Cutting Words - Polemical Dimensions of Galen's Anatomical Experiments

Erscheinungsjahr 2020
ISBN: 978-90-04-43918-4
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 55, 330 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 689 g

Reihe: Studies in Ancient Medicine

In Cutting Words: Polemical Dimensions of Galen’s Anatomical Experiments, Luis Alejandro Salas offers a new account of Galen’s medical experiments in the context of the high intellectual culture of second-century Rome. The book explores how Galen’s written experiments operate alongside their live counterparts. It argues that Galen’s experimental writing reperforms the licensing functions of his live demonstrations, acting as a surrogate for their performance and in some cases an improvement upon it. Cutting Words focuses on the philosophical targets and theoretical stakes of four case studies: Galen’s experiments on voice production, the bladder, the heart, and the femoral artery. It ends over a millennium later with Vesalius, who adapted his Greek predecessor's writing in his own anatomical work, framing himself as a new Galen and so securing Galen's legacy of writing.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Alejandro Salas, Luis

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Alte Geschichte & Archäologie Geschichte der klassischen Antike

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

Introduction

1 Experiment and Experimental Writing

1 A World of Text

2 Demonstration: Instruction and Display

3 The Physical Spaces of Public and Private Medical Performances

4 Public and Private Demonstrations in Writing

5 Antiquarianism and Galen’s Doxographical Polemics

2 Galen and Agonistic Anatomical Demonstration

1 Credentialing and the Medical Marketplace

2 Rome and the Centrality of Public Display

3 Anatomical Procedures

4 Agonism and Invasive Anatomical Display

5 Prepared Extemporaneity

6 The Intercostal Nerves

7 Galen’s Experiments on the Ureters and Ureterovesical Valves

8 The Implicit Contest with Alexander

3 Magnification and the Elephant

1 Magnification and Analogy

2 Analogy, Classification, and the Ancient Anatomical Tradition

3 Elephants

4 Aristotle, Teleology, and the Elephant’s Trunk

5 Teleology, Humoralism, and the Elephant’s Gallbladder

6 Analogy and Teleology

7 Aristotle and Surrogate Targets

4 Fighting with the Heart of a Beast: Galen’s Use of the Elephant’s Cardiac Anatomy against Cardiocentrists

1 The Os Cordis

2 The Agon over the Heart

3 Galen’s Engagement with Aristotle

4 Galen’s Teleology and Cardiac Structure

5 It Is Difficult Not to Write Anatomy: Galen on Erasistratus and the Arteries

1 Maryllus the Mime-Writer and the Value of Anatomical Experience

2 Claims of Knowledge and Refutations of Ignorance

3 Compulsion of the Truth and the Anatomy of Deception

4 A Polemic in Four Parts

6 Galen and the Experiment on the Femoral Artery

1 The Femoral Artery Experiment

2 Capacities and Their Explanatory Powers

3 Galen on the Simultaneous Movement of the Arteries

4 Arterial Breathing and Pulmonary Respiration

5 The Movement of the Blood

6 Irrigation of the Body

7 The Motile Properties of Blood and Pneuma

8 The Femoral Artery Experiment in Its Galenic Context

7 Drawing Blood: Galen’s Use of the Arterial Experiment against Erasistratus

1 Praxagoras and Some Rough Beginnings

2 Pneuma

3 Herophilus and an Emerging Tradition

4 The Simultaneous Action of Arterial and Cardiac Movement

5 Transpiration and the Arteries’ Attraction of Material from All Around

6 Erasistratus and Mechanism

7 Erasistratus and Void

8 Erasistratus, the Bird, and the Bear

9 Erasistratus and the Femoral Artery Experiment

8 De Galeni corporis fabrica: Writing Galen and the Greek Past in Vesalius’ Fabrica

1 Books and Book Production

2 Vesalius’ Appropriation of Galen’s Polemical Strategies

Conclusion

Bibliography

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Luis Alejandro Salas, Ph.D. (2013), University of Texas at Austin, is Assistant Professor of Classics at Washington University in St. Louis. His main research interests lie in ancient Greek and Roman medicine, philosophy, and intellectual history. He has published on Galen’s theory and classification of disease, as well as his systems of anatomy and physiology.