27/5/2019 Medicine — Brill

Brill’s Encyclopaedia of the Neo-Latin World

Medicine
(7,364 words)

Introduction: Language and Reality

Article Table of Contents
¶ For a long time, western medicine has been a
Introduction: Language and
fundamentally trilingual experience, for Greek, Latin and
Reality
Arabic were the languages that shaped the discipline for
more than two millennia. In the early modern period, as a Medical Humanism
result of a powerful movement of textual criticism and far- Medical Lexicography
reaching inquiries into the historical and cultural aspects of Paracelsianism
language known as ‘humanism’, Latin rose to the status of a Further Reading
powerful cognitive tool, both e fective and accurate in
adjusting knowledge and language to a reality in rapid
transformation.

The development of early modern medicine is marked by a characteristic tension between an

outstanding accumulation of new information concerning nature, the body, human diseases and
remedies, on the one hand, and a parallel e fort to hone the expressive and denotative potential
of the Latin language, on the other. The process through which Latin—transformed into a
sophisticated instrument of scienti c research—was accommodated to new knowledge and
new things is an event of primary importance in the history of early modern culture. One would
expect discussions about Latin to be rare in the eld of medicine, where health and disease have
always been perceived as realities that are too urgent and intense to become subjects for
disquisitions on style and linguistic propriety. As constantly reminded by one of the most
famous among Hippocrates’ aphorisms, life is short and is certainly not worth wasting in
linguistic quibbles about medical names or essences. And yet, also within the domain of
medicine, Latin’s precision and conciseness had turned that language into the ideal lingua
franca in exchanges of knowledge among di ferent intellectual communities, on both a national
and an international level. By all means, the range of positions was broad, going from overtly
anti-Latin attitudes to passionate defences of its value. To give only one example, while the
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 Cremonese physician Sebastiano Bresciani ( l. 1570)
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reminded readers of medical texts that a
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‘distinguished’ doctor needed to be ‘skilled in Greek, Latin and Arabic languages’, Giovanni
Argenterio (1513–1572), who between 1543 and 1555 lectured on medical theory and practice at
the newly re-established University of Pisa, complained that professors of medicine at the time
should more correctly be referred to as teachers of grammar than actual physicians, ‘for they
possess only the knowledge (ratio) of the Greek and Latin language’.1 Because of this
characteristic tension between expansion of knowledge and the sharpening of Latin’s expressive
focus, the history of early modern medicine is intertwined with the evolution of such categories
as ‘humanism’, ‘scholasticism’, ‘Galenism’, ‘Hippocratism’, ‘Avicennianism’ and ‘Paracelsianism’. It
is signi cant to note that in all these cases Latin played a crucial role: it helped rede ne
nomenclatures and provided a linguistic platform to mediate between textual and natural
knowledge; it favoured the adjustment of the imposing tradition of university teaching and
learning to new cultural and institutional settings; it gave early modern anatomists and
practitioners an e fective tool to use in their e forts to assimilate the vast corpus of previous
medical learning, such as the fundamentals of the Galenic understanding of the human body,
the Hippocratic wealth of information in matters of clinical and empirical medicine, and the
systematic spirit of the Avicennian synthesis; and nally, it facilitated the gradual assimilation of
vernacular and popular medicine, especially the principal tenets of Paracelsian natural
philosophy. In some cases, the division between such di ferent activities as reading books and
collecting real samples, commenting on medical authorities and studying nature is clear and
unequivocal. More often than not, though, a large number of works demonstrate that the
boundaries dividing one domain from the other were in fact quite permeable at the time. If, for
instance, a physician like Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499), with his extremely re ned background of
Platonic and Hermetic themes, could devise health regimens for men of letters and philosophy
by also relying on vernacular medicine and popular magic, it is a clear indication that the grey
area separating elite from popular cultures needs to be trodden carefully. Another example:
although Girolamo Cardano (1501–1576) wrote in Latin as an autodidact, he remained open to
elements of popular, scholastic and Arabic medicine throughout his career and looked at Latin
as a convenient means of communication at many levels. Finally, for all his pronouncements of
loyalty towards medical orthodoxy, Daniel Sennert (1572–1637) tried to reconcile Galenism with
the most up-to-date information and terminology coming from iatrochemical medicine, as was
clearly stated in his De chymicorum cum Aristotelicis et Galenicis consensu ac dissensu (‘The
chemical physicians’ consent and dissent with the Aristotelians and the Galenists’), published in
1619.

Between the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Renaissance, discussions about
the use of Latin in medicine were often intertwined with heated controversies concerning the
epistemological, methodological and institutional status of the discipline. During the fourteenth
and fteenth centuries, the antagonism between Aristotelianism and Galenism within the
scholastic tradition of both medicine and philosophy had intensi ed, as is apparent in the work
of Pietro d’Abano (c. 1250–1316), Gentile da Foligno (c. 1275–1348), Ugo Benzi (1376–1439) and 2/17
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 Tommaso del Garbo (c. 1305–1370). Moreover, progress
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in the domain of natural philosophy
Medicine — Brill

resulted in a general reassessment of the disciplinary organisations at the university. The

increasingly positive values attached to the activity of direct observation (historia) helped
rede ne the role of demonstrative arguments (scientia) and technical skill (ars) in the making of
scienti c knowledge. Within this general debate, medicine’s place wavered between the domain
of theoretical knowledge (the nature of life and the relationship between the soul and the body),
the sphere of mechanical and manual arts (ars operativa) and that of anatomical ‘history’. There
is no doubt that for a long while early modern culture continued to be riddled with the
characteristic contrast between, on the one hand, a clear awareness of the advantages provided
by Latin monolingualism (in terms of taxonomic consistency, semantic appropriateness and
technical precision) and, on the other, the expressive diversity provided by alternative means of
communication, on both a linguistic and visual level. However, despite countless cries about the
faults of the knotted and crabbed Latin of the schoolmen, some of which were irritatingly
con ned to the domain of inane bellettrism and self-fashioning vanity, Latin was increasingly
perceived by practitioners involved in the study of nature as the language that could contribute
to the ne-tuning of textual knowledge with a direct experience of nature.

Re ections on the nature of Latin as a scienti c tool were therefore closely related to
contemporary controversies about the best ways of securing production and transfer of
knowledge. From this point of view, the contribution of humanism to the discussion of the place
of Latin in medical knowledge had a long-lasting impact. Humanist savants and physicians
provided the level of historical, lexicographic and national awareness that was indispensable to
shape the identity of Latin as a transnational means of communication. Firstly, they pointed out
that any meaningful assessment of the relationship between language and reality had to be done
with a clear sense of the historicity of human cultures. Secondly, the discussion about the proper
use of Latin was connected to the question of the right nomenclature and how to convey in a
reliable way the whole system of correspondences between Greek, Latin (both classical and
scholastic), Arabic and national vernaculars. Finally, medical Latin had to respond to the
emergence of self-con dent and combative traditions of vernacular medicine, among which
Paracelsianism was certainly the most revolutionary and in uential. In all these cases, the
debate about the scope and limits of Latin as a cultural meta-language evolved from a
circumscribed technical question concerning translation and style into a veritable linguistic turn
with a strong philosophical import.

Medical Humanism
In the early modern period the progress of medical knowledge depended in a crucial way on
investigations about nature, the human body and materia medica as much as on the recovery of
the texts of antiquity, restored, when possible, to their pristine condition. Defending the need to
recover the correct approach to medicine by the ancients (prisca atque recta medendi ratio),
Leonhart Fuchs (1501–1566), professor of medicine at the University of Tübingen, described this3/17
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 task as frustratingly di cult, as if one were operating
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in a linguistic limbo in which ‘the Greek
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Galen was still not available, nor was he speaking to us su ciently well in Latin in the great
majority of works during this time’.2 Like Fuchs, many scholars at the time were confronted by a
situation in which original texts had been replaced by inadequate surrogates written in bad
Latin. As in other elds of human learning at the time, both naturalism and antiquarianism
acted as powerful agents of change and innovation. Understandably, faithfulness to the original
texts and propriety of language were issues of primary importance. In the letter to Thomas
Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, which prefaces his 1549 translation of Alexander of Tralles’
Twelve Books on Medicine, Johannes Guinther of Andernach (c. 1497–1574), anatomist, editor and
translator, announced that he had made Alexander of Tralles speak in Latin, ‘if not in a very
elegant and eloquent manner, certainly in a simple, proper and, as far as possible, correct way.’
And he continued:

I think that to express the opinions of the author whom one has decided to translate with no
absurd circumlocutions or far-fetched expressions is the mark of a faithful interpreter of
scienti c matters.3

Echoing Ciceronian concerns (‘I am not unaware that the words to be translated in any speech in
any language should not be considered with respect to their number, but their force’) and
acknowledging that ‘Latin words cannot always match their Greek equivalents’, Guinther
insisted on the importance of recognising that ‘both languages have their own proper
signi cations, speci c gures and usage.’4

Humanist translators of the Greek physicians of antiquity resorted to a large number of

solutions in cases of technical di culties. They could coin new terms, use periphrases, assign
new meanings to old terms, employ synonyms, adopt loanwords from the original or
transliterate technical words. Often, the relative scarcity of technical terms in the vocabulary of
classical Latin led Renaissance interpreters to turn their attention to authors of the late Latinity.
As shown by Richard Durling, Thomas Linacre (c. 1460–1524), key gure of humanist and
physician, was indebted to a wide range of late Latin authors for his vocabulary: elixatio,
fermentatio, perpensio, sangui catio, appetitorius, imaginatrix, morbi cus, experimentalis, to
mention only a few examples. Other words such as a fectrix, concoctrix, gustatorius and
transpirabilis may be considered Linacre’s own coinages.5

The striking in uence of medical humanism on the discipline during the fteenth and sixteenth
centuries can be seen at many levels. The establishment of a reliable corpus of Latin translations
of Hippocrates’ and Galen’s works represents one of the most spectacular accomplishments of
both medicine and textual criticism during the Renaissance. Another key contribution lies in
their philological and linguistic expertise, which remarkably improved taxonomic precision in
the elds of anatomy, botany and materia medica. In a situation of terminological uidity, in
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 which a long history of loans and borrowings among
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Greek, Arabic and the vernacular languages
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had contributed to blur the contours of words and things, Latin could act as an instrument of
metalinguistic clarity and distinction. This does not mean that humanists were simply involved
in discussions about words. More often than not, they were fully edged anatomists and
physicians, directly concerned with medical research and treatment, and decisions about proper
terminology and classi cation could have momentous consequences in the domains of therapy
and pharmacology.6

In some cases, excessive worship of the canonical works of antiquity proved to be

counterproductive. Jacques Dubois, better known in Latin as Jacobus Sylvius (1478–1555), the
author of a grammar of French language In linguam gallicam isagoge, una cum eiusdem
grammatica latino-gallica, ex hebraeis, graecis et latinis authoribus (Introduction to the French
language, together with its grammar in French and Latin, based on Jewish, Greek and Latin
authors) (1531), was also one of the most important anatomists and scholars of ancient medicine
at the time. For Sylvius, restoring the original text of Galen was such a priority that he did not
hesitate to defend Galen’s words even when they were blatantly refuted by fresh anatomical
evidence. In his Isagoge in Hippocratis et Galeni physiologiae partem anatomicam (Introduction
to the anatomical part of Hippocrates’ and Galen’s natural philosophy), originally published in
1541, Sylvius presented his main task as providing the reasons why ‘today in our bodies a few
parts look di ferently from the time of Hippocrates, Galen and other ancient anatomists’.7
Apparent divergences in bodily structures were in fact di ferences in textual descriptions. To save
the anatomical phenomena of antiquity, especially Galen’s ones, meant for Sylvius to save the
philological phenomena established through textual criticism. To do so, he set out to
demonstrate that our bodies had changed (in size, in shape and in longevity) when compared to
the bodies of our progenitors. It was indeed a risky move, for to say that nature had somehow
evolved during the centuries could question the belief in the immutability of created species
and essences. In Sylvius’ intentions, however, natural changeability was meant to justify
philological dogmatism and lexical invariability, and certainly was no attempt to question the
venerable notion of an atemporal chain of being.

Medical Lexicography
As evidence of growing con dence in both systematising medical knowledge and writing in
Latin, an intense lexicographic activity developed during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. Behind the e fort to order an imposing quantity of linguistic material, there was the
need to assimilate an extraordinary amount of knowledge, to catalogue new information, to
preserve the speci c and technical nature of the medical lexicon and to accommodate the
traditional Latin vocabulary to a body of knowledge written in the vernacular. It therefore does
not come as much of a surprise that Latin lexicography blossomed during the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries.
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 The Onomasticon by Julius Pollux, a second-century
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rhetorician, published in Venice by Aldus in
Medicine — Brill

1502, exercised a certain in uence on anatomists who were eager to enrich their vocabulary with
Greek terms. In 1541 the Onomasticon was translated into Latin by Rudolf Gwalther (1519–1586), a
Protestant theologian who succeeded to Heinrich Bullinger as head of Zurich. The second book
of Pollux’s Onomasticon proved to be especially useful, for it is devoted to the parts of the human
body and to ‘the most frequent use of the names that correspond to each single part’, starting
with the hair and then going through the head, the face, the vertebrae, the throat, the hands, the
ribs, the muscles, the feet, the stomach and the internal organs.8 Other anatomical glossaries—
either recovered from antiquity or created anew—were Giorgio Valla’s De humani corporis
partibus (1501), Theophilus Protospatharius’ De corporis humani fabrica and Rufus of Ephesus’ De
appellationibus partium corporis humani, translated into Latin by Giunio Paolo Grasso (d. 1575), a
physician and professor of medicine at the University of Padua, respectively in 1537 and 1552.
Medici antiqui Graeci, an anthology of texts from, among others, Aretaeus of Cappadocia and
Palladius, edited by the same Grasso, appeared in Basel in 1581. De natura structuraque hominis
opus by Meletius of Tiberiopolis, a Chalcedonian Christian who had written his treatise
sometime between the seventh and the thirteenth centuries, was translated into Latin by
Nicolaus Petreius in 1552.9 Bartolomeo Eustachi (1524–1574), the great anatomist of Galenic faith,
edited and translated Erotianus’ Collection of Hippocratic Words in 1566. Indexing the works of
Hippocrates and Galen that were being published in these crucial years was a natural part of the
editorial and translating activity. The in uential humanist Antonio Musa Brasavola (1500–1555)
composed an Index refertissimus in omnes Galeni libros (Venice, 1551) which, because of its
precision and comprehensiveness, remained in use for centuries.10

The early modern medical lexicon in Latin underwent a number of important transformations
due to the rediscovery or improved knowledge of medical works of antiquity, the in uence of
the vernacular and the impact of new approaches in medicine (mostly iatrochemistry and
iatromechanics). A reliable way of surveying the changes in the medical lexicon is to examine
the evolution of the renowned lexicon by Bartolomeo Castelli. Originally published in Messina
in 1598, it was reprinted in Venice in 1607, then again in 1628 with some additions by Emmanuel
Stuppan (1587–1664), professor of theoretical medicine at the University of Basel. In 1651 it was
enlarged and published in Rotterdam by Adrian Ravenstein (c. 1651–1685), then expanded even
more dramatically by Jacob Pancraz Bruno (1629–1709), who in 1682 republished the Castelli in
Nuremberg in a much expanded version and with a new title, Castellus renovatus (‘ad vera
novaque artis medicae principia accommodatus’, ‘adjusted to the true and new principles of the
medical art’). It was later reprinted in Padua in 1699 with the title Amaltheum Castello-
Brunonianum. Bartolomeo Castelli was a professor of practical medicine at the University of
Messina.11 He wrote an inaugural Oratio to the Senate of Messina (1596), a short and clear
Introductio to Aristotle’s logic (1596) and a Compendium et synopsis of the whole medical art
(1597). In his dedicatory letter to the senate of Messina which opens his dictionary, Castelli
explains that in writing his entries he had not been concerned with providing essential
de nitions (essentiae quidditativae) but pragmatic and useful terminological explanations, so 6/17
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 that his students could know ‘the origin and the meaning
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of medical terms’. In this way,
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especially when students were at the beginning of their studies, they would not stumble on
terminological di culties that could prevent their progress in the medical discipline.12 There
was also an autobiographical element behind Castelli’s decision to provide students of medicine
with a lexicon. He recounted that when he himself had been a student at the University of
Naples attending the courses of Giovanni Antonio Pisano, he had needed to be instructed
privately by the same Pisano in his home because he had ignored the names of speci c parts of
the body or of particular diseases.13

Owing to the signi cant additions and deletions introduced in the course of two centuries by a
number of editors who happened to be medical practitioners, Castelli’s Lexicon allows us to
assess the evolution of medical Latin through two centuries. Some examples are in order.
Referring to Galen’s De partibus artis medicativae (The parts of the medical art), Castelli reported
the classical de nition of autopsia as ‘the observation and recollection of those things that
everyone has seen with his own eyes’ (‘Autopsia, est eorum observatio et memoria, quae proprio
intuitu unusquisque inspexit’).14 Ravenstein’s edition added the following remark: ‘a word
characteristic of the Empirical sect, through which they meant the recollection of the things that
had been frequently seen and seen in the same way.’15 Bruno’s edition further expanded the
scope of the initial de nition by Galen by pointing out that direct inspection with one’s eyes
(autopsia, sive ocularis demonstratio) was necessary also for ‘rational’ medicine, especially after
the important anatomical discoveries of the past two centuries. Furthermore, autopsia was not
limited to the eyes, but included ‘observations through the other external senses’.16 The entry
‘Agonia’, which in the original 1598 edition describes the condition as an ‘uneven motion
resulting from the combination of fear and anger’, in Bruno’s edition takes into account the
iatrochemical work of Jan Baptista van Helmont (1579–1644) and refers the reader to the
de nition of ‘agonia’ in Helmont’s treatise De ideis morbosis, in which the condition is described
as a more dramatic ‘wrestling’ (colluctatio) among several emotions such as fear, hope, anger,
hatred, sadness and dissembling.17 Likewise, a signi cant Helmontian in uence can be noted in
Bruno’s expanded entry ‘Idea’. In the original 1598 Castelli, the de nition is less than a line (‘Idea
morbi, idest morbi essentia’), with the reference to Galen’s De crisibus; Bruno expands and
distinguishes between the meaning of ‘idea’ as exhaustive de nition (‘integra alicujus rei natura’,
‘the complete essence of a thing’) and the one introduced into medicine by Helmont and ‘other
followers of the “spagyric” ’ (i.e., Paracelsian) philosophy, who, ‘being determined to recover
Platonic ideas’, understood by ideas ‘images, conceptions, semblances, in one word, beings of
reason (entia rationis)’.18

The characteristic terminology of humoural medicine is well represented, especially in the early
editions of the dictionary: cachexia (‘a bad disposition of the body’), cacochymia (‘peccant
humour’), coctio (the transmutation of the nutritive substance), concoctio (‘the stomach’s
transformation of food into a quality that is suitable for the animal’), crasis (the balance of the
temperamental qualities), crisis (‘that is, judgement’, which, ‘according to some authors, denotes7/17
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 an abrupt change in the course of a disease; for others,
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only a tendency to a better state; for
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others, the agitation that precedes the resolution; for others, the complete resolution of the
whole disease; for others, only that resolution which happens for the good’), dyscrasia (an
unbalanced combination of the four primary qualities), habitus (‘the structure and composition
of the parts of our body’), nativus calor, also known as calidum innatum (which, according to
Galen, is either the soul or the primary and principal instrument of the soul), sangui catio (‘the
change of food into blood’), and spiritus (an entry that, quite signi cantly, in the original Castelli
is more articulate than in Bruno’s up-to-date version of 1682).19 Among the humours, bile
remains one of the central ones. The 1598 Castelli records a good number of varieties: ‘sour’
(acida), ‘rusty’ (aëruginosa), ‘bitter’ (amara), ‘roasted’ (assata), ‘scratching’ (radens), ‘pale’
(pallida), ‘leek-green’ (porracea), ‘yellow’ ( lava), ‘yolk-like’ (vitellina), ‘red’ (rubra), ‘dark’ (atra),
‘bluish’ (isatodes), and ‘black’ (nigra). The most neutral form of bile (biliosus humor) is the bitter
and pale one.20 Under ‘Ecstasis melancholica’, Castelli describes ‘a vehement and feral motion
and mental derangement (aberratio mentis) which derives from yellow bile that has been burnt
and over ows the brain.’ Ravenstein adds that melancholic ecstasy should not be confused with
a contemplative state (abstractio mentis a corpore ad contemplanda coelestia), which is also
called anagoge (‘ascent’) and ‘it is not a disease’. Hyoscyamus, green coriander and ephemeron
are listed as plants containing an ‘ecstatic power’. Bruno’s 1682 edition adds an intriguing
reference to Sennert’s characterisation of melancholic ecstasy as a form of religious
enthusiasm.21

The most signi cant and telling examples, however, are the ones that refer to bodily parts whose
de nitions and descriptions underwent momentous changes as a result of anatomical
discoveries, or re ected the increasing in uence of ideas and words introduced by the
Paracelsian revolution. As an example of the rst category, we can take the entry ‘Vena cava’,
described in the 1598 Castelli as ‘most ample’, originating ‘from the humps of the liver’ and
through which ‘the liver, from the particles that reach the stomach, distributes to all the higher
parts of the body the aliment that is attracted and elaborated in the substance of the liver.’22 In
the 1657 and 1682 later editions, the vena cava’s time-honoured ties with Galenic physiology are
cut o f or e faced in favour of an anatomical description of the circulation that is by now in line
with William Harvey’s discovery of the circulation of the blood (1628).23 ‘Circuitus’, the original
entry in the 1598 Castelli, refers to the cycle of intensi cation and remission of symptoms in a
disease (an entry which is expanded in Ravenstein’s edition), whereas in Bruno’s Lexicon the
new, important entry ‘Circulatio’ makes its appearance, devoted to both Harvey’s discovery of
the circulation of the blood—subdivided into circulation through the whole body (circulatio
sanguinis universalis), pulmonary circulation (circulatio sanguinis particularis) and circulation of
the animal spirits (circulatio spirituum animalium)—and to the chemical notion of distillation
(exaltatio essentiarum per circularem in vaso hermetico, ‘enhancement of essences through
distillation in a chemical vessel’).24 The old entry ‘Circuitus’ is instead reabsorbed into the one
dealing with ‘Periodus’.25 Particularly signi cant is the evolution of the entry ‘Hepar’. In the 1598
Castelli, the liver is de ned as ‘the principal organ located in the right part of the abdomen,
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 origin of all the veins, and the rst workshop andMedicine
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organ—of sangui cation, which is called
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haematosis, and the principle of the nutritive power.’ Ravenstein leaves the de nition almost
intact, whereas Bruno rejects the function of sangui cation attributed to the liver and updates
the state of medical knowledge concerning the organ after the discovery of the circulation of the
blood.26 ‘Sangui catio’ disappears from Bruno’s Castelli, replaced by the apparently more
modern ‘Haematosis’ and ‘Haema’, which in fact represent a return to the original Greek term
(aimatosis). The fact is that the Latin sangui catio, after the discovery of the blood circulation
and the description of its chemical composition (motus circularis et fermentatio), bore too many
associations with obsolete Galenic notions, while haematosis sounded more modern.27

In Castelli’s original edition, entries were largely straight Latinisations or Latin translations of
terms and de nitions taken from Hippocrates’ and Galen’s works. Some of the entries reported
by Castelli were Latin calques from original Arabic terms, such as alhacab (a ligament that
connects one end of a bone to the other), alsabiar for opiata medicamenta, catrab and cutubut
for lycanthropia or lupina vel canina insania, and meri for gula.28 The entries alhacab, alsabiar
and meri disappear in the later editions of Castelli. However, at the end of the Amalthaeum
Castello-Brunonianum, Bruno appended a ‘Mantissa nomenclaturae medicae hexaglottae’
(‘Addition of medical nomenclature in six languages’), in which Latin words were arranged in
alphabetical order with their Arabic, Hebrew, Greek, French and Italian equivalents. In the
preface to the Mantissa, Bruno explained that he did not want to publish such an elaborate
glossary to parade his learning (indeed, he had no problem in acknowledging his ‘ignorance of
the Arabic language’ and his ‘limited knowledge of foreign languages’), but to make up for the
many faults of Castelli’s original ‘List of the principal Arabic words’ (reprinted unchanged by
Ravenstein in his 1657 edition), where, in more than one case, ‘in the column of Arabic terms,
one can read Latin or Greek terms [. . .] and in the columns of Greek terms there are simple Latin
ones.’ For this reason, Bruno decided to write a new list of words based on a series of
authoritative works: the Interpretatio Arabicorum nominum (‘Translation of Arabic names’) by
Andrea Alpago (c. 1450–1521), the Lexicon pentaglottum by Valentin Schindler (1543–1604),
published posthumously in 1612, the Lexicon Hebraicum et Chaldaico cum brevi lexico rabbinico
philoso-phico (1607) by Johannes Buxtorf (1564–1629), the Thesaurus poliglottus (1603) by
Hieronymus Megiser (c. 1554–1618) and Dell’historia naturale (1599) by Ferrante Imperato (1550–
1625).29

To follow the expansions and contractions of Castelli’s de nitions from the original Hippocratic,
Galenic and—to a very limited extent—Avicennian meanings of the 1598 edition to the various
eighteenth-century editions of the Amalthaeum Castello-Brunonianum is a fascinating journey
through more than a century of early modern medicine. Lea ng through the various editions of
this standard reference work, one has a clear perception of the extent to which intellectual and
material changes in anatomical theory, hygiene and therapy seeped through the linguistic fabric
of medicine. One nal example sheds light on the characteristically medical unease in dealing
with the notion of the soul. The entry ‘Virtus’ underwent a signi cant semantic shift from the 9/17
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 original 1598 Castelli to Bruno’s Amalthaeum. By virtutes,
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Castelli meant Galen’s ‘faculties’ and
Medicine — Brill

Plato’s ‘souls’, that is, the three powers that govern the living being: the natural power that
animals share with plants, located in the liver, distributed through the veins and set out to
perform the basic nutritive functions (altrix, appetitrix, alterans and concoquens); the one which
is located in the heart and regulates all vital functions through the arteries (animosa); and nally
the power situated in the brain, which transmits perceptions and voluntary motions through the
nerves (ratiocinatrix). By contrast, in Bruno’s Castelli, virtus has lost its physiological meaning
and is de ned as an ‘equivocal’ term, which may be understood in a physical (de potentiis
naturalibus) or a moral sense, as a ‘habit of the mind acquired through repeated good actions.’30

Paracelsianism

The itinerant doctor Philip Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim, known as Paracelsus (1493–
1541), had an extraordinary impact on early modern medicine and deserves a place in an entry
devoted to the evolution of the early modern medical language. Although he wrote all his works
in a particular German dialect, he triggered a momentous change in the eld of natural
philosophy and medicine that extended to medical Latin. Paracelsus expanded the scope of
medicine immeasurably by introducing a number of new realities such as miners’ diseases, war
wounds, furnaces, mineral waters and peasant folklore. He also provided plausible explanations
and appropriate therapies for new and disconcerting illnesses. Going back to the Hippocratic
origins of the medical art, he looked at his profession in terms of a craft more than a science.
While he probably had a rudimentary knowledge of Latin, he programmatically decided to write
in the Swiss-German dialect of the region around his hometown, Einsiedeln. An indefatigable
traveller, he spent his life roaming across many countries in Europe (Italy, Holland, Prussia,
Poland, Scandinavia, Austria, Bavaria, Bohemia) and considered travelling an integral part of the
medical apprenticeship.31

The intriguing history of the dissemination of Paracelsus’ ideas through Europe is largely a story
of collecting manuscripts, spreading knowledge of the new medical ideas through the printing
press and translating the original German works into both national vernaculars and Latin.32 The
story starts with Adam von Bodestein’s discovery of Paracelsus’ manuscripts in Basel, originally
held by Johannes Herbst, better known by the Latinised name of Oporinus (1507–1568), who,
despite having been for a while Paracelsus’ amanuensis and secretary, had no interest in the
ideas of his mentor. Bodestein (1528–1577), who taught medicine at the University of Basel until
1564, the year when he was expelled due to his Paracelsian allegiances, published around forty
treatises from the treasure trove of Paracelsian manuscripts, followed in this editorial activity by
his student, Michael Schütz, known as Toxites (1514–1581), who published thirty more treatises,
then by Gerard Dorn (c. 1530–1484), another student of Bodestein, who spent the last part of his
life practising medicine in Frankfurt, and by Theodor Birckmann (1534–1586), key gure in
printing and intellectual entrepreneur responsible for publishing further Paracelsian treatises.
The recovery and publication of the rst wave of Paracelsian manuscripts happened in Basel, 10/17
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worked as an assistant to Oporinus, and his
Medicine — Brill

son-in-law, Konrad Waldkirch, published a large number of Paracelsian works between 1570 and
1603. The search for manuscripts and their editorial organisation culminated in Johannes Huser’s
magni cent edition of Paracelsus’ works, which came out between 1589 and 1591. Huser (c. 1545–
1597/1604), the court physician to Ernst of Wittelsbach, Elector of Cologne, published ten
volumes of Paracelsian texts in Basel with such philological care and precision that the work was
reprinted twice during the seventeenth century (1603–1605 and 1616–1618 by Lazarus Zetzner in
Strasbourg) and became the reference text for the Latin translation project undertaken under
the direction of Friedrich Bitisk in 1658.33

Through the good o ces of Perna, Basel had a key role also in Latinising Paracelsus’ oeuvre. In
the history of the Latin transmission of Paracelsian ideas, however—a history that remains
largely to be written—it is Bitisk’s three-volume edition that can be seen as the summa of Latin
Paracelsus.34 As he made clear in the prefaces to the three volumes, Bitisk was well aware that
Paracelsus’ rejection of Latin had acquired momentous signi cance in the decades following his
death, and that the question of the relationship between Latin tradition and vernacular
innovation needed to be addressed in the most unequivocal way. In a way, Bitisk’s prefaces can
be read as a Latin manifesto of Paracelsianism, in which Paracelsus’ lack of Latin pro ciency is
vindicated, while the arguments in favour of iatrochemical theories and remedies are presented
to a Latin audience.

In Bitisk’s opinion, Paracelsus’ use of the vernacular was an expression of freedom of thinking
and experience against all forms of dissimulation (ingenia Tiberiana), which he considered to be
a common habit among followers of Machiavelli’s teachings, especially in Italy (Doctoris Politici
ab Italia discipuli).35 He saw medicine as an activity involved primarily in practical matters
(praxis) and as a kind of knowledge based on the senses (opus sensibile). The practical and
empirical aspects of medicine were seen as the most important part in a physician’s e fort to
restore or preserve health (sanitas). True doctors, Bitisk argued, did not need to write in an
elegant manner about medicine and the causes of diseases, nor did they have to waste their time
attaching correct names to botanical illustrations or identifying the anatomical seat of bodily
parts and organs.36 By all means, Bitisk did not miss the opportunity to confront some of the
most recurrent charges levelled at Paracelsus by his contemporaries, such as his convoluted and
enigmatic way of writing (vitium obscuritatis) and his tendency to introduce ‘a large number of
words unheard of before’, often invented, even when there was clearly no need of forging new
terms.37 Bitisk replied to the objections by saying that Paracelsus adopted the style of writing
(usitata scribendi ratio) introduced since time immemorial by Egyptian sages and Pythagorean
philosophers, who had decided to intersperse their teachings with arcane symbols and images in
order to protect their discoveries from the distorted perceptions of the multitude. More
importantly, Bitisk thought that it was absolutely legitimate to come up with new words when
there were no words available for new things or new concepts (etymi defectus).
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against Arabic medicine, attacks on
Paracelsian medicine were often presented as attempts to defend Latin from cases of bad usage
(illatinus) or mere ignorance of Latin (latinae linguae ignorantia). Bitisk, himself a good Latinist,
had no qualms about recognising the need to be pro cient in Latin in all cases when knowledge
was to be transmitted in that language. However, he also acknowledged that in the middle of the
seventeenth century the situation had changed in a signi cant way and that the vernacular was
increasingly being used as a legitimate means of scienti c communication. In addition, in
Paracelsus’ case, direct study of nature had been a more urgent concern than reading books, and
for this purpose he had preferred to turn to the book of nature, ‘replete with knowledge of all
kind’. He knew that in order to read this book one did not need to turn ‘pages of paper’
(papiracea folia), but to have ‘attentive senses, a sharp mind, constant meditation, indefatigable
experience and God’s blessing.’

In order to silence ‘the cries complaining about the novelty and obscurity of the terms’, Bitisk
appended a short dictionary (dictionariolum) of Paracelsian technical terms at the end of the
third volume. Originally compiled by the French Paracelsian Roch Le Baili f (1540?-1598), Bitisk’s
‘little dictionary’ comprised ‘the words used by Paracelsus in his writings and after him by
philosophers dealing with chemistry (res spagyrica)’.38 In fact, Le Baili f had in turn plagiarised
his dictionary from the Onomasticon Theophrasticum, published in 1574 by Toxites. For all their
borrowings and misappropriations, a large number of dictionaries of Paracelsian medicine
appeared between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which is yet another instance of the
already mentioned general trend to compile medical dictionaries. In 1575 Adam von Bodenstein
published an Onomasticon Theophrasti Paracelsi in Basel through Perna; Leonhard Thurneysser’s
ERMENEIA, das ist ein Onomasticon came out in Berlin in 1574; the Lexicon alchemiae was
published by Martin Ruland the Younger in 1612, while the informative Opera chymiatrica by
Johannes Rhenanus (c. 1528–1589) came out in Frankfurt in 1635. All these works represent
further evidence that Paracelsus’ natural philosophy had a profound impact on medical Latin.

Among the Paracelsians who most contributed to the creation of a consistent Paracelsian jargon
in Latin, one should certainly include the Danish Peder Sørensen, better known by his Latin
name Petrus Severinus (1542–1602), author of the very in uential Idea medicinae philosophicae
(1571), a compendium of Paracelsian ideas in medicine and philosophy. It is signi cant that, in
Severinus’ case too, the question of language and its relationship with reality was of primary
importance. He advocated a natural origin of words such that any changes in the meaning and
use of terms (nominum metamorphoses) ‘follow the laws of nature’. Unlike the most radical
Paracelsian innovators, however, he admitted the possibility of mediation between the extremes
of linguistic conventionalism and naturalism. While intimating that the ‘notions of things’
should re ect the ‘stability of the essences’, he also acknowledged that names were subject to
decisions made by the practitioners in their respective disciplines.39 In Severinus’ reconstruction
of the history of medicine—a common exercise among the Paracelsians—ancient medicine was
described as characterised by a perfect balance between language and reality, for words were 12/17
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 supposed to be a direct expression of the very lifeMedicine
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of nature.
— Brill
Severinus believed that the decline
of medicine coincided with its becoming increasingly entangled in mathematical and logical
assumptions, seen as necessary to establish a quanti able system of material qualities—a kind
of metrics, as it were, regulating the proportions of heat, cold, dry and moist when
manufacturing remedies. In this way, practitioners in the art of healing had turned all their
attention to solving pointless questions of method and grammar: ‘Having left aside the very
things, true medicine began to migrate into languages.’40

Further Reading

Maclean, Ian, Logic, Signs and Nature in the Renaissance: The Case of Learned Medicine
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

Ottosson, Per-Gunnar, Scholastic Medicine and Philosophy: A study of Commentaries on Galen’s

Tegni (c. 1300–1450) (Naples: Bibliopolis, 1984).

Pelling, Margaret, Medical Con licts in Early Modern London: Patronage, Physicians, and Irregular
Practitioners, 1550–1640 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).

Siraisi, Nancy G., Medieval and Early Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and
Practice (Chicago–London: The University of Chicago Press, 1990).

Siraisi, Nancy G., History, Medicine, and the Traditions of Renaissance Learning (Ann Arbor: The
University of Michigan Press, 2007).

Temkin, Owsey, Galenism: Rise and Decline of a Medical Philosophy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1973).

Wear, Andrew, Roger K. French, and Iain M. Lonie (eds), The Medical Renaissance of the Sixteenth
Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).

Guido Giglioni

Notes

1. Sebastiano Bresciani, ‘Praefatio’, in Giovanni Argenterio, In artem medicinalem Galeni

commentarii tres (Paris: Jean Poupy, 1578) [no pagination indicated]; Giovanni Argenterio, in
ibid., p. 16. On Argenterio, see Nancy G. Siraisi, ‘Giovanni Argenterio and Sixteenth-Century
Medical Innovation: Between Princely Patronage and Academic Controversy’, Osiris, 6 (1990),
161–80.

2. Leonhart Fuchs, ‘Epistola nuncupatoria’, in Parado-xorum medicinae libri tres (Paris: Charlotte
Guillard, 1555), sig * iiijv.
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 3. Johannes Guinther of Andernach, ‘Ad ThomamMedicine
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Cranmerum’
— Brill
, in Alexander of Tralles,
Absolutissimi libri duodecim (Strasburg: Rémi Guédon, 1549), sigs Biirv.

4. Ibid. See Cicero, De optimo genere oratorum, 5.

5. Richard J. Durling, ‘Linacre and Medical Humanism’, in Linacre Studies. Essays on the Life and
Work of Thomas Linacre c. 1460–1524, ed. by Francis Maddison, Margaret Pelling and Charles
Webster (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), pp. 76–106 (pp. 100–1).

6. On medical humanism, see Jerome J. Bylebyl, ‘The School of Padua. Humanistic Medicine in
the Sixteenth Century’, in Health, Medicine and Mortality in the Sixteenth Century, ed. by Charles
Webster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp. 335–70; id., ‘The Rise of Medical
Humanism: Ferrara, 1464–1555’, Renaissance Studies, 11 (1997), 2–19; Humanismus und Medizin,
ed. by Rudolf Schmitz and Gundolf Keil (Weinheim: Acta Humaniora, 1984); Nancy G. Siraisi,
History, Medicine, and the Traditions of Renaissance Learning (Ann Arbor: The University of
Michigan Press, 2007); Hiro Hirai, Medical Humanism and Natural Philosophy. Renaissance
Debates on Matter, Life and the Soul (Leiden–Boston: Brill, 2011).

7. Jacobus Sylvius, In Hippocratis et Galeni physiologiae partem anatomicam isagoge, ed. by

Alexander Arnaud (Paris: Gilles Gorbin, 1560), p. 4.

8. Julius Pollux, Onomasticon, hoc est instructissimum rerum et synonymorum dictionarium, transl.
by Rudolf Gwalther (Basel: Robert Winter, 1541), pp. 73, 78–123.

9. Meletius of Tiberiopolis, De natura structuraque hominis opus, ed. by Nicolaus Petreius

(Venice: Giovanni Gri o, 1552). On Meletius, see Owsei Temkin, ‘Byzantine Medicine. Tradition
and Empiricism’, in The Double Face of Janus (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press,
1977), pp. 202–22 (216).

10. On medical lexicons in the early modern period, see Charles Singer, ‘The Con uence of
Humanism, Anatomy and Art’, in Fritz Saxl, 1890–1948, ed. by Donald J. Gordon (London: Nelson,
1957), pp. 261–69; DeWitt T. Starnes, Renaissance Dictionaries (Austin: University of Texas Press,
1954).

11. On Bartolomeo Castelli, see Corrado Dollo, ‘Fra tradizione e innovazione. L’insegnamento
messinese della medicina e delle scienze nei secoli XVI e XVII’, in Filoso a e medicina in Sicilia
ed. by Giuseppe Bentivegna, Santo Burgio and Giancarlo Magnano San Lio (Soveria Mannelli:
Rubbettino, 2004), pp. 331–354, esp. p. 333.

12. Bartolomeo Castelli, Lexicon medicum Graecolatinum ex Hippocrate et Galeno desumptum

(Messina: Pietro Brea, 1598), sig. a4r.

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 13. Castelli, Lexicon medicum Graecolatinum, sig. a4
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Medicine

14. See Galen, De partibus artis medicae, in Galeno ascripti libri, in Omnia, quae extant in Latinum
sermonem conversa, 2 vols. (Basel: Froben, 1562 ), II, p. 17. See also Galen, On the Parts of Medicine,
ed. H. Schoene (Berlin: Akademie, 1969), p. 120.

15. Bartolomeo Castelli, Lexicon, ed. by Adrian Ravenstein (Rotterdam: Arnold Leers, 1657), p. 45.

16. Castelli, Lexicon medicum Graecolatinum, p. 47; Bartolomeo Castelli, Lexicon medicum [. . .] a
Jacobo Pancratio Brunone locupletatum [. . .] deinde ab aliis plurimis novis accessionibus auctum, 2
vols. (Padua: Giovanni Manfrè, 1762), II, p. 115b.

17. Castelli, Lexicon medicum Graecolatinum, pp. 15–16; Castelli, Lexicon, ed. Bruno, I, p. 32b.

18. Castelli, Lexicon, ed. Bruno, II, p. 46b. Reference to Galen’s De crisibus, III, 4, see Opera omnia,
ed. by Carl Gottlob Kühn, 20 vols. (Leipzig: Cnobloch, 1821–1833; Hildesheim: Olms, 1964–1965),
IX, pp. 713, 715.

19. Castelli, Lexicon medicum Graecolatinum, p. 54, 83, 93, 105, 107, 136, 281–82, 359, 377–79.

20. Ibid., pp. 7, 14, 18, 50, 258, 287, 348.

21. Ibid., pp. 140, 264; Castelli, Lexicon, ed. Ravenstein, pp. 172–74; Castelli, Lexicon, ed. Bruno, I, p.
338.

22. Castelli, Lexicon medicum Graecolatinum, p. 67.

23. William Harvey, Exercitatio anatomica de motu cordis et sanguinis in animalibus (Frankfurt:
William Fitzer, 1628). See Geo frey Keynes, A Bibliography of the Writings of Dr William Harvey
1578–1657, 3rd ed., ed. by Gweneth Whitteridge and Christine English (Winchester: St Paul’s
Bibliographies, 1989); Roger K. French, William Harvey’s Natural Philosophy (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1994).

24. Castelli, Lexicon, ed. Bruno, I, pp. 214b–215a. No entry on ‘circulatio’ in Ravenstein’s Castelli.

25. Castelli, Lexicon, ed. Bruno, II, pp. 232b–33a.

26. Castelli, Lexicon medicum Graecolatinum, p. 205; Castelli, Lexicon, ed. Ravenstein, p. 250;
Castelli, Lexicon, ed. Bruno, II, p. 15.

27. Castelli, Lexicon medicum Graecolatinum, p. 359; Castelli, Lexicon, ed. Bruno, II, pp. 3b–4a, 5a.

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 28. Castelli, Lexicon medicum Graecolatinum, pp. Medicine
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17, 253,— 269,
Brill
295. The entry ‘Opium’ is an
interesting and rare instance in which Ravenstein’s Castelli (pp. 356–357) is more detailed than
both the 1598 Castelli and Bruno’s Castelli.

29. Castelli, ‘Praecipuarum Arabicarum vocum, ad artem medicam facientium, ordine

alphabetico series: in qua videre est, quae Arabica vox, cui Graecae et Latinae reddatur, et
signi cato respondeat’, in Lexicon medicum Graecolatinum, pp. 435–453; Lexicon, ed. Ravenstein,
pp. 518–535; Castelli, Lexicon, ed. Bruno, II, pp. 445–477 (447–48).

30. Castelli, Lexicon medicum Graecolatinum, p. 427; Castelli, Lexicon, ed. Bruno, II, p. 427a.

31. On Paracelsus, see Walter Pagel, Paracelsus: An Introduction to Philosophical Medicine in the
Era of the Renaissance (Basel: Karger, 1982); Charles Webster, Paracelsus: Medicine, Magic and
Mission at the End of Time (New Haven–London: Yale University Press, 2008).

32. See Didier Kahn, Alchimie et Paracelsisme en France (1567–1625) (Geneva: Droz, 2007); Allen G.
Debus, The Chemical Philosophy: Paracelsian Science and Medicine in the Sixteenth and
Seventeenth Centuries (New York: Science History Publications, 1977; repr. Mineola, NY: Dover,
2002); Hugh Trevor-Roper, ‘The Paracelsian Movement’ in Renaissance Essays (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1985), pp. 149–199.

33. Theophrastus Paracelsus, Bücher und Schri ften, ed. by Johannes Huser, 10 vols. (Basel: Conrad
Waldkirch, 1589–1591; repr. Hildesheim and New York: Olms, 1971); id., Sämtliche Werke, ed. by
Karl Sudho f and Wilhelm Matthiessen, 15 vols. (Munich–Berlin: Oldenbourg and Barth, 1922–
1933); Paracelsus, Opera omnia medico-chemico-chirurgica, ed. by Frederick Bitisk, 3 vols.
(Geneva: Tournes, 1658). On Paracelsus’s editions, see Karl Sudho f, Bibliographia Paracelsica
(Berlin: Reimer, 1894; repr. Graz: Akademische Druck-u. Verlagsanstalt, 1958).

34. See Wilhelm Kühlmann and Joachim Telle (eds), Der Frühparacelsismus, 2 vols. (Tübingen:
Niemeyer, 2001-2004).

35. Bitisk, ‘Praefatio’, to Paracelsus, Opera omnia, I, sig. ¶¶4v.

36. Ibid., I, sig. ¶¶4v.

37. Ibid., I, sig. ¶¶2v: ‘vitium obscuritatis . . . huius causam a ferunt vocabulorum incognitorum
ingentem numerum, citra ullam plane necessitatem con ctum.’

38. Ibid., I, sig. ¶¶2r.

39. Petrus Severinus, Idea medicinae philosophicae, fundamenta continens totius doctrinae
Paracelsicae, Hippocraticae, et Galenicae (Basel: Sebastian Henric-Petri, 1571), p. 47: “Rerum
notiones essentiarum stabilitatem imitari decet. Nomina arti cum arbitriis subiecta sunt.
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 40. Severinus, Idea medicinae philosophicae sigs α3
27/5/2019 r-α3v—
Medicine
. On
Brill
Severinus, see Jole Shackelford, A
Philosophical Path for Paracelsian Medicine. The Ideas, Intellectual Context and In luence of Petrus
Severinus (1540–1602) (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2004).

Cite this page

Giglioni, Guido, “Medicine”, in: Brill’s Encyclopaedia of the Neo-Latin World, General Editor Craig Kallendorf. Consulted online on 27 May 2019
<http://dx.doi.org.pbidi.unam.mx:8080/10.1163/9789004271296_enlo_B9789004271012_0051>
First published online: 2014
First print edition: ISBN:9789004265721

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