The history of anatomy has been the subject of much recent scholarship. This volume shifts the focus to the many different ways in which the function of the body and its fluids were understood in pre-modern European thought. Contributors demonstrate how different academic disciplines can contribute to our understanding of âphysiologyâ, and investigate the value of this category to pre-modern medicine.
The book contains individual essays on the wider issues raised by âphysiologyâ, and detailed case studies that explore particular aspects and individuals. It will be useful to those working on medicine and the body in pre-modern cultures, in disciplines including classics, history of medicine and science, philosophy, and literature.
Manfred (H.F.J.) Horstmanshoff was Professor of Ancient Medicine at Leiden from 2006-11, having taught Ancient History there since 1976. He is currently a Fellow of the Internationales Kolleg Morphomata, University of Cologne, studying the history of the patient from a comparative perspective. His publications include the co-editorship (with P.J. van der Eijk and P.H Schrijvers) of Ancient Medicine in its Socio-Cultural Context (Amsterdam: Clio Medica, 1995) and editorship of the selected papers of the XIIth Colloquium Hippocraticum as Hippocrates and Medical Education (Leiden: Brill, 2010).
Helen King, formerly Professor of the History of Classical Medicine at the University of Reading, is currently Professor of Classical Studies at The Open University, Milton Keynes. She works on ancient medicine and its reception until the nineteenth century, particularly on gynaecology and midwifery. Her publications include The Disease of Virgins (London: Routledge, 2003) and Midwifery, Obstetrics and the Rise of Gynaecology (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007).
Claus Zittel teaches philosophy and German literature at the Universities of Frankfurt am Main, Berlin (FU) and Olstzyn (Poland) and is the co-leader of the Max-Planck Research group, âThe Conscious Imageâ at the Kunsthistorisches Institut/Max-Planck-Institut Florence. His publications include Theatrum philosophicum. Descartes und die Rolle ästhetischer Formen in der Wissenschaft (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2009) and (with Moritz Epple) Science as Cultural Practice Vol. 1: Cultures and Politics of Research from the Early Modern Period to the Age of Extremes (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2010).
Preface and Acknowledgements
Notes on the Editors
Notes on the Contributors
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Helen King
PART ONE
HISTORY OF PHYSIOLOGY IN CONTEXT:
CONCEPTS, METAPHORS, ANALOGIES
Physiologia from Galen to Jacob Bording
Vivian Nutton
Physiological Analogies and Metaphors. In Explanations of the Earth and the
Cosmos
Liba Taub
The Reception of the Hippocratic Treatise On Glands
Elizabeth Craik
Between Atoms and Humours. Lucretiusâ Didactic Poetry as a Model of
Integrated and Bifocal Physiology
Fabio Tutrone
Losing Ground. The Disappearance of Attraction from the Kidneys 85
Michael R. McVaugh
The Art of the Distillation of âSpiritsâ as a Technological Model for Human
Physiology. The Cases of Marsilio Ficino, Joseph Duchesne and Francis Bacon
Sergius Kodera
The Body is a Battlefield. Conflict and Control in Seventeenth-Century
Physiology and Political Thought
Sabine Kalff
Herman Boerhaaveâs Neurology and the Unchanging Nature of Physiology
Rina Knoeff
The Anatomy and Physiology of Mind. David Humeâs Vitalistic Account
Tamás Demeter
More than a Fading Flame. The Physiology of Old Age between Speculative
Analogy and Experimental Method
Daniel Schäfer
Suffering Bodies, Sensible Artists. Vitalist Medicine and the Visualising of
Corporeal Life in Diderot
Tomas Macsotay
PART TWO
BLOOD
Blood, Clotting and the Four Humours
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
Barbara Baert, Liesbet Kusters and Emma Sidgwick
The Nature of the Soul and the Passage of Blood through the Lungs.
Galen, Ibn al-NafÄ«s, Servetus, İtaki, âAá¹á¹Är
Rainer Brömer
Sperm and Blood, Form and Food. Late Medieval Medical Notions of Male
and Female in the Embryology of Membra
Karine van ât Land
The Music of the Pulse in Marsilio Ficinoâs Timaeus Commentary
Jacomien Prins
âFor the Life of a Creature is in the Bloodâ (Leviticus 17:11). Some
Considerations on Blood as the Source of Life in Sixteenth-Century
Religion and Medicine and their Interconnections
Catrien Santing
White Blood and Red Milk. Analogical Reasoning in Medical Practice
and Experimental Physiology (1560-1730)
Barbara Orland
PART THREE
SWEAT AND SKIN
The âBody without Skinâ in the Homeric Poems
Valeria Gavrylenko
Sweat. Learned Concepts and Popular Perceptions, 1500-1800
Michael Stolberg
Of the Fishermanâs Net and Skin Pores. Reframing Conceptions of the Skin
in Medicine 1572-1714
Mieneke M. G. te Hennepe
Early Modern Medical Thinking on Vision and the Camera Obscura.
V.F. Plempiusâ Ophthalmographia
Katrien Vanagt
The Tertium Comparationis of the Elementa Physiologiae. Johann Gottfried
von Herderâs Coception of âTearsâ as Mediators between the Sublime
and the Actual Bodily Physiology
Frank W. Stahnisch
PART FIVE
BODY AND SOUL
From Doubt to Certainty. Aspects of the Conceptualisation and Interpretation
of Galenâs Natural Pneuma
Julius Rocca
Metabolisms of the Soul. The Physiology of Bernardino Telesio in Oliva
Sabucoâs Nueva FilosofÃa de la Naturaleza del Hombre (1587)
Marlen Bidwell-Steiner
âFull of Raptureâ. Maternal Vocality and Melancholy in Websterâs Duchess
of Malfi
Marion A. Wells
The Sleeping Musician. Aristotleâs Vegetative Soul and Ralph
Cudworthâs Plastic Nature
Diana Stanciu
Index Locorum
Index Generalis
Mostly researchers interested in the history of the body, history of ideas, history of medicine and science. Medical practitioners would also find this material interesting.