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Papers by Sandro Passavanti
A. Pozzo (éd.), Rhétoriques de la dissimulation, Turnhout, Brepols, 2021
Forthcoming
I. Baglioni, M. Iannello, M. Peloso (a cura di), Religioni e medicina. vol. I (L’Antichità Classica), Quasar, Roma, 2021
Forthcoming
M.-L. Desclos (éd.), La poésie dramatique comme discours de savoir, Classiques Garnier, Paris, 2020
A great deal of scholarship since as early as the 1930s has shown the deep interconnections betwe... more A great deal of scholarship since as early as the 1930s has shown the deep interconnections between 5th century Athenian tragedy and the making of Hippocratic medicine, as regards the vocabulary and the imagery used to describe the diseases. While a number of studies insist on the influence of Aeschylus on medical literature, the technical references in Euripides’ play have been mostly exclusively read as the result of the impact of Hippocratic naturalism on the poet’s rationalism. The famous scene from the Orestes, in which the protagonist sees the Erinyes when no one except for Electra is present on stage, for instance, is usually considered as a mise-en-scène of the Hippocratic treatise On the Sacred Disease, which deals with epileptic syndromes ruling out any supernatural origin. Through an innovative analysis of the Hippocratic passages dealing with sensory impairment, I challenge this widespread interpretation, arguing instead for partial independence of this scene from contemporary medical depictions of sensory disorders. I suggest, in fact, quite the contrary: the first representations of the Orestes might have inspired the accurate depiction of a clinical case in the Hippocratic ‘Internal Affections’.
V. Boudon-Millot, A. Guardasole, A. Ricciardetto (eds.), Médecine et Christianisme. Sources et pratiques, Paris (forthcoming), 2020
In a famous passage of Celsus’ anti-Christian pamphlet ‘The True Doctrine’ (2nd c.), the pagan ph... more In a famous passage of Celsus’ anti-Christian pamphlet ‘The True Doctrine’ (2nd c.), the pagan philosopher accuses Mary of Magdala and the other witnesses of Jesus’ resurrection to have partaken in a sort of shared hallucinatory phantasy, originated by an altered psycho-physical condition. Origen of Alexandria, in his apologetical response Contra Celsum (3rd c.), regards this argument as Epicurean and argues against it by employing a Stoicizing terminology. Origen’s interpretation of Celsus’ hypothesis has been so influential that even most recent scholarship on the topic has taken for granted its alleged Epicureanism. Reading the two texts against the background of ancient medical knowledge and Hellenistic philosophy, I provide a new interpretation of the debate, taking both positions as diverging responses to the skeptical argument of false perceptions. While Origen’s argument appears to be genuinely Stoic, Celsus’ assertion – far from being ‘epicurizing’ – may be taken as a further witness of the epistemology of Antiochus of Ascalona’s (1st c. BC), one of the last proponents of Academic skepticism.
« Journal of Theoretical and Applied Vascular Research », 2019
Saint Peregrine Laziosi of Forlì (1265–1345), healed in slumber by the Christ from a fatal leg le... more Saint Peregrine Laziosi of Forlì (1265–1345), healed in slumber by the Christ from a fatal leg lesion at the age of sixty, is considered in the Catholic tradition as the patron Saint of people suffering from incurable malignancies. On the basis of later sources relating his miraculous healing, both Roman Church and contemporary medical literature have hitherto endorsed various diagnostic interpretations of Saint Peregrine’s disease, either to ascertain its incurability and therefore the truthfulness of the miracle described by the sources, or, on the contrary, aiming to provide a complete naturalistic account of his lesion and instant healing. Albeit conflicting, both perspectives rest upon a literal reading of the available texts about Peregrine’s life. Medical scholarship on the subject, in particular, taking hagiographical reports as reliable sources to establish the ‘clinical’ truth of the matter, end up neglecting the religious nature and the edifying purposes of extant written witnesses. I propose in this article to tackle this problem through a narratological lens, stressing on the literary templates and the medical terminology which shape the most ancient and authoritative report about Peregrine’s lower limb pathology. A retrospective diagnosis of venous varicosity complications may indeed appear convincing, although not beyond every doubt: notwithstanding its terminological accuracy, consistent with ancient and medieval medical accounts of infected leg ulcerations, this text builds strongly on a traditional scriptural and hagiographical background, ranging from the Old Testament and the Gospels to early Byzantine Lives of Saints. The impossibility to clearly distinguish the literate convention from the historical account prevents us from stating with certainty the originality of Peregrine’s pathological history, and hence the trustworthiness of our sources as clinical reports.
T. Martí Casado, M. Savva, Le traitement. De la notion physique à ses représentations métaphorique dans l’Antiquité gréco-romaine classique et tardive, Sorbonne Université, Paris, 2019
C. Beneduce, D. Vincenti (eds.), Œconomia Corporis. The Body’s Normal and Pathological Constitution at the Intersection of Medicine and Philosophy, ETS, Pisa 2018, p. 9-20, 2018
In Plato’s Theaetetus (157e-158c) Socrates raises a short argument about dreams, illnesses, and m... more In Plato’s Theaetetus (157e-158c) Socrates raises a short argument about dreams, illnesses, and madness against Protagora’s phenomenistic epistemology (“knowledge is perception”), arguing that in all three cases we misperceive reality and we experience “false sensations”. This argument has been generally understood as a common-sense objection or as a hint to previous philosophical debates about abnormal mental states. However, some clues hinting at the fact that Socrates’ argument is an original reflection on the links between misperception and mental illness (manía). Plato’s view of sensory alterations – substantially differing from Hippocratic reflections on sensorial disorders as well as from Sophistic arguments in favor of the indistinguishability of health and madness, and from the variability of the subjective conditions of knowledge stated by Presocratics – may therefore be taken as an original epistemological argument.
Book Reviews by Sandro Passavanti
Fondazione Collegio San Carlo di Modena, 2014
« Medicina & Storia », 2015
« Ricerche teologiche », 2014
Encyclopedia entries by Sandro Passavanti
Medical Encyclopaedia of Islam and Iran, Teheran Academy of Medical Sciences
Encyclopedia entry 13th century Spanish translator into Latin of al‐Ghâfiqi’s “Kitab al-adwiya ... more Encyclopedia entry
13th century Spanish translator into Latin of al‐Ghâfiqi’s “Kitab al-adwiya al‐mufrada” and Ibn al‐Jazzār’s “Kitab al‐I’timad fi l‐adwiya al‐mufrada”
Medical Encyclopedia of Islam and Iran, Teheran Academy of Medical Sciences
Encyclopedia entry. Provençal translator (14th century) into Hebrew of “Jawāmi‘ al-Iskandarāniyīn... more Encyclopedia entry.
Provençal translator (14th century) into Hebrew of “Jawāmi‘ al-Iskandarāniyīn” (Summaria Alexandrinorum)
A. Pozzo (éd.), Rhétoriques de la dissimulation, Turnhout, Brepols, 2021
Forthcoming
I. Baglioni, M. Iannello, M. Peloso (a cura di), Religioni e medicina. vol. I (L’Antichità Classica), Quasar, Roma, 2021
Forthcoming
M.-L. Desclos (éd.), La poésie dramatique comme discours de savoir, Classiques Garnier, Paris, 2020
A great deal of scholarship since as early as the 1930s has shown the deep interconnections betwe... more A great deal of scholarship since as early as the 1930s has shown the deep interconnections between 5th century Athenian tragedy and the making of Hippocratic medicine, as regards the vocabulary and the imagery used to describe the diseases. While a number of studies insist on the influence of Aeschylus on medical literature, the technical references in Euripides’ play have been mostly exclusively read as the result of the impact of Hippocratic naturalism on the poet’s rationalism. The famous scene from the Orestes, in which the protagonist sees the Erinyes when no one except for Electra is present on stage, for instance, is usually considered as a mise-en-scène of the Hippocratic treatise On the Sacred Disease, which deals with epileptic syndromes ruling out any supernatural origin. Through an innovative analysis of the Hippocratic passages dealing with sensory impairment, I challenge this widespread interpretation, arguing instead for partial independence of this scene from contemporary medical depictions of sensory disorders. I suggest, in fact, quite the contrary: the first representations of the Orestes might have inspired the accurate depiction of a clinical case in the Hippocratic ‘Internal Affections’.
V. Boudon-Millot, A. Guardasole, A. Ricciardetto (eds.), Médecine et Christianisme. Sources et pratiques, Paris (forthcoming), 2020
In a famous passage of Celsus’ anti-Christian pamphlet ‘The True Doctrine’ (2nd c.), the pagan ph... more In a famous passage of Celsus’ anti-Christian pamphlet ‘The True Doctrine’ (2nd c.), the pagan philosopher accuses Mary of Magdala and the other witnesses of Jesus’ resurrection to have partaken in a sort of shared hallucinatory phantasy, originated by an altered psycho-physical condition. Origen of Alexandria, in his apologetical response Contra Celsum (3rd c.), regards this argument as Epicurean and argues against it by employing a Stoicizing terminology. Origen’s interpretation of Celsus’ hypothesis has been so influential that even most recent scholarship on the topic has taken for granted its alleged Epicureanism. Reading the two texts against the background of ancient medical knowledge and Hellenistic philosophy, I provide a new interpretation of the debate, taking both positions as diverging responses to the skeptical argument of false perceptions. While Origen’s argument appears to be genuinely Stoic, Celsus’ assertion – far from being ‘epicurizing’ – may be taken as a further witness of the epistemology of Antiochus of Ascalona’s (1st c. BC), one of the last proponents of Academic skepticism.
« Journal of Theoretical and Applied Vascular Research », 2019
Saint Peregrine Laziosi of Forlì (1265–1345), healed in slumber by the Christ from a fatal leg le... more Saint Peregrine Laziosi of Forlì (1265–1345), healed in slumber by the Christ from a fatal leg lesion at the age of sixty, is considered in the Catholic tradition as the patron Saint of people suffering from incurable malignancies. On the basis of later sources relating his miraculous healing, both Roman Church and contemporary medical literature have hitherto endorsed various diagnostic interpretations of Saint Peregrine’s disease, either to ascertain its incurability and therefore the truthfulness of the miracle described by the sources, or, on the contrary, aiming to provide a complete naturalistic account of his lesion and instant healing. Albeit conflicting, both perspectives rest upon a literal reading of the available texts about Peregrine’s life. Medical scholarship on the subject, in particular, taking hagiographical reports as reliable sources to establish the ‘clinical’ truth of the matter, end up neglecting the religious nature and the edifying purposes of extant written witnesses. I propose in this article to tackle this problem through a narratological lens, stressing on the literary templates and the medical terminology which shape the most ancient and authoritative report about Peregrine’s lower limb pathology. A retrospective diagnosis of venous varicosity complications may indeed appear convincing, although not beyond every doubt: notwithstanding its terminological accuracy, consistent with ancient and medieval medical accounts of infected leg ulcerations, this text builds strongly on a traditional scriptural and hagiographical background, ranging from the Old Testament and the Gospels to early Byzantine Lives of Saints. The impossibility to clearly distinguish the literate convention from the historical account prevents us from stating with certainty the originality of Peregrine’s pathological history, and hence the trustworthiness of our sources as clinical reports.
T. Martí Casado, M. Savva, Le traitement. De la notion physique à ses représentations métaphorique dans l’Antiquité gréco-romaine classique et tardive, Sorbonne Université, Paris, 2019
C. Beneduce, D. Vincenti (eds.), Œconomia Corporis. The Body’s Normal and Pathological Constitution at the Intersection of Medicine and Philosophy, ETS, Pisa 2018, p. 9-20, 2018
In Plato’s Theaetetus (157e-158c) Socrates raises a short argument about dreams, illnesses, and m... more In Plato’s Theaetetus (157e-158c) Socrates raises a short argument about dreams, illnesses, and madness against Protagora’s phenomenistic epistemology (“knowledge is perception”), arguing that in all three cases we misperceive reality and we experience “false sensations”. This argument has been generally understood as a common-sense objection or as a hint to previous philosophical debates about abnormal mental states. However, some clues hinting at the fact that Socrates’ argument is an original reflection on the links between misperception and mental illness (manía). Plato’s view of sensory alterations – substantially differing from Hippocratic reflections on sensorial disorders as well as from Sophistic arguments in favor of the indistinguishability of health and madness, and from the variability of the subjective conditions of knowledge stated by Presocratics – may therefore be taken as an original epistemological argument.
Fondazione Collegio San Carlo di Modena, 2014
« Medicina & Storia », 2015
« Ricerche teologiche », 2014
Medical Encyclopaedia of Islam and Iran, Teheran Academy of Medical Sciences
Encyclopedia entry 13th century Spanish translator into Latin of al‐Ghâfiqi’s “Kitab al-adwiya ... more Encyclopedia entry
13th century Spanish translator into Latin of al‐Ghâfiqi’s “Kitab al-adwiya al‐mufrada” and Ibn al‐Jazzār’s “Kitab al‐I’timad fi l‐adwiya al‐mufrada”
Medical Encyclopedia of Islam and Iran, Teheran Academy of Medical Sciences
Encyclopedia entry. Provençal translator (14th century) into Hebrew of “Jawāmi‘ al-Iskandarāniyīn... more Encyclopedia entry.
Provençal translator (14th century) into Hebrew of “Jawāmi‘ al-Iskandarāniyīn” (Summaria Alexandrinorum)