
Spirits dwelling in it’.11
Michael Schoenfeldt also rightly sees the early modern passions as
‘inextricably bound up with the humors’.12 But while this mutual imbrica-
tion of passions and humours is undeniable in early modern writing, one
of the writers to whom Schoenfeldt turns to exemplify this thesis, Thomas
Wright, in fact frequently also suggests that it is the passions that promote
the humours and are thus the primary instigators of emotional response.13

 
8 See in particular Paster G., Body Embarrassed, and Humoring the Body. Emotions and
the Shakespearean Stage (Chicago: 2004). As will become clear, I do suggest ways in which
Paster’s focus on the humoral nature of the emotions – though enormously productive
for her readings of particular plays ­– may obscure the importance of other ‘psychological’
developments in this period. See also Schoenfeldt M., Bodies and Selves in Early Modern
England. Physiology and Inwardness in Spenser, Shakespeare, Herbert, and Milton (Cam-
bridge: 1999), and his recent essay on passion in Milton, “ ‘Commotion Strange’: Passion in
Paradise Lost”, in Paster – Floyd-Wilson, Modern Passions 43–68.
 
9 Paster, Humoring the Body 5, quoting Taylor C., The Sources of the Self. The Making of
the Modern Identity (Cambridge, Mass.: 1989) 188.
10 Willis Thomas, Two Discourses Concerning the Soul of Brutes. Which is that of the Vital
and Sensitive Man (1683); repr. Scholars’ Facsimiles (Gainsville: 1971) 192.
11 Willis, Two Discourses 191. See also Jackson S., “Melancholia and the Waning of the
Humoral Theory”, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 33 (1978) 367–376,
for a discussion of the importance of Willis’s work in this regard.
12 Schoenfeldt, “Commotion Strange” 51.
13 Wright Thomas, The Passions of the Minde in Generall, 1604. Reprint, ed. Newbold W.
(New York: 1986). Hereafter I will refer to the Newbold edition.
 vocality and melancholy in webster’s duchess of malfi 689

According to Wright, the passions originate in the imagination, which

activates the spirits to journey to the heart ‘where they pitch at the door,
signifying what an object was presented, convenient or disconvenient for
it. The heart immediately bendeth either to prosecute it or to eschew it,
and the better to effect that affection draweth other humours to help him;
and so in pleasure concur great store of pure spirits; in pain and sadness,
much melancholy blood’ (italics mine).14 As Julie Robin Solomon suggests,
a purely humoral interpretation of Wright underplays the cognitive quality
of the emotions clearly in evidence here.15 Passions thus understood con-
stitute a response to the world as it pertains to the subject herself: a judg-
ment of whether a particular object is ‘convenient or disconvenient’. The
humours are still in play in this model, then, but they are activated by the
pressure of the spirits from the brain, which are themselves drawn on by
the imagination of what another doctor, William Vaughan, calls ‘outward
grief[s]’ such as ‘disgraces, iniuries, hatred, miserie, loss of honour,’ and
so on.16 Juan Luis Vives writes similarly that ‘our emotions seem to con-
verge toward that part of the body where the fantasy prevails’.17 Even that
most Galenic of writers, Andreas Laurentius (Discourse of the Preservation
of Sight, translated into English 1599), observes cautiously that the ‘tem-
perature of the body’ is not everything: ‘It is most true that Galen . . . in
one whole booke maintaineth with strong and firme argument, that the
maneres of the soule doe follow the temperature of the bodie [. . .] And
yet I for my part wil not yeeld so much either to temperature or shape, as
that they can altogether command and over-rule the soule’.18 On the view
I am uncovering here, then, the cognitively alive emotions first instigate
psycho-physiological change by effecting material alterations in the body.
Melancholy is (recognizably, to us) a physiological response to excessive

14 Wright, Passions of the Mind 123.

15 Solomon notes that Wright ‘underlines their cognitive character [that is, of the emo-
tions]’ by situating them in the sensitive soul ‘bordering upon reason and sense’. I also
concur with her assessment that in spite of the apparent give and take between passions
and humours noted in Wright by Schoenfeldt (“Commotion Strange” 51), ‘Wright makes
clear that for the most part, the passions of the soul impel the humors rather than the
other way around’; Solomon, “You’ve Got to Have Soul” 25–26.
16 Vaughan William, Approved Directions for Health (1612) 90.
17 Vives Juan Luis, The Passions of the Soul. The Third Book of De Anima et Vita: ed.
C. Norena, (Lewiston, NY: 1990), v. 4, 2. While acknowledging the continuing engagement
of Vives and others with the humoral tradition, Noga Arikha aptly sums up the cognitive
orientation of this work: ‘Emotions, then, were ways of knowing the world’. Arikha N.,
Passions and Tempers. A History of the Humours (New York: 2007) 218.
18 Laurentius Andreas, A Discourse of the Preservation of Sight of Melancholike Diseases;
of Rheumes, and of Old Age: ed. Larkey S.V. (Oxford: 1938) 83.
690 marion a. wells

sadness or fear (in respect of particular external objects or the appear-

ance of such): ‘when these affections are stirring in our minds they alter
the humours of our bodies, causing some passion or alteration in them’.19
Sadness is dangerous, Wright later tells us, because it causes ‘the gather-
ing together of much melancholy blood about the heart’.20 But as Roy
Porter has aptly emphasised, ‘in discarding humoralism . . . physicians
had no intention of setting mentalist theories in their place’.21 In other
words, even if the matter of the emotions turns out not to be primarily
the humours, this does not suggest that psychology now rests on immate-
rial foundations. On the contrary, as we can see clearly in Thomas Willis’s
work, this psychology of the passions is still profoundly material in its
dependence on the work of the animal spirits as the chemically reactive
messengers between brain and praecordia.
The role of the imagination and its spiritual vehicles as the essen-
tial connective matter between outside objects and internal experience
is underwritten by a theory of inscription or imprinting. Speaking of
the force of visual apprehension of objects on the imagination, Wright
explains: ‘no sense imprinteth so firmly his forms in the imagination as
this (italics mine)’.22 Helkiah Crooke writes similarly: ‘as the forming fac-
ulty in the heavens of those creatures whose generation is equivocall, is
imprinted in the aer; after the same maner the formes of the Imagination
are insculped or engraven in the aery spirits’.23 In early modern medi-
cine the ‘insculping’ power of a ‘spiritual’ object finds its most vivid, as
well as its most troubling illustration in the example of foetal imprinting
via maternal influence.24 Crooke writes: ‘Oftentimes the Imagination of
that thing is imprinted in the tender Infant which the mother with childe
doth ardently desire, which is onely to bee imputed to the strength of the
Fancy. For the real species of a Figge or a Mulbery is not transported to
the wombe, but onely the spirituall forme or abstracted notion’.25 Though
Wright does not use the language of imprinting to describe the convey-

19 Wright, Passions of the Mind 94.

20 Wright, Passions of the Mind 136.
21 Porter R., “Barely Touching: A Social Perspective on Mind and Body”, in Rousseau
G.S. (ed.), The Languages of Psyche. Mind and Body in Enlightenment Thought (Berkeley-Los
Angeles-Oxford: 1990) 57.
22 Wright, Passions of the Mind 197.
23 Crooke, Mikrokosmographia 312.
24 See Bicks C., “Planned Parenthood: Minding the Quick Woman in All’s Well”, Modern
Philology 103, 3 (2006) 305–306.
25 Crooke, Mikrokosmographia 311.
 vocality and melancholy in webster’s duchess of malfi 691

ance of passion from mother to child, he describes the process in very

similar terms:
It is wonderful what passionate appetites reign in women when they be with
child; I have heard it credibly reported that there was a woman in Spain
which longed almost till death to have a mouthful of flesh out of an extreme
fat man’s neck . . . most of these appetites proceed from women extremely
addicted to follow their own desires, and of such a froward disposition as in
very deed if they were crossed of their wills their Passions were so strong as
they undoubtedly would miscarry of their children; for vehement Passions
alter vehemently the temper and constitution of the body, which cannot but
greatly prejudice the tender infant lying in the womb.26
That the long tradition of maternal/foetal influence is seeping into a
developing mechanistic theory of the passions becomes quite clear in Des-
cartes’s striking rehearsal of this material in a letter to Marin Mersenne
(July 30, 1640):
With reference to birth marks (Fr: ‘marques d’envie’), since they never occur
in the infant when the mother eats fruit which she likes, it is quite probable
that they can sometimes be cured when the infant eats the fruit in question.
For the same disposition which was in the mother’s brain, and caused her
desire, is also to be found in the infant’s brain.27
Whereas Crooke seems to imagine the ‘species’ of the desired fruit as
literally imprinted on the infant’s body, Descartes understands the rel-
evant issue here to be not so much the ‘species’ itself but the desire that
informs it on the part of the imaginer (here the mother). The physical
birth mark is of interest only, as the French phrase suggests, as a ‘mark’
of the mother’s passion. In what follows I shall be suggesting that this
conception of the infant mind’s vulnerability to the material effects of
her/his mother’s bodily temper acts as a model for a much more broadly
conceived view of what I shall call the material relationality of the early
modern passionate subject, inwardly imprinted by transient stimuli but
lacking any stable humoral essence.28 In advancing this argument I will be
seeking to complicate ongoing debates about the nature of early modern

26 Wright, Passions of the Mind 145.

27 Letter to Mersenne, 30 July 1640, in Cottingham J. – Stoothoff R. – Murdoch D. –
Kenny A. (trs.), The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, Vol. III, Correspondence
(Cambridge: 1991) 148.
28 Solomon emphasises the point that early modern emotions are ‘relational’, arguing
for an analysis of the passions that accounts for their active ‘internal and external re-fram-
ing of perspective: ‘You’ve Got to Have Soul’ 49. This view tallies closely with the notion
of ‘material relationality’ that I will develop in this essay. For a more detailed discussion
692 marion a. wells

emotion by opening up the disparate and sometimes almost contradic-

tory strains of thought apparent in such writers as Wright, Crooke, and
Webster himself.
In this play in particular maternal voice becomes a powerful trigger for
male fears about the kind of mutual dependency that pregnancy figures
in this period but that is – pace the technical literature we have just sur-
veyed – not confined to that unique mind-body composite.29 I will hence-
forward use the term ‘vocality’ to denote the aspect of maternal voice that
interests me here – the material, literal voice, or what Roland Barthes
has called the ‘grain of the voice’.30 For Barthes, Adriana Cavarero, and
other recent theorists of the voice, the grain of the voice is ‘the materiality
of the body speaking its mother tongue’.31 This theoretical emphasis on
materiality intersects with the early modern view of voice as a pneumatic
flux that in writers like Helkiah Crooke is subtly connected in women to
the womb and genitals. Following this train of thought in the medical
literature allows me to explore more fully the significance of what I see
in the play as a submerged connection between maternal vocality and
male melancholy. Understood in this light, melancholy appears less a sua
sponte product of humoral imbalance within a particular organism than
as precisely an emotion as it would be fully theorised in the later mecha-
nistic theories of writers like Descartes: an involuntarily occurring mental
state produced by an interaction between the mind-body composite and
a stimulating object or event in its environment.32

of the transition from humoral character to a focus on ‘transient passions’ of the mind see
Bos, “Rise and Decline of Character” 29.
29 I am adapting a term used by Susan James in her Passion and Action. The Emotions
in Seventeenth Century Philosophy (Oxford: 1997) 42.
30 Barthes R., Image, Music, Text (New York: 1977) 182.
31 Barthes, Image 182. See also Cavarero A., For More than One Voice. Toward a Philoso-
phy of Vocal Expression: tr./intr. Kottman P.A. (Stanford: 2005). As she acknowledges, Cava-
rero is herself indebted for her materialist conception of voice to Julia Kristeva’s notion of
the ‘semiotic processes’ which are largely pre-semantic and remain closely associated with
the rhythms of the mother’s body. See for instance Kristeva’s discussion of the semiotic
and language in Kristeva J., Black Sun. Depression and Melancholia (New York: 1989) 68.
This notion of a pre-semantic or semiotic vocality will be useful for my later development
of the impact of maternal vocality on the child.
32 See Dixon’s discussion of the emergence of emotion language, particularly From Pas-
sion to Emotion chs. 1 and 4. Solomon also discusses this aspect of the emotions, arguing
that ‘passion involved responsive activity, and action was in large measure dependent on
the nature of human responsiveness to environment’ (Solomon, “You’ve Got to Have Soul”
11). Emphasising the continuity between Descartes and earlier theorists of the passions,
Bos writes: ‘In essence, Descartes’s psychology of the passions is a mechanistic psychology
that eventually explains emotional states by connecting them with the physical processing
of external impressions (italics mine)’ (Bos, “Rise and Decline of Character” 41).
 vocality and melancholy in webster’s duchess of malfi 693

All in the Mind. The Instability of Mental Experience

The notion of Bosola’s ongoing emotional subjection to a now absent

maternal influence seems connected to his claim after the Duchess’s death
that he continues to feel her acting upon him: ‘Still methinks the Duchess |
Haunts me; there, there: | ‘Tis nothing but my melancholy’ (5, 2, 340–342,
italics mine). The relatively new meaning of ‘haunt’ to describe a spirit
returning to its former home (OED 5b, 1590) suggests intriguingly that the
Duchess’s death has intensified the play’s fantasy of the passionate subject
as penetrated by alien spirits – in particular, of course, by the spirits of the
ever-present maternal body. A roughly contemporary meaning of ‘haunt’
is ‘to visit frequently or habitually, of diseases, memories etc.,’ (OED). To
be haunted in this play is to feel a rising in oneself of involuntary passions
– spirits – that respond to emotional stimuli from elsewhere and seem
uncannily both other and internal.
As I have suggested, the paradigmatic condition of subjection is the
dependence of the foetus on maternal appetites and imaginings. Ferdi-
nand’s reaction to the news that the secretly married Duchess has had
three children by her husband suggests just how deeply unsettling is the
prospect of such dependence:
Damn her! That body of hers,
While that my blood ran pure in’t, was more worth
Than that which thou wouldst comfort, called a soul.
(4, 1, 121–124, italics mine)
Though of course Ferdinand is ostensibly referring here to the adultera-
tion of the Aragon bloodline through his sister’s choice of her steward as
a husband, the figurative placement of his blood in her body clearly sug-
gests a sense in which Ferdinand considers his own physical wellbeing to
be as dependent on her body’s blood as that of the child whose existence
he has just discovered. Strikingly, it is Ferdinand’s imagination of his sis-
ter’s sexual ‘sin’ that first provokes the condition that the play will call
melancholia:
Methinks I see her laughing,
Excellent hyena! Talk to me somewhat, quickly,
Or my imagination will carry me
To see her in the shameful act of sin.
(2, 5, 38–40, italics mine)
‘With whom?’ the less viscerally disturbed Cardinal asks. Ferdinand’s vivid
evocation of the man who ‘leaps [his] sister’ as ‘some strong thighed barge-
man, | Or one o’th’wood-yard, that can quoit the sledge . . . or else some
694 marion a. wells

lovely squire | That carries coals up to her privy lodgings’ (2, 5, 43–45),
confirms the scene’s interest in portraying the overmastering power of
the imagination. Charged with ‘fly[ing] beyond reason’ by his brother
the Cardinal, Ferdinand responds tellingly: ‘Go to, mistress! ‘Tis not your
whore’s milk that shall quench my wild-fire, | But your whore’s blood’
(2, 5, 46–48). Ferdinand here responds directly to the Duchess, who is not
present, rather than to the Cardinal, who is; moreover, he constructs his
imaginary sister as a maternal figure, one whose ‘whore’s milk’ will return
in his violent fantasy to its original identity as blood. Lost in a scene of his
own imagining, Ferdinand succumbs to a mental state the Cardinal aptly
terms a ‘rupture’ (‘I can be angry | Without this rupture,’ 2, 5, 55–56).
The duke’s mental ‘rupture’ certainly dramatises quite clearly the
activity of the imagination in generating the passions that we saw ear-
lier in Wright’s description of the spirits ‘pitch[ing] at the door of the
heart’.33 But the genesis of Ferdinand’s melancholy is interestingly under-
diagnosed by the play’s physician, who relies on comfortably conventional
humoral interpretations of his sickness. The doctor confidently diagnoses
Ferdinand’s disease as lycanthropy, a form of melancholy:
In those that are possessed with’t there o’erflows
Such melancholy humour, they imagine
Themselves to be transformed into wolves,
Steal forth to churchyards in the dead of night . . .
[. . .]
Straight I was sent for,
And having ministered to him, found his grace
Very well recovered.
(5, 2, 9–21)
The doctor’s complacent assertion that the problem is an overflow of mel-
ancholy humour that can be easily treated (presumably with traditional
remedies, such as blood-letting) is scarcely well founded. For Ferdinand
is not very well recovered, and his fascination with churchyards, as the
audience knows but the doctor does not, coincides with his passionate
rage and jealousy towards his sister and his subsequent murder of her.
This brief scene with the doctor seems to serve little purpose other than
to emphasise the possibility of a psychological reading of Ferdinand’s mel-
ancholy. Such a reading would not of course obviate the need to read his
‘passions’ in psycho-somatic terms, nor would it exclude the role of the

33 Wright, Passions of the Mind 123.

 vocality and melancholy in webster’s duchess of malfi 695

humours altogether, but it does give greater emphasis to a dynamic view

of the passions as unpredictable inter-subjective events that cannot be
reduced to humoral excess.

‘Sure I Did Hear a Woman Shriek’.

Melancholy and the Maternal Voice

As we have seen, the central issue in this emerging conception of what

will eventually be called the emotions is the volatility of transient pas-
sions – a volatility partly attributed to the impact of the environment on
the impressionable spirits operative in the vehicles of the sensitive soul.
Since voice was also usually understood to participate in the circulation of
aerated spirit and to act as a vehicle for conveying outward what Aristotle
terms ‘sound characteristic of what has soul in it’ and ‘sound with mean-
ing (phonê semantikê)’ (On the Soul 420b6; 420b34), the voice emerges as
a kind of via media between the internal and external worlds.34 As such it
could have an impact on the body’s spiritual health (Crooke and Richard
Mulcaster both mention vocalisation exercises that promote health) and
also on the surrounding environment itself. Thus Gertrude pleads with
Hamlet to refrain from further speech: ‘These words, like daggers, enter
in mine ears. | No more, sweet Hamlet!’ (3, 4, 96). The spiritual nature
of voice is confirmed by later writers like Agrippa von Nettesheim in his
Three Books of Occult Philosophy (translated into English in 1651), ‘voyce
is sent forth out of the inward cavity of the breast and heart, by the assis-
tance of the spirit’; the spoken word is ‘a spirit proceeding out of the
mouth with sound and voice, signifying something’.35
Helkiah Crooke’s compendious 1615 Mikrokosmographia considers the
voice to be thoroughly enmeshed in the functioning of the whole body,
and responsive in particular to changes in the sexual organs. Having previ-
ously noted that the removal of the breasts in women produces a shriller

34 See Bonnie Gorden’s recent work on the implication of voice in the pneumatic sys-
tem of body and soul: ‘the parallel substances of voice, tears, vomit, and sweat turned into
one another and flowed in and out of the body through open orifices, purifying, nour-
ishing, and flushing it’, Monteverdi’s Unruly Women. The Power of Song in Early Modern
Italy (Cambridge: 2004) 20. See also the extensive discussion of the materiality of voice in
Bloom G., Voice in Motion. Staging Gender, Shaping Sound in Early Modern England (Phila-
delphia: 2007), especially chapter 2, ‘Words made of breath’.
35 Agrippa von Nettesheim, Three Books of Occult Philosophy (tr. 1651) 3,36. See Bloom,
Voice in Motion 81 for a discussion of Agrippa’s theory.
696 marion a. wells

voice, he adds: ‘when the testicles doe swell upon a cough, it putteth us
in mind of a sympathy and consent there is between the chest, the paps,
the seede, and the voice. And how great the consent is betwixt the parts
of respiration and the parts of generation’.36 This ‘sympathy and consent’
between mouth/throat and the reproductive organs can be traced back to
the Hippocratic corpus where, as Ann Hanson and David Armstrong put it,
‘the two necks [i.e., neck and cervix] are coupled’.37 As a result of this mate-
rial sympathy, a change in either neck or voice may indicate loss of virginity.
The most striking example of this association among the sources excavated
by Hanson and Armstrong is Nemesianus’s Eclogue 2, which describes the
shepherdess Donace’s post-coital voice as less delicate than before (‘non
tam tenui filo’), disturbed and rich (‘sollicitusque . . . pinguis’) Since ‘pinguis’
can also mean ‘rich’ in the sense of ‘fertile,’ this language clearly implies that
the voice betrays in its timbre a kind of bodily sexualisation.38
Helkiah Crooke extends the analogic connection between mouth and
womb in his evocation of the womb as ‘greedy’: ‘And presently after the
seeds are thus mingled, the womb [. . .] gathereth and contracteth it
selfe, . . . And this it doth as being greedy to conteyne and to cherish, we
say to Conceiue the seed. Moreover, least the geniture thus layd vp should
issue forth againe, the mouth or orifice of the wombe is so exquisitly shut
and locked vp that it will not admit the poynt of a needle’ (italics mine).39
The secretly pregnant Duchess herself helps to confirm the relationship
between mouth and womb, gluttony and pregnancy, remarking to Anto-
nio in the notorious ‘apricocks’ scene: ‘do I not grow fat?’ (2, 1, 101). (Fat
here seems to have exactly the same valence as the Latin ‘pinguis’.) By the
same token, when she eagerly ingests the apricots offered her by Bosola,
this ‘taking in’ seems to activate the primary sexual meaning of the euphe-
mistic Greek expression ‘to take into the belly’.40 The line ‘How they swell
me!’ therefore suggests not only that the green apricots have swollen her
belly through indigestion but also that they signify the male seed that has

36 Crooke, Mikrokosmographia 160 (on the breasts); 207 (on consent between the chest,
etc.).
37 Armstrong D. – Hanson A., “The Virgin’s Voice and Neck: Aeschylus, Agamemnon 245
and Other Texts”, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 33 (1986) 99.
38 Armstrong – Hanson, “The Virgin’s Voice and Neck” 98.
39 Crooke, Mikrokosmographia 262.
40 Following Emile Benveniste, Giulia Sissa points out that ‘the classical Greek words
for pregnancy were en gastri lambanein, syllambanein, echein (to take, embrace, or
have in the stomach)’. See Sissa G., Greek Virginity: tr. Goldhammer A. (Cambridge, Mass.:
1990) 63.
 vocality and melancholy in webster’s duchess of malfi 697

impregnated – that is, swollen – her. When Bosola muses afterwards that
‘there is no question but her . . . most vulturous eating of the apricots [is]
an apparent sign of breeding’ (2, 2, 2), we realise we have participated
in a voyeuristic dumb-show, a dramatisation of the action of the ‘greedy’
womb at conception through the upwardly displaced symbolism of the
greedy mouth. Moreover, the emphasis on the greed with which she eats
the apricots (‘how greedily she eats them!’ Bosola remarks aside at 2, 1,
140) recalls Wright’s moralistic discussion of the ‘passionate appetites’
of pregnant women. Like the woman in Wright’s apocryphal story who
desired ‘to have a mouthful of flesh out of an extreme fat man’s neck,’ the
Duchess reveals here not only her ‘greedy’ appetite for a base food (the
apricots have been ripened in horse dung), but also what Wright calls
a ‘froward disposition’; if she can be overcome by such an appetite, the
reasoning goes, she will be overcome by other ‘vehement Passions’ and
‘prejudice’ the infant in her womb accordingly.
Just as taking food in through the ‘vulturous’ mouth can suddenly
appear to be a dramatisation of the greedy womb’s absorption of seed, so
the analogy extends upwards, figuring the production of voice from the
body as a kind of birth. Thus Crooke writes that ‘the voice was prepared
in the rough arterie when the aire being shut up and compressed there,
doth after a sort attaine the state and condition of a solid bodie before it
yssue through the cleft, and being extruded or thrust out with violence
and force through the straite cleft, yeeldeth that sound which we call a
Voice’ (italics mine).41 The voice of a pregnant woman, then, would pre-
sumably have brought to mind with particular force the supposed consent
between the ‘organs of respiration and the organs of generation,’ perhaps
to suggest something more than mere analogy: a literal, material connec-
tion between what Agrippa calls the ‘vivificated aire’ of the voice and the
mysterious process of conception. This intuition finds intriguing support
in a passing moment in Middleton’s Women Beware Women (ca. 1621). In
this play the heroine of the subplot, Isabella, has engaged in an incestuous
liaison with her uncle Hippolito even as she is ‘tendered’ as a bride to the
witless Ward. One of the qualities her father praises in her as he shows
her off is her ‘breast,’ here meaning ‘voice’ but also the physical breast – a
bawdy pun that perhaps alludes to the medical conception of the ‘con-
sent’ between voice and the sexual organs. Later, when her adultery is
revealed by her pregnancy, the Ward remarks:

41 Crooke, Mikrokosmographia 646.

698 marion a. wells

Her father praised her breast, sh’ad the voice, forsooth; I marvelled she sung
so small indeed, being no maid. Now I perceive there’s a young chorister in
her belly – this breeds a singing in my head, I’m sure.
(4, 2, 116–119)
Although William Carroll notes in his edition to the play that ‘maid’ here
means ‘young girl,’ the passage in fact seems to be an early modern instance
of the notion that a woman’s voice changed after she had sex.42 The pas-
sage also clearly suggests that pregnancy alters the voice by humorously
asserting that it is the baby itself (the young chorister) whose voice sings
through its mother’s ‘breast’. Since Middleton did use young choristers to
perform his plays these lines also draw attention to the fact that there is
a young boy inside Isabella’s costume, playing Isabella herself; her voice
is a boy’s voice mimicking a woman’s. The cross-dressed boy actor play-
ing a pregnant woman conveys through his voice the fusion of mother
and male child that becomes such a powerful catalyst for discussions
of emotion. Not coincidentally, this maternal/childish voice produces
(‘breeds’) in the male listener ‘a singing in [the] head’ – a kind of dizzying
unease that in the less comic context of Webster’s play will progress into
melancholy.
Early modern writers seem quite aware of the mutual imbrication of
maternal vocality and the physical aspects of maternal nurturance. In his
View of the Present State of Ireland Spenser remarks: ‘The child that suck-
eth the milk of the nurse must of necessity learn his first speech of her,
the which being the first that is inured of his tongue, is ever after the most
pleasing unto him’.43 The intimacy of this first linguistic relation is inten-
sified if we consider that not only does the dependent infans receive the
mother-tongue along with maternal milk in an almost indistinguishable
flow from outside to inside, she or he also hears from within a space filled
with what Crooke calls inbred air derived from the ‘purest ayry part of
the mother’s blood’ within the womb.44 The division between outside and

42 Middleton Thomas, Women Beware Women: ed. Carroll W.C. (London: 1994).
43 Spenser Edmund, View of the Present State of Ireland: ed. Renwick W.L. (Oxford: 1970)
68. See Julie Costello’s interesting discussion of this text in the context of early colonialism,
“Maria Edgeworth and the Politics of Consumption: Eating, Breastfeeding, and the Irish
Wet Nurse in Ennui”, in Greenfield S. – Barash C. (eds.), Inventing Maternity. Politics, Sci-
ence, and Literature, 1650–1865 (Lexington KY: 1999) 180. See also Wendy Wall’s interesting
discussion of Spenser’s text as an instance of early modern views of the transmission of
culture within potentially disruptive domestic contexts, in Staging Domesticity. Household
Work and English Identity in Early Modern Drama (Cambridge: 2002) 136.
44 Crooke’s discussion of ‘inbred air’ occurs in Mikrokosmographia 607.
 vocality and melancholy in webster’s duchess of malfi 699

inside is tenuous indeed. Writing in praise of women in his Haec Homo of

1637, William Austin observes this intimacy in an ostensibly positive light:
‘For from their voyce (the voice of women, and particularly mothers) men
learne to frame their owne, to be understood of others. For in our infancy,
we learne our language from them. Which men (therein not ingratefull)
have justly termed our Mother tongue’.45 But there is room for ambiva-
lence in an earlier passage in which he writes: ‘men also (while they are in
their child-hood and infancy . . .) are voiced like women’.46 Being ‘voiced
like [a woman]’ surely carries a more ambiguous charge than this author
admits, not least because it suggests an unaltered dependency on both the
maternal tongue and the nourishing maternal body.
As the passage in Middleton’s play suggests, the notion that a boy is
‘voiced like a woman’ is especially relevant in the context of a theatrical
practice that gives women’s parts to boys. Though I do not have space
here to explore fully the significance of the fact that the Duchess’s lines
would have been spoken by a boy, it will be helpful to remember that audi-
ences would have heard, as Bruce Smith reminds us, ‘sounds in the same
pitch range as an adult female voice, but more carrying and penetrating’.47
Like a woman, speaking as it were the ‘mother-tongue,’ and yet not quite
a woman; the ambiguous and even contradictory signals conveyed by
the pitch and harmonics of the actor’s voice would surely have served
to intensify the audience’s awareness of precisely the kind of embodied
relationality that finds its most powerful model in the pregnant body.
From the first the Duchess’s verbal prowess seems to generate a series
of scenes that explore the impact of her voice on the emotions of the
male hearer – culminating of course in the uncanny Echo scene. These
scenes promote a complex association between powerful female speech,
pregnancy, and maternal influence; Bosola, Antonio, and Duke Ferdinand
all manifest emotional disturbance as a literal, bodily haunting by the
mother as a kind of vocalic spirit. The crisis that brings into the open the
mutual imbrication of these discrete threads is the moment of childbirth,
overheard (in the Duchess’s cries of pain) but not witnessed by her male

45 Austin William, Haec Homo. Wherein the Excellency of the Creation of Woman is
Described (London, Richard Olton: 1637) 133. See Linda Phyllis Austern’s interesting discus-
sion of this text in the context of a discussion of the mother’s voice: “ ‛My Mother Musicke’:
Music and Early Modern Fantasies of Embodiment” in Miller N. – Yavneh N. (eds.), Mater-
nal Measures. Figuring Caregivers in the Early Modern Period (Aldershot: 2000) 243–244.
46 Austin, Haec Homo 126.
47 Smith B., The Acoustic World of Early Modern England. Attending to the O-Factor
(Chicago: 1999) 229.
700 marion a. wells

companions. Her shriek – vocal sign of the ‘swollen’ belly – derails both
her hearers physically and emotionally in ways that precipitate the play’s
tragic denouement.
The first detail we hear of the Duchess from Antonio concerns her
speech: ‘For her discourse, it is so full of rapture, | You will only begin
then to be sorry | When she doth end her speech’ (1, 1, 181–182). Rapture
suggests a seizure of the self, a ‘raptus’ that might be desired or wholly
undesirable; the O.E.D. suggests ‘a state of passion’ (1d) or ‘a strong fit or
paroxysm of (some emotion or mental state)’ (1e), as well as ‘the action of
carrying a woman off by force’ (2a). The Latin root of ‘rapture,’ rapere, ‘to
carry off,’ attests to the potentially dangerous power of such a voice; it sug-
gests indeed that it possesses a kind of emasculating force with the power
to carry Antonio off as it were from the inside.48 We might associate such
power with the psychological ‘rupture’ suffered by Ferdinand when he
hears of the Duchess’s pregnancy – in both cases the play highlights her
power to intervene powerfully in the inward experience of these men. In
the wooing scene the Duchess dramatises this power of ‘rapture’ by seiz-
ing Antonio with her words and placing him in the role of husband. Boldly
initiating the words of the de praesenti spousal ceremony she ushers him
into this role – though it is worth noting that he never really answers her
in kind, as the de praesenti vow requires him to do:
Awake, awake, man.
I do here put off all vain ceremony,
And only do appear to you a young widow
that claims you for her husband, and like a widow
I use but half a blush in’t.
(1, 1, 445–448)
Though he does not demur, Antonio does tellingly remark a few lines
later: ‘These words should be mine, | And all the parts you have spoke’
(1, 1, 462). In spite of the passion of the scene there remains something
of the maternal in the Duchess’s teasing encouragement of her lover. She
compares him as he receives her kiss to a child receiving a treat: ‘This you
should have begged now. | I have seen children oft eat sweetmeats thus, |
As fearful to devour them too soon’ (455–458). Although Antonio dutifully
receives his ‘nourishment’ in this scene, he is notably tight-lipped in the

48 See Deborah Burks’s excellent discussion of the relationship between ‘rapture’

and ‘raptus’ (rape), in Burks D., “ ‘I’ll want my Will Else’: The Changeling and Women’s
Complicity with their Rapists”, English Literary History 62, 4 (1995) 769–770.
 vocality and melancholy in webster’s duchess of malfi 701

apricocks scene, refusing the Duchess’s offer to share the apricots with a
prim ‘Indeed, madam, I do not love the fruit’ (2, 1, 133–134).49
Earlier in that scene the Duchess interestingly invokes the disease of
the ‘mother’ (a form of suffocation or hysterical disease attributed mostly
to widows and unmarried girls, and thought to be caused by the rising
of noxious vapours from the womb into other organs): ‘I am | So trou-
bled with the mother’ (2, 1, 110).50 The symptoms singled out in Edward
Jorden’s 1603 treatise The Suffocation of the Mother suggest how routinely
disorders of the womb were implicated in digestive, vocalic and respira-
tory symptoms including ‘gnawing in the stomach . . . vomiting, loathing
of meate . . . swelling in the throat, privation of voice, rumbling and noise
in the belly or throat’ (italics mine).51 By the end of the scene the Duch-
ess is truly in the grip of the kind of mother-fit described by Jorden as
a precursor to labour. Her speech conveys the bodily discomfort she is
experiencing, and indicates that she will soon be overtaken by the ‘priva-
tion of voice’ mentioned as a symptom by Jorden: ‘O, I am in an extreme
cold sweat!’ (2, 1, 148). ‘O good Antonio, I fear I am undone’ (2, 1, 151–
152). The Duchess’s sudden ‘mother-fit’ suggests that she has herself been
‘rapt’ by the mysterious workings of the mother (womb), which overtakes
even her ability to speak. The connection between her internal trouble

49 See Wendy Wall for a reading of this moment in connection with the Duchess’s later
concern about providing syrup for her child, “Just a Spoonful of Sugar: Syrup and Domes-
ticity in Early Modern England”, Modern Philology 104, 2 (2006) 159.
50 Helen King has shown in detail that the connection between the womb (hustera) and
‘hysteria’ as it later developed is by no means straightforward in the Hippocratic account
often adduced as the source of the later tradition. She writes: ‘in the ancient period the
word “hysteria” is not used at all; husterikos, “hysteric”, is used, but with the very specific
meanings coming from the womb/suffering due to the womb’. “Once Upon a Text: Hyste-
ria from Hippocrates” 11, in Gilman S. – King H. – Porter R. – Rousseau G.S. – Showalter E.
(eds.), Hysteria Beyond Freud (Berkeley-Los Angeles-Oxford: 1993) 3–91. Edward Jorden’s
work is rather Hippocratic in its localisation in the womb of the disease that he calls pri-
marily ‘suffocation of the mother’ – for him its alternate names include ‘passio hysterica’
and ‘strangulatus uteri’. The immense disruptive power he attributes to the womb arises
largely from the ‘community and consent’ he considers it to have ‘with the braine, heart,
and liver, the principall seates of these functions [i.e., animal, vital, and natural functions].
And hereupon the symptoms of this disease [suffocation of the mother, or womb] are sayd
to be monstrous and terrible to beholde, and of such varietie as they can hardly be com-
prehended within any method or boundes’. Jorden Edward, Disease of the Suffocation of the
Mother (London: 1603), ed. Macdonald M. (New York: 1991) 2. Weighing in on the subject
of historical mis-readings of “hysterica passio” in terms of much later (and vaguer) concep-
tions of hysteria, Kaara Peterson offers a compelling reading of that term’s significance in
King Lear: “Historica Passio: Early Modern Medicine, King Lear, and Editorial Practice”,
Shakespeare Quarterly 57, 1 (2006) 1–22.
51 Jorden, Suffocation 18.
702 marion a. wells

and the ‘rapture’ attributed to her voice finds suggestive support in Web-
ster’s similar formulation in a later play. In The Devil’s Law-Case (ca. 1619),
Leonora, a powerful widowed woman and mother of two of the central
characters, has secretly fallen in love with one of her daughter’s suitors,
Contrarino. When she hears that her son Romelio has killed him, she says:
‘I am very sick’. Her son replies: ‘Your old disease: when you are grieved,
you are troubled | With the mother’. Leonora then tellingly replies: ‘I am
rapt with the mother indeed | That I ever bore such a son’ (3, 3, 225–229).
This exchange suggests how readily overwhelming emotion is associated
with the disease of the ‘mother’ or womb, and then with the figure of the
mother herself. If we read this form of ‘rapture’ back into the scene of
the Duchess’s confinement, we might suspect that the Duchess’s power
to enrapture her hearers is metonymically associated with her maternal
influence precisely through the disabling emotional power attributed to
the ‘mother’/womb.
The next vocalisation we hear from the Duchess is indeed not a word
at all, but rather a shriek, presumably as she gives birth offstage. Bosola is
drawn to her chamber by the sound: ‘Sure I did hear a woman shriek: list,
ha? . . . List again! | It may be ‘twas the melancholy bird . . . The owl, that
screamed so’ (2, 3, 1–8). The passing reference to the ‘melancholy bird,
the owl’ hints at the play’s interest in the emotive power of this maternal
shriek. Like the scene in Middleton’s play, though this time in a tragic
vein, the mother’s voice has the power to ‘breed a singing’ in the brain of
the male hearer. Bosola is joined by Antonio, and both men move towards
the source of the sound as in a kind of trance: ‘Let’s walk towards it. | No:
it may be ‘twas | But the rising of the wind’ (2, 3, 16–17). Her voice has
faded to something that is both more and less than voice: it is no longer
Aristotle’s phonê semantikê, a sound with meaning, unless that meaning
be beyond the subject’s control, the speech of the body; it is pure pneuma,
the ‘aery’ spirit itself. If, as Bruce Smith argues, ‘speech sounds [in the
early modern theatre] gendered as male would pervade the wooden O,
filling it from side to side,’ and ‘speech sounds gendered as female would
be heard as isolated effects within this male matrix,’ we seem to experi-
ence in this moment a reversal of the usual acoustic structure.52 What
Smith calls the ‘male matrix’ of sound has become female, as the two dis-
oriented men wander in a space filled with a female sound of ambiguous
provenance and meaning. This reversal then dramatises an enclosure of

52 Smith, Acoustic World 229.

 vocality and melancholy in webster’s duchess of malfi 703

the male voice by the female one – just as the ‘young chorister’ is enclosed
by ‘Isabella’’s maternal body in Middleton’s play. But whereas Isabella is
still able to control the semantic content of her voice – through her witty
singing about her miserable marriage – the Duchess’s voice expresses
what Bruce Smith calls the ‘O factor’: ‘From the very beginning [. . .] a
child uses sound as a way of projecting its body, its self, into the space
around it. [O] is a primal cry, and we never forget its bodily trace’.53 The
Duchess’s repeated ‘O’s, and especially her later shriek, bear witness to
a body exerting an irresistible power over the normally highly cognitive
activity of speech, obliterating its semantic content, the logos itself.
That this obliteration of logos by a primal cry poses a very material
threat to the masculine world of the court is suggested by the startling
piece of stage business with Antonio’s handkerchief. After a verbal duel
with Bosola Antonio suddenly remarks aside:
My nose bleeds. [He draws an initialed handkerchief ]
One that were superstitious would count
This ominous, when it merely comes by chance:
Two letters, that are wrought here for my name,
Are drowned in blood!
(2, 3, 43–46)
The timing of Antonio’s nosebleed suggests that it is provoked by the Duch-
ess’s shriek of pain. Acting, then, as a displaced version of the blood from
the birthing scene to which we have aural but not visual access, the blood
from Antonio’s nose ‘drowns’ out the letters of his name in a symbolic
reiteration of the drowning out of ‘logos’ by the shriek itself. Activated by
the spiritually disturbing shriek, Antonio’s own blood flows in response to
his wife’s pain, just as the Ward’s head ‘sings’ in horrified response to the
voice of the ‘young chorister’ in Isabella’s belly. The symbolic import of
this striking moment seems to be that Antonio momentarily loses his own
separate identity under the sway of the violent emotion conveyed to him
through his wife’s shriek. His blood flows involuntarily, just as Exeter’s
‘mother came into [his] eyes | And gave [him] up to tears’ (Henry V 4,
6, 30–32). Since in this period a nosebleed was linked to menstruation
(either as a form of ‘vicarious’ menstruation or as a symptom of menstrual
disorder), Antonio does indeed seem to be (like his wife) ‘rapt with the
mother’ in this scene: not initially because of humoral disturbance, but

53 Smith, Acoustic World 13.

704 marion a. wells

because of an irrepressible bodily reaction to a passionate disturbance of

the mind.54
When Bosola subsequently finds the horoscope Antonio has dropped,
and by this means discovers the cause of the Duchess’s confinement, he
plans to send a letter to ‘make her brothers’ galls | O’erflow their livers’
(2, 3, 74–75). The letter seems to encode the shriek of childbirth and in so
doing makes Ferdinand’s liver ‘o’erflow’, just as Antonio’s nose overflows
with blood and ‘drowns’ the initials of his name. The plethoric maternal
body in childbirth is isolated from the view of men but its voice cannot be
silenced. As though to confirm the connection between the handkerchief
drowned in blood and the letter Ferdinand receives, Ferdinand refers to
his letter as a ‘mandrake’ he has ‘this night digged up’ (2, 5, 1). According
to medieval lore, the mandrake shrieked when it was dug up, posing the
threat of death or madness to the one who heard it (thus Shakespeare’s
Juliet refers to ‘shrieks like mandrakes torn out of the earth, | That living
mortals, hearing them, run mad’ (3, 47–48)). The letter, then, conveys a
displaced version of the Duchess’s shriek which, like that of a mandrake,
will make him mad (or melancholy, in this case). This shriek causes him,
in a striking repetition of Antonio’s action, to draw his handkerchief and
soil it with the tears that he quickly imagines replaced by blood – the
Duchess’s own: ‘There is a kind of pity in mine eye, | I’ll give it to my
handkercher; and now ‘tis here, | I’ll bequeath this to her bastard . . . to
make soft lint for his mother’s wounds’ (2, 5, 26–30). Since the mandrake
was also associated with fertility and thus with childbirth, its shriek in
this context is doubly significant. It is the sign of a fertility that kills, or
makes mad; as a shriek it signifies a pre-semantic vocality that ‘drowns’
the letters that would organise identity by recalling in the listener a (now
irredeemably lost) relation to, and dependency on, the maternal body.55
Thus although Bosola and the doctor speak in terms of an overflow of
humours (gall and melancholy), it is Ferdinand’s outraged imagination of
‘her in the shameful act of sin’ that ‘carr[ies]’ him remorselessly towards
the mental ‘rupture’ that he experiences in this scene.

54 Peggy McCracken’s fascinating account of the cultural value of blood touches on the
function of the nosebleed (in relation to Guinevere’s claim that her sheets are stained with
blood from her nose in Chrétien’s Lancelot). She writes: ‘The analogy between a nosebleed
and menstruation is surely motivated by the fact that both are characterized by an uncon-
trolled flow of blood that does not result from a wound or a disease’. The Curse of Eve, The
Wound of the Hero. Blood, Gender, and Medieval Literature (Philadelphia: 2003) 13.
55 See n. 31 above.
 vocality and melancholy in webster’s duchess of malfi 705

In light of this analysis we are not surprised to find in Ferdinand’s

encounter with the Duchess in her closet an attempt primarily not to kill
but to silence her. The closet scene is the clearest dramatisation thus far in
the play of what Adriana Cavarero sees as the primary meaning of voice:
invocation, a calling to the other. For Cavarero, the primary model for
such invocation is the mother-child dyad: ‘[the voice’s] inaugural scene
coincides with birth, where the infant, with her first breath, invokes a
voice in response, appeals to an ear to receive her cry, convokes another
voice . . . the voice first of all signifies itself, nothing other than the rela-
tionality of the vocalic’.56 Before Ferdinand’s intrusion, this scene provides
an idyllic version of vocalic relationality; the Duchess and Antonio enjoy
what sounds like a highly pleasurable back and forth that has prompted
numerous critics to read the scene as part of an emerging discovery of
bourgeois companionate marriage. But Antonio withdraws, leaving Fer-
dinand to step into the space of invocation as his more vengeful double.
‘Do not speak’ (3, 2, 74), he commands, refusing her desperate plea to be
heard: ‘Pray sir, hear me’ (3, 2, 73). When the Duchess does try to speak,
Ferdinand replies: ‘The howling of a wolf | Is music to thee, screech-owl;
prithee peace’ (3, 2, 88). She is still compared to non-human creatures: the
wolf, and the owl, the melancholy bird to whose screech Bosola has earlier
compared her shriek.
Kaara Peterson has suggested that the Duchess’s death by strangula-
tion mimics the disease of the ‘mother,’ sometimes also referred to as
‘strangulatus uteri’: she is punished, in other words, for being, as Bosola
remarks aside, ‘too much’ troubled with the mother, or too driven by her
sexuality.57 I would add to this that the significance of this strangulation
lies in its rendering permanent the temporary symptom of ‘privation of
voice,’ its destruction of her power to invoke a response in a male listener.
The early modern insistence on a pneumatic consent between mouth,
throat, and reproductive organs gives a special materiality to this invo-
catory power, and helps to explain the return of this voice as an echoic
‘spirit that answers’ in the Echo scene.

56 Caverero, For More than One Voice 169.

57 Peterson K., “Shakespearean Revivifications: Early Modern Undead” Shakespeare
Studies 32 (2004) 240–266, 262–263.
706 marion a. wells

‘Thou Art a Dead Thing’. Echo and the Passions of the Mind

Eccho to the Painter, out of Ausonius

Alas! fond Painter, why dost strive to grace
An unknown Goddess with a fancy’d Face?
I am the Daughter of the Tongue, and Wind,
An empty Mother, Voice without a Mind.
I dying sounds fetch back with living tone,
And others mock with Words that are my own.
I in thy Ears my Habitation found,
And if thou mean’st to paint me, paint a Sound.
Matthew Coppinger, Poems, songs and love-verses, upon several subjects by
Matthew Coppinger, 1682
The most well known version of a myth involving Echo in the Early Mod-
ern period is Ovid’s tale of Echo’s hopeless love for Narcissus. In this
version the garrulous nymph is punished for her ability to distract Juno
from Jupiter’s amours by being forced to use the words of others – ‘aliena
verba’. In his influential sixteenth-century translation and interpretation
of these tales, Arthur Golding is clear in his condemnation of what he
calls the ‘babling Nymph,’ calling her actions the ‘lewd behaviour of a
bawd’ (Epistle, 107–108).58 Whether or not Webster intends any detailed
allusion to Ovid’s story in his Echo scene, it is surely impossible for early
modern audiences to extirpate entirely from their memories the story of
the ‘babling nymph’ who offers her body to an unwilling youth. The echo
scene thus holds out the possibility of a darker reading of the Duchess
than the remainder of the play (unlike its sources) would seem to autho-
rise. But it is not necessary to attribute Golding’s negative judgment of
Echo to Webster in order to assume that the primary function of the allu-
sion is to explore and dramatise the power of the Duchess’s speech.
Ovid’s story offers a paradoxical reading of a female vocality which,
while powerful, is nonetheless forced to refract its meaning through the
words of another (aliena verba): ‘By chaunce the stripling being strayde
from all his companie, Sayde: is there any bodie nie? straight Echo
answerde: I’ (3, 473–474).59

58 Gina Bloom discusses this interpretive move on Golding’s part in her interesting
discussion of the Echo myth in Voice in Motion, chapter 4.
59 Golding William, The XV Bookes of P. Ovidius Naso, entytuled Metamorphosis (Lon-
don, Willyam Seres: 1657) 72.
 vocality and melancholy in webster’s duchess of malfi 707

Golding’s translation perfectly captures the thematic point here: in his

play on ‘nie’ and ‘I’ he points up the fracturing of identity that occurs
through Echo’s use of aliena verba. To whom exactly does the pronoun ‘I’
point here? Who speaks it? Whose identity is established by it? Webster
also plays on the slippage of identity in the play of voice and echo:
Antonio: Tis very like my wife’s voice.
Echo: Ay, wife’s voice.
Ay, or a punning ‘I’, the personal pronoun, emerges as a fragment of Anto-
nio’s ‘my’. In her deconstructive reading of the Narcissus story, Claire
Nouvet shows that this slippage of meaning between the original utter-
ance and its echo is in fact fundamental to the operation of language: ‘as
soon as it appears, language ‘echoes’, that is, diffracts into a potentiality
of alternative meanings without providing us with the means to decide on
any true, proper meaning’.60 For Nouvet the key moment is when Narcis-
sus says ‘huc coeamus’, meaning ‘let us meet’, only to have Echo respond
‘Coeamus,’ by which she means ‘let us unite/copulate’. Something similar
seems to happen in Webster’s scene. The central impasse of meaning in
the scene occurs when Antonio refuses to ‘talk’ with this echo, refuses to
give it the status of an interlocutor:
Antonio: Echo, I will not talk with thee, | For thou art a dead thing.
Echo: Thou art a dead thing.
(5, 3, 38–39)
Has Antonio said this (thou refers to an Other)? Or has something exter-
nal to Antonio said this to him (thou refers to Antonio)? Has Antonio in
some sense said this to himself (I and thou merge)? Early modern culture’s
understanding of voice as a material flux deepens the significance of Nou-
vet’s insight into scenes of verbal echoing, preparing us for the third possi-
bility. I and thou merge through the mediation of a maternal voice which
calls up or invokes the possibility of the kind of pre-semantic relationality
described by Cavarero, but also implicit in early modern descriptions of
maternal ‘imprinting’ on the foetal body and mind by the ‘aery spirits’ of
the sensitive soul.61 The fact that Antonio does not control the meaning

60 Nouvet C., “An Impossible Response: The Disaster of Narcissus” 107, Yale French Stud-
ies 79 (1991) 103–134.
61 On the ‘relationality of the vocalic’, see Cavarero, For More than One Voice 169; on
‘imprinting’ see Crooke, Mikrokosmographia 312; and Paré Ambroise, The Workes of that
Famous Chirurgion Ambrose Parey: tr. Johnson T. (London, Th. Cotes and R. Young: 1634),
who writes intriguingly that ‘monsters [. . .] take their cause and shape by imagination [. . .]
708 marion a. wells

of his words here, that they turn out to be inhabited by other seemingly
ghostly meanings, dramatises at a linguistic level the psychological ‘rup-
ture’ endured by Ferdinand when he experiences his own blood as tainted
by the blood of childbirth. Like Bosola, Antonio feels ‘haunted’ by the
Duchess, who momentarily appears to him: ‘on the sudden, a clear light |
Presented me a face folded in sorrow’ (5, 3, 44–45). But he is also haunted
in the sense of being visited internally by spirits or disease: like his words,
which are inhabited by foreign meanings as they return to him, his body
feels a rising fever (‘I’ll be out of this ague’ (5, 3, 47)) that appears to be
the secondary physical symptom of emotional response. When Delio says
the face comes from ‘[Antonio’s] fancy, merely,’ he is not entirely wrong.
Even if we are to imagine a ‘real’ haunting here, the play endorses a read-
ing of this moment in terms of the imagination’s power to ‘carry’ a person
away – to disable his or her reason by means of a ‘rupture’ or indeed even
a ‘rapture’ in the mind.
The echo of a maternal voice in the male speaker’s own voice thus dra-
matises once again the passibility of the passionate subject whose internal
feelings are not fully his own but act instead precisely as emotions – invol-
untary perturbations stirred by a complex interaction between internal
and external forces. It also establishes quite clearly a connection between
a sense of being ‘haunted’ by melancholy and the power of the maternal
body as a model for inter-subjective emotional relationship. As Bos argues,
the waning power of humoralist explanation gives rise to more complex
and dynamic interactions between ‘mind’ and ‘body’.62 Just as Bosola had
tried earlier to deny the connection between his grief and his mother’s
body, as he dies he tries to silence the internal echo of the Other: ‘We are
only like dead walls, or vaulted graves, | That, ruined, yields no echo’ (5, 5,
96–97). Yet of course Bosola’s evocation of the echo does echo – it echoes
through the scene we have just witnessed, giving the lie to his claim to
perfect solitude by diffracting his own particular meaning through the
Duchess’s answering spirit. His ‘melancholic’ final words seem to indicate
unwittingly a sense of being enmeshed in a world of feelings and emo-
tions not fully his own:

for the force of imagination hath so much power over the infant that it sets upon it the
notes or characters of the thing conceived’ (Paré, Workes 978).
62 Bos, “Rise and Decline of Character” 41–42.
 vocality and melancholy in webster’s duchess of malfi 709

   O, this gloomy world!

In what a shadow, or deep pit of darkness,
Doth, womanish and fearful, mankind live!
(5, 5, 99–102)
Why ‘womanish’? One answer could be that the image of a child immersed
in the dark pit of the womb, subject as we have seen to the turbulent
impressions of its mother’s ‘passionate appetites,’ haunts the men of this
play as a model for their own emotional conditioning in a ‘gloomy world’
beyond their control. Although Webster’s materialism certainly does not
leave classical humoralism entirely behind, the play’s exploration of mel-
ancholy does suggest a clear movement towards the dynamic conception
of the passions that would eventually render the humoral one primarily
figurative.
710 marion a. wells

Selective bibliography

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Austern L., “ ‘My Mother Musicke’: Music and Early Modern Fantasies of Embodiment”, in
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Austin William, Haec Homo. Wherein the Excellency of the Creation of Woman is Described
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Bloom G., Voice in Motion. Staging Gender, Shaping Sound in Early Modern England (Phila-
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Bos J., “The Rise and Decline of Character: Humoral Psychology in Ancient and Early Mod-
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Cavarero A., For More than one Voice. Toward a Philosophy of Vocal Expression: tr./intr.
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Crooke Helkiah, Mikrokosmographia. A Description of the Body of Man, together with the
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(Cambridge: 2003).
Golding Arthur, The XV Bookes of P. Ovidius Naso, entytuled Metamorphosis (London,
Willyam Seres: 1657).
Gordon B., Monteverdi’s Unruly Women. The Power of Song in Early Modern Italy (Cam-
bridge: 2004).
Greenfield S. – Barash C. (eds.), Inventing Maternity. Politics, Science, and Literature,
1650–1865 (Lexington KY: 1999).
Jackson S., “Melancholia and the Waning of Humoral Theory”, Journal of the History of
Medicine and Allied Sciences 33, 3 (1978) 367–376.
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1997).
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King H., “Once Upon a Text: Hysteria from Hippocrates”, in Gilman S. – King H. –
Porter R. – Rousseau G.S. (eds.), Hysteria Beyond Freud (Berkeley-Los Angeles-Oxford:
1993) 3–90.
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Middleton Thomas, Women Beware Women: ed. Carroll W.C. (London: 1994).
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Period (Aldershot: 2000).
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(1991) 103–134.
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don, Th. Cotes and R. Young: 1634).
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——, The Body Embarrassed. Drama and the Disciplines of Shame in Early Modern England
(Ithaca: 1993).
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in the Cultural History of Emotion (Cambridge: 2003).
Peterson K., “Historica Passio: Early Modern Medicine, King Lear, and Editorial Practice”,
Shakespeare Quarterly 57, 1 (2006) 1–22.
——, “Shakespearean Revivifications: Early Modern Undead”, Shakespeare Studies 32
(2004) 240–267.
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(ed.), The Languages of the Psyche. Mind and Body in Enlightenment Thought (Berkeley-
Los Angeles: 1990) 45–81.
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in Spenser, Shakespeare, Herbert, and Milton (Cambridge: 1999).
——, “Commotion Strange: Passion in Paradise Lost”, in Paster G. – Floyd-Wilson M. –
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tion (Cambridge: 2003) 43–68.
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(Bloomington-Indianapolis: 1988).
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1999).
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(Lewiston NY: 1990).
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——, “Just A Spoonful of Sugar: Syrup and Domesticity in Early Modern England”, Modern
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 The sleeping musician.
Aristotle’s Vegetative Soul and Ralph Cudworth’s
Plastic Nature

Diana Stanciu

Summary

While trying to invalidate Descartes’ sharp division between matter and intellect
as res extensa and res cogitans, Ralph Cudworth opposes physiology as mechani-
cally conceived and replaces it with the concept of ‘plastic nature’. This plastic
nature is responsible for order and regularity as signs of the incorporeal prin-
ciples guiding Cudworth’s ‘intellectual system of the universe,’ at both the macro-
cosmic and microcosmic level. However, plastic nature is described just as a mark
of the intellect in the entire corporeal world and not as a part or a faculty of the
intellect itself. It is actually deprived of awareness and knowledge. Moreover, the
human soul is not itself conscious of the activity of plastic nature within itself,
within the soul. This complex account of plastic nature may be generated by
Cudworth’s attempt to harmonise such different sources as Plato, Aristotle, Ploti-
nus, the Stoics, Galen, Harvey, Paracelsus and van Helmont while simultaneously
trying to challenge Descartes’ definition of being as cogitation and self-awareness.
And Mosheim, Cudworth’s later editor and translator into Latin, may have further
cultivated the ambiguity of the concept of plastic nature.

Mechanical physiology and plastic nature. Two opposed concepts

In his True Intellectual System of the Universe (1678), Ralph Cudworth

asserts that human souls are not always conscious of whatever they have
in them, in the same way that a sleeping musician is not himself conscious
of his musical skills and songs, which are nevertheless still somehow
inside him. Thus, it should be possible for the soul to possess some vital
energy without being expressly conscious of it.1 Otherwise, human souls in
‘profound sleeps, lethargies and apoplexies’ and also ‘the embryos in the
womb’ would cease to have any being.2 Therefore, Cudworth’s ostensible

1 Cudworth Ralph, The True Intellectual System of the Universe (London, Royston: 1678,
facsimile repr. Stuttgart: 1964) 160.
2 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 160.
714 diana stanciu

assumption is that awareness is not essential to life. And in support of that,

he presents two types of actions that humans perform ‘non-attendingly’.3
First, he explains that one cannot always tell how one’s brain is affected
by different ‘motions and figurations’ in one’s ‘phantastic thoughts’, just as
one is not aware of that ‘vital sympathy’ by which one’s soul is united to
the body, but only of its effects. Second, he shows that sometimes one can-
not even tell how one’s soul is affected by the different motions of one’s
own body.4 To illustrate the first case, he gives the example of dreams, in
which ‘cogitations’ and ‘coherent dialogues’ between the soul and other
persons develop without the soul itself being aware of them, although
the soul itself remains ‘the poet and inventor of the whole fable’.5 For the
second case, his first example is that of respiration or ‘that motion of the
diaphragma and other muscles’, of which the soul is not always conscious,
especially while asleep. He follows this with the example of the motion
of the heart, where he quotes Harvey, ‘that curious and diligent inquirer
into nature’, against Descartes, who offers a mechanical explanation of
the systole and diastole as caused by some ‘pulsific’, corporeal quality in
the substance of the heart itself.6
Mechanism is actually refuted, together with atheism, at the very begin-
ning of Cudworth’s True Intellectual System of the Universe, not only in con-
nection with the human body, but also with regard to the whole universe,
and referring not only to Descartes, but to his ancient sources as well.
This refutation of mechanism and of its ancient atomist antecedents is
based not only on Platonic views (as one might expect from a ‘Cambridge
Platonist’ like Cudworth),7 but also on those of Aristotle. Indeed, Cud-
worth tries to demonstrate the concordance between the Platonists and
Aristotle in their refutation of atomism. He quotes Aristotle extensively in

3 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 160.

4 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 160–161.
5 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 161.
6 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 161; cf. Lotti B., Ralph Cudworth e l’idea di
natura plastica (Udine: 2004) 233: this vis pulsifica is actually an old Galenic and scholastic
idea connected to the pulsation of the heart.
7 The Cambridge Platonists were fellows or students of two colleges in Cambridge:
Christ’s and Emmanuel. Benjamin Whichcote (1609–1683), Henry More (1614–1687), Ralph
Cudworth (1617–1688) and John Smith (1618–1652) formed the inner circle of the group.
Other contemporaries associated with them were Nathaniel Culverwell (1619–1651) and
Peter Sterry (1613–1672). Among their younger followers can be counted George Rust
(† 1670), John Norris (1657–1711) and Anne Conway (ca. 1630–1679). Two other kindred
spirits could be Joseph Glanville (1638–1680) and Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667).
 the sleeping musician 715

support of his own criticism of the so-called ‘atomical physiology’,8 above

all when he wants to prove that, generally, it is the atheistic system of
the world that makes all things materially and mechanically necessary,
and that such a system is built on a peculiar ‘physiological’ hypothesis
‘which is called by some atomical or corpuscular, by others mechanical’.9
The main targets of Cudworth’s criticism are the suppositions of atheistic
‘atomical’ physiology that the body is nothing more than extended mat-
ter, and that nothing is to be attributed to it besides magnitude, divis-
ibility into parts, shape and position, together with motion or rest. He
also criticises the view that motion is so conceived that no part of the
body can ever move itself, but is always moved by something else.10 In
this sense, according to Cudworth, again Aristotle did not disagree with
Plato, as both posited ‘a substance separable and also actually separated
from sensibles’, an ‘immovable nature or essence’.11 Moreover, Cudworth
insists that, besides asserting an incorporeal deity and an immovable first
mover, Aristotle also followed Plato ‘in physiologising by forms and quali-
ties and rejecting the mechanical way by atoms’.12 And Cudworth is right
in this sense, as Aristotle’s teleology was indeed directed against the atom-
ists and especially against Democritus.13
Physiology is then described by Cudworth as that which deals with the
corporeal and which, as such, must be primarily mechanical.14 Thus, while
refuting mechanism, Cudworth also refutes physiology as mechanically
conceived, and uses here the ideas of Aristotle along with those of the Pla-
tonists. The term Cudworth prefers, and which he opposes to mechanical
physiology, is that of ‘plastic nature’,15 which is responsible for the order

8 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 8, 10.

 

9 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 7.

 

10 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 7.

11 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 19.
12 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 53; Cudworth Ralph, A Treatise Concerning
Eternal and Immutable Morality with A Treatise of Free Will, ed. Sarah Hutton (Cambridge:
1996) 39.
13 Cf. Aristoteles, De generatione animalium V8, 789a8–b15.
14 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 25, 32, 39.
15 A possible source for the concept is the passage in Timaeus 42d referring to the
moulding (Gr. platein, Lat. plasmare) of the mortal bodies and the way they are united
to the souls, cf. Lotti, Ralph Cudworth 188–189. The Greek adjective is plastos (formed,
shaped) and the noun is plastês (moulder, modeller), cf. Bonifazzi C., The Soul of the World.
An Account of the Inwardness of Things (Washington, DC: 1978) 55. Ideas from Neopla-
tonism and Aristotelianism are generally combined with ideas in Timaeus when account-
ing for the creation and order of the universe from the Middle Ages on, cf. Carré M.H.,
Phases of Thought in England (Oxford: 1949, repr. Westport, Connecticut, 1972) 130–131.
716 diana stanciu

and regularity in both the body and the universe. Nevertheless, despite
this rational order that it stands for, plastic nature is not defined by aware-
ness and the capacity of knowledge. The metaphor of the sleeping musi-
cian and the other examples used by Cudworth have already suggested
that. Even if nature ‘acts artificially and teleologically’, it cannot but ‘mim-
ick’ the divine art and wisdom since it does not understand either ‘the
ends which it acts for’ or the ‘reason of what it does’ in order to attain
them. Thus, nature is not capable of ‘consultation or deliberation’; it can-
not ‘act electively or with discretion’.16 And through this, while criticising
Descartes’ mechanism, Cudworth also argues against his attempt to define
being through cogitation and awareness.
At first sight, there are simply a number of assumptions here which
deal with psychology and physiology in a manner that opposes Descartes.
However, contextualisation and detailed analysis reveal that there is
much more to be said. For instance, the whole passage that begins with
the metaphor of the sleeping musician should be understood as belonging
to a somewhat separate, self-contained Digression Concerning the Plastick
Life of Nature17 within Cudworth’s True Intellectual System of the Universe,
where he discusses vital energies without express awareness. Nevertheless,
this passage should be interpreted in the wider context of the ‘intellectual
system’ that Cudworth tries to devise in the treatise as a whole. Without
doubt, the concept of plastic nature is introduced with the explicit inten-
tion of invalidating not only Descartes’ mechanism but also all attempts
to reduce nature to material necessity. Furthermore, Descartes’ definition
of being as cogitation and awareness is presented as an indication of athe-
ism and refuted together with it not only in the passage on plastic nature,
but also in the entire treatise. Here, as elsewhere in his work, Cudworth
presses for his ideas of a ‘right intellectual system of the universe’ and
of an incorporeal deity in order to demonstrate that ‘life, cogitation and
understanding’ do not essentially belong to matter, but are ‘the peculiar
attributes and characteristics of substance incorporeal’.18 And in this sense
he refutes not only the ideas of the atomists and of Descartes, but also the

On plastic nature, see also Lotti, Ralph Cudworth 35, 175–256. On the natural philosophy
of the Cambridge Platonists referring to the plastic nature see Cassirer E., The Platonic
Renaissance in England (Edinburgh: 1953) 147, n. 1. On Cudworth and plastic nature see
also Bonifazzi, The Soul of the World 62–63 and on plastic nature in general, Bonifazzi, The
Soul of the World 54–80.
16 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 171.
17 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 146–173.
18 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 146.
 the sleeping musician 717

opposed ideas of the Stoics and ‘hylozoists’, whom he presents as assert-

ing that ‘life and perception or understanding should be essential to mat-
ter as such or that all senseless matter should be perfectly and infallibly
wise’.19 This is why Cudworth criticises not only the atomists, but also the
‘cosmo-plastic’ or Stoic atheists and the ‘hylozoic’ or Stratonical atheists,20
the latter also offering him the chance to refute Hobbes and Spinoza. To
summarise, Cudworth opposes not only those who draw too sharp a line
of separation between matter and intellect, or between the sensible and
the intelligible, but also those who try to identify them.
However, the atomists and Descartes remain the main target of the pas-
sage on the plastic nature since, despite their error of ascribing ‘intellec-
tual’ qualities to matter, the Stoics and the hylozoists still have the merit
of positing the existence of plastic nature. The peculiar way in which Cud-
worth sometimes borrows Stoic concepts, while other times he criticises
the Stoics, will be described in more detail below. Here, it is necessary
to observe only that Cudworth, while sharing with them the concept of
plastic nature, remains careful to refute the Stoic and Hylozoic tendency
of ‘perverting’ or ‘abusing’ the notion of plastic nature ‘to make a certain
spurious and counterfeit God-Almighty of it (or a First Principle of all
things)’. Such a notion would contradict his principle that there is only
one ‘perfect mind or consciously understanding nature presiding over
the universe’.21 But, having taken all these precautions, in his intellectual
system of the universe Cudworth still needs to introduce the idea of a
plastic nature that is never mechanically conceived (as physiology can
be). Unless one admits the idea of a plastic nature that is not mechani-
cal and that acts regularly towards an end, one should accept either that
phenomena happen accidentally, without the guidance of any mind or
understanding22 – which would be nonsensical – or that free will and
freedom of any kind do not exist and God is the immediate efficient cause
of everything,23 down to the smallest body of ‘every gnat and fly’.24 There-
fore, Cudworth rejects both the view that all things are produced acciden-
tally or by the unguided mechanism of matter and the opposed view that

19 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 145.

20 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 145–146.
21 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 172.
22 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 148.
23 Cf. Lotti, Ralph Cudworth 182: The relationship between God and matter, after the
creation, is always indirect, mediated by plastic nature.
24 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 147.
718 diana stanciu

God himself does all things immediately and miraculously, regardless of

the fact that they are all so masterfully created that ‘Galen professed he
could never enough admire that artifice which was in the leg of a fly’.25
Plastic nature thus acts as an inferior and subordinate instrument of God,
being responsible for the regular and orderly motion of matter.26 It consti-
tutes the means through which the divine intellect, that does not remain
confined within itself, will ‘print its stamps and signatures everywhere
throughout the world’.27
To sum up, one can notice here that the passage on plastic nature is
apparently well integrated within the wider context of the ‘intellectual
system’ that Cudworth conceives in his treatise, a universe in which the
decrees of the divine will are carried out by an agent (or executioner), the
operative, energetic or efficient cause appointed, which is plastic nature.
However, when taking all of Cudworth’s sources into account, the fact
that plastic nature as ‘efficient cause’ or ‘agent’ does not have awareness
or the ability to know may create some incongruities in Cudworth’s sys-
tem. It may be difficult to understand how such an ‘agent’ may be able to
execute solely by virtue of the traces of divine reason that are preserved in
it, not through its own power of decision. Additionally, if there is a plastic
nature that governs the motion of matter throughout the corporeal world
according to specific laws, then the same should apply to the formation of
plants and animals in order to assure an ‘apt coherent frame and harmony
of the whole universe’.28 At any rate, this is what Cudworth maintains and
in this sense the ‘agency’ of plastic nature needs to be further explained.
For instance, in the formation of the bodies of animals, it is one and the
same thing that directs the whole in framing the eye, the ear, the hand or
the foot, in delineating the veins, the arteries, in fabricating the nerves,
in projecting the muscles and joints and in designing and organising the
heart and the brain. The same idea also appears elsewhere in Cudworth,
when he states that the plastic nature ‘virtually’ contains within itself ‘the
forms of all the several organical parts of animals’ and that it ‘displays
them gradually and successively, framing an eye here and an ear there’.29
One and the same thing must have in it ‘the entire idea’ and ‘the complete

25 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 147.

26 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 147.
27 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 150.
28 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 151.
29 Cudworth, A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality 77.
 the sleeping musician 719

model’ of the whole organic body, and the same is true for the plastic
nature of the entire corporeal universe.30
It must thus be accepted that there is plastic nature both at the mac-
rocosmic and at the microcosmic level and that it makes all things ‘con-
spire everywhere and agree together into one harmony’.31 Aristotle’s De
anima (On the Soul) 1.4 is quoted to prove that plastic nature in animals
is that which ‘holds together such things as of their nature would other-
wise move contraryways’ or ‘which keeps the more fluid parts of them
constantly in the same form and figure’, ‘that which restores flesh that
was lost’, ‘consolidates dissolved continuities’, ‘incorporates the newly
received nourishment’ or ‘which regenerates and repairs veins consumed
or cut off’ or ‘which causes dentition in so regular a manner’.32 Aristotle
is severely censured, however, for a purported fault that Cudworth finds,
and tries to correct, in his work: although he talks everywhere of a nature
that acts regularly, artificially and methodically, with the best results as
its final goal, he never definitively declares whether this nature is cor-
poreal or incorporeal, substantial or accidental.33 The fact that he does
not determine these points regarding the rational soul, either, makes the
matter even more complex for Cudworth. Moreover, Aristotle’s follow-
ers conclude that his nature is corporeal. In spite of all these, Cudworth
maintains that, since it can be neither the matter, nor the forms, nor
the accidents of bodies, according to his own principles, plastic nature
must be incorporeal in Aristotle even if it is deprived of knowledge and
awareness.
Here the Platonists are taken as arbiters of an incorporeal plastic nature
because, in Cudworth’s view, they seem to affirm both that there is a plas-
tic nature in all particular souls of humans and animals and that there is
a general plastic nature of the whole universe, distinct from their world
soul.34 Thus, while stating its incorporeality, Cudworth also differentiates
his plastic nature from the Platonic/Neoplatonic anima mundi (world

30 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 163–164.

31 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 167.
32 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 166–167. More on Aristotle’s biological ideas
in Kullmann W., Die Teleologie in der aristotelischen Biologie. Aristoteles als Zoologe, Embry-
ologe und Genetiker, Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften:
Philosophisch-historische Klasse 1979, 2 (Heidelberg: 1979).
33 More on the concept of nature in Aristotle in Zekl H.G., Aristoteles’ Physik. Vorlesung
über Natur, Philosophische Bibliothek 380 (Hamburg: 1987).
34 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 171.
720 diana stanciu

soul)35 and insists that Aristotle, in spite of not clearly stating the incor-
poreality of plastic nature, agrees with the Platonic doctrine that plastic
nature is either a ‘lower power or faculty of some conscious soul’, or else
an ‘inferior kind of life by itself, depending upon a superior soul’.36 And
by that Cudworth actually avoids acknowledging the existence of a ‘mun-
dane soul’. He prefers not to discuss this issue in detail. It is of minor
importance to him whether plastic nature is a part or power of a ‘mun-
dane intellectual soul’ (if such a ‘mundane soul’ exists) or simply some
kind of inferior life in itself. What he clearly states in this sense is only
the existence of the plastic nature ‘depending immediately upon the Deity
itself’, that is, ‘upon mind or intellect’, and being a mark of it.37 However,
this ambiguity in defining plastic nature in comparison to the world soul
becomes yet another source of possible incongruity in Cudworth’s Pla-
tonic ‘system’. And that might be emphasised by the fact that he defines
plastic nature sometimes as ‘life’, and at other times as ‘power’ or ‘fac-
ulty’, without consistently choosing one definition or another. Neverthe-
less, this will be discussed below, when considering in detail the possible
incongruities regarding plastic nature generated in Cudworth’s treatise by
his multiple sources. Here I would simply mention that Cudworth refers
sometimes to a ‘plastic life of nature’ and other times to a ‘vegetative or
plastic power of the soul’.38

Possible incongruities generated by the concepts of ‘plastic nature’/

physiology within Cudworth’s ‘intellectual system of the universe’

If we compare all of Cudworth’s ideas on plastic nature while keeping

in mind his Platonic/Neoplatonic stand, it may seem that he contradicts
himself when he asserts that plastic nature acts regularly, even artistically,
and has a certain finality, but at the same time it also acts ‘non-attend-
ingly’. If plastic nature is defined by ‘life’, ‘internal energy’ and ‘self-activity’
and is differentiated from body, which is defined by ‘passive capability’,39

35 On plastic nature as coming from the ancient theory of anima mundi see Janet P.,
Essai sur le mediateur plastique de Cudworth (Paris: 1860) 30–32; on the idea that plastic
nature does not coincide with the anima mundi because it is deprived of awareness or
reflection, see Lotti, Ralph Cudworth 188.
36 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 165.
37 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 171. For an opposed view, see Janet, Essai sur
le mediateur plastique 30–32.
38 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 157, 171.
39 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 163.
 the sleeping musician 721

how can this ‘activity’ and ‘energy’ of plastic nature be explained without
awareness and the capacity of knowledge? A more detailed analysis of
the Platonic concept of the world soul (anima mundi) and of Cudworth’s
views on that can be revealing here. Thus, in Plato, the intellect is the
power that shapes the world and counteracts necessity through teleol-
ogy; it is the agent in the general teleological scheme while the world
soul seems to lack the qualities of a purposeful designer or of a planning
architect.40 Then, in Plato as well as in Cudworth, the intellect is the basic
principle, creating as much ‘good’ as possible and the world soul is one of
the implements created and employed by the divine intellect in pursuit
of this purpose.41 However, in Plato, beyond its essential function as the
principle of life (zôê) and the originator of movement (kinêsis), the world
soul is also credited with an epistemological function. It is the organ of
knowledge and opinion, corresponding on the cosmic scale to the activi-
ties of the individual human soul.42 And this could be a serious difference
between Plato’s world soul and Cudworth’s plastic nature, since the latter
is deprived of knowledge and awareness. It was perhaps for this reason
that Cudworth avoided defining his plastic nature as similar to the world
soul. However, in spite of being thus inferior to the world soul, plastic
nature is devised by Cudworth as a means to struggle against necessity, a
function ascribed to the intellect in the Platonic system. And this could be
by itself a source of incongruities in Cudworth, given also the facts that,
in Plato, teleology is connected to intellect and knowledge or awareness,43
and that Cudworth defines plastic nature as pursuing specific ends and
thus acting teleologically, but yet ‘non-attendingly’.
Moreover, one may consider whether Cudworth noticed a further pos-
sible problem here: despite the fact that such a vital energy acts according
to laws,44 the idea that awareness is not essential to life appears to con-
tradict some theological views expressed by Cudworth in the True Intellec-
tual System of the Universe, A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable
Morality (1731), A Treatise of Free Will (1838), some of his unpublished

40 Solmsen F., “The Teleological Approach”, in Solmsen F. (ed.), Plato’s Theology (Ithaca,
NY: 1942) 98–122, esp. 112.
41 Plato, Timaeus 36d-e, 37c; cf. Solmsen, “The Teleological Approach” 115–116.
42 Pl. Ti. 36e.
43 Cf. Solmsen, “The Teleological Approach” 101–103.
44 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 161; Harvey William, Exercitationes de gen-
eratione animalium, quibus accedunt quaedam de partu, de membranis ac humoribus uteri
et de conceptione (London, Du Gardianis: 1651), Ex. 50, 150–151 quoted by Cudworth in the
margin.
722 diana stanciu

work (for instance, British Museum Add. Ms. 4979), and in his sermons.45
Here Cudworth defines ‘true religion’ as ‘an intellectual and truthful sys-
tem of the universe’, opposed to atheism as a ‘false system’ and he refers,
of course, to ‘systems and bodies of divinity’, the dogmatic religious views
which should not escape the censorship of reason and become simply
outbursts of enthusiasm. Within such systems, a human soul that par-
tially lacks awareness, but still acts teleologically and artistically, seems to
rather undermine his argument that rational beings should act in God’s
ways from an ‘inward rational principle’ and out of free will.46
Additionally, as already noted, the main focus of Cudworth’s entire
work is his ‘intellectual system of the universe’ that pertains, according to
the Platonic tradition, to the realm of the ‘intelligible’ as opposed to that
of the ‘sensible’. His religious ‘inward rational principle’ points in fact to
the same Platonic intelligible realm reflected in the sensible world. Such
an idea is supported by the passage in which the concept of an ‘intel-
lectual system’ is presented as the ‘true’ system, to be distinguished from
‘the other, vulgarly so called, systems of the world (that is, the visible and
corporeal world)’, the astronomical systems: the Ptolemaic, the Tychonic
and the Copernican.47 Thus, although claiming not to feel called to write
de omni ente, Cudworth insists that we consider the whole scale of entity,
because the intelligible is at stake and the intelligible is present every-
where, at all levels. And from this point of view, a plastic nature acting
regularly and according to rational principles, but still deprived of aware-
ness and knowledge, may again be difficult to maintain and explain.
Furthermore, as shown above, the criticisms raised by Cudworth (and
by other Cambridge Platonists) against Descartes and his rationalism,
and Hobbes and his empiricism, are in fact that their account of motion
is inadequate and that mechanism cannot account for life.48 Cudworth
introduces plastic nature into his system precisely to complement the
mechanical view of the body as ‘resisting bulk’, as ‘antitypous extension’
incapable of directing its motion.49 It is in order to criticise mechanism,

45 Cudworth Ralph, A Sermon Preached Before the Honourable House of Commons on

March 31, 1647, being a Day of Public Humiliation (Liverpool, Thomas Hodgson and London,
Edmund Fry: 1831) and Cudworth Ralph, A Sermon Preached to the Honourable Society of
Lincoln’s Inn (London, printed by J. Flesher for R. Royston: 1664).
46 For instance, see Cudworth, Lincoln’s Inn 34–36.
47 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 3.
48 Carré, Phases of Thought 265.
49 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 163.
 the sleeping musician 723

and especially Descartes, that he develops a concept of plastic nature

that acts organically rather than mechanically. Also in order to refute
Descartes, Cudworth limits his own concept of plastic nature to a ‘veg-
etative’ and ‘executive’ function, allowing it no degree of knowledge or
awareness. He ensures that plastic nature is conceived only as a mediator
between body and soul or, generally, between the sensible and the intel-
ligible, without allowing any identification with any of ‘the extremes’. But
in such a context one may wonder how specifically Cudworth’s plastic
nature is devised to ‘mediate’ between these ‘extremes’. The answer to this
question requires a few additional explanations.
Thus, Cudworth quotes Aristotle’s On the Soul (especially 430a and
432a) in support of the distinction between the rational and the sensi-
tive functions of the soul. He insists on the difference between the higher
and active part, which acts separately from matter and is impassible, that
which knows or understands (to noêtikon), and the lower, passive or sym-
pathetic part, which suffers actions from outside and acts in conjunction
with the body, that to which sensation belongs (to aisthêtikon).50 Thus,
sense is passion and in all sensation there is first a passion in the body of
the sentient being, since the motion in that body which moves another
is called action and the one in that which is moved by another is called
passion.51 Consequently, bodily passion is mainly described simply as
local motion impressed upon the nerves from the outside objects. But this
local motion is then propagated and communicated to the brain, where
all sensation is made; and Cudworth, following Aristotle, insists that, in
fact, sense is not mere local motion generated from one body to another,
or a simple resistance of one body to the motion of another, but a cogi-
tation, recognition or vital perception and awareness of these motions
or passions of the body.52 Moreover, Cudworth also holds an Aristotelian
view of knowledge that presupposes not only contact, as in Plato, but also
action.53 Thus, he insists that the primary and immediate objects of cogni-
tion and knowledge are not things existing outside the mind, but ideas of

50 Cudworth, A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality 54.

51 Cudworth, A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality 49.
52 Cudworth, A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality 50.
53 Cf. Duhot, J.-J., La conception stoïcienne de la causalité (Paris: 1989) 88–89. For Plato’s
theory of knowledge, see also Kucharski P., “Sur l’évolution des méthodes du savoir dans
la philosophie de Platon”, in Kucharski P. (ed.), Aspects de la spéculation platonicienne
(Paris-Louvain: 1971) 259–272.
724 diana stanciu

the mind itself. And, as intelligible reasons (rationes) of things, they are
actively exerted.54
Under such conditions, if sense is not completely deprived of aware-
ness and cogitation, how can plastic nature be deprived of them? What
is its status? Does plastic nature function below the level of sensibility?
And if it does, then how can it ‘mediate’ between two things that are both
superior to it? Cudworth does not explain at this point that there are
indeed places both in The True Intellectual System of the Universe and else-
where in his work where he opposes the spermatic or vegetative or plastic
nature/power to the ‘cognoscitive’ power of the soul (vis cognitrix).55 For
the moment, only the term plastic nature is used and it seems to be able
simply to oppose mechanism and physiology as mechanically conceived,
without being assigned a clear status that would make it play the ‘configu-
rating’ or forming role Cudworth ascribes to it within his intellectual sys-
tem of the universe. And then again, if plastic nature is somehow defined
as functioning at the vegetative level, below the level of the senses, how
can it mediate between the intelligible and the sensible and how can it
‘struggle’ against necessity as mechanically conceived? Why does Cud-
worth insist that the soul, or nature in general, may be unconscious of this
vital energy within itself? The answer could be that he cannot accept a
second active principle in addition to the One, the intellect governing the
universe, which is God himself. Consequently, plastic nature in Cudworth
cannot be defined by awareness and the capacity for knowledge. As will
be shown below, this ambiguity may indeed be generated by Cudworth’s
attempt to find an alleged concordance between several different ancient
schools of philosophy. Such a concordance is not only questionable, but
also seems to cause some problems of internal consistency within Cud-
worth’s system.
Plastic nature is thus described sometimes as ‘life’ and at other times
as ‘power’, or capacity, or faculty (dunamis) of the soul; sometimes it is
defined as ‘energy’ (energeia) and at other times as ‘potentiality’, which
are all concepts that require fuller detailed discussion below. For the
moment, we should briefly observe that out of Aristotle’s three different
approaches in discussing causes (the semantic approach in the Physics 2.3,
the physical-metaphysical one in De partibus animalium 1 and the logical-

54 Cudworth, A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality 76; Aristoteles, De

anima 431a and Plotinus, Enneades 5.5.1 quoted.
55 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 171; Cudworth, A Treatise Concerning Eternal
and Immutable Morality 77.
 the sleeping musician 725

epistemic one in the Second Analytics),56 it is only the first two that seem
to be of interest for Cudworth. The ontological matter/form distinction,
as an instrument of analysis, helps Cudworth explain the incorporeal-
ity of the vital principle and its intellectual substance. He also needs the
dynamic final/efficient distinction to oppose mechanism. However, the
actual/potential distinction remains of secondary interest for him: he pre-
fers not to discuss it, or simply overlooks its relevance.
Cudworth may prefer to overlook the logical-epistemic actual/poten-
tial distinction because he seems to place plastic nature at the level of
sensation and identify it with the vegetative part of the soul. And since
it is sensation that in fact represents the realisation of potentiality, the
advance of something towards itself and towards actuality,57 a perfecting,58
for Cudworth it is not important to discuss the actual/potential difference.
He is not interested in perception as described by Aristotle as a distinctly
mental and not corporeal act or as a discriminative power from which the
highest acts of cognition are reached by a continuous development.59 Per-
ception is distinguished from nutrition by the fact that, while in the latter
the matter of the food is absorbed, the former is receptive of form without
matter.60 The essential fact about perception is the apprehension by the
mind of some quality of an object. And a true description of perception
requires awareness of form. However, Aristotle explains in De anima 3.4
that, while thought is receptive of intelligible form, sense is receptive of
sensible form. Thought is the faculty by which we grasp essence while
sense is that by which we grasp essence-embodied-in-matter.61 And the
existence of a certain amount of confusion between psychology and
physiology in Aristotle’s account of perception62 may actually cause
similar confusion in Cudworth as well; this adds to his lack of interest in
sensation or perception and to his preference for the concept of vegeta-
tive soul.

56 Duhot, La conception stoïcienne 21–24.

57 Arist. De An. 417b6, 16.
58 Aristoteles, Physica 246b2.
59 Arist. De An. 32b18, 424a5, 432a16, cf. Ross W.D., Aristotle (London: 1923; repr. Lon-
don: 1960) 136–137.
60 Arist. De An. 424a18.
61 Ross, Aristotle 137, 146.
62 Ross, Aristotle 137.
726 diana stanciu

Possible explanations for the alleged incongruities generated by ‘plastic

nature’/physiology within the ‘intellectual system of the universe’

An answer to all this might be provided by two simultaneous approaches:

a more detailed study of concepts such as physiology and plastic nature
as described by Cudworth, and a more attentive assessment of his sources.
However, if one is to take physiology as understood by Cudworth in its
etymological sense, of knowledge about nature (phusis + logos), or even of
natural philosophy, and also to remember that Cudworth defines knowl-
edge according to the Platonic and Aristotelian tradition, then one finds
further incongruities: on the one hand, physiology is defined as knowledge
about nature, and on the other, it is sometimes mechanically conceived.
Moreover, physiology is opposed to plastic nature, and plastic nature is
deprived of knowledge. On the basis of these premises, one may deduce
on the one hand, that physiology is superior to plastic nature, since it is
knowledge, and on the other hand, that physiology is inferior to plastic
nature since it can be mechanical, while the plastic nature is dynamic.
Such conclusions would be absurd within Cudworth’s system, however,
and they differ from his own assertions about physiology and plastic
nature. The ultimate question, then, is: what does Cudworth understand
by nature (phusis)? This could be rephrased as: how many definitions of
nature does he have? Furthermore, what are his sources? The following
sections represent an attempt to offer a survey of possible antecedents
of Cudworth’s theory of plastic nature. These are the sources he himself
quotes, and which seem to have inspired him either directly or indirectly.
We will then examine to what extent he pursued the arguments he found
in his sources as a whole, or only in part, in order to reach his personal syn-
thesis, and to what extent this synthesis is more or less self-contained.

a) Aristotle and the finality of nature

In Aristotle’s Physics, nature is either an inner impulse to movement, or
unshaped material, or form, or even transcendental principle.63 Nature as
the form of a thing is actually the end (telos) towards which it develops.64
For Cudworth too, nature as an inner impulse to movement consti-
tutes the basis for the refutation of mechanism. Nature is conceived as a

63 Ross, Aristotle 67–68.

64 Ross, Aristotle 71.
 the sleeping musician 727

subordinate instrument of the divine wisdom and it is an instrument

especially when defined as matter, as in Aristotle, where nature as mat-
ter is the means to the end.65 Cudworth even calls it a ‘manuary opifi-
cer or executioner’ of divine wisdom.66 He later observes, acknowledging
Aristotle’s teleology, that Aristotle’s nature is ‘no fortuitous principle’; it
is ‘such as does nothing in vain, but all for ends’. He also explains that in
Aristotle nature is something that ‘in every thing pursues the best’. The
‘executing’ function of the plastic nature discussed above is thus related to
the Aristotelian teleology adopted by Cudworth here. Moreover, the idea
that nature ‘pursues the best’ points to Aristotle’s nature as transcenden-
tal principle. However, of these definitions, Cudworth appeals primarily
to Aristotle because the latter favours teleology against mere mechanism
and prefers to study the parts in the light of the whole, instead of treating
the whole as mere sum of the parts.67 Relying on the authority of Aristotle,
Cudworth defines thus nature primarily through its finality.68
Relevant here is Aristotle’s theory of causality regarding the genera-
tion of natural phenomena (phusikê genesis). For instance, in Physics
2.3 (194b16–195b30 and especially 195a21–27), Aristotle presents the four
causes while suggesting two pairs of oppositions: that between the mate-
rial and the formal and that between the efficient and the final. The first
opposition represents an ontological point of view, the second a dynamic
one. In Parts of Animals 1 (639b11), only two causes are taken into account
for the explanation of nature, of the way the phenomena are produced:
the final and the efficient (or the initial). While quoting Parts of Animals
1.2, Cudworth refers to the same idea and explains that the most impor-
tant of these two causes seems to be the final or ‘the intending cause’, as
this is reason and reason is ‘alike a principle in artificial and in natural
things’.69 Thus, while movement from within represented the distinc-
tion between natural and manufactured objects in Aristotle,70 reason
represented the link between them since art, as the imitation of nature,
requires knowledge of both form and matter because it studies both the
end and the means.71 The procedure of nature is in this sense assimilated

65 Ross, Aristotle 71.

66 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 54.
67 Cf. Ross, Aristotle 71.
68 More on Aristotle’s teleology in nature in Ross, Aristotle 78–81.
69 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 165.
70 Ross, Aristotle 66–67.
71 Ross, Aristotle 70.
728 diana stanciu

to that of art and the study of nature is included among the constructive
sciences rather than the theoretical in Parts of Animals.72 Similar ideas in
Cudworth will be presented below.
In the same sequence of thought, Cudworth explains Aristotle’s idea
that intellect (nous) together with nature (phusis) are the causes (aitia) of
the whole universe: intellect as the principal and directive cause, nature as
a subservient or executive instrument.73 This features in Physics 2.5, where
Aristotle explains that, besides things which exist of necessity, there are
also others defined by finality. Things that display finality may do so by
thought or by nature.74 This double causality remains ambiguous, how-
ever. For instance, when Aristotle describes the structure of animals as
the result of purpose in On Heaven, the question that may naturally arise
is: whose purpose? Nature is generally described as acting for a purpose,
but nature is not a conscious agent; it is only the vital force present in
all living things.75 Here as elsewhere, Aristotle seems to be content, as
have been many thinkers inspired by him ever since, with the notion of
a purpose which is not the purpose of any mind. His teleology does not
necessarily imply intentionality. And this idea is transparent in Cudworth
as well when discussing plastic nature without awareness or knowledge.
One should not forget here, however, that in his ethics and in his phys-
ics Aristotle displays different views on teleology. While in the ethics the
telos is happiness (eudaimonia), that has a normative import and requires
awareness and knowledge (since it is described as the final arbiter of
rational thought and ethical obligations in pursuit of the good), in the
natural sciences, the telos is rather the perpetuation of the type, the pres-
ervation of the species whereby living things can share in the eternal and
the divine. Nutrition and reproduction provide examples for this.76 Even if
he does not acknowledge it explicitly, in his own work Cudworth seems to
adopt this double significance of teleology. The teleological approach spe-
cific to the organic life and the model of the natural sciences in Aristotle
fits Cudworth’s definition of plastic nature while the ethical approach to
teleology fits his ethical and theological concerns mentioned above.
And all this is integrated within a Platonic/Neoplatonic ‘intellectual sys-
tem of the universe’ in order to harmonise different tendencies in ancient

72 Aristoteles, De partibus animalium 639b16–21.

73 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 151.
74 Arist. Ph. 2.5, 196b17–25.
75 Aristoteles, De caelo 271a33.
76 Cf. Ross, Aristotle 125–126, 135–136.
 the sleeping musician 729

philosophy despite the risk of displaying incongruities between these

different sources. Furthermore, trying not only to harmonise Plato and
Aristotle, but also to bring their views regarding plastic nature into line
with those of other ancient philosophers, Cudworth insists that not only
Plato and Aristotle, who were ‘naturally more addicted to ideas than to
atoms, to formal and final than to material causes’,77 but also the first ato-
mists, who accepted the idea of incorporeal substance, used physiology in
subordination to theology and metaphysics. Cudworth even tries to show
some impartiality here regarding the views of the atomists on causality
and finality, explaining that their philosophy emerged from the ‘principle
of reason that nothing comes from nothing, nor goes to nothing’.78

b) Plotinus and the artificiality of nature

Cudworth quotes a fragment from Plotinus’ Enneads 3.2.16 to describe the
activity of nature and its rational forming principle as artificial or rather
‘art-like’,79 resembling the movements of a dancer. He also insists that,
for the ancient mythologists themselves, the nature of the universe was
represented by Pan playing upon a pipe or harp and being in love with the
nymph Echo, as if nature, ‘by a kind of silent melody’, made all the parts
of the universe ‘dance in measure and proportion’.80 It is certainly not
human art that Cudworth, following his source, envisages here. Human
art cannot act upon matter other than from outside and at a distance,
while nature is another kind of art which, insinuating itself into the things
and acting there as an inward principle, ‘does its work easily, cleverly and
silently’.81 Nature is art ‘incorporated and embodied in matter’ and it does
not act upon it from outside, mechanically, but from within, ‘vitally and
magically’.82 As God is ‘inward to every thing’, so nature acts immedi-
ately upon the matter, as ‘an inward and living soul or law in it’.83 Con-
sequently, plastic nature is divine art acting immediately and inwardly
upon nature, not simply human art. When art is said to imitate nature, it

77 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 52.

78 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 34.
79 Cf. Isnardi Parente M., Techne. Momenti del pensiero greco da Platone al Epicuro, Bib-
lioteca di Cultura 76 (Florence: 1966) 12: in Plato, phusis can be also reduced to an act of
divine dianoia or of technê.
80 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 155–156.
81 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 156.
82 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 156, Plot. Enneades 3.8.1 quoted here.
83 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 156.
730 diana stanciu

means that imperfect human art imitates the perfect art of nature, which
is divine art itself.84
However, the idea of imitation (mimêsis) itself may bring further expla-
nations to Cudworth’s concept of plastic nature. While in Aristotle art as
imitation of nature requires knowledge of form and matter and studies
ends and means, in Plotinus and Plato it has fewer pretentions to knowl-
edge even if it works ‘inwardly’. Thus, when defining plastic nature, Cud-
worth seems to have preferred Aristotle’s teleology in the natural sciences
on one side, and the Platonic or Neoplatonic definition of art on the other
side, in order to avoid the identification of plastic nature with the world
soul and the necessity to ascribe it an epistemological function. The com-
bination of Aristotelian and Platonic/Neoplatonic teleology and art seems
to explain thus some of the ambiguities in Cudworth. It is also interesting
to note here that the relationship between purpose and the good (imply-
ing perfection, eternity and indestructibility) is basically explained in Pla-
to’s Timaeus through the same notion of mimêsis (imitation). The visible
created cosmos imitates, as far as possible, the perfection of the cosmos of
eternal forms. In fashioning the physical world, the divine craftsman has
his eyes fixed on the ideal world.85 Thus, art and teleology do not seem
to contradict each other. While Cudworth does not mention this passage,
which would have helped him better explain his concept of plastic nature,
the idea is nevertheless present in his work.

c) Aristotle, Plotinus, finality and artificiality

From what has been said so far, one may conclude that, for Cudworth,
the resemblance between nature and art does not contradict the final-
ity of nature. On the contrary, Aristotle’s views in Physics 199b26–33 are
quoted by Cudworth in this sense to prove the existence of finality in both
art and nature.86 Following Aristotle, he insists that it is absurd to sup-
pose that purpose is not present in nature because there is no deliberation
(boulêsis) there. There is finality in art although art does not deliberate.
Likewise, there is finality in nature. This serves to support Cudworth’s
idea of plastic nature as art and finality, as being dynamic and opposed
to mechanical physiology. In Plotinus himself, the shaping, ‘configurating’

84 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 155 bis.

85 Pl. Ti. 29a, 30c, 37c.
86 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 155–156.
 the sleeping musician 731

power of nature (plasmare) had an anti-mechanist function, nature being

conceived as an animated, living principle.
The difference in Cudworth is again simply that nature is deprived of
awareness. That is why he prefers to refer to Aristotle’s text here and to
insist that nature does not deliberate (and consequently it has no knowl-
edge and awareness), but that does not prevent it from having a final-
ity. Cudworth always emphasises that it is not human art that he has in
mind here. The ‘configurating’ power of nature is an expression of divine
creativity in as much as it is manifested in the ‘vitality and ordinating
capacity of nature’87 and also in cosmogony.88 Aristotle’s Parts of Animals
1.1 is quoted to strengthen this idea: as there is art in artificial things, so
there is in nature ‘such a principle or cause’ as plastic nature ‘by which the
heavens and whole world are thus artificially ordered and disposed’.89
Cudworth never loses sight of one final problem regarding the differ-
ence between nature and human art in respect of plastic nature. Here
he quotes Aristotle’s Physics 199b26–33: both art and nature are teleologi-
cal, but the difference between them is that art is a power in one thing
to effect change in another, and nature a power in one thing to effect
change in itself.90 He continues with Aristotle’s example: ‘if the art of ship-
wright were in the timber itself, operatively and effectually, it would there
act just as nature does’. The solution too comes from Aristotle: nature
may be closer to the medical art when it is being used by the physician
to cure himself.91 This idea serves to strengthen Cudworth’s account of
plastic nature as being art itself, acting immediately upon the matter as
an inward principle in it, but it still does not explain why it should be
deprived of awareness since it is active and acts even upon itself. Further-
more, there is an idea in Aristotle’s Physics 192b8–193b21 that Cudworth
seems to ignore here: lack of deliberation does not necessarily imply lack
of awareness or lack of knowledge, but on the contrary, it may imply
awareness and knowledge. Aristotle explains that the one who deliberates
does not yet know, but the artist knows. Thus, the artist already knows his
art and proceeds by habit. Nevertheless, such new issues will be discussed
later on.

87 Cf. Lotti, Ralph Cudworth 190.

88 Pl. Ti. 55e; cf. Lotti, Ralph Cudworth 188–189.
89 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 168.
90 Cf. Ross’s commentary in Ross W.D. et al. (eds.), The Works of Aristotle (Oxford: 1931),
vol. 3, 47.
91 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 155.
732 diana stanciu

d) Galen and the dunamis diaplastikê

Another antecedent of Cudworth’s plastic nature may be Galen’s dunamis
diaplastikê (translated in Latin as facultas formatrix) in his On the Natu-
ral Faculties I 5–6 or II 3.92 This ‘moulding’, ‘configurating’ faculty is also
defined by Galen as ‘artistic’ (technikê) when it regulates the processes
of development and conservation of the living organisms. Moreover, it
is teleological while opposing the mechanical and atomistic physiology
of Erasistratus. That serves Cudworth’s purpose very well, especially as
Galen’s dunamis diaplastikê is also deprived of awareness. However, Cud-
worth quotes Aristotle and Plotinus rather than Galen and, when he does
quote Galen, he prefers On the Utility of the Parts rather than On the Natu-
ral Faculties, although the latter was published in London in 1523 in the
Latin version of Thomas Linacre and Cudworth may have had access to
the original Greek as well (despite the fact that Bibliotheca Cudworthiana,
the auction catalogue of his library, does not mention it).93 The fragment
he quotes from On the Utility of the Parts, the one already mentioned
above, regarding the fly and the microscope, is suggestive in terms of his
views on plastic nature, and fits his general argument very well. It refers to
the constructive art of nature and compares the imitative human art with
the ‘plasmatic’ and living art of nature in order to note the superiority of the
latter.94 Moreover, Galen describes the process of creation, growth and
nutrition not as simple activities of nature, compounded of alteration and
shaping. His shaping, or moulding (diaplasis), refers to the specific ordering
of the tissues into organs through formative or ‘diaplastic’ activity.95 That in
turn supports Cudworth’s idea that plastic nature acts in an orderly and
regular way, but not mechanically.
Galen’s dunamis diaplastikê is, then, a very plausible source for Cud-
worth’s plastic nature, although not openly acknowledged as such; indeed,
Cudworth is generally well-known for his syncretism and his reluctance
to acknowledge his sources. In this context, his editor and translator into
Latin, Johann Lorenz von Mosheim, makes valuable remarks – among
Cudworth’s sources regarding plastic nature, Mosheim often quotes Galen.

92 Cf. Hunter W.B., The Seventeenth-century Doctrine of Plastic Nature (Cambridge: 1950)
199, n. 3; Bonifazzi, The Soul of the World 55; Lotti, Ralph Cudworth 191.
93 Cf. Lotti, Ralph Cudworth 192–193, 201–202.
94 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 147; Galenus, De usu partium 2.7 (3.117–118 K.);
2.8 (3.121–125 K.); 2.9 (3.167 K.).
95 Galenus, De facultatibus naturalibus 1.5 (2.152 K.); cf. Bonifazzi, The Soul of the
World 55.
 the sleeping musician 733

However, neither the antecedents to Cudworth’s plastic nature already

mentioned, nor Galen’s concept can entirely explain the lack of aware-
ness and knowledge in Cudworth’s plastic nature. Thus, Galen’s concept
is described as dunamis (potentiality) in Greek and as facultas (faculty) in
Latin. These notes of the concept are in perfect agreement with the lack of
awareness of the dunamis diaplastikê in Galen. But this is not the case in
Cudworth’s system, where plastic nature is defined, as already observed,
both as dunamis (potentiality) and as energeia (actuality) and as both ‘life’
and ‘faculty’ or ‘power’. Mosheim may have contributed to this ambiguity
himself while trying in fact to solve it: he decided to give plastic nature a
more specific definition by reducing its scope and he preferred the term
vis genetrix (generating power). At the same time he often referred to the
concept of vegetative soul while implying that he actually meant plastic
nature.96 The question that then remains is whether the Aristotelian veg-
etative soul is a concept that could fit in a Platonic ‘intellectual’ system of
the universe such as the one Cudworth conceived.

e) Plotinus and the reason immersed and diffused into matter (ratio mersa
et confusa)
Up to this point, Cudworth seems to have managed to create some con-
cordance between different ancient philosophers and to define plastic
nature in terms of teleology and art. Having declared himself in favour
of ‘the Aristotelic doctrine concerning the plastic nature of the universe,
with which the Platonic also agrees,’ and having explained that it may be
a ‘part of a mundane intellectual soul (that is a lower power and faculty
of it)’ or simply ‘some inferior thing’ immediately depending on divine
intellect,97 Cudworth proceeds to describe nature as reason immersed and
diffused into matter (ratio mersa et confusa).98 Referring back to Plotinus’
idea of nature as divine art, he now explains that it is not the divine art
as archetypal, but only as ectypal (Gr. ektupos means something which is
out of the mould, as an exact copy, but not as a prototype), while matter
alone is only ‘antitypous extension’. The idea of art as mimêsis (imitation)
mentioned above seems to be relevant again here.

96 Mosheim J.L. von, Systema intellectuale huius universi seu de veris nature rerum orig-
inibus commentarii (Jena, Meyer: 1733) 148–149.
97 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 171.
98 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 155 bis, cf. Lotti, Ralph Cudworth, 266, n. 58.
734 diana stanciu

Thus, plastic nature, as a ‘living stamp or signature of the divine wis-

dom’, is created precisely according to its archetype, but it remains only
ectypal, as it is not able to comprehend ‘the reason of what itself does’.99
Here, finally, may be a possible source and explanation for Cudworth’s
insistence that the soul and nature in general still preserve traces of ratio-
nality even when there is no awareness of that. This could also accord
with Cudworth’s general Platonic ‘system’. Quotations by Cudworth from
Plotinus’ Enneads are relevant here. Thus, wisdom is the first thing and
nature the last and lowest, for nature is only an image or imitation of wis-
dom, ‘the last thing of the soul, which has the lowest impress of reason’,
as ‘when a thick piece of wax is impressed upon by a seal’, the impression
being clear and distinct in the upper part and weak and obscure in the
lower part, and nature being ‘a thing which does only do, but does not
know’.100 Likewise, Cudworth presents plastic nature as a certain power
of moving matter, which does not know, but can only do, and seems to
be ‘just a stamp or a figure in water’.101 Thus, plastic nature is not pure
mind or perfect intellect, nor any kind of pure soul, but something which
depends upon it, being just ‘an effulgency or eradiation’ from both mind
and soul or rather from ‘soul affected according to mind’ and generating
‘a lower kind of life’,102 the same plastic nature deprived of awareness that
Cudworth posits. One should note here, nevertheless, that such an idea
does not completely follow the ideas of Plotinus, in whose work nature
still preserves traces of awareness, even in a diffused manner. We there-
fore need to enquire further into the sources and explanations of plastic
nature lacking awareness in Cudworth’s system, and into the gnoseologi-
cal implications of such a view.

f) Nature as habit (hexis), the logoi spermatikoi and the pneuma/tonos/

logos model of the Stoics
Regarding the relationship between intellect and matter, Cudworth also
adopts the idea, to be found in Aristotle and also in the Stoics,103 that

 
99 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 155 bis; On ectypon / archetypon cf. Lotti,
Ralph Cudworth 176.
100 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 156 bis; Plot. Enneades 4.4.13.
101 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 156 bis; Plot. Enneades 2.3.17.
102 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 163; Plot. Enneades 3.2.16.
103 Mosheim, Systema intellectuale 168, n. 2. Mosheim here explains that nature as the Sto-
ics defined should be presented according to Diogenes Laertius, De clarorum philosophorum
vitis 7.148, 459.
 the sleeping musician 735

nature is a habit (hexis) and is in motion due to inner causes according to

‘spermatic reasons or seminal principles’ (the logoi spermatikoi or rationes
seminales transmitted through medieval Augustinianism).104 Here he
quotes from Diogenes Laertius on the life of Zeno.105 Cudworth explains
furthermore that, in the Stoics, habits are acquired by teaching, industry
and exercise, while in Hippocrates106 they are unlearned and untaught,
but may in some sense be said to be also self-taught (autodidaktos).107 He
also maintains that, even before the Stoics and Hippocrates, Heraclitus
described a regular and artificial nature as ‘the fate of things in this lower
world’ since reason, ‘passing through the substance of all things’, was ‘the
seed of the generation of the universe’.108 However, Cudworth also insists
here on countering the doctrine of the ‘hylozoists’ that life and perception
or understanding should be essential to matter as such, or that all sense-
less matter should be perfectly and infallibly wise.109
It could be argued, on the one hand, that it is not surprising that he
opposes the Stoics here, as the main objective of Stoic physics is in fact to
overcome the dualism between mind and matter taught by other Greek
philosophical schools.110 The Stoics propose a unitary reality, a monism in
which God is mind and matter at the same time111 and everything that acts
is a body.112 And all this contradicts Cudworth’s idea of plastic nature and

104 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 153; cf. Carré, Phases of Thought 118–119, 266,
Hunter, The seventeenth-century doctrine 200, Colish M.L., The Stoic Tradition from Antiq-
uity to the Early Middle Ages (Leiden: 1985), vol. 1, 203–206; cf. Lotti, Ralph Cudworth 187.
105 On the inspiration Cudworth found in Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of the Philosophers,
see Hutton S., “Aristotle and the Cambridge Platonists: The Case of Cudworth”, in Black-
well C. – Kusukawa S. (eds.), Philosophy in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Conver-
sations with Aristotle (Aldershot, Hampshire: 1999) 338.
106 Mosheim, Systema intellectuale 168, n. 3. Mosheim also quotes Hippocrates and he
explains that Hippocrates’ nature differs greatly from Cudworth’s. Actually it does not dif-
fer that much. For instance, Hippocrates explains, when referring to mediating nature, that
nature is the doctor of maladies since it finds by itself, not by intelligence or knowledge or
instruction, the ways and means to do what is convenient. Cf. Hipp. Epid. 6.5 (5.315 L.).
107 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 153.
108 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 152; cf. Lotti, Ralph Cudworth 187.
109 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 145.
110 Colish, The Stoic Tradition I, 23; see also Sambursky S., Physics of the Stoics (New
York: 1959).
111 Stoicorum veterum fragmenta, ed. Arnim I. von (Stuttgart: 1903–1905; repr. 1964),
vol. I, 85, 87, 102, 153–154, 159–162, 493, 495; vol. II, 299–328, 526); see also Todd R.B.,
“Monism and Immanence: The Foundations of Stoic Physics”, in Rist J.M. (ed.), The Stoics
(Berkeley: 1978) 137–160.
112 Stoicorum veterum fragmenta, vol. I, 89–90; vol. II, 341, 346a, 358–359, 467, 665, 797,
848; vol. III, 84.
736 diana stanciu

life in general as a purely incorporeal principle.113 However, on the other

hand, the Stoic continuum between mind and body,114 in which matter
is not ‘dead’ matter in the Cartesian sense, but dynamic matter, charged
with vital force, serves Cudworth’s idea of plastic nature very well. When
asserting that mind is not something external to matter, an abstract ideal
quality, but rather an active principle, the creative force permeating the
universe and holding it together, Stoic physics is in perfect harmony with
the Neoplatonic ideas adopted by Cudworth and discussed above. But
when matter is liable to acquire awareness due to such hypotheses, Cud-
worth immediately refutes the Stoic views.
In the same way, Cudworth prefers to neglect the Stoic biological
model of cosmology, despite the inspiration he finds in the Stoics for his
concept of plastic nature. The Stoics assert that, just as the universe as
a whole is held together by tonos (tension, intensity), pneuma (breath,
spirit) and logos (reason), so the physical and metaphysical metabolism
and the vital functions of each individual thing in the universe are also
regulated by tonos, pneuma and logos. All things are thus related to the
cosmic pneuma115 and to each other, since tonos and pneuma are the same
whether they operate on a cosmic level or on the level of the individual
being.116 The Stoic idea that such a common force operates differently in
different kinds of creatures would be very helpful for Cudworth, especially
when trying to explain that plastic nature is actually deprived of aware-
ness or knowledge.
Thus, for the Stoics inorganic nature is vivified by hexis, organic nature
by phusis and humans by psuchê.117 Between psuchê, on the one hand, and
hexis and phusis on the other, the Stoics draw a sharp distinction, which
is qualitative and not merely quantitative.118 The Stoic pneuma, at its low-
est level of organisation and concentration, produces simple cohesion in
the matter in which it dwells, holding together individual unified bodies.
This state of cohesion and coherence is actually called hexis119 and this is

113 On corporeals and incorporeals in the Stoics, see Duhot, La conception stoïcienne
87–100.
114 Colish, The Stoic Tradition, vol. 1, 23.
115 For more on pneuma theory in the Stoics and in early modern authors inspired by
them see Papy J., “Lipsius, Atoms and Pneuma? Stoic Physics and the Neostoic Reading of
the World”, in Papy J. – Hirai H. (eds.), Justus Lipsius and Natural Philosophy. Handelingen
van de Contactfora, KVAB (Brussels: 2009) 11–19.
116 Colish, The Stoic Tradition, vol. 1, 27.
117 On hexis, phusis and psuchê, see also Bonifazzi, The Soul of the World 106.
118 Colish, The Stoic Tradition, vol. 1, 27.
119 On being and cohesion, see Bonifazzi, The Soul of the World 106–128.
 the sleeping musician 737

what defines Cudworth’s plastic nature in general. For the Stoics, psuchê
alone is rational, being a fragment of the divine logos, the highest level
of pneumatic activity120 and this is a distinction that could have helped
Cudworth better explain awareness in the individual soul when defining
plastic nature. The Stoic pneuma seems to be the closest to Cudworth’s
own plastic nature. However, it would still not help him explain the meta-
phor of the sleeping musician, since Cudworth insists that the human soul
still contains unconscious, ‘unattended’ elements and the Stoics insist, on
the contrary, that, as the divine logos permeates and orders the whole
universe, so the human logos or pneuma permeates humans’ entire being
and accounts for all their activities.121
Pneuma at the level of psuchê applied to Cudworth’s metaphor of the
sleeping musician should thus have accounted for full awareness regard-
ing all activities, something that Cudworth actually wanted to deny. This
is perhaps why he does not refer to it, but rather quotes Plotinus on reason
diffused into matter and Aristotle on the inward activity of nature. How-
ever, knowledge of this Stoic definition of pneuma at the level of psuchê
may have made Cudworth think that the Platonic notion of the world soul,
as defined by awareness and knowledge, was actually not appropriate for
explaining plastic nature. Maybe this is why Cudworth preferred the Aris-
totelian vegetative soul, which did not present any threat of asserting the
immanence of the intellect in nature, an idea that would have contra-
dicted Cudworth’s theological principles.
The obvious issue here, once more, is that Cudworth cannot accept
the pantheistic hints in the Stoic doctrines nor their empiricist gnoseol-
ogy. Likewise, he opposes Stoic cyclicity122 even while accepting the logoi
spermatikoi, which demonstrate cyclicity.123 Consequently, he insists that
plastic nature was the immediate workman and operator while the intel-
lectual nature was the supreme architect and master builder of the world,124
the same idea referred to above, when discussing Cudworth’s inspiration
from Plotinus and Aristotle. He may have liked the pneuma theory, but
not its suggestions of the corporeality of the spiritual entities; for that, he

120 Stoicorum veterum fragmenta, vol. II, 725; vol. III, 219–220, 337–339, 367–376.
121 Stoicorum veterum fragmenta, vol. I, 134–143, 216–223, 518–526; vol. II, 773–789, 823–
849; vol. III, 544–656.
122 Cyclicity was actually appropriated from Heraclitus, cf. Colish, The Stoic Tradition,
vol. 1, 24.
123 Cf. Lotti, Ralph Cudworth 187.
124 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 158.
738 diana stanciu

prefers to appeal to Plotinus, who explains the world through the incor-
poreal acting upon the corporeal, and to Aristotle, who explains the world
through final causality.125
Thus, his plastic nature is incorporeal. But at the same time it is
deprived of awareness. Plastic nature with awareness would have posited
a second active principle in the universe, in addition to God. Cudworth
seems unable to emerge from this vicious circle, not because he lacks phil-
osophical skills, but rather because he is trying to find consensus between
tendencies and schools of thought that are simply too far apart. For the
same reason, he discarded passages in Aristotle or Plotinus that would
have helped him better define his plastic nature, but that would have also
emphasised the differences between the different schools of thought that
Cudworth wanted to harmonise. This can also be seen in the following
examples.

g) Hexis-energeia-dunamis: A syncretic combination of Aristotelian,

Neoplatonic and Stoic concepts
As already observed, in his concept of plastic nature, Cudworth combines
numerous concepts and distinctions specific to such different authors
as Plotinus, Aristotle and the Stoics, but he prefers to use them only
partially for fear of not sufficiently emphasising the differences among
these authors. Had he been interested in offering a more comprehensive
analysis of the concepts he combines, he would have been better able
to explain the ambiguities created by the attempted concordance of so
many sources. For instance, in Plotinus, the substance or the essence of
the One is defined as dunamis (potentia, potentiality) while in Aristotle
the essence of the prime mover is defined as energeia (actus, actuality,
activity). Praxis and also technê are defined as activity, as too is even
local motion.126 Furthermore, in Metaphysics 5 (1022b), Aristotle defines
hexis (possession, disposition) as energeia (actuality, activity) in the case
of either having one thing or of making (praxis, technê) one thing. An
alternative term for hexis is also diathesis (disposition), as an arrange-
ment (taxis) of parts in space (topos), in potentiality (dunamis) or in form
(eidos). In Categories 8b, hexis either as possession or as disposition is

125 Cf. Duhot, La conception stoïcienne 87.

126 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 169.
 the sleeping musician 739

defined as active, not as passive like the impulses or the capacities, which
belong to humans by nature. But, on the contrary, in Metaphysics 8–9 and
in the Nicomachean Ethics 1.8 (1098b33), Aristotle opposes hexis as posses-
sion or disposition and, thus, defined this time as dunamis (potentiality),
to energeia (or ergon as function, task, work). These differences between
his sources, Aristotle and Plotinus, as well as those within Aristotle him-
self, could enable us to unlock Cudworth’s own contradictions concerning
plastic nature. If Cudworth defines nature according to the Neoplatonists
as dunamis (potentiality) and according to the Stoics as hexis (habit, dis-
position), then his insistence upon the inner activity (energeia) of nature,
borrowed from Aristotle, is not always easy to explain.
Moreover, Aristotle himself defines nature and soul sometimes as
dunamis and at other times as energeia. But Cudworth does not seem to
be interested in understanding and exploiting the differences between
hexis as dunamis and hexis as energeia in Aristotle’s Metaphysics, even
though they could have helped him better explain his concept of plastic
nature and in particular why and how it can be deprived of awareness and
knowledge. Likewise, Cudworth does not seem able, or interested, to fully
exploit the value of the comparison between nature and art that he often
notices, and the full significance of praxis or technê in Aristotle’s definition
of hexis as energeia in his Metaphysics. He also quotes without further dis-
cussion a passage from Plotinus, where Plotinus himself actually defines
nature as energeia (actuality), contrary to his usual definition of nature as
dunamis (potentiality). The passage refers to ‘the energy of nature’, which
is artificial ‘as when a dancer moves, for a dancer resembles this artifi-
cial life of nature’.127 Consequently, the same definition of plastic nature
as ‘life’ and ‘energy’ seems to continue to create ambiguities. Following
this, the fact that Cudworth does not try to explain these ambiguities in
his sources, but rather overlooks them, perpetuates some incongruities
already pointed out. Under such conditions, one must observe again that,
although his attempt to demonstrate the concordance between different
ancient philosophical schools helped Cudworth better define his concept
of plastic nature, this ideal of concordance finally became an obstacle to
a more thorough analysis of the sources and of the concept itself.

127 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 158, quoting Plot. Enneades 3.2.16.
740 diana stanciu

h) Harvey and the Aristotelian medical tradition

Moving beyond his ancient sources, Cudworth also seems to have found
inspiration in some contemporary authors. For instance, when mention-
ing habit (habitus, hexis) as self-taught (autodidaktos), Cudworth quotes
Harvey’s Exercitationes de generatione animalium.128 Mosheim, his trans-
lator into Latin and editor, quotes this same passage and also speaks
of habit and, moreover, of natura procreatrix, since in his work Harvey
referred to the idea of nature as self-taught (autodidaktos) as well as to
the intellectual and artistic/artificial principles it represents.129 Moreover,
Mosheim also notes that, when speaking of phusis and hexis, Cudworth
actually refers to this passage in Harvey rather than to Hippocrates or the
Stoics.130 However, in complete contrast to Cudworth’s works, Harvey’s
Exercitatio 49 refers to Aristotle’s ‘efficient cause’ in the generation of ani-
mals (quae sit animalium causa efficiens). When discussing the formation
of the chick in the egg, Harvey speaks not only of ‘active’ and ‘passive’, but
also of ‘actual’ vs. ‘potential’ – the distinction Cudworth generally prefers
to overlook – and also of the facultas formatrix.131 It is clear, then, that
Cudworth did not follow Harvey in every detail, just as he had not fol-
lowed Aristotle in every detail, but instead used parts of his work to serve
his philosophia perennis.
Furthermore, when mentioning the Neoplatonic idea of nature as ‘ratio
mersa et confusa, which does not know, but only do’, Cudworth again
quotes Harvey in the margin and refers in the text to the ‘modern judi-
cious writer and sagacious inquirer into nature’ who seems fully to agree
with his views.132 He insists that Harvey, after having admired the wisdom
and art by which the bodies of animals are framed, concluded either that
the vegetative (plastic) nature/power of the soul, ‘by which it fabricates
and organises its own body’, was more excellent than the rational, or else
that in the works of nature there was neither prudence nor understand-
ing, these only seeming to be present as a result of the human tendency
to apply human patterns to nature, as if nature would produce its effects

128 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 153; Harvey, Exercitationes Ex. 49, 146. On
Cudworth and Harvey see also Lotti, Ralph Cudworth 228–234.
129 Harvey, Exercitationes Ex. 49, 146.
130 Mosheim, Systema intellectuale, 168, n. 4; see also Harvey, Exercitationes Ex. 50,
152–153; cf. Lotti, Ralph Cudworth 232.
131 Harvey, Exercitationes Ex. 49, 143.
132 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 156 bis.
 the sleeping musician 741

‘in the same manner as we do our artificial works’.133 Here Mosheim him-
self quotes Harvey in a footnote, but in contrast to Cudworth he speaks
of natura naturans sive anima mundi,134 that which comprehends every-
thing even if God is the only agent.135 He seems to accept the Platonic
world soul and also Harvey’s immanentism here in an attempt to ascribe
awareness to plastic nature, while Cudworth does not. What should not
be forgotten here is that both Cudworth and Mosheim still equate plastic
nature with the vegetative function of the soul, which introduces some
new ways of understanding the concept.
However, some questions remain. For instance, why is Harvey so impor-
tant for Cudworth? From Plotinus, Aristotle and the Stoics he already has
all the notions needed for his plastic nature. Why does he prefer to quote
Harvey? Mainly because, while continuing the Aristotelian tradition of the
De anima, Harvey managed to overcome the ambiguities of the Aristote-
lian commentators and established the immateriality of the vital principle
against the materialistic theories of his time.136 Harvey refutes matter as
an absolute principle, as a distinctive feature of objects and especially of
living organisms, which he refuses to discuss in terms of aggregation and
composition of material elements.137 Within a teleological and artistic
context, he defines plastic nature as an immaterial agent of generation,
anatomical construction and physiological processes. That then becomes
a necessary correlate of the epigenetic theory that Harvey derived from
the Aristotelian tradition.138
The plastica vis naturae is used by Harvey to explain the dynamic process
of generating animal life which he observed and described, for instance
in the case of the growth of the chick in the egg.139 Here it is interest-
ing to note again that Mosheim translated plastic nature into Latin as vis

133 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 156 bis-157. Harvey, Exercitationes Ex. 49,
140–148 quoted; here Harvey in fact speaks about efficient cause and Aristotle.
134 Harvey, Exercitationes Ex. 49, 146.
135 The specific passage is in Ex. 49, 146, quoted accurately not by Cudworth, but by
Mosheim, Systema intellectuale 167, n. 3.
136 Pagel W., “The Reaction to Aristotle in Seventeenth-Century Biological Thought”,
in Underwood A. (ed.), Science, Medicine and History. Essays on the Evolution of Scientific
Thought and Medical Practice Written in Honour of Charles Singer (London: 1953), vol. 1,
489–509, esp. 502.
137 Pagel W., William Harvey’s Biological Ideas. Selected Aspects and Historical Back-
ground (Basel and New York: 1967) 311. Here, however, Pagel forgets the former mechanist
lectures of Harvey, cf. Lotti, Ralph Cudworth 230.
138 Harvey, Exercitationes Ex. 50, 148–149, cf. Lotti, Ralph Cudworth 229.
139 Harvey, Exercitationes Ex. 49, 143; cf. Bonifazzi, The Soul of the World 56; Lotti, Ralph
Cudworth 229–230.
742 diana stanciu

genetrix while referring to the vegetative soul140 and that, when referring
to Harvey’s views, Cudworth also accepted the idea that plastic nature
is actually just a ‘power’ or ‘faculty’.141 Like Cudworth, Harvey criticised
Descartes and especially the Cartesian doctrine of the heart’s physiol-
ogy, opposing to it a vitalist explanation without repeating the traditional
doctrines.142 In his Exercitationes anatomicae de motu cordis et sanguinis
circulatione, for instance, Harvey defined the heart as ‘the fundament of
life, the principle of everything, the sun of the microcosm, on which all
vegetative life depends’143 and, like Cudworth,144 criticised the Galenic
and scholastic theory of the vis pulsifica adopted by Descartes.145
Harvey’s system of physiology is thus an Aristotelian one, understood as
the proper functioning of the body,146 but this is the Aristotle of Fab­ricius
or of Padua rather than the Aristotle of the Schools.147 And Cudworth
must have been attracted by the fact that, in natural philosophy, Harvey
was an Aristotelian concerned with efficient and final causes, but he may
have been equally attracted by the idea that Harvey borrowed his Aristo-
telian ideas from the medical tradition148 in order to refute mechanically
conceived physiology. Within the Aristotelian medical tradition on plastic
nature (vis or virtus plastica) in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
and within the tradition of criticism of Descartes and the atomists, one
can list numerous other names including those of Jacob Schegk,149 Dan-
iel Sennert, Johannes Kepler, Thomas Browne, Robert Hooke, Herbert
of Cherbury, Kenelm Digby or Walter Charleton. For instance, Sennert,
Kepler and Browne referred to this plastic power while interpreting the

140 Mosheim, Systema intellectuale 148–149.

141 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 171.
142 Harvey, Exercitationes Ex. 49, 142–148; cf. Gilson E., Études sur le rôle de la pensée
médiévale dans la formation du système cartésien, Études de philosophie médiévale 13
(Paris: 1967) 51–101; cf. Lotti, Ralph Cudworth 234.
143 ‘fundamentum vitae, princeps omnium, microcosmi sol, a quo omnis vegetatio
dependet’ – Harvey W., Exercitationes anatomicae de motu cordis et sanguinis circulatione.
London: Roger Daniels, 1661, dedicatory letter to King Charles I.
144 See note 6.
145 Lotti, Ralph Cudworth 234.
146 Harvey, Exercitationes Ex. 49, 142–143.
147 Harvey, Exercitationes Ex. 10, 31–32; 50, 151; cf. Carré, Phases of Thought 213–214.
148 For the medical tradition in Cambridge and its main lines of evolution in the seven-
teenth century, see Carré, Phases of Thought 213–214.
149 The influence of Aristotle was nevertheless often complemented by that of Galen or
of the Neoplatonists. E.g., for Schegk’s inspiration in Galen and the Neoplatonists in his De
plastica seminis facultate, see Hirai H., “The Invisible Hand of God in Seeds: Jacob Schegk’s
Theory of Plastic Faculty”, in Early Science and Medicine 12 (2007) 377–404.
 the sleeping musician 743

regular structure of the crystals as a product of an inner formative prin-

ciple in the minerals.150 Harvey himself quoted Sennert on the facultas
formatrix as an efficient cause in the formation of the chick in the egg.151
And, as shown above, Cudworth quoted Harvey. This made him part of a
strong contemporary tradition of Aristotelianism and science, in addition
to being a well-known Cambridge Platonist, while at the same time slot-
ting into a long tradition of anti-Cartesian thought. The Aristotelian ideas
referring to plastic nature thus appear to gain even more importance for
Cudworth, as they are borrowed from a scientist whom he reveres.
However, as already suggested, Cudworth does not fully take on board
the concept of plastic nature and physiology he finds in Harvey. First, he
does not consider plastic nature as necessarily related to physiology, since
for him they may be actually opposed, physiology being mainly mechani-
cally conceived. In addition, Cudworth does not accept the immanentism
of Harvey, nor does he seem interested in the Aristotelian difference
between actual and potential that Harvey often mentions. What helps, to
some extent, to solve the incongruities noted in Cudworth’s concept of
plastic nature is nevertheless the idea of the Aristotelian vegetative soul
that he may have borrowed from Harvey. Resembling the vegetative soul,
plastic nature could indeed be just a ‘power’ or ‘faculty’ of the soul, totally
deprived of awareness. However, its function in the ‘intellectual system’,
and especially at the macrocosmic level, must now be discussed.

i) The hermetic and alchemical tradition and the vegetative soul

In addition to his quotations from Aristotle’s biological works, the Hippo-
cratic and Galenic medical tradition, Timaeus and The Laws and, above all,
from the Enneads of Plotinus and the works of Harvey, Cudworth also occa-
sionally mentions the hermetic and alchemical tradition, which may pro-
vide an important key to understanding his concept of plastic nature. It was
far from unusual in the seventeenth century to combine authors as differ-
ent, for instance, as Aristotle, Aquinas, Duns Scotus, the Neoplatonists and
Pseudo-Dionysius, while taking many of their ideas from Cornelius Agrip-
pa’s De occulta philosophia.152 Cudworth himself may have borrowed ideas
on the vegetative soul and plastic nature from the hermetic and alchemical

150 Lotti, Ralph Cudworth 203–228.

151 Harvey, Exercitationes Ex. 49, 143.
152 Carré, Phases of Thought 198–199.
744 diana stanciu

tradition and especially from Agrippa.153 For instance, he refers to ‘that

nature of Hippocrates that is the curatrix of diseases’ and to ‘that Archeus
of the chimists or Paracelsians to which all medicaments are but subservi-
ent’. For him these seem to represent precisely that principle in the bodies
of animals mentioned above ‘which is not mechanical but vital’. Here he
combines these hermetic and alchemical notions with the ideas of Aristo-
tle, who considers such a principle to be ‘a certain part of the soul of those
animals or a lower unconscious power lodged in them’.154
Likewise, Cudworth apparently borrows the idea of the vegetative soul
presented in De anima 2.4 (415a23–25) as that which deals with nutrition
(trophê) and generation (genesis), an idea taken up by Galen when he
explains that feeling and voluntary action are specific to animals, and
growth and nutrition to plants, the former being considered the effects of
the soul and the latter the effects of nature. But Cudworth also insists that
the rational life ‘ought to be accounted a much higher and more noble
perfection’ than that of the plastic nature which is ‘indeed the last and
lowest of all lives’, just as the vegetative is inferior to the sensitive.155 It is
in such passages that Cudworth finally responds to a question he should
perhaps have posed much earlier if we are to better understand the status
of the plastic nature. The idea is also found in Galen, who explains that,
if one allows plants to have a share in the soul, then their soul would be
called vegetative, while the other would be called sensory,156 but Galen
is not quoted here. And Cudworth does not draw such a distinction. For
him, plastic nature is everywhere the same – both in the human soul and
in the entire universe.
Perhaps, as already suggested, Cudworth took the idea from Harvey.
Nevertheless, he prefers to cite the ‘Platonists and Peripatetics’ and ‘the
chimists and Paracelsians’, who insist ‘upon the same thing and seem
rather to have carried the notion further on, in the bodies of animals,
where they call it by a new name of their own, the Archeus’.157 It should be
added here that in Paracelsus, the Archaeus is a force of nature, the chief
link between the ‘blind matter’ of which man is made and the personality
that determines his ‘complexion’,158 and in van Helmont the Archaeus

153 Carré, Phases of Thought 266–167.

154 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 167.
155 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 163.
156 Galen, De fac. nat. 1.1 (2.10–11 K.).
157 Cudworth, The True Intellectual System 153; see also the explanations in Mosheim,
Systema intellectuale 161.
158 Cf. Prachter H.M., Paracelsus. Magic into Science (New York: 1951) 138.
 the sleeping musician 745

consists of the connection of vital aura as material with the seminal image
that is the inner spiritual nucleus.159 Such ideas are not far from what
Cudworth had already suggested and, indeed, we find Paracelsus’ De
matrice and De tribus principiis in Cudworth’s library.160 Van Helmont’s
Ortus medicinae and his Paradoxal Discourses are also included161 together
with Cornelius Agrippa’s De occulta philosophia.162 It is thus possible that
Cudworth borrowed the idea of the upper and lower elements from the
hermetic tradition and from the Paracelsian corpus, although the idea
of the role in the generation of animals of semina fallen from heaven to
earth could have come from Anaxagoras himself.163 A possible source for
Cudworth’s plastic nature could even be the hermetic notion of prime
matter, not as matter in the sense accepted nowadays, but as the spiritual
medium in and from which the world was created and also as a homog-
enous and formless medium into which forms are introduced through
creation.164 But that would raise further problems and distinctions that
are outside the scope of this article and would make us come full circle
towards the immanentism that Cudworth often refutes.

Conclusion

To summarise, while opposing physiology as mechanically conceived,

Cudworth replaces it with the concept of plastic nature which, while it
may be the lowest of all forms of life, since it is nevertheless life, must
also necessarily be incorporeal. At the level of both the macrocosm and
the microcosm, this plastic nature is responsible for order and regular-
ity as marks of the incorporeal, intellectual principles guiding Cudworth’s
‘intellectual system of the universe’. However, it is described simply as a
sign of the intellect in the corporeal world and not as capable of knowl-
edge or awareness itself; this creates incongruities if one tries to fit this

159 Cf. Thorndike L., A History of Magic and Experimental Science, VII–VIII: The Seven-
teenth Century (New York: 1958), vol. VII, 21.
160 Bibliotheca Cudworthiana sive catalogus variorum librorum plurimis facultatibus
Insignium bibliothecae instructissimae Rev. Doct. Dr. Cudworth, ed. Edward Millington (Lon-
don: 1690/1691) 34.
161 Bibliotheca Cudworthiana 40.
162 Bibliotheca Cudworthiana 32.
163 Mosheim, Systema intellectuale 161; cf. Pagel W., “The Higher Elements and Prime
Matter in Renaissance Naturalism and in Paracelsus”, in Winder M. (ed.), Religion and
Neoplatonism in Renaissance Medicine (London: 1985) 93–127, esp. 94.
164 Pagel, “The Higher Elements” 110–113.
746 diana stanciu

concept of plastic nature within Cudworth’s Platonic intellectual system

of the universe.
In fact, Cudworth works so hard to refute Descartes’ definition of being
as cogitation and self-awareness that he does not seem to notice that he
is also sometimes inconsistent with his Platonic/­Neoplatonic, Aristotelian
or Stoic sources, or at least that he quotes them in a fragmentary way. For
instance, while motion may be interpreted as a sign of life, order may be
a sign of the intellect and, by denying cogitation and self-awareness in his
plastic nature, Cudworth partially disregards the Platonic and Neoplatonic
principle of the anima mundi (world soul), the formal constitutive prin-
ciple of the universe. In this respect, he prefers Aristotle’s vegetative soul
and insists that not everything that transcends mechanism has the ability
to reach the level of knowledge by virtue simply of not being mechanical.
Furthermore, he uses the ideas of Harvey on generation and organisation
in the body and the universe as well as Stoic, Neoplatonic and Aristote-
lian sources common to both him and Harvey, but he avoids the monism
and immanentism in Harvey, also found in the Stoics. This is due to his
theological views, which prevent him from accepting the immanence of
the intellectual principle in nature. He also prefers to avoid explaining
important concepts in Aristotle, Plotinus or Galen such as energeia (actu-
ality) and dunamis (potentiality), although he indirectly refers to them
in relation to his plastic nature. Moreover, Cudworth’s insistence on the
inner activity (energeia) of nature, borrowed from Aristotle, is difficult to
explain since he generally tends to define nature, on the contrary, primar-
ily as dunamis (potentiality), according to the Neoplatonics, and as hexis
(disposition), according to the Stoics. But this too is due to his preference
for Aristotle’s vegetative soul. One remaining question is whether such a
concept of the vegetative soul can fit into his Platonic intellectual system:
the answer is that it can, but not always.
Undoubtedly, all these issues have a serious impact on the clarity of
his argument. His eclectic (or rather syncretic) manner makes him some-
times contradict the premises of his intellectual system while leaving out
important views that would help him solve such contradictions. Thus,
Cudworth seems to sacrifice the clarity and completeness of his argu-
ments to his Renaissance ideal of the prisca theologia and to his attempt
to find concordance and harmony between different ancient schools of
thought.
The distinctions Cudworth makes are those between creation or life
(vis creatrix) and generation or organisation (vis generatrix), between
incorporeal or immaterial and corporeal or material, between action and
 the sleeping musician 747

passion, between formal cause and material cause or between dynamic

and mechanical. But he does not mention Aristotle’s and Plotinus’ dis-
tinction between dunamis (potentiality) and energeia (actuality) and that,
together with his omission of the Stoic pneuma or the Platonic anima
mundi, in fact provides an important explanation for the incongruities or
gaps in his system. Under such conditions, the metaphor of the sleeping
musician remains difficult to understand within Cudworth’s wider ‘intel-
lectual’ context. Perhaps because of his disagreements with Descartes,
Cudworth is not interested in the potential/actual difference, but only in
the corporeal/incorporeal difference in Aristotle. This may be due to him
taking the ideas of Aristotle that had already been quoted or discussed by
Harvey in terms of the Aristotelian medical tradition, making him over-
look the potential/actual distinction. However, the analysis of Harvey’s
text shows that Harvey is very much aware of it and willing to discuss it,
while Cudworth prefers to remain silent about it. A better answer then
would be the following: had Cudworth discussed such a distinction and
the concepts of the Stoic pneuma or the Platonic anima mundi at the same
time, the concordance between his sources would have been threatened.
But that makes him unable to account for his assertion that plastic nature
‘mediates’ between the intellectual and the sensible level both in the
individual and in the universe. If plastic nature is just vegetative soul,
which is below sensation or perception and below the level of actualising
a certain potentiality, how can it mediate between the intellectual and
the sensible realms?
Thus, when introducing plastic nature as a mediating term between
the incorporeal and the corporeal, or between the intelligible and the sen-
sible, Cudworth contradicts ‘Ockham’s razor’, the principle of parsimony
according to which one should not unnecessarily multiply the entities in
an argument. All his arguments on plastic nature certainly help him to
refute mechanical physiology, but they do not always assist in completely
and accurately explaining the lack of awareness and knowledge of the
plastic nature within his system, even according to the definitions he him-
self gives to it. Here, as elsewhere in his treatises, Cudworth sometimes
leaves the argument only partially developed, preferring to remain an eru-
dite who appeals to a multitude of ancient sources, among them Aristotle,
Plotinus, the Stoics and Galen, and also to contemporary ones such as
Harvey, together with the Aristotelian medical tradition supporting his
work, and the hermetic and alchemical tradition of the time. The meta-
phor of the sleeping musician remains ambiguous, its main role appar-
ently being only to avoid asserting a second rational and active principle
748 diana stanciu

in addition to God himself, while at the same time refuting mechanism on

one side and the immanence of the spiritual principle on the other side.
Very helpful here, nonetheless, are the references in Harvey and also in
Cudworth to the Aristotelian concept of the vegetative soul. As this paper
has shown, they actually explain to some extent the status of the plastic
nature.
 the sleeping musician 749

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vol. 5.
——, Physica, ed. Ross W.D. (Oxford Classical Texts) (Oxford: 1977).
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bibliothecae instructissimae Rev. Doct. Dr. Cudworth, ed. Edward Millington (London:
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D.C.: 1978).
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Colish M.L., The Stoic Tradition from Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages, 2 vols. (Leiden:
1985).
Cudworth Ralph, A Sermon Preached Before the Honourable House of Commons on March
31, 1647, being a Day of Public Humiliation (Liverpool, Thomas Hodgson-London, Edmund
Fry: 1831).
——, A Sermon Preached to the Honourable Society of Lincoln’s Inn (London, printed by
J. Flesher for R. Royston: 1664).
——, A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality with A Treatise of Free Will, ed.
Hutton S. (Cambridge: 1996).
——, The True Intellectual System of the Universe (London, Royston: 1678) [facsimile repr.
Stuttgart: 1964].
Duhot J.-J., La conception stoïcienne de la causalité (Paris: 1989).
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——, De usu partium libri XVII: ed. Helmreich G. (Leipzig: 1909).
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(Paris: 1967) [Études de philosophie médiévale 13].
Harvey William, Harvey W., Exercitationes anatomicae de motu cordis et sanguinis circu-
latione (London, Roger Daniels: 1661).
——, Exercitationes de generatione animalium, quibus accedunt quaedam de partu, de
membranis ac humoribus uteri et de conceptione (London, Du Gardianis: 1651).
Hirai H., “The Invisible Hand of God in Seeds: Jacob Schegk’s Theory of Plastic Faculty”,
Early Science and Medicine 12 (2007) 377–404.
Hunter W.B., The Seventeenth-century Doctrine of Plastic Nature (Cambridge: 1950).
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versations with Aristotle (Aldershot, Hampshire: 1999) 337–349.
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1985) 93–127.
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van Helmont, Glanvill, Charleton, Harvey, Glisson, Descartes”, in Underwood A. (ed.),
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 INDEX LOCORUM

Biblical passages

John Mark
5.1–8 316 5 311
9.1–4 316 5.24–34 309
5.24b–34 307, 309
Leviticus
5.25 311
12.7 312
5.28–30 314
15.19–33 312
5.29 312
17 428
17.11 415, 420 Matthew
20.18 312 9.19–22 309
15.22 316
Luke
8 311 Numbers
8.42–48 309 5.1–4 311
8.44–46 314
13.10–17 316
22.44 509

Classical passages

Aëtius 416b 370 n. 28

Placita 417b6, 16 725 n. 57
4.3.11 88 n. 15 418a–b 555 n. 18
4.13 554 n. 14 419a 556 n. 19
4.15.3 (= SVF II 420b6 695
866) 558 n. 27 420b34 695
424a5 725 n. 59
Agnellus Ravennas 424a18 725 n. 60
In Galeni De sectis ­commentarium 430a 723
5, 24 Westerink 32 n. 20 431a 724 n. 54
26, 26 Westerink 644 n. 49 431b29–31 676
432a 723
Aristoteles et Corpus Aristotelicum 432a16 725 n. 59
Analytica posteriora De caelo
76a37–40 44 271a33 728 n. 75
98a20–23 (2.14) 44 n. 10 288b15–20 256 n. 61
99a15–16 (2.17) 44 n. 10 Ethica Nicomachea
De anima 1096b29 566 n. 68
402a–402b 600 n. 27 1098b33 739
405a30 677 n. 42 De generatione animalium
409a7–10 98 n. 46 725b 371 nn. 32–33
409a7 98 n. 47 725b–726a 371 n. 31
411b19–22 98 n. 46 726a 370 n. 30
413b16–21 98 n. 46 736b30ff. 145 n. 19
416a 370 n. 29 739b20 456 n. 44
752 index locorum

(Arist. et Corpus Arist. cont.) De partibus animalium

740b–741a 371 n. 34 639b16–21 728 n. 72
741a 371 n. 35 644a16–23 44 n. 7
744b–745b 366 n. 9, 371 n. 36 650a21–25 50 n. 31
766b 370 n. 30 650b 296
777a15 450 n. 22 654b–655a 376 n. 51
783b7–8 245 n. 20 665a–667b 433 n. 48
784b7f. 245 n. 15 668b 507 n. 24, 509
784b8–10 245 n. 16 n. 31
784b33–34 257 n. 62 671b3–24 105 n. 2
785a26–30 245 n. 16 672b14–19 51 n. 33
789a8–b15 715 n. 13 Physica
De generatione et corruptione 191b–192b 665 n. 11
314a–314b 369 n. 23 192b8–193b21 731
319b 369 n. 25 194b16–195b30 727
319b–320a 369 n. 24 195a21–27 727
322a 370 n. 26 196b17–25 728 n. 74
Historia animalium 199b26–33 730–731
486b19–22 43 246b2 725 n. 58
488b12–27 91 n. 27 415a23–25 744
518a8–18 245 n. 16 Poetica
536b24–32 94 n. 37 1457b6 43 n. 3
De iuventute 1457b6–33 43
469b32–470a4 250 n. 38 1457b7–16 45
470a1 245 n. 15 1457b20–22 45
470a23–b5 52 n. 35 Problemata
De longaevitate 874b33 245 n. 14
466a12–17 243 n. 6 875a4–15 245 n. 15
466a27–28 244 n. 11 875a15 247 n. 26
466a30–33 249 n. 34 909b2 245 n. 18
466b13–14 244 n. 11 909b25–27 245 n. 18
466b17–19 245 n. 13 De respiratione
Metaphysica 474b13–24 245 n. 15
1022b 738 475b18–20 163 n. 80
1048a35–37 52 478a15–25 163 n. 80
Meteorologica 478b27–28 244 n. 10
341b6–10 50 n. 29 Rhetorica
351a26–27 51 n. 31 1410b12–15 43, 46
356b9–12 49 1410b36 43 n. 3
357a24–28 49 De sensu
357a32–b1 52 n. 39 437b 555 n. 17
357b21–26 50 437b26–35 554 n. 13
357b24–26 49 n. 27 438a 555 n. 16
357b24–358a26 50 Topica
358a3–25 49 n. 27 108a11 551, 566 n. 68
360a6–8 50 n. 30
Athenaeus
366b14–19 48 n. 24
Deipnosophistae
366b14–22 58 n. 59
3.101a 29 n. 5
366b19–30 49 n. 25
6.324 297 n. 3
368a6–11 58 n. 59
379a17–19 250 n. 38
Celsus
379b12–34 462 n. 63
De medicina
379b33–380a9 144 n. 18
7.7.14a 562 n. 47
 index locorum 753

Chrysippus apud Plutarchum De atra bile

De Stoicorum ­repugnantiis 2 (5.107 K.) 297 n. 7
1052F 635 De causis pulsuum
2.10 (9.86 K.) 31 n. 18
Cicero
2.13 (9.89 K.) 31 n. 18
De natura deorum
3.6 (9.129 K.) 250 n. 37
2.25 (65) 148 n. 30
De constitutione artis medicae
1 (1.227 K.) 30 n. 14
Clemens Alexandrinus
De differentiis febrium
Protrepticus
1.10 (7.318 K.) 247 n. 26
2.36.1 498 n. 70
De differentiis pulsuum
4.3 (8.721 K.) 30 n. 14
Diogenes Laertius
De elementis secundum Hippocratem
De clarorum philosophorum vitis
1.5 (1.449 K.) 31 nn. 15–16
7.148 734 n. 103
1.9 (1.486 K.) 31 n. 15
8.10 247 n. 28
2.2 (1.494–495,
10.42 57 n. 51
142, I–6 K.) 665 n. 9
Didascalia Apostolorum 2.2 (1.496 K.) 297 n. 5
26.62.5 313 n. 14 2.2 (1.497 K.) 297 n. 6
De facultatibus naturalibus
Dionysius Alexandrinus
1.1 (2.10–11 K.) 744 n. 156
Epistola Canonica ad Basilidem episcopum,
1.4 (2.9 K.) 110 n. 15
Canon II: Migne
1.5 (2.152 K.) 732 n. 95
1282 313 n. 15
1.12 (2.27 K.) 87 n. 11
1.13 (2.36–37 K.) 109 n. 13
Epicurus
1.14 (2.45 K.) 31 n. 15
Epistula ad Herodotum
1.15 (2.59 K.) 106 n. 7
2.63 88 n. 15
1.16 (2.65–66 K.) 106 n. 7, 107 n. 8,
10.42 57 n. 51
107 n. 10
37–38 46
2.2 (2.78–79 K.) 108 n. 12
58–59 47
2.3 (2.80 and
63 88 n. 15
101 K.) 638
Epistula ad Pythoclem
2.3 (2.80 K.) 108 n. 12
10.105 54 n. 43
2.4 (2.88 K.) 30 n. 12, 31 n. 15
De rerum natura
2.4 (2.88–92 K.) 31 n. 15
28.5 43 n. 3
2.9 (2.117 and
Sententiae Vaticanae
129 K.) 633 n. 10
24 93 n. 33
3.13 (2.201 K.) 639
Eustathius 4 (2.88–92 K.) 30 n. 12
Commentarii ad De foetuum formatione
Homeri ­Iliadem 6 (4.689 K.) 30 n. 14
1.738.26–1.738.29 ad 4.237 495 n. 61 Historia philosopha
2.74.13–2.75.15 ad 5.289 498 n. 68 25 (19.306–307 K.) 553 n. 8, 554 n. 11
Commentarii ad De iuvamentis membrorum
Homeri ­Odysseam 6.3 110 n. 16
1.104.8 ad 2.376 493 n. 49 De libris propriis
17 (19.48 K.) 31 n. 19
Galenus et Corpus Galenicum (SM II, 97 = Boudon-
An in arteriis natura sanguis contineatur Millot 140.18) 551 n. 2
2 (4.706–707 K.) 635 n. 18 De locis affectis
8 (4.733 K.) 640 4.1 (8.217.1–2 K.) 564 n. 55
De anatomicis administrationibus 4.1 (8.218.3–8 K.) 564 n. 56
7.16 (2.646–650 K.) 640
754 index locorum

(Galenus et Corpus Galen. cont.) 1.12 (6.67 K.) 506 n. 11, 506 n. 12
4.1 (8.218.10–12 K.) 564 nn. 57, 59 4.4 (6.251 K.) 505 n. 5, 510 n. 46
4.1 (8.221.15–18 K.) 564 n. 58 4.4 (6.65f K.) 505 n. 6
4.1 (8.226.2–11 K.) 565 n. 60 6.2 (6.388 K.) 257 n. 62
4.1 (8.227.3 K.) 565 n. 61 6.3 (6.399–400 K.) 244 n. 10
6.3 (8.396–398 K.) 109 n. 14 6.8 (6.417f K.) 508 n. 28
De marcore De semine
2 (7.669–670 K.) 256 n. 60 (4.512–651 K.) 366 n. 10
3 (7.672–676 K.) 250 n. 37 De simplicium medicamentorum
4 (7.677–681 K.) 256 n. 59 temperamentis ac facultatibus
4 (7.679 K.) 250 n. 39 2.1 (11.445 K.) 31 n. 17
De methodo medendi 2.20 (11.517 K.) 31 nn. 16, 17, 18
1.2 (10.17 K.) 31 n. 15 4.14 (11.664 K.) 30 n. 14, 31
2.5 (10.107 K.) 30 n. 14, 31 nn. 16, 18 nn. 15–16
9.10 (10.635 K.) 638 10.14 (12.281 K.) 504 n. 3, 505 n. 5
10.11 (10.730 K.) 256 n. 59 10.14 (12.282 K.) 505 n. 4
11.8 (10.753 K.) 250 n. 37 De symptomatum causis
12.5 (10.839– 1.2 (7.89 K.) 562 n. 44
840 K.) 632 n. 9 De temperamentis
14.3 (10.986– 2.2 (1.580–582 K.) 248 n. 31
989 K.) 562 n. 47 2.2 (2.582 K.) 243 n. 8
De optima doctrina De usu partium
5 (1.52.1–9 K.) 566 n. 68 2.7 (3.117–118 K.) 732 n. 94
De ordine librorum suorum 2.8 (3.121–125 K.) 732 n. 94
(19.49–61 K.) 642 n. 39 2.9 (3.167 K.) 550, 732 n. 94
De partibus artis medicativae 3.6 (3.760 K.) 559 n. 31
1 30 n. 13 4.3 (3.269–270 K.) 633 n. 10
6 30 n. 13 5.5 (3.363 K.) 106 n. 5
De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis 5.6 (3.371–373 K.) 107 n. 9
2.8 (5.281 K.) 636 n. 20 5.7 (3.373 K.) 106 n. 6
6.3 (5.520–521 K.) 640 6.16 (3.487 K.) 637
6.3 (5.521 K.) 641 7.8 (3.541 K.) 30 n. 14
6.8 (5.572–573 K.) 637 7.8 (3.541–542 K.) 633 n. 12
7.3 (5.600–601 K.) 638 8.6 (3.641.6 K.) 551 n. 2
7.3 (601 K.) 638 8.6 (3.644.2–3 K.) 559 n. 33
7.4 (5.611 K.) 557 n. 25, 561 n. 41 10.1 (3.760, 14–761,
7.4 (5.612 K.) 558 n. 26 1 K.) 563 n. 53
7.4 (5.614 K.) 561 n. 43, 562 nn. 44, 10.1–2 (3.759–
48 769 K.) 551 n. 1
7.4 (5.615 K.) 563 n. 51 10.2 (3.762.7 K.) 559 n. 32
7.4 (5.617 K.) 560 n. 35 10.5 (3.781 K.) 562 n. 44, 563
7.5 (5.618 K.) 560 n. 37 n. 54
7.5 (5.622 K.) 561 nn. 39–40 10.5 (3.782.13–
7.5 (5.625 K.) 560 n. 36 16 K.) 562 n. 45, 559 n. 34
7.7 (5.703–704 K.) 250 n. 36 10.12 (3.812.15 K.) 566 n. 66
8.8 (5.707–709 K.) 637 n. 25 10.12 (3.813–
9.9 (5.792 K.) 31 n. 16 814 K.) 562 n. 49
10.7 (5.707 K.) 637 10.12 (3.817.7–
De propriis placitis 8 K.) 558 n. 29
8.3 638 n. 30 11.14 (3.905 K.) 31 n. 15
14 566 n. 67 Definitiones medicae
De sanitate tuenda 11 (19.351 K.) 5 n. 14, 29 n. 6
1.2 (6.6 K.) 244 n. 10 72 (19.365 K.) 507 n. 22
 index locorum 755

73–74 (19.365– De carnibus

366 K.) 642 n. 36 8 (8.594 L.) 296
117 (19.379, 10– Epidemiae
14 K.) 556 n. 22 6.5 (5.315 L.) 735 n. 106
Historia Philosopha De flatibus
(19.306.16 K.) 554 n. 11 8 (6.100–104 L.) 146 n. 23
(19.306–307 K.) 553 n. 8 De glandulis
In Hippocratis librum De alimento 6 (8.560 L.) 129 n. 50
commentarii De humoribus
3 (15.262 K.) 298 n. 8 11.1 (5.490 L.) 51 n. 34
3.17 (15.322f K.) 505 n. 8 De locis in homine
3.17 (15.322 K.) 506 nn. 15–16 30 (6.322 L.) 296
In Hippocratis Aphorismos commentarii De morbis
1.15 (12.421 K.) 506 n. 15 2.8 (7.16 L.) 296
1.15 (17B.420f K.) 506 n. 11 4.51 (7.584 L.) 296
3.30 (17B.645 K.) 249 n. 32 De morbo sacro
14 (17B, 408– 7 (6.372 L.) 634 n. 16
409 K.) 250 n. 37 10 (6.378 L.) 296
14 (17B.410– 16 (6.390–392 L.) 634 n. 16
412 K.) 245 n. 19 De natura hominis
In Hippocratis librum De articulis 12 (6.64 L.) 247 n. 25
commentarii
Homerus
45 (18A.379 K.) 67 n. 3
Ilias
In Hippocratis Epidemiarum librum VI
3.35 497
commentarii
3.142 496
1.2 (17A.805 K.) 31 nn. 16, 18
4.130 485 n. 10
4.10 (17B.161 K.) 30 n. 14
4.137 485 n. 10
4.19 (017B.189 K.) 30 n. 14
4.139 485 n. 10, 496
In Hippocratis librum De fracturis
4.237 485 n. 10, 491, 496
commentarii
4.447 488 n. 24
2.9 (18b.435.7–
4.510 485 n. 10, 491
10 K.) 485 n. 11
4.511 491
In Hippocratis De humoribus librum
5.308 488
commentarii
5.335–346 498 n. 69
2.1 (16.216f K.) 511 n. 48
5.337 485 n. 10, 496
2.1 (16.217 K.) 510 n. 46
5.354 485 n. 10, 496
In Hippocratis De natura hominis librum
5.696 493
commentarii
5.855–861 498 n. 69
1 (15.73–74 K.) 298
5.858 485 n. 10, 491, 496
3.7 (15.185–190 K.) 248 n. 31
6.117 486 n. 14
Introductio seu medicus
7.207 485 n. 10
2 (14.677–678 K.) 29 n. 10
7.474 488 n. 24
7 (14.689–690 K.) 29 n. 8
8.43 485 n. 10
8 (14.695 K.) 29 n. 10
8.61 488 n. 24
16 (14.767–777 K.) 552 n. 3
8.298 485 n. 10, 491, 496
Thrasybulus sive utrum medicinae sit an
9.548 486 n. 14
gymnasticae hygiene
9.596 485 n. 10
30 (5.862 K.) 31 n. 16
10.23, 10.177 486 n. 14
Gregorius Magnus Epistola 64: Migne
10.155 488 n. 24
1194 313 n. 16
10.212 499 n. 75
10.262 488 n. 24
Hippocraticum Corpus
10.334 488 n. 24
Aphorismi
10.575 485 n. 10
1.14 (4.466 L.) 247 n. 25
11.352 485 n. 10, 491
756 index locorum

(Hom. cont.) 19.27 485 n. 10, 496

11.398 485 n. 10, 491 19.33 485 n. 10, 491, 498 nn. 71–72
11.437 485 n. 10, 496 19.38–39 498 n. 71
11.457 485 n. 10, 496 19.39 485 n. 10, 488 n. 24, 491
11.573 485 n. 10, 491, 496 19.174 493 n. 52
11.574 485 n. 10, 491, 496 19.233 485 n. 10
12.263 488 n. 24 19.323 496
12.427 485 n. 10, 496 20.100 485 n. 10, 491, 496
12.464 485 n. 10 20.276 488 n. 24
13.25 485 n. 10 21.70 485 n. 10, 496
13.191 485 n. 10 21.168 485 n. 10, 496
13.241 485 n. 10 21.398 485 n. 10, 491, 496
13.279 485 n. 10, 497 21.568 485 n. 10, 491
13.284 485 n. 10, 497 21.568–569 498
13.340 485 n. 10, 491 22.286 485 n. 10, 496
13.406 488 n. 24 22.321 485 n. 10, 491
13.440 485 n. 10 22.322 485 n. 10
13.501 485 n. 10, 491, 497 22.370–374 499 n. 73
13.544 493 23.67 485 n. 10
13.553 485 n. 10, 491, 496 23.186–191 498 n. 71
13.574 485 n. 10, 496 23.191 485, 496
13.580 493 23.598 493 n. 52
13.616 488 n. 24 23.600 493 n. 52
13.640 485 n. 10 23.673 485, 496
13.649 485 n. 10, 496 23.803 485 n. 10, 491
13.804 488 n. 24 23.805 485 n. 10, 491
13.830 485 n. 10, 491, 495 23.819 485 n. 10
13.831 496 24.19 485 n. 10
14.25 485 n. 10 24.19–21 498 n. 71
14.164 485 n. 10 24.119 = 147 = 176 = 196 493 n. 52
14.170 485 n. 10, 491 n. 32 24.321 493 n. 52
14.170–172 497 n. 65 24.358 493
14.175 485 n. 10 24.414 485 n. 10, 496, 498 n. 71, 499
14.187 485 n. 10 Odyssea
14.383 485 n. 10 1.108 488 n. 24
14.406 485 n. 10, 491 2.291 486 n. 14
14.456 485 n. 10, 496 2.376 485 n. 10, 492
15.315 485 n. 10, 491, 496 4.436 486 n. 14
15.316 485 n. 10, 491, 496 4.440 486 n. 14
15.317 485 n. 10, 491, 496 4.749 485 n. 10
15.534 485 n. 10 4.750 485 n. 10
16.11 496 4.759 485 n. 10
16.247 499 n. 75 4.782 486 n. 14
16.341 486 4.840 493 n. 52
16.504 485 n. 10 5.26 = 144 = 168 499 n. 75
16.636 488 n. 24 5.160–161 492
16.678–680 498 n. 71 5.281 488 n. 24
16.761 485 n. 10, 491, 497 5.426 488
16.814 485 n. 10, 496 5.435 488
17.210 485 n. 10 5.455 496
17.571 485 n. 10 6.61 485 n. 10
17.733 485 n. 10, 497 6.129 485 n. 10
18.344–351 498 n. 71 6.219–220 497 n. 65
 index locorum 757

6.220 485 n. 10 19.263 485 n. 10, 491

6.224 485 n. 10 19.263–264 492
8.53 486 n. 14 19.320 497 n. 65
8.521–522 492, 494 19.505 497 n. 65
8.530 493 n. 47 19.536 494
8.530–531 492 21.412 485 n. 10
8.541 493 n. 47 21.412–413 497
9.79 499 n. 75 22.59 493 n. 52
9.292–293 486 22.88 493
10.359 493 22.113 485 n. 10
10.450 497 n. 65 22.278 488
11.191 485 n. 10 22.362 486 n. 14
11.529 485 n. 10, 497 23.47 493 n. 52
11.535 499 n. 75 23.95 485 n. 10
12.45–46 488–489, 492 n. 42 23.115 485 n. 10
12.46 488 23.237 485 n. 10
12.175 493 24.44 485 n. 10
12.395 488 n. 24 24.156 485 n. 10
12.423 488 n. 24 24.158 485 n. 10
13.398 485, 496 24.467 485 n. 10
13.429–432 486 24.500 485 n. 10
13.430 485, 496
13.436 486 n. 14 Johannes Alexandrinus
14.24 485 n. 10, 486 n. 14 Commentaria in librum De sectis Galeni
14.50 486 n. 14 1, 11 Pritchet 32 n. 20
14.134 488 9, 50–51 Pritchet 644 n. 48
14.255 499 n. 75 In Hippocratis Epidemiarum librum VI
14.506 485 n. 10 commentarii fragmenta
14.519 486 n. 14 CMG XI.1.4, 102,
15.60 485 n. 10 1–4 Duffy 645 nn. 53–54
15.165 493 n. 52 CMG XI.1.4,
15.379 493 n. 52 Duffy 643 n. 42, 644 n. 48
16.145 485, 488, 492 n. 42 In Hippocratis De natura pueri
16.175 485 n. 10, 496 commentarium 1:
16.181–182 487 CMG XI.1.4.132 32 n. 20
16.182 485 n. 10
Jonas Aurelianus Episcopus
16.210 485 n. 10
De institutione laicali
16.332 496
Migne
16.457 485 n. 10
187–188 314 n. 18
17.48 485 n. 10
17.58 485 n. 10
Lucretius
17.203 485 n. 10
De rerum natura
17.338 485 n. 10
1.250 148 n. 30
18.172 485 n. 10, 497 n. 65
2.1105–1174 56
18.179 485 n. 10, 497 n. 65
2.1164–1174 56
18.192–193 497 n. 65
3.231–322 87
19.72 485 n. 10
3.262–265 88 n. 14
19.136 493
3.288–307 89 n. 20
19.204 485 n. 10, 492
3.307 92
19.218 485 n. 10
3.307–322 92
19.232 485 n. 10
3.314–318 91 n. 28
19.237 485 n. 10
3.357–358 88 n. 14
758 index locorum

3.487–509 58 n. 56 Plotinus
3.634–669 98 n. 45 Enneades
3.741–753 90 n. 25 2.3.17 734 n. 101
3.991–992 148 n. 30 3.2.16 729, 734 n. 102
4.110–122 98 n. 50 4.4.13 734 n. 100
4.962–1036 92 n. 32 5.5.1 724 n. 54
4.984–1010 93 n. 34
Plutarchus
5.855–867 90 n. 25
Adversus Colotem
6.495–503 55 n. 45
1118D–E 88 n. 15
6.547–551 54 n. 44
Demetrius
38.3–4 399 n. 14
Macrobius
Commentarium in somnium Scipionis Pseudo-Plutarchus
1.14.20 88 n. 15 Placita philosophorum
883C4–5 484 n. 9
Origenes IV, 13, Lachenaud
Contra Celsum 154 553 n. 8
1.67–68 324 n. 32 XII2, Lachenaud
15–18 553 n. 7
Palladius
Soranus
Scholia in Galeni De sectis
Gynaecia
75 Baffioni 32 n. 20
1.1.1 32 n. 20
Plato 1.1.2 29 n. 7, 32 n. 21
Timaeus 3.3.5 29 n. 7, 32 n. 21
29a 730 n. 85
Pseudo-Soranus
30c 730 n. 85
Quaestiones
31b–32c 400 n. 18
medicinales 23 32 n. 20
32c–33a 259 n. 67
34b–36d 403 n. 27
Stephanus
35b–36b 396 n. 10
In Hippocratis Aphorismos commentarii
36d–e 721 n. 41
CMG XI.3.1.34 32 n. 20
36e 721 n. 42
CMG XI.1.3.2 645 n. 52
37c 721 n. 41, 730 n. 85
In Hippocratis Prognosticum commentarii
42d 715 n. 15
CMG XI.1.2 644 n. 51
45b–d 555 n. 15
47b–d 398
Stobaeus
47d 403 n. 29
4.50.2 247 n. 25
53c–55c 259 n. 67
55e 731 n. 88
Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta: Arnim I.
70d–71a 410 n. 46
von, 3 vols. (Stuttgart: 1903–1905) [reprint
70d–72b 408 n. 45
1964].
70d–e 638
1.85, 87, 102, 735 n. 111
71a–b 410 n. 47
153–154,
78d–78e 527 n. 16
159–162, 493,
79d–e 163 n. 80
495
81d 259 n. 67
1.89–90 735 n. 112
85c–e 296
1.134–143 216–223, 518–526, 737
86e–f 88 n. 15
n. 121
87–90 412 n. 52
2.52.178 562 n. 47
90a–b 672 n. 28
2.299–328 526, 735 n. 111
Plinius 2.341, 346a, 735 n. 112
Naturalis historia 358–359, 467,
10.98.212 94 n. 38 665, 797, 848
 index locorum 759

2.393, 458 635 Theophrastus

2.716 635 De causis plantarum
2.725 737 n. 120 6.2.3 554 n. 11
2.773–789, 737 n. 121 De sensu
823–849 26 557 n. 24
2.806 635 49–83 554 n. 11
3.84 735 n. 112 50–54 554 n. 11
3.219–220, 737 n. 120 438 554 n. 11
337–339,
367–376 Vergilius
3.544–656 737 n. 121 Georgica
2.324–326 148 n. 30
 INDEX GENERALIS

Abano, Pietro d’, 33, 368 n. 20, 387–388 201 n. 19, 208, 213, 242, 253, 344, 369–
Aeschylus, 71, 497 n. 66 370, 415, 432, 462, 507, 509, 526–527, 551,
Aëtius, 553 573–574, 638, 671, 713–750
Agathinus, 636 n. 23 on ageing, 244–245, 249, 250, 256
Agnellus of Ravenna, 32, 644, 647 n. 61, and/on analogy, 10, 13, 18, 41–42, 44–45,
648 n. 62 47–53, 58–59, 243–244, 369–371, 376
Agrippa von Nettesheim, Heinrich n. 51, 467, 673
­Cornelius, 150 n. 36, 697, 743, 745 and Avicenna, 369, 372–373, 380
Albinus, Bernard Siegfried, 213 biology of, 54, 91, 92 n. 29, 94
alchemy, 139–159, 168, 255, 348, 463, on blood and blood vessels, 296–297,
743–744, 747 370, 438, 462, 507, 509
Alcmaeon, 88 n. 15, 554 n. 14 causality of, 727, 740–741
Alderotti, Taddeo, 139, 386 on digestion, 48–52, 144, 368, 370,
Alexander of Aphrodisias, 96 462–463
Alexandria, 643, 647 on earthquakes, 49, 59
Alexandrian school, 644 on elements, 86, 100
Alpago, Andrea, 348 on the embryo, 364, 366–368, 371–372,
Alpago, Paolo, 348 379, 467, 673
Alpetragius, 187 on generation, 368–370, 372, 386, 456
Amelung, Juliane, 607 on growth, 368–369, 456
Amsterdam, 74, 205, 579–580 on the heart, 358, 433, 437
amulet(s), 19, 308, 324–325, 328, 332, on the kidneys, 105–106, 123 n. 40, 130
334–335 and Lucretius, 86 n. 8, 90, 94–95, 98–99
Anatomia animata, 202 on matter, 345, 369, 665
anatomy on menstrual blood, 370, 450, 456, 462
animal, 233 and/on metaphor, 43–47, 57, 249,
comparative, 10, 65, 69, 75–76, 78, 448 379–380
descriptive, 37 on meteorology, 47–48, 52–53
female, 460 on motion, 189, 190 n. 70
functional, 65, 629, 633, 654 on nutrition, 368, 372–373, 386, 456
and physiology, 2, 4, 38, 103, 171, psychology of, 49–51, 368, 370, 667, 669,
173 n. 11, 221, 416 677, 695, 713–750
theatre(s), 3, 347, 581 on semen, 370, 462
Anaxagoras, 676, 745 on sensus communis, 203, 600 n. 27
Anaximenes, 634 sexism of, 332, 364, 457 n. 46
Anguier, Michel, 280, 284 teleology of, 54, 92 n. 29, 715, 719,
al-Anṭākī, Dawūd, 358 726–738
Antonio Palazzo, 182 n. 43 on vision, 551, 554–556, 566, 569,
aquavit, 142, 154, 156, 158–159, 168 573–575, 591–592
Aquinas, Thomas, 743 on the voice, 695, 702
Archigenes, 636 n. 23 artery, -ies, 72, 201, 212, 347–349, 365, 376,
Aretaeus, 124, 211 404–408, 435, 453–454, 458, 461,
Aristophanes (comicus), 68 464 n. 70, 469–471, 610, 639–640, 718
Aristophanes of Byzantium, 91 n. 26 as carriers of innate heat and vital
Aristotelianism, 83, 96, 432, 715 n. 15, 743 spirit(s), 143 n. 14, 347, 427–428,
Aristotle, 15 n. 39, 16, 31 n. 15, 68–69, 73, 76, 433–435, 458, 466, 529, 630, 632–633,
90 n. 22, 92 n. 29, 97–98, 145 n. 19, 148, 637–640, 648, 650
 index generalis 761

Galen on, 637, 639–640, 654 Battus, Levinus, 37

pulsation of, 126 n. 46, 434–435, 638 Bauhin, Caspar, 8, 118–119, 120 n. 35, 122
renal, 103, 105–106, 112–113, 115, 118–119, Beeckman, Isaac, 580
125, 127, 130, 132–133 Bellini, Lorenzo, 127, 134
(arterial) vein, 347, 349 Benedetti, Antonio, 35
Articella, 629, 649 Benzi, Ugo, 367, 373, 381, 387
Asclepiades, 30–31 Beraioonikij see Veronica
Asclepius, 321, 552 Berengario da Carpi, Jacopo, 19, 116, 122,
Aselli, Gaspare, 65, 73, 74, 468, 469, 470 125
Asterius of Amasia, 324 Berenice see Veronica
Athenaeus, 30, 69, 296 Berkeley, George, 229
atoms, 47, 55 n. 45, 85, 87, 93, 96, 97 n. 43, Bernard, Claude, 5, 197
98, 100, 224–225, 715, 729 Bidloo, Govert, 532, 541
atomism, 16, 83, 84, 85 nn. 6, 8, 88, 92, Black, Joseph, 221
95, 97 nn. 42–43, 98, 234, 472, 634, blood
714, 732 bloodletting, 213, 295, 297, 302–305, 452
al-‘Aṭṭār, Ḥasan, 339–340, 357–359 cake, 302, 304
attraction, 18, 96, 97 n. 43, 99, 103, 106, 107, of Christ, 313, 419–20
110, 120, 122, 124, 128, 130, 133, 134, 234, cinders, 245
235, 460, 462, 463, 503 circulation of, 284, 418, 431, 435, 437
Augustine of Canterbury, 313 clotting, 295–305, 434, 467
Augustinianism, 735 coagulation of, 296
Austin, William, 699 colours, 297, 300
Averroës (Ibn Rushd), 356 Eucharistic, 312
Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā), 110, 111, 147 n. 27, 164, globules, 200, 301, 534 n. 51
345–346, 369–372, 677 haematite (bloodstone), 328, 333
on ageing, 242, 250, 252, 257 and humours, 508
and analogy, 10, 146, 379 and milk, 18, 427, 443, 445, 447–449,
on anatomy, 339, 342–346, 356, 358–359 466, 469–470, 473
on blood, 298–300, 305 movement of, 105, 434–35
Canon, 20, 27, 33, 34, 35, 38, 298–300, pure and impure, 106, 107, 432, 435, 457
305, 348, 359, 363–392, 651–652 and semen, 20, 241
on embryology, 372, 379–380, 382–388 and serum, 119
on fever, 174–176, 185 and spirits, 17–18, 20, 279, 432
on the humidum radicale, 247 n. 26, 257 vessels, 20, 72, 103, 111, 122, 130–131, 211,
on membra, 363–392 296, 298, 343, 453, 507, 634
and metaphors, 379–380 see also menstruation
body
Bacchylides, 494 and soul, 144, 393, 395, 406, 420, 431,
Bacon, Francis, 10–11, 17, 24, 98, 139, 142, 620, 661, 671, 678, 695 n. 34, 723
159, 160–161, 163–164, 167, 169, 171–172, of fluids, 5
183–191, 208, 241–242, 259, 260 n. 70, of organs, 5
517, 529, 663 Boeckel, Johannes, 36
Baghdad, 342, 646 Boerhaave, Herman, 5, 6, 15–6, 79 n. 26,
Baker, Henry, 544, 546 195–196, 198–214, 465, 472, 510
Barker, John, 210, 402 n. 22, 653 n. 87 Bontekoe, Cornelis, 18, 443, 445–446
Barry, Edward, 210 Bordeu, Théophile de, 270, 273–274, 281,
Bartholin, Thomas, 75, 77–78, 455, 283, 285, 288
463 n. 66, 464 n. 68, 470 Bording, Jacob, 37
Bary, René, 284–285 Borel, Pierre, 532
Basel, 75, 509, 571 Borelli, Giovanni, 127–128, 131, 133–134
Bassand, Joannes Baptista, 198 Botallo, Leonardo, 74
Basso, Sebastian, 98–99 Bövingh, Johann Georg, 512
762 index generalis

Boyle, Robert, 168 n. 102, 541 camera obscura, 18, 556 n. 20, 569, 570, 571,
brain(s), 130, 195–216, 357, 433–434, 557 572, 578, 581, 582, 584, 585, 586, 587, 590,
n. 24, 591, 596 n. 5, 600, 610, 621–622, 591, 592
666–667, 669–670, 672, 675–679, Campanella, Tommaso, 10, 11, 22, 141,
688–691, 701 n. 50, 702, 714, 718, 723 171–185, 188–189, 191, 193
cognition and, 144, 204, 408, 591, 600, Capivaccio, Girolamo, 556 n. 20, 574
669 Carl August, Prince, 601
Galen and Pseudo-Galen on, 31, 551, 552 Carrère, Joseph-Barthélemy-François, 518
n. 3, 557, 559 n. 32, 560–561, 564–566, Casserius Placentinus, Julius, 556 n. 20,
577, 629–659 575, 577
in the Hippocratic Corpus and its Celsus, 30 n. 11, 321, 467, 562 n. 47
reception, 66–67, 70 n. 6, 72, 74–76, Cesalpino, Andrea, 18, 20, 348, 415, 417,
78–79, 195–216, 634 429, 431, 432, 433, 434, 435, 437, 438
metaphors for, 235, 280, 557, 677 Charleton, Walter, 467, 742
and sensorium commune, 202–207, 600 Christ, see Jesus Christ
and the spirits (pneumata), 143 n. 14, Chronos, 333
146, 152, 161–162, 179, 280 n. 31, 346, Chrysippus, 558, 562 n. 47, 635
408, 428, 454, 557, 559, 564, 630, chyle, 19, 73, 77–79, 153, 432, 443, 460–461,
632–633, 635, 636–641, 648–650, 667, 464–465, 468–469, 473, 503, 509, 672, 677
679, 689, 690 Cicero, 61
and vision, 551–567, 569–594 Clement of Alexandria, 498
breast(s) Cohn, Tobias, 9
in animals, 69–70 Colombo, Realdo, 126 n. 46, 339, 347 n. 27,
breastfeeding, 19, 73, 117, 125, 363–392, 431, 435
443–478 concoction, 144, 153, 165, 179, 346, 402,
and glands, 66–67, 77, 465 427, 432, 434, 450, 460–465, 469, 505,
inflammation of, 471 508–509
and kidneys, 117–120, 125 concordia discors, 405
male and female, 66, 458 Constantine the African, 339 n. 1, 631, 649,
and menstruation, 374, 449–452, 473, 652 n. 84
687 consumption, 68, 78, 256, 517
structure, 454–455 continuity, 2, 11, 15, 22, 105, 132, 360, 385,
sympathy with womb, 19, 450, 453–455, 518, 529, 686, 692 n. 32
465, 472–473 Cornarius, Janus, 71
and the voice, 695–698 corpuscularianism, 84, 92, 95, 96, 97
Browne, Thomas, 447, 742 n. 42, 100
Brun, Charles le, 278–280, 283–284 cosmic harmony, 394, 405
Bruno, Giordano, 83, 98, 99 n. 53, 141, 482, Cowper, William, 532, 534, 541
489 cribrum, 112, 121, 124, 118 n. 29
Buffon, George-Louis (Marie) Leclerc, Crollius, Oswald, 168
203 n. 27, 235 n. 65, 237, 271, 609 Crooke, Helkiah, 454, 457, 460–462, 531,
buffy coat, 296, 298, 301 n. 22, 303, 304 690–692, 695–698
Burnet, Thomas, 79 Cudworth, Ralph, 16, 22, 713–747
Burton, Robert, 60, 235 n. 67, 630 Cullen, William, 218, 219 nn. 6–7, 221, 226,
Busch, Amalia Rheinholdina, 606, 607 n. 51 232, 235, 237
Cunningham, Andrew, 2–4, 7, 41, 196–197,
Caius, John, 65, 71 211 n. 54, 231, 419, 422, 432 n. 43, 525
calor innatus (innate heat), 51 n. 31, 120 n. 6, 538
n. 35, 178, 186, 191, 247–248, 250,
253, 346, 427, 437, 456, 462, 506, 517, Dante, 652 n. 84
637–638, 653 n. 86 death, 12, 50–51, 148, 156 n. 50, 161, 165, 183
Calvus, Marcus Fabius, 71 n. 47, 207, 243, 245, 247, 250, 262,
Cambridge Platonists, 71, 653 n. 88, 714 284–285, 311, 345, 419, 424, 428, 482, 493,
n. 7, 715 n. 15, 722, 742 n. 148, 743 496, 510, 514, 691, 704
 index generalis 763

Democritus, 49, 68, 73, 76, 96, 98, 100, 553, Duchesne, Joseph, 17, 139, 153, 155–156, 158,
554 n. 11, 715 160, 167
demonology, 408 n. 43 DuLaurens, André, 118, 120–123, 131,
derma, 481, 484–489, 491, 498, 500, 252 n. 42
528 n. 23, 529 Duns Scotus, John, 743
Des Chene, Dennis, 1
Descartes, René, 1, 10, 13, 16, 205, 278–279, earthquake, 59
448, 531, 578 n. 31, 580, 586, 588, 610 Ebenfijis see Ibn al-Nafīs
n. 63, 686 n. 4, 691–692, 713–714, eclecticism, 84, 87, 92, 96, 97 n. 43, 213,
716–717, 722, 742, 746–747 636 n. 23
Despars, Jacques, 367, 373, 381–382, Edinburgh, 79, 208 n. 41, 219–221
385–386 education, medical, 33, 614
despiritualisation, 587 Elizabeth I, 188
Deusing, Anton, 73, 466 embryo, 10, 173 n. 11, 202, 363–364, 366,
Devereux, Robert, Earl of Essex, 188 368 n. 20, 371–374, 376–377, 379–382,
Diderot, Denis, 9, 211, 267–271, 273–275, 384–386, 388–389, 391, 448, 457–458,
281, 283–288 460 n. 55, 466–467, 635, 675, 713
Digby, Kenelm Edward, 742 embryology, 68–69, 274, 363–364, 366–367,
digestion, 56, 406, 174 n. 11, 178, 190, 250, 368 n. 20, 374, 389, 391, 466, 635
253, 255–257, 400, 406, 633, 696, 701 emotions, 7, 8, 87, 236, 311, 393, 395,
analogies and metaphors for, 13, 41, 59 398–399, 410, 492–493, 496, 508, 520,
n. 60, 60, 246 614–616, 621, 622 n. 99, 686 n. 4,
as concoction, 144, 165, 461–465 687–689, 691 n. 28, 692, 695, 698,
embryology and, 363–392, 443–478 699–700, 702–703, 708
old age and, 241, 248–250 Empedocles, 49, 85, 100, 450, 527, 554
residues, 72, 157–158 Englert, Ludwig, 30
spirits and, 17, 144, 154–155, 166, 667, Epicureanism, 85, 89, 92, 95 n. 40
672 Epicurus, 31, 41–43, 46–47, 54–58, 85 n. 6,
see also Aristotle; liver; metabolism; 88, 90, 92, 94–97, 99, 553, 554 n. 11
organs Erasistratus, 5, 30, 31 n. 15, 399, 635, 732
Diocles of Carystus, 506 Euripides, 71
Diogenes Laertius, 47, 89, 735 Eustachio, Bartolomeo, 118–119
Diogenes of Apollonia, 634 Eustathius of Thessalonica, 493, 495, 498
Dionysius (Pseudo-), 743 exhalation(s), 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 97 n. 43,
Dionysius of Alexandria, 313 247 n. 27, 284, 529
dissection exorcism, 332, 333 n. 58, 334–335
animal, 7, 343 n. 14, 358, 639 experiment(s), experimental,
human, 2, 4, 36, 76, 346–347, 349, 435, experimentation, 2–3, 7, 11, 18, 196–199,
447, 470, 528–529, 559, 563, 580–581, 241–266, 304, 416 n. 3, 443–478, 532,
583, 597 596, 631
meaning of term, 491 16th century, 116, 661
distillation, 9, 17, 139, 141–144, 146–148, 17th century, 73, 76, 84 n. 4, 85 n.5, 122,
150–153, 155, 156 n. 50, 157–158, 160–161, 125–126, 127–128, 130, 132–133, 160–162,
163, 165, 166 n. 98, 167, 348, 463 168, 471–472, 506, 511, 534, 536, 541,
divisions of medicine, 27, 29, 30 544, 556 n. 20, 569–593
Doni, Agostino, 98 18th century, 196–199, 203, 221, 225, 262,
Donne, John, 9 301, 472, 610, 613, 617
Dorn, Gerhard, 147 experimental evidence, 132, 197, 472
double nature of man, 618, 621, 622 Galen and, 32, 109, 126, 132, 562–563,
dreams, 92, 94–96, 268, 552, 714 634, 638, 640
dryness, 49–50, 52, 59, 69, 144 n. 18, 151, self-experimentation, 183 n. 47
164, 244–245, 247–248, 252, 256, 297, eye(s), 6–7, 66, 72, 89, 156, 166 n. 99, 167
299–300, 402, 427, 444, 492, 496, 518, n. 99, 212, 284, 286, 357, 433, 494,
664 551–567, 569–593, 603, 686, 703, 718
764 index generalis

anatomy and dissection of, 18, 551, movement and stagnation of, 5, 6, 72,
587–590 206, 525, 529, 532, 534, 536, 538, 540
blindness, 316 humoral, see humours, and under indi-
diseases of, 551–552, 561–564, 595–626 vidual humours
focusing, 220, 229 non-humoral, 6, 156, see also milk;
glasses, 591 semen; spirits; sweat; tears; urine
oozing, 248, 496 n. 63 nervous, 600, 610
and sweat, 510, 514–515 and pneuma or spirits, 561, 663, 667
see also tears flux, 10, 66, 70, 74–75, 77, 79, 279, 284, 446,
eyelids, 6 n. 19, 94, 272, 561 n. 42, 564, 616 452, 469, 489, 494, 555, 692, 707
bodily, 72
Fabricius ab Aquapendente, Hieronymus, Foesius, Anutius, 65, 71, 80
457 n. 45, 458, 556 n. 20, 575 food(s), foodstuff(s), 50–51, 56, 69–70, 144,
Fahraeus, 302–304 154, 157, 178, 210, 252–253, 255, 364–365,
Falconet, Etienne Maurice, 269, 271, 280 370–372, 374–375, 377–378, 383,
n. 31, 281, 283–286 386–387, 389–391, 400 n. 20, 420, 427,
Falloppio, Gabriele, 118–119 432, 444, 454, 455 n. 37, 457–458,
fat, 10, 67, 71, 73, 115, 116 n. 24, 300, 366, 460–466, 469, 493, 505, 510, 544, 564,
370, 376, 382–384, 387, 389, 462, 632, 697, 725
463 n. 66, 503, 508, 514, 691, 696 Fracastoro, Girolamo, 83, 96, 97 n. 43,
Feijoo, Jerónimo, 681 667 n. 16, 673, 678
female, 6, 8, 19, 20, 36, 68, 145 n. 19, 307, Franklin, Kenneth, 28, 33, 35, 38
324, 363–365, 366 n. 8, 367, 371–372, Froidmont, Libert, 579
377–379, 382–383, 389–391, 403, 446,
447–448, 451, 456, 459–460, 512–513, Galen, 4–5, 16–19, 27, 29–32, 80, 86, 96,
661–662, 669, 672–673, 675, 699, 702, 153, 203–204, 250, 395, 407, 415, 424, 426,
706 429, 431–433, 526, 597, 689, 713, 718, 732,
femininity, 364 n. 2, 365, 378, 382, 390, 746–747
672, 674 on ageing, 242–245, 248–250, 252,
Ferguson, Adam, 220 256–257
Fernel, Jean, 5, 21, 27, 28 n. 4, 33, 34 n. 30, and analogy, 244–245, 256
35, 36, 37, 38, 172, 178, 179 n. 34, 242, 252, on anatomy, 36, 453 n. 33, 551
253, 416, 417, 457 n. 45, 529, 531, 540, 652, on blood and movement of the blood,
653 n. 86, 667 n. 16 297–298, 303, 339–362, 431, 434–435,
fever(s), 10–11, 67–68, 174–176, 178–180, 437–438, 468–469
185–187, 191, 195, 244, 256–257, 301, 304, Boerhaave on, 208, 213
395–396, 411, 452, 509–510, 512–513, and dissection, 4, 7, 16
515–516, 519, 565, 608, 614, 708 embryology, 364–366
Ficino, Marsilio, 11, 17, 19, 139, 141, 149, 150, on experiments, 109, 126, 132, 634, 640
151, 152, 153, 159, 160, 164, 167, 249 n. 32, on facultas formatrix, 732–733
255 n. 54, 393–412, 432 on generation, 8, 372, 379, 732–733
filters, 85 n. 8, 103, 107, 109, 112, 113, on glands, 69–70, 73, 76
116 n. 24, 117, 119, 120, 124, 125, 127, 131, on the Hippocratic Corpus, 67
132 on the kidneys, 18, 103–137
Flachsland, Caroline, 605 n. 46 on matter, 86–87
fluid(s), fluidity, 18–20, 77, 105 n. 2, and metaphors, 243, 249
107–109, 120, 125–128, 130, 132–133, on phusiologia, 27–40
135, 180, 252, 296–300, 374, 393, 405, on pneuma, 629–659
432, 434–435, 443–478, 503–522, 588, on the skin, 485, 490, 526–527, 541
613–614, 618, 622, 645, 669, 676, 687, 719 on sweat and urine, 19, 504 –508,
bodily texture, 494–497 510–511
Boerhaave on, 200, 205–210, 212–213 on teleology, 634
lymphatic, 72 on vision, 551–567, 569, 572–575
 index generalis 765

Galenic, Galenist, 9, 19–20, 27, 36, 70, 123, Haly Abbas see al-Majūsī
242, 247, 394, 426, 448, 503, 525, 531, 551, Hartknoch, Johann Friedrich, 608
666, 671, 689, 742–743 Harvey, William, 4, 5, 9, 13, 16, 21, 71, 73–74,
embryology, 363–392, 455 n. 37, 456 105, 119, 120 n. 35, 121, 123, 125, 126 n. 46,
n. 42 127, 130, 172, 179, 188, 197–198, 202–203,
on the heart, 284, 654, 714 n. 6 205, 210, 213–214, 301, 339, 341, 360, 415,
opposed to Hippocratic medicine, 209 417, 462, 466, 467 n. 79, 468–470, 519,
on the humours, 444–445, 472, 613 n. 73 578, 585–586, 630, 653, 713–714, 740–744,
on the liver, 79, 426, 639, 640, 640–641 746–747
on the spirits, 20, 279, 285, 344, 347, 426, healing, 4, 10, 19, 175, 178, 307–308, 310–311,
433, 629–659, 666, 744 314, 316, 321, 324–325, 328, 334–335,
on vision, 569–593 393–394, 399, 407, 411, 435, 607, 617, 619
Galenic Corpus, 35, 344, 553, 556, 646, 664 heart, 2, 17, 20, 50 n. 31, 70, 72, 89, 98, 112,
Galenism, 4, 17, 499, 577, 629, 641–643 120, 122, 126 n. 46, 130, 142, 143 n. 14, 152,
late-antique, 27, 32–33, 38, 647 154, 163, 173 n. 11, 178, 195–196, 201, 203,
medieval, 27, 34, 110–111, 257, 363–392, 207, 212, 284, 341, 343–348, 351, 356,
429, 662 358, 360, 376, 399–400, 406, 408, 415, 418,
neo-, 34, 121, 153, 168 n. 102, 178, 241, 262 420, 424, 426, 428–429, 431–435,
n. 80 437–438, 456, 458, 464 n. 70, 465, 468,
Garrick, David, 271 470, 492–493, 566, 573, 585, 616, 630,
Garzoni, Tommaso, 142 632–633, 636–641, 647–650, 653–654,
Gassendi, Pierre, 89 n. 17, 580 667, 672, 689, 694, 695, 701 n. 50, 714,
Gentile da Foligno, 367, 373–374, 376, 380, 718, 742
384 Hekhalot Rabbati 18, 312
Giles of Rome, 364 n. 1, 366 Helmont, Jan Baptist van, 16, 176, 472, 713,
gland(s), 6, 10, 17, 65–67, 69–70, 71 n. 7, 72, 744
75, 77–80, 123–124, 129, 131–132, 274, 279, Helvétius, Claude Adrien, 268
454, 458 n. 49, 460, 465, 506, 518, 532, Hemsterhuis, Frans, 281, 286
534, 540, 602, 605 n. 44, 610, 613, 616, Henry IV, King of France, 153
621 Heraclitus, 735, 737 n. 122
lachrymal, 6, 613 Herbert of Cherbury, 742
Glisson, Francis, 77, 653 n. 88 Herder, Johann Gottfried von, 22, 595–622
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 601, 604, Herophilus, 5, 557, 635
606–607 Heurnius, Johannes, 556 n. 20
Golding, Arthur, 706, 707 Hipparchus, 554
Golitsyn, Dimitry Alekseevich, 283 Hippocrates, 429, 642, 735, 744
Golius, Jacobus, 579 and Aretaeus, 212
Graaf, Reinier de, 197–198 appeals to, 29
Gregory the Great, 313 Boerhaave as new Hippocrates, 201
Grew, Nehemiah, 523, 525, 536–537, 540, and chemical medicine, 153
544 and Democritus, 68, 79
Guarinonius, Hippolitus, 516 Early Modern approaches to, 66, 71–78,
Guinter d’Andernach, Jean, 113, 115, 129, 209
347 n. 27 as Father of Medicine, 208, 211
Gutermann, Georg Friedrich, 453 Galen on, 31–32, 67, 70, 248–249, 494
and Harvey, 16, 210, 213, 740
Haemorrhoissa, 19, 307–312, 314, 316, 321, on humours, 51, 72, 88, 248, 445–446,
325, 328, 333–335 472–473, 614 n. 73
Hall, Thomas, 1, 28 and observation, 208, 213, 296
Haller, Albrecht von, 3, 22, 198, 202, and Plato, 31
203 n. 27, 271, 302, 513, 544 n. 77, 595, Hippocratic Corpus, 489, 494, 526, 634,
596 n. 5, 598, 600, 602, 609, 610 n. 63, 642–643
611, 613, 614, 616, 619, 620, 622 centrality of brain, 196, 203–204
766 index generalis

critical days theory, 177 Huygens, Constantijn, 581, 584

date and authorship, 67–8, 73, 209 hydraulic body, 19, 443, 470–472
gynaecology, 68, 73, 332, 450, 455, hysteria, 328, 332, 335, 686 n. 1, 701 n. 50
457–458, 696, 701 n. 50
heat in, 175, 247 Ibn Abī Uṣaybi‘a, 343
letters in, 68–9, 73 Ibn al-Makkī, 348
Hippocratic method, 209–210 Ibn al-Nafīs, 16–17, 21, 30, 339–343,
Histiaeus of Perinthus, 554 n. 12 345–350, 356–359
Hobbes, Thomas, 717, 722 Ibn Sīnā, see Avicenna
Hoffmann, Friedrich, 513 Ibn Ṭufayl, İtaki see Şemsettin İtaki
Holbach, Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d’, 268 impurity, 311, 314, 335, 457 n. 45
Homer, 481–484, 489–490, 491 n. 33, 492, innate heat see calor innatus
493 n. 50, 494, 496 n. 63, 497, 499–500 İtaki see Şemsettin İtaki
homo patiens, 618
Hooke, Robert, 465, 534, 544, 742 Jacopo da Forli, 367, 368 n. 20, 373, 374,
Horne, Johannes van, 65, 73, 75, 78 378, 379, 380, 383, 384, 386, 387, 388
Horus, 325 Jairus, 308–310
Huarte de San Juan, Juan, 681 James I, King of England, 188
Hufeland, Christoph Wilhelm, 600, 607, 618 James, Robert, 211, 506
Hülägü Khan, 342 Jesus Christ, 19, 307, 309–311, 313–314, 321,
humanism, 267 n. 1, 412, 432 n. 45 324–325, 328, 333–334, 390, 418–420,
Hume, David, 11, 16, 21, 217–218, 219 n. 6, 423, 429, 509
221–238 Joannitius see Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq
humidity, humid, 154, 245, 434, 444, John of Alexandria, 32, 644–645, 647 n. 61
459 n. 53, 463, 676 Jonas of Orléans, 313
humours, humoral theory, 5–6, 7, 31, 32, Jorden, Edward, 701
34, 51, 68, 72, 79, 83, 88, 129–130, 172, Judaism, 311–312
298, 301, 304–305, 450, 471, 473, 510, 514, Juvenal, 620 n. 94
647, 666, 672, 677, 679
aqueous and crystalline humours in eye, Kant, Immanuel, 595, 598, 609, 611
559, 564, 575, 585, 588, 590–591 Kepler, Johannes, 566, 570 n. 6, 571, 573,
in Bacon, 185–186 585 n. 55, 587, 590–592, 742
balance of, 19, 406, 426, 632, 704 Khunrath, Heinrich, 147
in blood, 427 kidney(s), 8, 18, 21, 66–67, 103–135, 157,
in Boerhaave, 200 505, 507
and distillation, 148, 157 al-Kindi, 399–400, 403
and food, 374–375, 387, 564
four, 18, 144 n. 18, 153, 168, 248, 302–303, lactation, 73, 448–452, 456, 465, 473
305, 396, 400, 402 n. 22, 403, 423, 426, male, 451, 460
427, 444, 614 n. 73 see also breast; milk
and medical practice, 302, 452 Laocoön, 275, 277–280, 283–284, 286
and organs, 21 Laurentius, Andreas, see DuLaurens, André
and passions, 424, 688–689 Lavater, Johann Caspar, 600
serum as a humour, 507, 517 Lazarus, 324
and ‘spirits’, 141, 143, 408, 432, 509, Leeuwenhoek, Antoni van, 301, 523, 525,
689–690 537, 544
sweat as a humour, 505 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 182, 191
three, 153 Leiden, 6, 74–75, 205, 208, 213, 219, 281,
two, 181 579, 581
see also under individual humours Lémery, Louis, 465 n. 71
Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq (Johannitius), 33, 345, Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 277, 286, 288,
629, 643, 645–646, 649 615 n. 75
Hunter, William, 3 Leucippus, 96, 553 n. 10
Hutcheson, Francis, 222 life, seat of, 422
 index generalis 767

Linacre, Thomas, 632, 732 Matthew, Gospel of, 334

Linden, Johannes Antonides van der, 65, Maupertuis, Pierre-Louis Moreau de, 268
74 Maurus of Salerno, 299–300
liver, 73, 77, 79, 130, 154, 298–299, 346–347, Mead, Richard, 619
376, 382, 399, 408–410, 426, 432–433, mechanistic models of the body, 16, 18, 19,
614, 645, 654, 704 21, 24 n. 42, 84, 87, 94, 144, 186, 191,
in digestion, 157, 351, 432, 461, 463–464, 199–200, 224, 231–235, 246, 257, 262,
468–470, 505, 509, 633, 638–642, 667, 271–274, 279–280, 283–284, 472, 508, 531,
672 538, 586, 663, 713–748
in divination, 70–71 and digestive system, 470
in embryology, 457–458 failure of model, 218–221
as food, 69 and glandular system, 129–130
as one of three principal organs, 178, and the passions, 691–692
630, 638, 648–650 and skin, 541, 546
Lobstein, Johann Friedrich, 603, 605 and urine production, 106–110, 116, 125,
Lombard, Peter, 390–391 126–127, 131–135
London, 78, 260, 422, 424, 460, 525, 540, see also machine, body as
732 medicine, medieval, 257, 302, 373, 376, 385,
Lucretius, 13, 16, 41–42, 54–58, 60, 83–100 396 n. 9, 412
lung(s), 66, 78–79, 146, 157, 196, 207, 252, melancholy, 249 n. 32, 408 n. 42,
400 n. 20 614 n. 73, 616, 685–689, 692–694, 698,
as cooling the heart, 163, 435 702, 704–705, 708–709
in Galen, 633, 637, 640–641 membra
as noble parts, 376 sanguinary, 363, 365–367, 375–377, 380,
as organs of consciousness, 492 382, 384–389
as organs of elimination, 252 spermatic, 363, 366, 376–377, 380–389
pulmonary transit, 339–360, 431, 432, 435 menstruation, 246, 311, 332 n. 48, 379,
Lycurgus, 181 383–384, 457, 517
Lygaeus, Johannes, 36 and healing, 307
lymph vessels, 72, 75 and lactation, 448–455, 473
lymphatic system, 65–66, 69, 72, 78–79, male, 451 n. 27
468 n. 83, 470 and purity, 19
suppressed, 512
machine, body as, 11, 130, 202, 204, 205, taboos, 312–314, 334
232, 246, 257, 273–274, 471, 472 vicarious, 703, 704 n. 54
see also mechanistic models of the body Ménuret, Jean-Joseph, 270, 274, 283, 288
Machiavelli, Niccolò, 180–182, 184, Mercuriale, Girolamo, 523, 525–527, 529
190 n. 68, 191 Mersenne, Marin, 544, 580, 691
magic, 15, 150 n. 36, 308, 311, 321, 334, 570, metabolism, 155, 457, 661–683
584 meteorology, 10, 13, 42, 48, 58, 173 n. 11
al-Majūsī, ‘Ali ibn al-’Abbas (Haly Mettrie, Julien Offray de La, 268, 270
Ab(b)as), 339, 356, 651 microscopy, 16, 85, 262, 506 n. 17, 523, 532,
male, 8, 365, 367, 371, 377, 379, 390–391, 534, 538, 544
403, 446, 451, 460, 465, 673, 685, 692, Middleton, Thomas, 697–699, 702
696, 698–699, 702–703, 705, 708 milk, 70, 73, 78, 296, 297, 365, 374, 382–383,
Malebranche, Nicolas, 229 427, 685, 687, 694, 698
Malpighi, Marcello, 21, 103, 105–106, 126, analogy with blood, 18
130–133, 135, 202, 506, 532, 541 in embryology, 10, 19, 379–380, 675
Marcellinus, 314, 321 and sweat, 509
Mary St., 328 and urine, 19, 117, 120, 124–125
Mary Magdalene, 316 as ‘white blood’, 18, 443–473
masculinity, masculine, 363, 365–366, See also lactation
377–378, 503, 703 miracle, 15, 308, 316, 321, 325, 335, 382
768 index generalis

Moffett, Thomas, 443, 445 and embryology, 363–391, 456–461, 467

moisture, moist, 49–51, 55, 66, 70, 75, and Harvey, 468–469
78–79, 120, 129, 144 n. 18, 151, 154, 241, and Lucretius, 87
244–250, 252–253, 255, 259, 391, 402 n. stages of, 464, 638–639
22, 427, 454, 462–464, 493–496, 515, 517, and tears, 493
617, 664
Monnier, Pierre, 280 obesity, 509
Monte Cassino, 649 observation, 7, 9, 15, 17, 47, 66, 71 n. 7,
Monte, Giambatista da, 652 n. 85 77, 85, 94, 112, 119, 121, 130, 145, 155, 162,
Moses, 31, 311, 321, 428 243–244, 248, 256, 269–271, 403, 423,
Mosheim, Johann Lorenz von, 713, 732, 434, 455, 512, 519, 538, 577, 661
740–741 astronomical, 187, 403
motion(s), 1, 3, 9–10, 50–51, 53–54, 72, 89, of blood clotting, 296, 299–305
127, 168, 171, 178–182, 184–191, 195–196, clinical, 260, 504, 519
200–201, 204, 207, 210, 212, 219–220, in Galen, 32, 108, 298, 558–559, 562–564
228–229, 255, 280 n. 31, 285, 471–472, 538, in Hippocratic corpus, 209, 213, 296
555–556, 634, 637–638, 667–668, 670, 675, with microscope, 471
679, 714–715, 718, 722–723, 735, 738, 746 see also microscopy
celestial, 181 Opstal, Gérard van, 277–278, 280
circular, 72, 347–348, 404, 407, 527 organs, 5, 7–8, 130, 146, 171, 178, 189,
of heart, 126 n. 46, 348, 406–407, 714 202–203, 227, 250, 273–274, 345, 365,
involuntary, 204 433–434, 444, 454, 457, 471, 614, 635, 697,
perpetual, 180, 407 701, 732
and sensorium commune, 196, 207 and anatomy, 36
and sight, 210–220, 229 colour, 70
of spirits, 160, 166 n. 99, 280 n. 31, 630 of consciousness, 493, 500
in the womb, 455 digestive, 60, 155, 157, 166, 458
mouth, 51, 79 n. 26, 154–155, 166 n. 99, 195, excretory, 107–108, 120–121, 127
212, 284, 347, 364, 378 n. 57, 420, 451, in Galen, 32, 566, 640, 646
464, 467, 510 irritability of, 602
of the womb, 378 sensory, 93, 143 n.14, 206, 229, 274, 404,
analogy between mouth and womb, 560, 666
695–697, 705 see also under individual organs
Muḥammad ‘Alī Pasha, 357 organ, musical instrument, 235, 288
Murat IV, 350 Origen, 313, 324
musical therapy, 393–394, 396, 403–404, 412 Ovid, 706
Myrepsus, Nicolaus, 334
Padua, 9, 71, 75, 341, 348–349, 431, 468, 575,
Needham, Walter, 466 579, 671, 742
Neoplatonism, 141, 149, 150, 159, 167, 260, Pansa, Martin, 514
715 n. 15, 739, 743, 745 n. 163 papillae, 103, 105, 116–118, 120, 122–125, 131
Newton, Isaac, 16, 134, 217–218, 226, Paracelsus, 16, 139 n. 2, 143, 147, 155, 157–158,
233–234, 424 n. 26 166, 168, 208, 438, 448, 472, 713, 744
Newtonianism, 199 n. 14, 217, 226, 234–235, Paré, Ambroise, 452 n. 28, 529
237, 273 Paris, 36, 76, 113, 153, 267, 349, 357
nose, 6 n. 19, 66, 72, 79 n. 26, 146, 156, 195, Medical Faculty, 33–34, 652
212, 488 n. 24, 605–606 Royal Academy, 9, 269–270, 275
nosebleeds, 311, 334, 451, 514, 703–704 University of, 121
novelty, 11, 41–42, 58, 61, 275, 324 pathology, 30, 66–68, 70, 174, 176, 241 n. 1,
nutrition, 1, 19, 20, 405, 448, 450 n. 22, 538, 248, 257, 262, 302–305, 412, 512, 518, 552,
633, 679, 725, 728, 732, 744 561, 575, 607, 614, 662
in animals, 55 humoral, 302, 614
and Boerhaave, 200, 210 of ageing, 241
 index generalis 769

patient(s), 15, 174, 272, 281, 283–284, 286, Platter, Felix, 571–572, 582
395–396, 399, 403, 411–412, 512–519, 524, Plempius, Vopiscus Fortunatus, 18, 566,
538, 563, 565 n. 61, 606, 616, 618, 622 569, 572, 578–585, 587–588, 590–592
and Boerhaave, 198, 207, 209, 214 plethora, 452, 459, 509
see also observation plexus
patients’ letters, 504, 540 choroid, 636
Pecquet, Jean, 73, 76, 78, 470 retiform, 179, 632–633, 637, 640
Peiresc, Nicolas-Claude Fabri de, 580 Pliny the Elder, 6, 94, 95 n. 39, 467, 671
perception(s), 47, 88, 186, 203–204, 212, Plotinus, 16, 149, 713, 729–730, 732–734,
222–231, 280, 393, 447, 493 n. 50, 496, 737–739, 741, 743, 746–747
519, 560 n. 38, 591, 663, 666, 668, 717, Pluche, Noël-Antoine, 221
723, 725, 735, 747 Plutarch, 61, 553, 555, 635
and emotions, 410, 613, 619–620 pneuma, 253, 279, 347, 356, 556–557, 586,
sensory, 96, 97 n. 43, 143 n. 14, 178, 203, 630–631, 687, 692, 702
205, 212, 273–274 circulation of, 552 n. 3, 557, 559, 561
visual, 556, 557 natural, 17, 629, 631–633, 635, 638–641,
Pergamum, 629–630, 642 645–646, 648, 652 n. 85, 653
Peripatetics, 31 n. 15, 145, 500 n. 78, 744 psychic, 632, 633, 635, 636, 639, 640,
Persio, Antonio, 667, 681 645, 648, 654
Peter, St., 314, 321 Stoic theories of, 143 n. 14, 558, 634–635,
Petitus, Petrus, 6 736–737
Peyer, Johann Conrad, 77 visual, 18, 551, 558, 565, 576
Philodemus, 61 n. 65, 94 n. 35, 95 n. 40 vital, 559, 632, 635–637, 640, 645, 648
phlebotomy, see blood see also spiritus
physiology, 68, 70, 85, 95, 96, 122, 127, 141, pneumatism, 636 n. 23
143, 153, 160–161, 167, 187, 213–214, 273, pneumatology
344 tripartite, 629, 641, 648, 650–651
of ageing, 241, 243, 246, 249, 257, 259, pollution, 503, 511
264 pores, 255, 464 n. 69, 471
as ‘animated anatomy’, 3, 202 in cardiac septum, 112, 349, 431, 435
corpuscular, 100, 127, 715 in renal sinus, 112, 116, 124, 128, 132, 134
definitions of, 1–2, 3–5, 10, 22, 27, 29, of skin, 17, 128, 505–509, 513, 515,
42, 58, 85, 92, 171–173, 183, 186, 189, 517–518, 523–548
196–197, 199–200, 202, 238, 400, 416, Porret, Christiaen, 581
715, 726 Porta, Giambattista della, 148, 566,
of dreams, 88 569–571, 584, 587, 590
experimental, 3, 197, 416 n. 3, 443, Porterfield, William, 219–220, 229, 232
470–471, 596 Presocratics, 68
Father of, 5, 38 primordia, 85, 88, 100
histories of, 1–2, 7, 9, 15–20, 28, 30–32, principia, 85, 88, 100, 173, 664
36–38, 71, 84, 86, 105, 110–111, 205–206, printing, 35 n. 36, 74, 140, 357
218–219, 229, 248, 268, 444, 471–472, psychology, 58, 87, 90, 97, 143 n. 14, 173 n.
518–519, 534, 599, 631 11, 226, 273–274, 280, 285, 287, 344, 368,
of sight, 551–566, 572, 577, 579 394, 403, 427, 494, 600, 611–618, 631–639,
theoretical, 632, 654 652, 654, 666–667, 685–688, 686 n. 4,
Pindar, 494 692 n. 32, 694, 688, 690, 700, 708, 716,
Pitcairne, Archibald, 134 725
plagiarism, 37, 348, 359, 670 pulse, 11, 72, 179, 272, 393–412, 433, 435,
plague, 78, 163–164, 287, 410–411, 499 544, 650
Plato, 16, 31, 68, 86, 149, 163, 208, 242, Pythagoras, Pythagoreans, 177, 247 n. 28,
259, 393–395, 400 n. 20, 403–405, 407, 398, 410, 484, 489, 554 n. 14
409–410, 412, 433, 482, 526–527, 531, 534,
541, 554–555, 573–574, 639, 671–672, 713, Qalāwūn, Mamlūk Sultan, 343
715, 721, 723, 729–730 Quintilian, 61
770 index generalis

al-Qurashī, see Ibn al-Nafīs sieve, 18, 107–108, 112, 115, 117 n. 27, 118, 121,
Qustā ibn Lūqā, 345 124, 127, 131–134, 507
simulacra, 93, 96
Ramazzini, Bernardino, 454 skin, 8, 16, 18, 166 n. 99, 244, 252, 429, 481,
Ravenna, 321 484–490, 494–495, 498–500, 505–509,
respiration, 28, 207, 400 n. 20, 407, 433, 512–518, 520, 523–529, 531–532, 534,
435, 527, 529, 538, 541, 546, 632, 635, 536–538, 540–541, 544, 546
696, 697, 714 Smith, Adam, 220
Rhazes (al-Rāzī), 356, 558 n. 28 Sömmerring, Samuel Thomas von,
Riolan the Younger, Jean, 76, 105, 121 600 n. 26
Rolfinck, Guerner, 77 Soranus of Ephesus, pseudo-Soranus, 29, 32
Rudbeck, Olof, 71, 75, 470 soul, 143 n. 14, 144–145, 212, 224, 253, 273,
Rudolf II, 571 277, 278–280, 285–287, 343–347, 364,
Rueff, Jacob, 457 n. 47 386–387, 393–395, 398, 420–423, 431,
Rufus of Ephesus, 124 434, 462, 481, 482, 494, 553, 602, 611, 615,
Rupescissa, Johannes de, 143, 149, 151 617–622, 634–635, 687–689, 693, 707,
Ruysch, Frederik, 79 n. 26, 199 n. 10, 213, 713–716, 729–737, 740–748
262 Aristotle on, 51, 98, 368–372, 433, 456,
555–556, 566, 573, 667, 695, 719–720,
Sabuco de Nantes y Barrera, Oliva, 6, 18, 723–724, 737, 739, 746
20, 661–663, 669–681 as consciousness, 22
Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn (Saladin), 343 Ficino on, 141, 150, 152, 159, 403–410
Salerno, 299, 305, 631, 649–650 Galen on, 31, 433, 566, 632, 638–641,
Santorio, Santorio, 506, 511, 544 n. 75 652–653, 744
Savonarola, Michele, 142, 146 generative capacity, 373
Schegk, Jacob, 742 von Haller on, 202
Scheiner, Christoph, 571, 573, 587, 588 Lucretius on, 57, 89, 93, 97–98
Schneider, Conrad Victor, 75 Plato on, 400 n. 21, 433, 555, 632,
Schwartz-Erla, Johann Christian, 609 719–720, 721–723, 741
Scot, Michael, 372 Sabuco on, 671–672, 675–678, 679–680
semen, 6, 18, 20, 70, 98, 145–146, 241, 253, Telesio on, 98, 664, 666, 667–669
256, 345, 363–366, 371–373, 375, 377–382, see also sensorium commune
386–387, 389–391, 446, 456, 459 n. 53, Spenser, Edmund, 698
667, 674–675, 677–679, 687 sperm see semen
female, 20, 363–367, 370–371, 377–381, Spiegel, Adriaan van de, 74–75, 579
383, 390 Spinoza, Baruch de, 717
male, 10, 363–366, 370–372, 377–382, Spirit, Holy, 347, 426, 437, 438
389–390, 456, 462, 640 spirits, 17–18, 34, 59, 141, 146 n. 22, 148,
Şemsettin İtaki, 21, 339, 340 n. 3, 350, 351, 151–152, 153–155, 172, 186–190, 207,
356, 357, 359 211–212, 213, 233, 284–285, 426, 508–509,
Seneca, 49 n. 25, 58–60 517, 520, 529–532, 576, 578, 630, 653, 663,
Sennert, Daniel, 99, 742 688–690, 693, 695, 707–708
serum, 18, 107–108, 112, 118–120, 122–124, visual, 575, 581, 587, 588, 590, 591
127–128, 200, 295, 299, 302, 304, 503, as ‘vital virtues’, 666
507–508, 517 see also distillation
Servet, Miguel, 21, 339, 341, 347–349, 359, spiritus, 7, 98, 141 n. 8, 143, 145, 152, 157–167,
431, 667 n. 16 178–179, 246, 252, 259, 260, 428, 433, 476,
Severino, Marco Aurelio, 76, 78 641, 653, 663, 666–667, 675
Shakespeare, William, 445, 685, 704, 711 blood as vehicle of, 166, 246, 406, 408,
Sharp, Jane, 455 416, 522, 424, 426, 437
Sharpey, William, 5 essence of life, 155, 156
Sherrington, Sir Charles, 27, 35 n. 36 four kinds, 426
Short, Thomas, 508 and mercury, 153
 index generalis 771

mundi, 151 and sweat, 49, 504, 505, 507, 508, 511
musical, 407 history of, 103–135, 298–299
three kinds, 20, 168, 179, 347, 629, 630, see also uroscopy
544–645, 647–648, 649–651 uroscopy, 147, 296, 301, 511
two kinds, 186 uterus
see also pneuma; spirits charms to heal, 328–332
Stensen, Niels, 6, 79 n. 26, 506, 532 as cold, 677
Stephanus of Alexandria, 32, 644, 645 communication with breasts, 19, 450,
n. 52 453–454, 472
Stephanus of Athens, 647 n. 61 and conception, 374–375, 377, 449, 456,
Stobaeus, 553, 554 n. 12 457–458, 460, 675, 713
Stoic(s), 16, 30, 31, 143, 213, 500 n. 78, haemorrhage from, 316, 333, 335
551, 554 n. 14, 558, 562 n. 47, 634–636, as hot, 456
653, 673 n. 32, 680, 713, 717, 734–738, humours in, 374
740–741, 746–747 mobile, 332–333, 519
Storch, Johann, 447, 473 mouth of, 364, 378, 696–698
Swammerdam, Jan, 197 in pregnancy, 166, 365–366, 382, 385,
sweat, 8, 93, 503–520, 524, 529, 531, 544, 451, 453, 454–455, 458, 690–691
701 temperature of, 456, 677
analogies for, 19, 49, 55 terminology for, 8, 686
and blood, 349, 406, 509 n. 32, 687 vapours from, 701
physiology of, 16–17, 532–538 see also menstruation
as a remedy, 541
and spirits, 162 Vaughan, William, 689
and tears, 406, 446, 452 veins, 72, 99, 212, 347, 349, 376, 377, 400
and urine, 49, 52, 117, 128, 298, 452, 466 n. 20, 404–406, 434–435, 453, 454, 458,
Sylvius, Jacobus, 36 464, 529, 610, 630, 650, 718, 719
analogical understanding of, 13–15, 60,
al-Ṭahṭāwī, Rifā‘a, 357 437, 471
Tansey, Tilly, 3, 596 n. 4 cervical, 296
tears, 6–7, 19, 406, 446, 452, 493, 496, 500, Galenic model of, 426–427, 432, 468,
511, 614–618, 621–622, 685–687, 695 632–633, 637, 639, 640, 641, 648, 654
n. 34, 703, 704 and heart, 201
blocked tear duct, 22, 561 n. 42, milk, 460, 466, 467, 469–470
595–613 renal, 103, 105, 106, 108, 109, 111, 112–118,
in epilepsy, 212 123, 125, 127–138, 130, 132, 153, 505
Telesio, Bernardino, 17, 21, 83, 98, 178, spermatic, 383
661–669, 671–681 subclavian, 73
Theodore of Tarsus, 313 Veronica, 333–334
Theophrastus, 58, 90 n. 24, 91 n. 26, 557 Vesalius, Andreas, 4–5, 21, 71, 112–113,
Thurneisser, Leonard, 514 115–116, 118–119, 121, 341, 347 n. 27, 351,
Tissot, Samuel Auguste, 513–514, 516, 415, 431, 453, 523, 528–529
540 n. 65 Vimercato, Francesco, 100
transpiration, 503–508, 511, 514–515, 527, Virchow, Rudolf, 295, 297, 302–303, 305
687 n. 5 virtues, virtutes, 189, 387, 433 n. 46,
insensible, 17 615–616, 644, 647, 649–651, 666
Trescho, Sebastian Friedrich, 609 visualisation, 334, 400 n. 21
Tulp, Nicolaes, 579 vitalism, 9, 21, 83–84, 86 n. 9, 218, 233, 267,
Turner, Daniel, 525, 540 272 n. 17, 273, 275, 302, 504, 536 n. 55
Vives, Juan Luis, 689
urine, 452, 464, 466
analogies for, 19, 52 Walaeus, Johannes (Wale, Jan de), 74
analysis of, 147, 444 n. 4 Wharton, Thomas, 77–78, 79 n. 26, 466
772 index generalis

Whytt, Robert, 219–220, 232 Young, George, 220

Willis, Thomas, 168 n. 102, 467, 688, 690
Wilson, Leonard G., 1, 28 Zacharias, 333
Winter of Andernach, Johann see Guinter Zeno of Citium, 735
d’Andernach, Jean Zerbi, Antonio, 116, 121, 245 n. 17, 250
womb, see uterus Zimmermann, Johann Georg von, 600, 619
Wright, Thomas, 688–690, 692, 694, 697 Zwinger, Theodor, 65, 71, 129