HIST 449 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Smart People, Staden, Humorism
9 Jun 2018
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HIST 449- Feb 6/18
Doctors without borders: The Hellenistic Medical World
Part 1: Aristotle Continued, The Heart and Non Uniform Parts
Theories of Forms
Plato
• Unique, eternal, real and absolute ideas
• Imperfectly reflected in matter
• Perceived by reminiscence
• Real beauty exists in the form of beauty, then there is a concept of beauty,
individual beautiful entities and then imitations of beautiful entities
Aristotle
• A non-material program to produce, methodically and purposefully,
particular things
• Perceived by abstraction from material entities
• In living thing: soul
Platos Model of the Body
• We have a rational soul in the head, a spirited soul in the chest and heart, and
an appetitive soul in the belly and liver
• Body below the head as a vehicle to get around and nourishing us
• The head and the body are radically different
• Graphic: reason is us at the head of the chariot, and the white horse is the
spirited soul and it aspires upwards towards reason, but the black horse
keeps wanting to go down
• Our body is torn between two souls that are conflict with each other
• Rational soul needs to keep spirited and appetitive soul together
• Dualistic (triolistic??) view of humanity
• Women as failed men, men that dont make it
• Perfection of the male body
• Not that nature makes a mistake but there is a hierarchy
Parts of Animals
• Final product of digestion is blood
• Soul is therefore in the blood
• Only animals with blood have brains
• Uniform and not uniform parts, not uniform is a hand for example
• Heart is a non uniform part (structured and segmented)
• Case for the primacy of the heart
• Flesh is the organ of sensation
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• We have to keep replenishing our blood by eating
• Soul is in the blood
Non-uniform parts: Parts of Animals
• There are three categories: parts to take food in, parts to get rid of food, and
the heart
• Besides this, there is the head, which contains the brain and the organs of
sensation
• Optic nerve does not go to the brain but the blood vessels in front of the
brain
• Comparative animal dissection and vivisection
• Not just analogies like Hippocrates, finds stuff in animal and extrapolates to
human
Primacy of the heart
• First thing that is made in the body after generation
• Bases this on experiments with hens eggs
• Heart is Source and spring of blood vessels
• The Heart is in the noblest position, upper front and center, seems contrary
to the idea of the brain but he envisions it a different way
• Seat of sensation and moves, thinks of it like a moving creature, it
experiences sensation when we are upset for example and we can feel it
moving
• Heart has three chambers, he would strangle his dogs and their atrium would
collapse and it looks like there are three when this happens
• Blood vessels are like irrigation channels in a garden
• Nature doesnt make anything in vain and structure dictates function, thinks
that blood comes out from heart and that it doesnt pass through it
• Blood deposits flesh like silt in a river the vessels braid the body together
Pneuma
• Literally means air or breath
• Vegetti defines it as A semi material organic substance, innate air that was
thus different from external air, heated with a similarly innate heat that was
not the same as fire, a mysterious cardiac vapour
• Bridges body and soul, transmission of sensation and motion and generation
through semen
• Male semen, it is the bubbles of Pneuma that carry the soul in the semen the
white is just the vehicle
• Heart exudes Pneuma
Diocles of carystos
• Closely associated with Aristotle
• The second Hippocrates
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Part 1: aristotle continued, the heart and non uniform parts. Imperfectly reflected in matter: unique, eternal, real and absolute ideas, perceived by reminiscence, real beauty exists in the form of beauty, then there is a concept of beauty, individual beautiful entities and then imitations of beautiful entities. Aristotle: a non-material program to produce, methodically and purposefully, perceived by abstraction from material entities particular things. Diocles of carystos: closely associated with aristotle, the (cid:498)second hippocrates(cid:499, strongly influenced by cardiocentrism, situated innate pneuma and heat in the left ventricle. If everything comes through sensation and experience, then everything comes through the body and there are not ideas outside of the body: virtues and vices are seen in the structure of bodies. Roadmap to the hellenistic medical world: focus on alexandria, the (cid:498)city without a skin(cid:499), named after alex the great, human dissection moment happens in alexandria: herophilus and, very sprawling. Erasistratus: medical sects, so-called rival schools and allegiances.
