Main description:

This book explores the presence of Galen of Pergamon (129 - c. 216 AD) in early modern philosophy, science, and medicine. After a short revival due to the humanistic rediscovery of his works, the influence of the great ancient physician on Western thought seemed to decline rapidly as new discoveries made his anatomy, physiology, and therapeutics more and more obsolete. In fact, even though Galenism was gradually dismissed as a system, several of his ideas spread through the modern world and left their mark on natural philosophy, rational theology, teleology, physiology, biology, botany, and the philosophy of medicine. Without Galen, none of these modern disciplines would have been the same. Linking Renaissance with the Enlightenment, the eleven chapters of this book offer a unique and detailed survey of both scientific and philosophical Galenisms from the sixteenth to the late eighteenth century. Figures discussed include Julius Caesar Scaliger, Giambattista Da Monte, Hyeronimus Fabricius ab Aquapendente, Andrea Cesalpino, Thomas Browne, Kenelm Digby, Henry More, Ralph Cudworth, Robert Boyle, John Locke, Guillaume Lamy, Jean-Baptiste Verduc, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Christian Wolff, Julien Offray de La Mettrie, Denis Diderot, and Kurt Sprengel.

Contents:

H Darrel Rutkin On Critical Days: Galen's Treatise on Astrological Medicine and its Influence in Early Modern Europe.- Craig Martin Galenic Causation in the Theoretical and Practical Medicine of Giambattista Da Monte.- Guido Giglioni Galen and the Irritable Self: Reading De Naturalibus Facultatibus in the Early Modern Period.- Fabrizio Baldassarri - Robert Vinkesteijn In the Beginning was the Plant: The Plant-Animal Continuity in the Early Modern Debate On Galen.- Brunello Lotti Galen as a Source for Natural Theology in Early Modern British Philosophy.- Gideon Manning How to Identify a Galenist: The Case of Robert Boyle.- Claire Crignon Locke on Diseases and Respiration: Reading the Galenic Account of the Battle Between Medical Sects.- Emanuela Scribano The use of parts. Mechanism against Galen.- Raphaele Andrault Teleological Anatomy: The Case of Leibniz's Hymnus Galeni.- Matteo Favaretti Camposampiero Christian Wolff's Mechanization of Galen.- Tinca Prunea-Bretonnet Galen's Eclectic Methodology in the Late German Enlightenment .- Charles T. Wolfe Galen's contribution to the history of materialism.