Kill or Cure: Lecture 2

Humoral Body

Dr Claudia Stein

Albrecht Dürer, 1471-1528

Ulrich von Hutten, 1488-1523

Galen of Pergamon, AD 129– c. 200/ c. 216)

On the heavensOn sleep and sleeplessnessOn animalsOn the soulVirtues and vicesMetereologyMetaphysicsOn Longlivity and Shortness of LifePoeticsIn Generation and Corruption

And so on……..

Aristotle, 384 BC – 322 BC

The micro-macrocosm

De humani corporis fabrica libri septem (On the fabric of the human body in seven books), 1543

René Descartes (1596 – 1650)

Cogito, ergo, sum,: I think, therefore I am

Mechanical philosophy: a general explanation of the world that treated its phenomenon as due to nothing but pieces of inert matter interacting with another by virtue of their shapes, sizes, and motions

Cartesianism: a strain of philosophy owing its central tenets to René Descartes.

Passions of the Soul, 1649

Description of the Human Body, 1647

William Harvey, 1578-1657De Motu Cordis – On the Motion of the Heart, 1628

What’s new by the end of the 17th century?

1. The use of mathematics and measurements to give precise determinations of how the world and its parts work.

2. The use of observation, experience, and where necessary artificially constructed experiments, to gain understanding of nature.