• From Food to Elements and Humors: Digestion in Late Renaissance Galenism

    Author(s):
    Elisabeth Moreau (see profile)
    Date:
    2020
    Group(s):
    Renaissance Science and Medicine
    Subject(s):
    Medicine--Philosophy, Medicine, History, Renaissance, Science, Sixteenth century
    Item Type:
    Book chapter
    Tag(s):
    History and philosophy of medicine, 16th-century science
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/54c7-7547
    Abstract:
    In late Renaissance medicine, the example of digestion was frequently invoked to prove the elemental composition of the human body. Food was considered as being decomposed in its first elements by the stomach, and digested into a thick juice which is assimilated by the liver and the body parts. Such a process points to the structure of the human body into four elements that are transformed into different types of humors during several stages of “concoction”. This chapter examines the Galenic interpretation of digestion expounded by the French physician Jean Fernel (1497–1558) in his Physiologia (1567). In this treatise, Fernel states the body composition into elemental portions, while stressing the role of the “innate heat” as the physiological counterpart of the body’s essence or “substantial form”. He applies this view in his account of digestion, where he states that the conversion of food follows the rule of “mixture”. This chapter aims to explore how Fernel applies his interpretation of elements and innate heat to the process of digestion, as well as his sources in Galen’s De facultatibus naturalibus, Avicenna’s Canon, and Aristotle’s Meteorologica. It first examines the role of the natural soul and its “nourishing” faculties in nutrition as a physiological function. It then considers the role of elements, humors and innate heat during the “concoction” of food in the stomach, liver and veins.
    Metadata:
    xml
    Published as:
    Book chapter     Show details
    Pub. DOI:
    10.1515/9783110690552-016
    Publisher:
    De Gruyter
    Pub. Date:
    2020
    Book Title:
    Nutrition and Nutritive Soul in Aristotle and Aristotelianism
    Author/Editor:
    Giouli Korobili & Roberto Lo Presti
    Page Range:
    319 - 338
    ISBN:
    9783110690552
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    3 years ago
    License:
    All Rights Reserved

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