Abstract
A very common view describes iatromechanism—which seeks to explain every bodily process, even pathology, on a purely mechanical basis—as opposed to iatrochemistry, which focuses on medicine through the lens of chemistry. Giorgio Baglivi (1668–1707), a proponent of a mechanistic and solidistic view, shows how misleading this strict distinction can be. While rejecting the chemical medicine of his time, Baglivi dealt with numerous chemical issues strictly related to the role of body fluids, on which he carried out rigorous and verified tests and experiments. This “anatomy of fluids” plays an indispensable role in explaining diseases, finding new remedies and understanding the body itself. Baglivi realised that diseases caused by a certain corruption of fluids are not as easy to study as those involving solids, and that pathology is not simply a malfunctioning machine. In Baglivi’s view, this knowledge should only be based on direct experience with nature.
A preliminary version of this paper was discussed in Scientiae Conference 2021. See also: Luca Tonetti, ‘Machines and Diseases: Giorgio Baglivi and his Mechanistic Physiopathology’, in Wired Bodies. New Perspectives on the Machine-Organism Analogy, edited by Nicole Dalia Cilia and Luca Tonetti (Roma: CNR Edizioni, 2017), 37–44.
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Notes
- 1.
See: Mirko D. Grmek, ‘Osservazioni sulla vita, opera ed importanza storica di Giorgio Baglivi’, in Atti del 14. Congresso internazionale di storia della medicina, Roma-Salerno, 13–20 settembre 1954 (Roma: Guerra e Belli, 1960), 423–437; id., ‘La vita e l’opera di Giorgio Baglivi medico raguseo e leccese (1668–1707)’, in Il nucleo filosofico della scienza, ed. by Guido Cimino, Ubaldo Sanzo and Gabriella Sava (Galatina: Congedo, 1991), 93–111. On Baglivi’s iatromechanics: Maria Vidal, ‘Giorgio Baglivi tra osservazione clinica e speculazioni iatromeccaniche,’ Atti del centro ricerche storiche di Rovigno 20 (1990), 133–214; Tonetti, ‘Machines and Disease’. All quotations from Baglivi’s works, unless otherwise indicated, are from the 7th edition of Baglivi’s complete works: Giorgio Baglivi, Opera omnia medico-practica, et anatomica, 7th ed. (Leiden: Anisson and Joannis Posuel, 1710); hereafter, Opera, followed by the page number. All English translations are mine with the exception of Baglivi’s De praxi medica (abbreviated in PM) for which I have used the following English translation: The Practice of Physick… 2nd ed. (London: D. Midwinter et al., 1723).
- 2.
PM, bk. I, ch. 10, §7 (in Opera, 126): “Nam si compagem illius attente quis lustraverit, inveniet profecto in mandibulis, ac dentibus forficem, in ventriculo phialam, in venis, arteriis, caeterisque canalibus tubulos hydraulicos, in corde embolum, in visceribus cribrum, seu secernicula, follem in thorace, vectis potentiam in musculis, trochleas in angulis oculorum, & sic de reliquis.”.
- 3.
See Opera, 366: “Oportet vero, ut qui recte velit percipere materiam de solidis, & liquidis corporis animati tractantem; apponat sibi prae oculis opera, quae edidit doctissimus Borellus, Romanae Academiae nobile sydus, is enim de proprietatibus liquidorum in genere plura scripsit in aureo libro de motionibus naturalibus a gravitate pendentibus. De vi autem solidorum, in libro de vi percussionis in solidis, & in fluidis projectis a solidis: ubi modus expenditur considerandi solidum seorsim a fluido, fluidum seorsim a solido, & utraque simul.”
- 4.
See Antonio Clericuzio and Maria Conforti, ‘Iatrochemistry and Iatromechanism in the Early Modern Era’, in Encyclopedia of Early Modern Philosophy and the Sciences, ed. by Dana Jalobeanu and Charles Wolfe (Cham: Springer, 2021).
- 5.
The dichotomy between rational method and empirical practice in early modern medicine in Italy is well represented by Malpighi-Sbaraglia dispute at the end of the seventeenth century. The implications for medicine have been thoroughly examined in Domenico Bertoloni Meli, ‘Mechanistic Pathology and Therapy in the Medical Assayer of Marcello Malpighi’, Medical History, 51 (2007), 165–180. See also: Marta Cavazza, ‘The Uselessness of Anatomy: Mini and Sbaraglia versus Malpighi’, in Marcello Malpighi: Anatomist and Physician, ed. by Domenico Bertoloni Meli (Florence: L.S. Olschki, 1997), 129–145; Domenico Bertoloni Meli, Mechanism, Experiment, Disease: Marcello Malpighi and Seventeenth-Century Anatomy (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011), ch. 11. On Baglivi’s view, see: Raphaële Andrault, ‘What Does it Mean to Be an Empiricist in Medicine? Baglivi’s Praxis Medica (1696)’, in What Does it Mean to Be an Empiricist? Empiricisms in Eighteenth Century Sciences, ed. by Siegfried Bodenmann and Anne-Lise Rey (Cham: Springer, 2018), 169–188.
- 6.
PM, Praefatio (in Opera, [xi]).
- 7.
Ibid. (in Opera, [xiii]).
- 8.
In his letter to William Sherard, May 20, 1702 (in RS, Sherard Collection, MS/252/574), Baglivi wrote: “Io qui ho molto da fare: attendo alla stampa di molte altre cose, e non perdo tempo, accio prima di morire veda ristabilita la prattica di medicina, come era a tempi felici del grande Ipocrate” (I have much to do here: I attend to the printing of many other things, and waste no time, so that before I die I may see the praxis of medicine re-established, as it was in the fortunate days of the great Hippocrates). The contrast between “prisca sapientia” and “nova medicina” is reiterated, for example, in PM, bk. I, ch. 1, §3 (in Opera, 2): “Naturae, non hominis voce loquitur Hippocrates Medicorum Romulus; cui nec aetas prisca vidit parem in re medica, nec videbit futura, nisi demum resipiscant Medici, & velut ab alto somno excitati, videant quantum differat historica, & mascula Graecorum Medicina, à speculativa, & pensili novorum Hominum.”
- 9.
PM, bk. I, ch. 10, §1 (in Opera, 119).
- 10.
PM, bk. I, ch. 10, §2 (in Opera, 120): “Primi Itali, inter quos M. Fabius Calvus, Mercurialis, Martianus, Septalius &c. eosque secuti Galli, & prae caeteris ex nobili Parisiensium Academia Duretus, Ballonius, Hollerius, & Jacotius &c. post excussum Arabicae servitutis jugum, ad restituendam priscam Graecorum de re medica sapientiam omni studio contenderunt.” All the authors mentioned here are involved in the early modern rediscovery of Hippocratism in medicine, although they are still closely concerned with traditional approaches, namely translation and textual criticism of the Hippocratic corpus. See: Iain M. Lonie, ‘The “Paris Hippocratics”: Teaching and Research in Paris in the Second Half of the Sixteenth Century’, in The Medical Renaissance of the Sixteenth Century, ed. by Andrew Wear, Roger K. French, and Iain M. Lonie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 155–174. On Baglivi’s Hippocraticism, see Ian M. Lonie, ‘Hippocrates the Iatromechanist’, Medical History, 25 (1981), 113–150; Ingo W. Müller, ‘Der Hippokratismus des Giorgio Baglivi’, Medizinhistorisches Journal, 26, 3–4 (1991), 300–314.
- 11.
PM, bk. I, ch. 10, §4 (in Opera, 121): “Cartesiana, inquam, Democritaea, Mechanica, Physico-Mechanica […].”
- 12.
Ibid.: “Horum exemplo Medici, facti omnino Philosophi, (ab abstractae sapientiae tranquillitate allecti) praxim medicam, quae lectulos aegrorum vix, ac ne vix quidem deserere potest in philosophiam contentiosam converterunt.”
- 13.
PM, bk. I, ch. 11, §7 (in Opera, 126).
- 14.
Ibid.
- 15.
PM, bk. I, ch. 11, §7 (in Opera, 126–127): “quicquid hac de re Medici asserere conantur, nil aliud vere sunt quam ignes fatui, qui rei corticem ne quidem attingunt.”
- 16.
Ibid. (in Opera, 127): “Quamvis ignota nobis sit talium humorum vera configuratio, & textura: ad curationem tamen sufficiet, per experientiam nosse varios eorundem motuum progressus, exitus, & declinationes, qui utpote a natura excitati, & directi, veros indicationum fontes nobis adaperiunt, in exhibendis, mutandisque remediis.”
- 17.
Ibid.: “Haec cum vera sint, fatebimur sane, artem curandorum hominum, solo usu, & exercitatione comparari, adeoque praxim prae theoria […] curationi morborum magis conferre.”
- 18.
Same analogy is used in his description of the dura mater.
- 19.
See Opera, 408: “Ad motum enim musculorum recte peragendum duo necessaria videntur esse, primum determinata sanguinis quantitas in ejus fibris, ejusdemque determinata velocitas. Nam sicuti in horologio excedens, vel deficiens appensum pondus horologij motum impedit, & retardat; ita deficiens, vel abundans sanguinis quantitas, velocitasque in musculis, illorum motui maximo erit impedimento. Alterum est proportio debita motus, & resistentiae singulorum liquidorum per canales suos currentium, quorum alterum si turbetur, musculorum quoque motus inaequalis, & turbatus inde orietur. Id magna ex parte experimur verum in febribus. […].”
- 20.
See Opera, 408: “Certe nisi quis recte quaesiverit proportionem hanc motus, & gravitatis inter componentia minima cujuslibet liquidi, & inter singula liquida per canales suos currentia, nec non aequilibrium inter fluida corporis animati currentia, & solida quae resistunt, vel contra quae impellunt, & contranituntur; ac demum inter solida, & solida tum homogenea, ut membranas inter & membranas, & ex membranis compacta viscera, tum etherogenea ut inter fibras carneas, & membranosas, difficilem profecto problematum mechanices motus musculorum solutionem experietur.”
- 21.
Baglivi thus provides a new interpretation of the Hippocratic concept of balance: it is about the forces and resistances between solids and fluids in the body, since the body is conceived as a bundle of closely interconnected fibres (fasciculus fibrarum), which is crossed by a continuous oscillatory movement. That movement is exerted, first and foremost, by the dura mater of the brain, which serves as the central motor for the body. See Specimen, ch. 6. Luca Tonetti, ‘Bodies in Balance: Santorio’s Legacy in Baglivi’s Medicine’, in Santorio Santori and the Emergence of Quantified Medicine, 1614–1790, ed. by Jonathan Barry and Fabrizio Bigotti (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), 289–315.
- 22.
See Opera, 349–350: “Sed hic contra me obmurmurantem video medicum, & in me his verbis invehentem. Quam minime mathematice instructus est hic Autor solidorum? Quam parcus in afferendis geometricis demonstrationibus, ac legibus pro ardua solidorum provincia illustranda? Cui quidem respondeo, me in hoc de solidis specimine mere ad ampliandam praxim directo, non uti rigorosis legibus demonstrationum, quia morborum origo, progressus, & eventus omnes hujusmodi speculativas demonstrationes flocci faciunt ac spernunt; sed animo praeconceptis ac bene perceptis generalibus quibusdam Mathematices principiis ad hanc rem opportunis; regulas geometriae observationi certae affectionum fibrarum, non vero contra observationem geometriae accommodare in animo semper habuisse.”
- 23.
On the use of colour as a tool of investigation, see: Domenico Bertoloni Meli, ‘The Color of Blood: Between Sensory Experience and Epistemic Significance’, in Histories of Scientific Observation, ed. by Lorraine Daston and Elizabeth Lunbeck (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2011), 117–134.
- 24.
See: Domenico Bertoloni Meli, ‘Blood, Monsters, and Necessity in Malpighi’s De polypo cordis’, Medical History, 45 (2001), 511–512.
- 25.
[Giovanni Girolamo Sbaraglia], De recentiorum medicorum studio dissertatio epistolaris ad amicum (Gottingae, 1687), 32: “[…] potius consulerem ad aliquam remediorum inventionem, & applicationem excitandam, ut Anatomia comparata inter fluida sana, & morbosa institueretur; quaeruntur in denatis viscerum labes, & sanguis caeterique humores negliguntur, quod est idem, ac investigare effectus in partibus solidis, & oscitanter praetermittere causas influidis latentes.” Sbaraglia uses the name “Aristides” as a pseudonym. The imprint Göttingen, 1687, is fictitious.
- 26.
On Sylvius and de Graaf, see: Evan Ragland, ‘Experimenting with Chymical Bodies: Reinier de Graaf’s Investigations of the Pancreas’, Early Science and Medicine 13, 6 (2008), 615–664; id., ‘Chymistry and Taste in the Seventeenth Century: Franciscus dele Boë Sylvius as a Chymical Physician Between Galenism and Cartesianism’, Ambix 59, 1 (2012), 1–21. On Boyle, see: Harriet Knight and Michael Hunter, ‘Robert Boyle’s Memoirs for the Natural History of Human Blood (1684): Print, Manuscript and the Impact of Baconianism in Seventeenth-Century Medical Science’, Medical History 51, 2 (2007), 145–164. On 17th-century research into blood, see Robert G. Frank, Harvey and the Oxford Physiologists: Scientific Ideas and Social Interaction (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1980). On Leeuwenhoek, see: Lesley Robertson et al., Antoni van Leeuwenhoek: Master of the Minuscule (Leiden: Brill, 2016), esp. ch. 8; Ian M. Davis, ‘“Round, Red Globules Floating in a Crystalline Fluid”. Antoni van Leeuwenhoek’s Observations of Red Blood Cells and Hemocytes’, Micron 157 (2022): 103249. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.micron.2022.103249.
- 27.
See, in particular, BUB, ms. 2085/II, which contains Malpighi’s “diarium”, a collection of unpublished notes. On this source, see: Domenico Bertoloni Meli, ‘The Archive and Consulti of Marcello Malpighi’, in Archives of the Scientific Revolution, ed. by Michael Hunter (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1998), 109–120.
- 28.
Letter from Giorgio Baglivi to Antonio Maria Valsalva, April 26, 1692, in BUB, ms. 4030 (see Ladislao Munster, ‘Nuovi contributi alla biografia di Giorgio Baglivi’, Archivio Storico Pugliese 3, 1–2 (1950): 120): “[…] del resto qui vado giornalmente facendo qualche osservazione ne’ cadaveri, e l’altro giorno per ordine del Signor Malpighi con questo Astante dell’Opsedale della Consolatione habbiamo tentato varii sperimenti sopra il sangue e siero humano con soprafonderli, e mischiarvi la polvere di cantarelle e dimani habbiamo determinato di aprire la jugulare d’un cane e d’infonderli qualche portione di tintura di cantarelle, per vederne gli effetti che ne susseguiranno, de’ quali V.S. Ecc.ma ne sarà partecipata a suo tempo […].” Remarkably enough, BUB, ms. 936, box II, folder A, fol. 2, includes a red chalk drawing of blood corpuscles from Malpighi’s observation on human blood in 1690 (“figurae obser: in sanguine humano 1690”). In 1691 Malpighi moved to Rome, following his appointment as archiater. In April 1692 Baglivi joined him. The physician (“astante”) from the Hospital of Consolation is presumably Antonio Pacchioni (1665–1726). On Pacchioni-Baglivi dispute, see Maria Conforti and Silvia de Renzi, ‘Sapere anatomico negli ospedali romani. Formazione dei chirurghi e pratiche sperimentali (1620–1720)’, in Rome et la science moderne: Entre Renaissance et Lumières [online] (Rome: Publications de l’École française de Rome, 2009), available at http://books.openedition.org/efr/1951 .
- 29.
See: Baglivi, Dissertatio III, Lectori (in Opera, 672): “Inter omnes investigationes, laboresque Anatomicorum, nihil utilius illustrandae morborum aetiologiae, structuraeque animati corporis duco, quam infusoriam liquorum in venas, viscerave Animalium vivorum; Quibus mortuis systema mutatur, tam solidarum, quam fluidarum partium, ita ut quandoque diversae appareant, quandoque vero abscondantur. Contra experientiae, quibus utimur in vivis, praecipue per infusoriam, ostendunt effectus inde profectos valde clare, ac sincere.” On ‘chirurgia infusoria’, see Silvia Marinozzi and Maria Conforti, ‘Dal sangue come terapia alla terapia attraverso il sangue nel XVII secolo,’ Medicina nei Secoli, 17, 3 (2005): 695–720.
- 30.
See: Luca Tonetti, ‘Corpus fasciculus fibrarum: Teoria della fibra e pratica medica nel De praxi medica di Giorgio Baglivi’, Physis. Rivista Internazionale di Storia della Scienza, 51, 1–2 (2016): 379–392; and id., ‘Stimulus and Fibre Theory in Giorgio Baglivi’s Medicine: A Reassessment’, in Mechanism, Life and Mind in Modern Natural Philosophy, edited by Charles Wolfe, Paolo Pecere, and Antonio Clericuzio (Cham: Springer, 2022), 67–82.
- 31.
On Jean Pecquet’s experiments, see Domenico Bertoloni Meli, ‘The Collaboration between Anatomists and Mathematicians in the mid-17th Century. With a Study of Images as Experiments and Galileo’s Role in Steno’s Myology’, Early Science and Medicine 13 (2008), 665–709. See also: Nuno Castel-Branco, ‘Physico-Mathematics and the Life Sciences: Experiencing the Mechanism of Venous Return, 1650 s–1680 s’, Annals of Science, 79, 4 (2022): 442–467.
- 32.
Baglivi, De experimentis circa bilem…, conclusio (in Opera, 441): “In decimo, & aliis experimentis, quae cum acidis facta sunt, bilis maximam mutationem in colore, & tota substantia subiit, quasi nihil magis inimicum sit bili, quam acidum. Et si haec exterius contingunt bili, cur negabimus etiam in humano corpore ab acidis peccantibus eadem fieri posse?”.
- 33.
Ibid. (in Opera, 440): “Magna enim morborum pars cum sedem in fluidis habeat, examen, quod circa ipsa peragetur, chymia vel infusoria duce, fieri non potest, ut in curationis morborum utilitatem non redundet.”
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Tonetti, L. (2023). ‘Nature is More Subtle Than Any Mathematician’: Giorgio Baglivi on Fluids in the Human Body. In: Guidi, S., Braga, J. (eds) The Quantification of Life and Health from the Sixteenth to the Nineteenth Century. Palgrave Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Medicine. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15725-7_7
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