Abstract
How are we to connect the mechanist methodology used by Baglivi in his physiological treatises with the apparently strict empiricism that he promotes in his therapeutic work entitled Practice of Physick, reduc’d to the Ancient Way of Observations? In order to answer this question, we examine the methodological implications of the “history of diseases” that Baglivi promotes by using Bacon’s recommendations in the Novum organum. Then, we compare this result with the place that historians generally gave to Baglivi in the medical context of that time: the place of a dogmatic and “iatromechanist” physician who was far from practical and therapeutic concerns. This confrontation allows us first to apprehend the polemical origin of the so-called “iatromechanism” as a historiographical label, and second, to question the preeminence of the role of observations in the shaping of the classical distinction between “rational” physicians and “empirical” ones. When Early Modern physicians use the dichotomy between “empirical” and “rationalist” in order to discredit what they perceive as oversimplification or dogmatism, there is most often a third group at stake: a group which is depicted as the providential and intelligent solution to sectarianism. For Baglivi, this third group would be an “Empirick rational sect.” The distinction between a medicina prima and a medicina secunda allows us to understand such an apparently paradoxical category.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
See Boucher (1851), I–LXIX, footnote 1, VII, VIII.
- 3.
See Catherine Wilson, ch. 6 supra, on the “split between Continental Rationalism and British Empiricism.”
- 4.
Baglivi (1704a), book 1, ch. 1, 1. Now quoted: PM (De praxi medica), I, I, 1. If the translation is relatively free, the meaning of Baglivi’s book is, for the passages we quote, entirely faithful to the Latin.
- 5.
PM, I, II, § 3.
- 6.
PM, I, II, § 7, 11.
- 7.
- 8.
PM, II, V, § 4, 245.
- 9.
PM, I, 2, § 7, 11: “For two patients seiz’d with a plurisie, (for instance) and treated different ways, by two different Physicians, will likewise have different symptoms: so that if there be an error in the method of cure, the physician and not the disease, will be the author of many symptoms”.
- 10.
PM, I, 5, § 6, 30.
- 11.
On Bacon’s influence and the importance of the De praxi medica for Boissier de Sauvages’s Nosology, see Martin (1990), 111–137, 115–118.
- 12.
PM, I, VI. For instance, 24, invoking the fact of believing exclusively in the virtue of only one remedy supposed to cure every disease, either the milk, or purgation and bleeding, or else the “acids and alkalis”.
- 13.
Bacon’s induction is quoted PM, 224.
- 14.
PM, II, III, § 2, 220.
- 15.
PM, II, III, § 3, 223.
- 16.
He became a member of the Royal Society in 1697.
- 17.
PM, II, IV, 1, 231.
- 18.
PM, II, IV, 2, 234.
- 19.
Baglivi (1704b).
- 20.
- 21.
Sydenham is not quoted in the methodological parts of De praxi medica, but his name is mentioned a few times as an heir of Hippocrate, along with Settala, Morton, Manget, Tulpius, Rivière or Tozzi. See PM, II, 2, § 3, 216.
- 22.
In this matter, see Duchesneau (1973), chs. 1 and 2.
- 23.
PM, II, VI, § 1, 250. Compare to Sydenham’s Tractatus de podagral et hydrope (Sydenham 1683).
- 24.
Grmek (1970), 391–392, esp. 391.
- 25.
Daremberg (1870), 786–787.
- 26.
PM, I, XI, § 7, 135–136.
- 27.
Canguilhem (1992), 101–157, esp. 104.
- 28.
PM, I, XI, § 7, 136–137. We could add the conclusion of this passage: “Now these truths being premis’d, we can’t but confess that the art of curing human bodies is acquir’d only by use and exercise; and consequently, that practice is of more importance than the theory.”
- 29.
- 30.
This presentation corresponds to the descriptions of Baglivi’s works in the Journal des sçavans (1702, December the 11th), 1122sq. and in the Nouvelles de la République des lettres (1704, November), article VIII, 559sq.
- 31.
See Baglivi (1710).
- 32.
Bordeu (1754), 477.
- 33.
PM, II, VII, § 1, 267.
- 34.
PM, I, VI, § 2, 36.
- 35.
We could find in Leibniz the proof of his interest (and even preference) for Baglivi’s conception of the membranes (that is to say, for the following ideas: 1/ the vibrations of the membranes as the “impetum facientia” of the human body, 3/ the sensitive importance of the dura mater, 2/ the fact that it is the membrane, not the nerve, which allows the sensitive perception (for instance for the view it would be the choroïde and not the retine). Leibniz found in this theory a possibility to reduce physiological processes to their “mechanical causes”. See the letter to Michelotti (1715) in Leibniz (1768), II-2, 90–91.
- 36.
PM, I, VI, II, 36.
- 37.
Baglivi (1761), 9.
- 38.
Baglivi (1851), 32–33.
- 39.
Conring (1687), 68.
- 40.
See Michelotti (1721).
- 41.
On this matter, see our paper: Andrault (2013).
- 42.
Grmek (1970), 392.
- 43.
PM, II, V, § 6, 249.
- 44.
Even if here the spring is a fluid, not the elastic motion of the membranes.
- 45.
PM, II, IX, § 10, 307.
- 46.
On this negative connotation, see the semantic analysis of Marc Ratcliff, ch. 2 supra: in 17th and 18th centuries, an “Empirik” was mainly a Quack.
- 47.
PM, II, IX, § 2, 285 (see Baglivi 1704b, 206: “Neque quis putet nos hîc sustinere Empiricos, qui causas evidentes, & subjectas sensui perpetuo revolvunt, latentes vero atque internas propemodum despiciunt…”).
- 48.
PM, II, II, § 1, 213 (see Baglivi 1704b, 167: “Empirici licet experientiam perpetuo jactent, illam tamen nunquam recte attingunt; nam praeterquam quod sine luce & method eandem aggrediuntur, tantam inquisitionis diuturnitatem non sustinent, quanta explorandis morborum effectibus, & exinde praeceptis practicis deducendis requiritur; unde nil mirum si ex stupido, nebuloso, ac prorsus erroneo experiundi genere, talis quoque Empiricorum praxis oriatur.”).
- 49.
PM, II, II, § 1, 211 (see Baglivi 1704b, 167: “… non ita si Empiricam [sectam] rationalem, sive Empiricam factam litteratam, methodo non casu inventam, ab intellectu faecundatam, & directam, & post diuturnam effectuum morborum explorationem ad veritatis culmen perductam; quam mehercule docti Viri semper laudarunt, & tanquam naturae consonam ad majora promoverunt.”).
- 50.
PM, I, XII, § 5, 145. And as for Bacon, see Bacon (1961–3), vol. I, § 95, 201.
- 51.
PM, I, I, § 12, 7–8 (see Baglivi 1704b, 4: “Qui rationem cum experientia conflictare volunt, nae illi omnes desipere mihi videntur tam Empiric, quam Rationales. Quomodo enim dici potest, omnes Rationi partes tribuendas esse ea. in disciplina, quae, ut sapiens quisque fateri debet, longinqui temporis usu, ac periclitatione acquiritur? Aut respectum ad solam experientiam habendum esse, & nullo loco rationem esse numerandam; modo Rarionis nomine, non illa vis animi intelligatur, quae obscura naturae investigans inventio, & excogitatio dicitur, & magis ad physicam pertinent: sed illa potius Domina omnium, & Regina Ratio, per quam consequentia videt Medicus, morborum principia, & causas conjicit, eorundem progressus, eventusque auguratur, & ex rebus praesentibus assequitur, ac prospicit futuras.”).
- 52.
PM, II, II, § 2, 213, speaking critically of the observations of the Empirics: “These observations are like so many unsteady waves of fleeting Experience, made upon three or four cases, and not continued in a constant order through hundreds and thousands of patients, as the school of Coos did”.
- 53.
Jaucourt (1755), 587: “Empiricism—practice entirely based on experience. Nothing seems more sensible than such a medicine, but do not let ourselves deceive by the word…” (my translation from the French original: “pratique uniquement fondée sur l’expérience. Rien ne paraît plus sensé qu’une telle medecine: mais ne nous laissons pas tromper par l’abus du mot; démontrons-en l’ambiguïté avec M. Quesnai, qui l’a si bien dévoilée dans son ouvrage sur l’oeconomie animale”).
- 54.
We do not mean that such an opposition is always useless, but only that it is enlightening in specific contexts, where the meaning of “experience” and the intellectual motivations of the opposition are made explicit. (See for instance, the Kantian theorization of “Empiricism” in this book, ch. 2). According to Sophie Roux, there is sometimes a confusion between the empiricism (as opposed to rationalism) and the experimentalism (a doctrine derived from the constitution of natural sciences), see: Roux (2013), 48.
- 55.
PM, II, II, § 1, 210.
- 56.
PM, I, V, § 4, 27.
- 57.
PM, I, V, § 5, 28: “Now the infancy of Physick, which owes its first nourishment to the history of diseases, cannot be confounded and tyed up to the rules of other sciences, without demolishing the very foundations of the Divine art itself”.
- 58.
PM, I, V, § 5, 28.
- 59.
PM, II, I, § 2, 208.
- 60.
Kerckring (1670), prooemium, 2.
- 61.
See Sbaraglia (1698), 258.
- 62.
See for instance Steno in Kardel et al. (1994), 85, 87: “Our body is an organism composed of a thousand organs. Whoever thinks that its true understanding can be sought without Mathematical assistance must also think that there is matter without extension, and body without figure”, “And why would it not be permitted to hope for great things if Anatomy was transformed so that experimental knowledge would rely only on well established facts and reason accepted only what has been demonstrated, in other words, if Anatomy used the language of Mathematics?”
- 63.
One could find the same kind of argument in Steno’s geological treatise, De solida intra solidum naturaliter contenter, see Steno (1968), 145: “This, to avoid this reef also, I decided to press with all my might in physics for what Seneca often urges strongly regarding moral precepts; he states that the best moral precepts are those which are in common use, widely accepted, and which are jointly proclaimed by all from every school, Peripatetics, Academics, Stoics, and Cynics… Thus I do not determine whether particles of a natural substance can or cannot undergo change…”
- 64.
PM, I, V, § 8, 31–32.
- 65.
Duchesneau (1982a), 126.
- 66.
PM, II, VIII, 269–270.
- 67.
See for instance, in De praxi medica, the distinction between acute and chronic diseases, or the distinction between several time-periods (birth, progress, or decline of the disease).
- 68.
Baglivi (1704b), 167.
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Andrault, R. (2018). What Does It Mean to Be an Empiricist in Medicine? Baglivi’s De praxi medica (1696). In: Bodenmann, S., Rey, AL. (eds) What Does it Mean to be an Empiricist?. Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, vol 331. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69860-1_9
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