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Books by Vivian Nutton

Honoré Champion, 2020

Galien de Pergame (129-ca 216) a systématisé l’ensemble du savoir médical ancien et sa doctrine s... more Galien de Pergame (129-ca 216) a systématisé l’ensemble du savoir médical ancien et sa doctrine s’est maintenue jusqu’à l’époque moderne. Son œuvre tentaculaire a aussi innervé la pensée philosophique, logique et théologique. Toutefois, Galien a fait l’objet de critiques de la part de ses contemporains, puis de ses successeurs. Après le triomphe du galénisme à la fin de l’Antiquité, les penseurs islamiques ont introduit les premières brèches dans ce système. Ces attaques, relayées en Occident latin et à Byzance, ont connu une ampleur nouvelle à la Renaissance avec la remise en cause et la déconstruction de l’autorité galénique.

Dans ce livre est proposée une histoire dynamique de la réception de Galien à travers différents cas d’anti-galénismes. Les études qui y sont réunies portent sur des textes peu connus, voire inédits. Elles recensent les critiques contre Galien, tout en explorant différentes facettes de sa pensée médicale et philosophique. Ce parcours permet ainsi de suivre les changements de paradigmes épistémologiques qui s’opèrent au fil des siècles, mais aussi de mieux cerner, par la négative, ce que fut le galénisme durant sa longue tradition.

Antoine Pietrobelli est helléniste, philologue et historien de la médecine. Il est maître de conférences titulaire d’une HDR à l’Université de Reims. En 2005, il a découvert à Thessalonique un manuscrit de Galien qui contenait des textes inédits, dont le Ne pas se chagriner publié en 2010 dans la Collection des Universités de France. Dans cette même collection, il a fait paraître en 2019 le premier volume du commentaire de Galien au Régime des maladies aiguës d’Hippocrate. Il est l’auteur de nombreux articles sur Galien et la médecine galénique.

Ont contribué à cet ouvrage : Susan P. Mattern, Anna Motta, Matyáš Havrda, Pauline Koetschet, Philippe Vallat, Joël Chandelier, Nicoletta Palmieri, Danielle Jacquart, Vivian Nutton et Fabrizio Bigotti.

CSMBR Events by Vivian Nutton

Papers by Vivian Nutton

Medical History, 1978

was famous in his lifetime as a medical eccentric, whose practice could only with difficulty be c... more was famous in his lifetime as a medical eccentric, whose practice could only with difficulty be classified under any school-theory. His papers, preserved in the Fellows' Library at Clare, confirm that he was humane and forthright, not tied to any philosophical system but with ideas pointing towards the testing of remedies by trials and of theories by experience. Such is the just verdict of Dr. Jeffrey Boss in his recent publication in this journal of seven of the Butler Mss.,1 but his implication that they are all that remains in them of medical interest is far from true. In this article I shall deal first with four other pieces from that collection, all in Latin, which throw light on Butler and contemporary medicine; and secondly offer some corrections and elucidations of the published documents, also thereby showing the range and character of Butler's learning.2 I For all his fame as a doctor, Butler's medical expertise and qualifications were doubted by the Royal College of Physicians, who licensed him to practice only after a letter from Lord Burghley and even then under restrictions.3 His bitter view of the College is evident from a letter published by Dr. Boss, p. 444, and in a rambling and allusive Latin reply (Ms. 39) to an anonymous academic physician he reveals a similarly jaundiced attitude at the end of his life towards medicine and its practitioners in general. The translation is as follows: Venerable doctor, your letter to me gave me great pleasure: I recognize in it your wisdom, the candour of your noble heart, the virtue and consummate skill of your medical practice, and the rashness and inconstancy of the noble lady with you. Woman, to use the words of the poet,' is always fickle and changeable, and always immoderate: for she loves too much and hates

Medical History, 1983

THE SEEDS OF DISEASE: AN EXPLANATION OF CONTAGION AND INFECTION FROM THE GREEKS TO THE RENAISSANC... more THE SEEDS OF DISEASE: AN EXPLANATION OF CONTAGION AND INFECTION FROM THE GREEKS TO THE RENAISSANCE by VIVIAN NUTTON* "AN interesting problem, to which I hope to return." Thus, in 1915, Karl Sudhoff ended a brief note on Galen's views on "seeds of plague", but the hope was never fulfilled, and, despite citation in bibliographies, Sudhoff's little article, buried deep in the wartime pages of the Mitteilungen zur Geschichte der Medizin, excited no scholarly attention whatsoever.' This was hardly surprising, for Sudhoff himself appeared to distrust his own conclusion that Galen had in fact prefigured Fracastoro's celebrated theory of seeds of diseases and was prepared to countenance, at least briefly, the idea that some diseases were specific entities which propagated by means of their seeds. But Galenic scholarship has moved on, albeit slowly, since Sudhoff's day, and the modern picture of Galen is of a doctor far less logical, systematic and consistent than he once appeared, and more ready to accept for his own immediate purposes ideas and examples from others that did not always fit with his overall schema of humoral medicine. Thus, while supporting Sudhoff's observations, I shall also show in this paper how Galen's (and, indeed, the Hippocratics') general philosophical views militated against the further development of any ontological theory of disease. Galen wrote of seeds of disease in a context of contagion and communicable diseases, and this paper will also have to concern itself, although not at great length, with ancient ideas and perceptions of contagion. Historians have occasionally denied to the doctors of antiquity a knowledge of contagion on the grounds that they had no theory of seeds of disease or of germs, but this is to confuse an appreciation of contagion qua contagiousness with one explanation of its mechanics. A belief in a theory of seeds presupposes a belief in contagious (or communicable) diseases, but the reverse is not true, for there were always other possible hypotheses, like that of putrid air, to explain why, for instance, phthisis was easily caught. Usually, contagion was

Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 2003

What did it mean to think like a doctor in Renaissance Europe? This is the question Ian Maclean s... more What did it mean to think like a doctor in Renaissance Europe? This is the question Ian Maclean sets out to answer in his fascinating and meticulously researched new study. The answer, he argues, is to be found not simply in the content of medical thought but in its underlying ...

Medical History, 1971

THE PROBLEM of the origins of the medical school of Salerno has exercised the talents of many dis... more THE PROBLEM of the origins of the medical school of Salerno has exercised the talents of many distinguished medical historians, who, even if they have not reached complete agreement, have purified and tested the ancient traditions and the surviving evidence. Although Kristeller's magisterial article which imposed clarity upon much that was formerly obscure seemed to have fixed the terms of the debate,' an old and discredited theory has been resurrected in the last decade and is beginning to find its way back into general acceptance. A direct link is discovered between medieval Salerno and early Greek medicine through the existence of a medical college at Velia which was transferred with its learning and institutions intact to Salerno. The classical heritage of Salerno is thus more than vague ideas; it is the continuation of a tradition of doctrine and organization going back to the Romans and Greeks, back to the age of Hippocrates himself. The new evidence is derived from archaeology, epigraphy and numismatics, each of which has its own limitations and difficulties, and the argument gains whatever cogency it may be thought to possess from the cumulation of several minor arguments. I shall review these new discoveries in the first part of this paper and then discuss other recent developments in the history of classical medicine in Europe in the Dark Ages in an attempt to show how they may lead to a better understanding of the place of Salerno. The small town of Velia (close to the modern village of Ascea Marina) lies some eighty kilometres south along the coast from Salerno and is a palimpsest of south Italian history. On the headland dominating the bay stands a Saracenic-Norman tower whose foundations rest in part upon a Greek temple of the early fifth century B.C. beneath which have been found traces of an even earlier Greek civilization. The classical town whose walls extend into the surrounding hills lay at the foot of the headland and there, close by the Porta Marina, was uncovered a building with an underground portico, a cryptoporticus, in which were found statues, portrait busts, strigils, a few surgical (or, more likely, toilet) instruments and pieces of pottery.2 An inscription in Greek at the base of one of the male statues reads as follows: 1 P. 0. Kristeller, 'The school of Salerno', Bull. Hist. Med., 1945, 17, 138-94; republished in his Studies in Renaissance Thought and Letters, Rome, 1950, 495-552. The first publication is henceforward referred to as Kristeller.

Phillip De Lacy (editor, translator, and commentator), Galeni De Placitis Hippocratis et Platonis (Corpus Medicorum Graecorum V 4, 1, 2), Berlin, DDR, Akademie-Verlag, 1984, 8vo, pp. 222, M. 65.00

Medical History, 1985

Professors, Physicians and Practices in the History of Medicine, 2017

In her recent books, Nancy Siraisi has investigated the wider cultural world of Renaissance physi... more In her recent books, Nancy Siraisi has investigated the wider cultural world of Renaissance physicians. 1 She has introduced us to a great range of historians and letter-writers in Italy and Germany, and has shown the extent to which they flourished in a society where their professional medical expertise at times took second place to their other activities and interests. They gained leading positions at court or in the life of a city state because of their ability as doctors, but this was supported, and sometimes surpassed, by their social and intellectual skills. Participation in a circle of antiquarians, exchanging letters across Europe, or composing a history of a family or a state brought access to potentially wealthy patients, for the sixteenth century was a time when culture mattered, both politically and socially. A display of literary skills marked off the gentleman physician from humbler healers; an ability to conjure up a neat Latin phrase or to allude to a past historical event showed that the physician was a truly learned man and worthy to be considered a member of polite society. That both enhanced his status and gained him access to fame and fortune. One celebrated doctor of this period whose historical interests have never been fully investigated is the Englishman, John Caius (1510-1573). He is known to the general public today, if at all, only as the (second) founder of the Cambridge College that bears his name, Gonville and Caius College, although members of the Royal College of Physicians of London will be familiar with the display of gifts that he made to it during the many years of his vigorous presidency. 2 More recently,

Medical History, 1979

To TALK of Thomas Linacre and John Caius together iti the same paper is almost like commending a ... more To TALK of Thomas Linacre and John Caius together iti the same paper is almost like commending a saint and a sinner in the same sermon. Linacre is universally praised by his contemporaries and by modem scholars alike, while Caius in his writings and in his daily relationships seems petulant and domineering, with a dislike of Welshmen, whom he excluded from his refounded College along with the blind, the deaf, the halt, the lame, and sufferers from grave or incurable diseases.1 Linacre's achievement was to drag medicine in this country into the sixteenth century; the effect of Caius' example, it is alleged, was firmly to keep it there for a further two centuries. Caius was a reactionary in many ways, of that there is no doubt-his preference for the old rituals and institutions was strengthened by his experience of unruly junior fellows and boisterous undergraduates given to games and drinking, who preferred to spend their money on fashionable clothes that would soon wear out rather than on books that would endure.2 Yet his attachment to the past was not just wistful yearning for a bygone age: he was aware of the positive benefits to the present to be gained by adherence to an active tradition, that of the medical humanism of Linacre, whose memory he venerated and whose tomb he repaired and, in his will, commanded his executors to clean and mend.3 His medical fellowships at his college, his proud and autocratic rule of the College of Physicians, cannot be understood without Linacre's example, and Caius would assuredly have been delighted and flattered by Bullein's praise of him for "shewyng himself to be the seconde

European Review of History: Revue europeenne d'histoire, 2011

Epidemic disease has long exercised a fascination for historians. The disease that devastated Ath... more Epidemic disease has long exercised a fascination for historians. The disease that devastated Athens in 430 BC and recurred a few years later drew from the contemporary historian Thucydides some of his most memorable pages. He portrayed it as a social as well as a medical crisis, a metaphor for the disintegration of Athenian society under the strains of a major war. 1 His detailed description, based on his own personal experiences of the disease, is the most extensive account of an ancient epidemic disease to have survived, and provided the model for innumerable imitators, like the Latin poet Lucretius or the Byzantine historian, Procopius. 2 Indeed, so influential was this description that the Roman satirist Lucian, in the 160s, could expect his audience to appreciate the joke when he described how a certain Crepereius Calpurnianus of Pompeiopolis, writing his history of Rome's wars with Parthia, had transposed large sections of this account from Athens to the distant Syrian city of Nisibis. 3 Thucydides' eyewitness testimony, allied to the apparent precision of his language, attracted the attention of doctors at least from the time of Galen (129-c. 216), who bemoaned the fact that the historian did not know enough medicine fully to single out the most significant features of the disease. Had Hippocrates been the observer, future doctors could have relied on his information to use in their own practices. 4 Modern historians are no less frustrated than Galen, but for different reasons. Thucydides' focus on Athens (and her plague-stricken outpost at Potidaea in northern Greece) robs us of a proper context, for we cannot give precision to Thucydides' passing comment that the disease was felt elsewhere, or link it to other outbreaks of epidemic disease recorded for other places around the same time. The disease itself defies identification in modern terms, and a long series of doctors and historians have raised a string of possibilities, only for the weaknesses in their theories to be denounced by others. 5 Even the recent announcement that archaeological evidence now proves the plague to have been typhoid has been beset by doubts about the DNA analysis and the dating and context of the alleged plague grave.

Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 2003

Abstract A contemporary chronicler described an apparent vivisection performed in Paris in 1475. ... more Abstract A contemporary chronicler described an apparent vivisection performed in Paris in 1475. Over the centuries, the story changed in every particular until it was believed to describe one of the triumphs of French surgery, the first surgical lithotomy. Widely known ...