Jean Fernel's On the Hidden Causes of Things

Forms, Souls, and Occult Diseases in Renaissance Medicine

Series: 

Editors:
John Forrester
and
John Henry
An annotated translation of Jean Fernel’s On the Hidden Causes of Things (1542), with a scholarly introduction showing its great importance in the intellectual history of the Renaissance. The only sixteenth-century writer, apart from Paracelsus, to develop a new theory of disease, Fernel was also a leading natural philosopher. His survey of the role of occult qualities and powers in life processes, especially generation, and in contagious and pestilential diseases draws upon astrology, alchemy, and other occult sciences. Although an original and innovatory thinker, Fernel operated within the parameters of Aristotelian and Galenic philosophy, while drawing upon Platonic, Stoic and other worldviews. Accordingly, this book shows the continued vitality in traditional thought in the period just before the Scientific Revolution.
Copyright Year:
2005
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Published
ISBN:
978-90-47-40648-8
Publication:
01 Dec 2004
Hardback
Availability:
Published
ISBN:
978-90-04-14128-5
Publication:
15 Nov 2004
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Front Matter
Preliminary Material
Acknowledgements
Jean Fernel and the Importance of his de Abditis Rerum Causis
On the Transcript and the Translation
De Abditis Rerum Causis: A Synopsis
De Abditis Rerum Causis
Preface
Liber Primus
Chapter 1 The elements of the world provide the only matter for each thing that is brought into being
Chapter 2 The form of a natural thing is substance, not accident
Chapter 3 The substance of the form of every natural body is simple, and has not arisen from the forms of the substrate, contrary to Alexander’s position
Chapter 4 The forms of the individual parts that are in a composite are as it were preparations for the introduction of a form of the whole, and they are multiple
Chapter 5 It is not the potentiality of a natural thing to proceed to a form through its own initiative; but just as an actuality is summoned from a disposition, a form is summoned from the potentiality of the matter
Chapter 6 There was not the smallest contribution previously in matter towards the generation of a form, and there is no potentiality of a form, nor can it be assigned to the kind of a substance
Chapter 7 The form of what has been generated could not emanate from the parents. The character and source of the true origin of forms
Chapter 8 The forms and original substances of everything are derived from heaven, according to Aristotle
Chapter 9 In philosophising upon Nature, Aristotle established the divine origin of forms: that greatest God created the heavens and stars, and bestowed on these the powers of begetting things; these are Platonic views too, compatible with Holy Writ
Chapter 10 All transient and mortal things were divinely originated in the past; they are now both begotten and controlled by heavenly excellence, which is itself manifestly divine
Chapter 11 The spirits by whose rudders people say the world is controlled
Liber Secundus/Book II
Preface
Chapter 1 Powers reside in each generated thing that are some of them due to the matter, some of them to the temperament of the qualities, and some to the form
Chapter 2 The powers that a form displays, like the form itself, are manifestly divine and are referred to as such, there being no sure and evident basis for them
Chapter 3 The structure of the human body and of every living creature is divine
Chapter 4 Our soul is not sprung from the elements, on Galen’s judgment
Chapter 5 What the faculty of the soul is to Galen
Chapter 6 The substance of the three parts of the soul is divine, on Galen’s view
Chapter 7 The spirits of the human body, like those of all living things, are divine, as is their innate heat
Chapter 8 Very many functions and activities in us come from hidden causes
Chapter 9 Not one but three kinds of diseases are present in a similar part, and which the diseases of matter are
Chapter 10 Diseases of the total substance, and how significant they are in the art
Chapter 11 Distinguishing characteristics of occult diseases
Chapter 12 On the pestilent diseases: that their cause is hidden
Chapter 13 There is something hidden in epidemic diseases
Chapter 14 The contagious diseases
Chapter 15 Poisoned diseases
Chapter 16 Diseases, and also some remedies, transcend nature
Chapter 17 The existence of some hidden properties of the form or of the total substance, and the number of their different sorts
Chapter 18 From where the property of the total substance originated, and how it is distinct from the substance, and where it resides
Chapter 19 Occult diseases should be treated with the secret property of medicaments, not by the Empirics’ procedure, but by skill and method
Back Matter
Bibliography
Index
Medieval and Early Modern Science
John M. Forrester retired from a medical career in 1988. He has previously published a translation of Fernel’s Physiologia of 1567 (Transaction of the American Philosophical Society, 2003).
John Henry, Ph.D. (1983) is Reader in History of Science at Edinburgh University, and has published widely on Renaissance and early modern science.
'This book contains an excellent edition and translation of the text, a useful synopsis of the content, quite a few important annotations, a bibliography and an index. Hopefully it will bring Fernel's book back into the discussions about the emergence of "modern" medicine and natural philsophy.'
Martin Mulsow, Fast Reviews of Books in Renaissance Intellectual History, 2005.
Those interested in the intellectual history of the Renaissance, particularly the history of medicine, natural philosophy, and natural magic, as well as the later histories of Aristotelianism, Platonism, Neoplatonism and Galenism.
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Publisher:
Brill
Language:
English
Pages:
x, 779 pp. (parallel translation Latin - English)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1163/9789047406488

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