The True Medicine (Volume 4) (The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series) [Critical ed.] 0772720673, 9780772720672

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Oliva Sabuco de Nantes Barrera

The True Medicine Ed ite d and Tr an sl ate d by

Gianna Pomata

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series, 4

THE TRUE MEDICINE

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series, 4

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series

Ser ie S e d i t o r S

Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, Jr.

Recent Publications in the Series

1 Madre María Rosa Journey of Five Capuchin Nuns Edited and translated by Sarah E. Owens 2009 2 Giovan Battista Andreini Love in the Mirror Edited and translated by Jon R. Snyder 2009

3 Raymond de Sabanac and Simone Zanacchi Two Women of the Great Schism: The Revelations of Constance de Rabastens by Raymond de Sabanac and Life of the Blessed Ursulina of Parma by Simone Zanacchi Edited and translated by Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Bruce L. Venarde 2010

The True Medicine OLIVA SABUCO DE NANTES BARRERA •

Edited and translated by GIANNA POMATA

Iter Inc. Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies Toronto 2010

Iter: Gateway to the Middle Ages and Renaissance Tel: 416/978–7074 Fax: 416/971–1399 Email: [email protected]

Web: www.itergateway.org

CRRS Publications, Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies Victoria University in the University of Toronto Toronto, Ontario M5S 1K7 Canada Tel: 416/585–4465 Fax: 416/585–4430 Email: [email protected]

Web: www.crrs.ca

© 2010 Iter Inc. & the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies All Rights Reserved Printed in Canada We thank the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation for a generous grant of start-up funds for The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe: The Toronto Series, a portion of which supports the publication of this volume. Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Sabuco, Miguel. The true medicine / Oliva Sabuco De Nantes Barrera ; edited and translated by Gianna Pomata. (Other voice in early modern Europe : Toronto series ; 4) Co-published by: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies. Translation of: Nueva filosofia de la naturaleza del hombre. Work written by Miguel Sabuco and originally published with his daughter’s name on the title page. Scholars disagree on attribution of work, but majority of research at the Biblioteca Nacional de España confirms authorship. Includes bibliographical references and index. Also available in electronic format. ISBN 978–0–7727–2067–2 1. Philosophical anthropology—Early works to 1800. 2. Philosophy of nature—Early works to 1800. I. Pomata, Gianna II. Sabuco de Nantes y Barrera, Oliva, b. 1562 III. Victoria University (Toronto, Ont.). Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies IV. Iter Inc V. Title. I. Series: Other voice in early modern Europe. Toronto series ; 4. B785.S133N8313 2010 128 C2010–902578–4 Cover illustration: Alonso Sánchez Coello (1531–1588), Joven desconocida (Unknown Young Woman), date unknown Credit: Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, España (Catalogue no. 1140) Cover design: Maureen Morin, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries Typesetting and production: Iter Inc.

A Caterina PARA DESPUÉS Después de este desorden impuesto, de esta prisa, de esta urgente gramática necesaria en que vivo, vuelva a mi toda virgen la palabra precisa, virgen, el verbo exacto con el justo adjetivo. Que cuando califique de verde al monte, al prado, repitiéndole al cielo su azul como a la mar, mi corazón se sienta recién inaugurado y mi lengua el inédito asombro de crear. (Rafael Alberti)

Contents Acknowledgments





Abbreviations

ix xi

Introduction A Book that was Missing in the World The Precarious Fame of Doña Oliva: The Issue of Authorship Moon Milk: The Medical Heresy of Nueva Filosofia Echoes of the Querelle des Femmes in Early Modern Medicine Aftermath: Sabucus Hispanus in England and Beyond

53 64

Note on the Translation

85

1 8 30

Translation, The True Medicine 91 Letter from Doña Oliva Sabuco to Sir Don Francisco Zapata 92 Dialogue on True Medicine 95 Of the Two Natures: one that gives birth, one that gives growth 126 Of critical, or otherwise said, decretory days 148 Question of the shape of the brain’s marrow, membranes, skull, scalp, and crown of the head 152 Of the chyle, or juice, and its varieties 159 New and old medicine compared and contrasted: the old medicine refuted 166 Comparison and refutation: on poisons 167 Comparison and refutation: on purgative remedies 168 Comparison and refutation: on hemorrhoids 171 Comparison: on aliments 173 Comparison: on supervening diseases 173 Comparison: on the way the aliment enters the body 178 Comparison: on crudities 182 vii

Comparison: on drink and food Comparison: on anger Comparison: on sweat Comparison: on idiopathy, sympathy, and consent Comparison: on apoplexy and epilepsy Comparison: on diverting disease to another place Comparison: on temperaments and actions Comparison: on the four moistures discovered by Avicenna Comparison: on semen Comparison: on the causes of diseases Comparison: on fevers All that has been said is proved with evident reasons

184 186 189 191 197 200 203

Bibliography

231

Index

255

viii

206 209 210 211 214

Acknowledgments Much of the work for this translation was done while I was a fellow at the National Humanities Center in North Carolina, that most delightful of scholars’ havens. I would like to thank the staff of the Center for their gracious hospitality and the thoughtful care they devote to creating a serene and supportive environment for the pursuit of scholarship. In particular, I’d like to thank the Center’s librarians, Eliza Robertson and Jean Houston, for their untiring help with bibliographical searches, and Karen Carroll, coordinator of editorial services, for expert and careful editing of the translation’s manuscript. My new home institution, the Institute of the History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University, offered me a supportive environment in which to complete the project, and generously provided financial assistance toward the publication of the book. At the Institute, I would like to thank in particular Christine Ruggere, Curator of the Welch Library, for her expert advice on various matters, including the image for the book cover. Thanks also to Seth LeJacq, a splendid research assistant, for his meticulously accurate work on the book index. I have discussed the research presented in the Introduction in several venues: at the European University Institute in Florence; the Kolloquium zur Frauen- und Geschlechtergeschichte of the University of Vienna; the Women’s Studies Forum at Queen’s University, Belfast; the University of Valencia, Spain; and the Centre de Recherches Historiques of the École des hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. For comments and suggestions received on these occasions I would like to thank Alain Boureau, Simona Cerutti, Jennifer FitzGerald, Christiane Klapisch Zuber, Raffaella Lamberti, Edith Saurer, and Anne Jacobson Schutte. Among the fellow scholars who have given me the benefit of their guidance on matters of perplexity, I am particularly indebted to Michael McVaugh, Giovanna Ferrari, and Chiara Crisciani; special thanks are also due to Giovanna and Chiara for kindly allowing me to read their work in progress on the history of the notion of “humidum radicale.” By the same token, I should thank María-Milagros Rivera ix

x Acknowledgments Garretas, who shared with me her own work on Sabuco before it was published. I am very much indebted to Andrea Carlino and Sabina Brevaglieri, who referred me to important and hitherto neglected primary sources for the study of Sabuco’s fortuna: their generous help was invaluable. Montserrat Cabré read the entire book manuscript, correcting some of my errors of translation and providing many useful additions to the bibliography. I gratefully acknowledge her expert help. Over the years, research for the Introduction has benefited from innumerable suggestions and indications by James Amelang, a fellow historian and Hispanist who has supervised with a friendly eye the incursion of a non-Hispanist in Spanish territory. I owe him more than I can say. Finally, I’d like to thank the editor of the Other Voice Series, Albert Rabil, for the heroic patience with which he tolerated my dilatoriness in completing this project, and kept supporting it in the face of difficulties. My daughters Catherine and Heather have helped me with loving care in many ways, from xeroxing texts to choice of cover image. But most importantly I should tell them that in this humble, though exacting, task of translation I drew much inspiration and support from our shared passion for the art of writing.

Abbreviations

Acad. Autorid. = Real Academia Española, Diccionario de Autoridades (Madrid: Editorial Gredos, 1964). Covarrubias, Tesoro = Sebastian de Covarrubias Orozco, Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, 1611 (Madrid: Turner, 1977). Dicc. Hist. = Real Academia Española, Diccionario histórico de la lengua española (Madrid: Librería y casa editorial Hernando, 1936). Galen, Opera = Claudi Galeni Opera Omnia, ed. C.G. Kühn (Leipzig 1821–33; facsimile edition, Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1965), 22 vols. Laguna, Dioscorides = Andrés Laguna, Pedacio Dioscórides Anazarbeo, 1555 (facsimile edition, Madrid: Instituto de España, 1969), 2 vols. Pliny, NH = Pliny, Natural History, trans. H. Rackham (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 10 vols.

xi

Introduction Oliva Sabuco de Nantes Barrera, The True Medicine A Book that Was Missing in the World In 1587 a volume titled Nueva Filosofia de la Naturaleza del hombre was published in Madrid under the name of Oliva Sabuco de Nantes Barrera.1 “This book is as new and as strange as its author,” we read in the dedication addressed to Philip II: Kneeling down in Your absence since she cannot kneel down in Your presence, a humble maidservant and vassal dares to speak. I am made bold by that ancient 1. Nueva Filosofia de la Naturaleza del hombre, no conocida ni alcançada de los grandes filosofos antiguos: la qual mejora la vida y salud humana. Compuesta por doña Oliva Sabuco (Madrid: Pedro Madrigal, 1587). This first edition was followed by a second, revised edition, under the same title and by the same press, in 1588. For the purposes of this volume, I have used the text of the editio princeps comparing it with the 1588 edition. Unfortunately there is no recent critical edition of Sabuco’s work. The best and most easily accessible modern edition remains that published more than a century ago: Oliva Sabuco de Nantes, Obras, ed. Ricardo Fé with a prologue by Octavio Cuartero (Madrid: Establecimiento tipográfico de Ricardo Fé, 1888), which reproduces the text of the 1587 edition with minor variants (it omits the two sonnets in Oliva’s praise by the Licenciado Juan de Sotomayor). For the reader’s convenience, both in this introduction and in the translation that follows, I shall always quote Sabuco’s work from this modern and more easily accessible edition (hereafter Sabuco, Obras). There is now an English translation of the whole Sabuco oeuvre: Oliva Sabuco de Nantes Barrera, New Philosophy of Human Nature Neither Known to nor Attained By the Great Ancient Philosophers, Which Will Improve Human Life and Health, trans. and ed. Mary Ellen Waithe, Maria Colomer Vintró, and C. Angel Zorita (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007). My translation was done independently of Waithe’s, Vintró’s, and Zorita’s work, and it was completed before their book came out. Unfortunately, I find myself in disagreement with their views on several important issues, not only concerning some general principles and specific details of the translation but also, most importantly, regarding the authorship of Nueva Filosofia (see below, Introduction, 16–22). I indicate these points of disagreement, as well as the most important differences between their rendering and mine, in the notes to the translation. Unless otherwise stated, all the translations quoted in this Introduction and in the Translation are mine.

1

2 Editor’s Introduction law of high chivalry, whereby great lords and high-born knights freely chose to bind and commit themselves always to protect women in their adventures. […] Thus emboldened, I dare to offer and dedicate this book to Your Catholic Majesty […] May Your Majesty accept this service of a woman, for I think it is of greater quality than those rendered by men, vassals, or lords, who have exerted themselves in Your Majesty’s service. For even though Your Caesarean and Catholic Majesty has had many books dedicated by men, very few and rare are those by women, and none at all on this subject matter. This address to the king shows great intellectual pride and daring, rather than the conventional modesty displayed by women authors. Although using the topos of feminine weakness, Oliva Sabuco strongly emphasizes the novelty and significance of her work—a work that, in her own words, filled a gap in ancient and modern culture: This book is as strange and as new as its author. It deals with the knowledge of oneself, and offers doctrine whereby man can know and understand himself and his own nature, and learn the natural causes of life, death and disease. […] This book was missing in the world (Este libro faltaba en el mundo) whereas of the other ones there are all too many.2 The volume contained several texts in dialogic form: A Dialogue on Self-Knowledge; On the Composition of the World as It Is; On the Things that Will Improve the State of the World, and Its Commonwealths; On the Aids and Remedies of the True Medicine; and finally A Dialogue on the True Medicine. These vernacular texts are followed by two conclusive dialogues in Latin, Dicta brevia circa naturam hominis, medicinae fundamentum (“Brief sayings on the nature of man, the foundation of medicine”) and Vera philosophia de natura mistorum, hominis et mundi, antiquis oculta (“True philosophy, 2. Sabuco, Obras, XLI–XLII.

Editor’s Introduction 3 unknown to the ancients, of the nature of mixed bodies, of man, and of the world”). These were obviously addressed to learned readers, either philosophers or physicians, but the bulk of the book is in the vernacular, and deliberately so. Ranging from natural philosophy to medicine, from agriculture to political and legal matters, these texts present what claims to be a radically new view of man and world, of microcosm and macrocosm. Nueva Filosofia opens with a long “Dialogue on SelfKnowledge,” in which the speakers are three shepherds, Antonio, Veronio, and Rodonio. The three observe Rodonio’s father, Macrobio, pass by, a hale and hearty old man, though a nonagenarian, and they start to converse about longevity and the means to die a natural death. Meanwhile, a partridge pursued by a hawk falls dead at their feet. Antonio who, throughout the various dialogues, will be the author’s mouthpiece and the representative of the new medicine, notes that the partridge died of fear, which shows how tremendously important are the consequences of the passions of the sensitive soul, fear among them, on the health of animals and men. Yet, Antonio argues, their significance for life and death, health and disease, has been ignored by philosophers and physicians, who have not pursued the most difficult branch of knowledge—the knowledge of one’s own self. All creatures are affected by the perturbations of the three parts of the soul: the plants by those of the vegetative soul, the animals by those of the vegetative and the sensitive soul, and man by those of the vegetative and sensitive souls, which he shares with plants and animals, plus those of the rational soul, which belongs only to man. Because man is the only being endowed with the three parts of the soul, he is even more susceptible than plants and animals to the soul’s emotions, and in consequence he is more vulnerable to disease. Antonio lists several examples of people who got sick and died of grief, anger, sadness, hatred, shame, fear, anxiety, and despair, but also of excessive joy or pleasure. Rodonio objects that most people think that disease and death are caused by food. Antonio replies that yes, bad food damages one of man’s “two harmonies,” but only the minor harmony of the stomach. The perturbations of the soul, however, shatter man’s “first harmony,” the harmony of the brain. In the view of man’s nature that Antonio is

4 Editor’s Introduction expounding, the brain is the principal organ, the “prince of this house,” as he calls it. Man, Antonio says, is a “tree upside-down”—an ancient metaphor of Platonic origin that here acquires a new significance. The root of man is the brain, which performs in humans the nourishing role that the root performs in plants. Thanks to its “attractive force,” the brain draws up the “chyle,” or nutritive juice, both raw from the mouth and cooked from the stomach, and the brain distributes it, root-wise, to all the body parts. So, Antonio stresses, the main agent of nutrition is the “white chyle,” or juice of the brain, not the blood, as conventionally believed. In health, this white nutritive juice goes up to the brain, but in disease the opposite happens: the nutritive juice falls down and turns into unwholesome catarrh, harming the body parts it reaches. This “flux,” or fall of the brain’s juice can be triggered by several causes, but it is primarily due to the perturbations of the soul. Therefore, Antonio says, the main remedies against disease are those that strengthen “the three pillars of health,” which are cheerfulness, good hope, and the good functioning of the stomach. The primary factors of health are therefore moderation (every form of excess, even of joy or pleasure, can upset the brain’s juice) together with everything that cheers the soul—friendship, eutrapelia (i.e., good conversation), music, pleasant scents. The “Dialogue on Self-Knowledge” concludes with Veronio summing up what he learned from Antonio: health is not due to the balance of the four humors, as all physicians wrongly believe, but to the correct functioning of the brain, whose white juice nourishes the body in the same way a root feeds a plant. In the second dialogue, On the Composition of the World as It Is,3 Veronio asks Antonio to describe, after the microcosm, the macrocosm. This piece is much shorter, because, Antonio says, many authors have already dealt with this subject. To visualize the maquina del mundo,4 one has to imagine an ostrich egg: the small yolk at the center is the earth, surrounded by three layers of “eggwhite,” a thicker layer, water, followed by a thinner one, air, and finally an even more rarefied element, conventionally named fire. The egg has eleven shells, the ten heavens plus the Empyreum, “the house 3. Sabuco, Obras, 161–81. 4. Ibid, 179.

Editor’s Introduction 5 of God,” where “the heavenly court” resides.5 At first sight, Sabuco’s cosmology seems to replicate in essentials the conventional vision of the universe as it was held in medieval natural philosophy, with the earth at the center. But there are significant novelties in Sabuco’s view of the elements, as will be more fully explained later in the book, where Antonio argues that there are in fact only two elements, earth and water, and not four as in the conventional view (earth, water, air, fire). Air and fire, Antonio states, are just transformations of water, in a rarefied and even more rarefied form.6 This new theory of the elements is only barely suggested here. But not quite developed are also the correspondences between microcosm and macrocosm, especially between the sun and the heart, the moon and the brain, that will be emphasized in later parts of the work.7 There follows another short dialogue On the Things that Will Improve this World, and Its Commonwealths,8 where the conversation among the three shepherds moves on to politics and social criticism. Since Antonio seems to know how to improve individual health, he is asked how to reform the community. The disease of the social body, Antonio replies, is the excessive number of long-protracted lawsuits, which create much misery and despair.9 This is due fundamentally to two facts: first, there are too many laws and, second, they are written in Latin and are therefore unintelligible to most people. Antonio laments “the murderous burden of law books” that oppresses the 5. Ibid. 6. In this second dialogue Sabuco speaks in fact of “four elements” (163, 174) and calls fire an element (“el elemento del fuego,” 164) but later in the text, especially in the conclusive section of the volume, Vera philosophia de natura mistorum, Sabuco argued, in contrast with the conventional Aristotelian view, that there are just two elements, i.e., earth and water—air and fire being respectively rarefied and even more rarefied water. See below, Introduction, 50 and Translation, n123. 7. Especially in the final dialogue, Vera philosophia de natura mistorum, where the correspondences between micro and macrocosm are also graphically summarized in a table (Sabuco, Obras, 427). 8. Sabuco, Obras, 183–204. 9. Sabuco actually states that to start a lawsuit is a mortal sin (ibid, 189)—a proposition that was censored by the Inquisition in the Indice expurgatorio of 1632, and consequently struck out of subsequent editions of Nueva Filosofia. In the 1888 edition by Ricardo Fé, from which I quote, the sentences censored by the Inquisition are indicated in italics.

6 Editor’s Introduction country. If laws were in the vernacular, there would be no need for law schools and chairs at the universities. Excess and greed are as bad for the social body as they are for the individual body: if there were no luxury, there would be no poverty. Remedial change is needed especially for the poor, workers, and shepherds, whose health is affected by the misery and despair of their daily lives. Their condition could be improved, Antonio argues, by forbidding the seizure of cattle or work implements for debt10; also, by improving aqueducts, and introducing new plants from the Indies. It would also be beneficial to prohibit duels and the absurd code of honor, which derives from pride—a vice of the soul that leads to many social ills. Another remedy—especially important for women—would be to stop giving daughters in marriage for money’s sake, as many do who “marry their daughters to a farm, or to cows or sheep.”11 This is especially important for the procreation of healthy children, because in generation, Sabuco stresses, two seeds are needed. Both the male and the female seed contribute actively to form the embryo—not only the male, as in the Aristotelian doctrine of generation. The next short dialogue is prefaced by Veronio feeling sick and asking Antonio what remedies he should employ. A Dialogue on the Aids and Remedies of the True Medicine12 follows, where Antonio asserts, first of all, the general goal of the true medicine, which is to bring accord between body and soul (discord of body and soul being the primary cause of disease) and to comfort the brain by means of the three “pillars of health,” namely, with words and deeds that generate joy and good hope, and by taking care of the stomach. The second general remedy will be to divert the humor falling from the brain, so that it can be discharged through the bodily openings (nostrils, mouth, skin pores, etc.) and will not reach the internal organs, especially the stomach and heart, whose “innate heat” would be smothered by the cold humor, causing death. Such “evacuative” remedies (vomiting, sweating, bloodletting, etc.) are employed by animals—and man 10. According to some early modern jurists, this was one of the privilegia rusticorum, that is, the customary rights of peasants. See A. M. Hespanha, “Savants et rustiques. La violence douce de la raison juridique,” Jus Commune 10 (1983), 1–47. 11. Sabuco, Obras, 196–99. 12. Ibid, 204–31.

Editor’s Introduction 7 should learn from them. But the true medicine avoids strong purging and cupping, which may further draw the humor from the head, thus intensifying rather than counteracting the cause of disease. So far, Antonio’s exposition of the new philosophy and medicine has been meant for the layman. The concluding Dialogue on the True Medicine,13 in contrast, together with the two Latin texts, is addressed to a medical audience. The dialogues move therefore from empirical observation of daily life to theoretical speculation, from addressing the general public to addressing learned physicians, from exoteric to esoteric knowledge. To mark the transition, the speakers change: Veronio and Rodonio are gone, and the conversation is between Antonio and an unnamed physician, called Doctor.14 So far, the medical element had been introduced gradually and in small doses, but now Antonio launches into a full-fledged exposition of an alternative medical system, vigorously pointing out the errors of School medicine. Though displaying considerable knowledge of the medical debates of the times, Sabuco adopts the point of view of the outsider, unshackled by ties to the medical establishment. In the dedication to the king, she declares that she never studied medicine. In order to evaluate the new medical system that she proposes, no learning is needed, only common sense. Whoever will read her book, she argues, will know himself and the true nature of mankind; he will be initiated into the principles of true medicine, he will no longer be dependent on doctors, nor will he be treated by them like a dumb beast “who does not see, hear or understand what they treat it for, not knowing why and to what purpose.”15 The attitude and even the tone adopted are an open challenge to the medical establishment and its intellectual tradition, summed up by the names of Galen, Hippocrates, and Avicenna, the authorities that were dominant in the medical culture of the Renaissance. Sabuco stresses the uncertainty of medicine, borrowing from Pliny’s virulent polemic against the medical profession: Vera 13. Vera Medicina y vera filosofia in the 1587 edition. 14. To further highlight the special character of this part of the work, the dialogue on “The True Medicine” is prefaced by another carta dedicatoria, addressed to don Francisco Zapata, Conde de Barajas and Presidente del Consejo de Castilla. In the 1888 edition this dedication appears instead at the front of the book (Obras, XLV–XLVI). 15. “Carta dedicatoria al Rey nuestro señor,” in Obras, XLII–XLIII.

8 Editor’s Introduction Medicina opens with a long quotation of the section from the ninth book of the Natural History, where Pliny famously summed up the history of medicine as a long inconclusive succession of medical sects, all purporting to be right but all unable to reach true knowledge of the causes of disease. Echoing Pliny’s arguments, Sabuco says that the Saracens and the Chinese, who have no professional physicians, have a larger population than the Spaniards (in other words, they have a lower mortality rate). “Only in this art [i.e., medicine] may anybody declare himself a physician without being such; no other falsehood implies more danger and damage [than the medical falsehood], and less punishment at the same time: only the doctor is allowed to kill with impunity.”16 This dialogue On the True Medicine is the text that is translated and presented here, as part of the “Other Voice in Early Modern Europe” series.17 It is, as we shall see, a text that bears a significant relation to the Renaissance Querelle des femmes, beyond the remarkable circumstance of being emphatically presented as the work of a woman author. But before we examine in detail the content of the Dialogue on the True Medicine and locate it in the context of the medical and cultural world of the late Renaissance, as I shall try to do in this Introduction, we have to address a preliminary question. Who was this daring woman who attacked so uncompromisingly the medical establishment of her times?

The Precarious Fame of Doña Oliva: The Issue of Authorship We know that she became immediately famous. At the beginning of the seventeenth century Lope de Vega called her “the tenth Muse,” listing her with other women prodigies of Europe.18 The picara Justina, 16. Vera medicina, in Sabuco, Obras, 239. 17. For an English translation of the whole Sabuco oeuvre see Sabuco, New Philosophy of Human Nature (cit. in n1 above); the translation of Vera Medicina is at 177–252. For differences between that translation and mine, see below, Note on the Translation, 85–89. 18. “Dona Isabel Esforcia fue ilustrisima / en letras y virtud, y en Milan fenix: \ dona Oliva de Nantes, Musa decima,\ y dona Valentina de Pinelo / Que hermosura ha nacido en nuestros siglos, / como dona Maria Enriquez tuvo, / que hoy llora Tormes, y la envidia misma?” (El hijo prodigo, in book 4 of the novel El peregrino en su patria, published in Seville in 1604, but

Editor’s Introduction 9 the roguish heroine of a popular novel of this period (1605), sang her own praise by bragging to be “more famous even than doña Oliva” and other very celebrated personages indeed: I am the queen of Picardy More universally known than the herb rue, More famous even than Doña Oliva, Don Quixote and Lazarillo, Alfarach and Celestina.19 As these verses seem to indicate, the learned Oliva soon became a protagonist of popular imagination, as famed as fictional characters such as Don Quixote, Lazarillo de Tormes, and Celestina. Oliva Sabuco’s name was included for centuries in the repertories of Spain’s “illustrious women”20 but in point of fact very little written much earlier according to M. Menendez y Pelayo, introduction to Obras de Lope de Vega, vol. 6 [Madrid: Atlas, 1963], XIX, BAE vol. 157). The Italian Isabella Sforza was the author of Della vera tranquillità dell’animo (1544). Valentina de Pinelo defended women’s right to interpret Holy Scripture in a book in praise of St. Anne (1601), for which Lope wrote two introductory sonnets: see Lola Luna, “Sor Valentina Pinelo, intérprete de las Sagradas Escrituras,” Cuadernos hispanoamericanos 464 (Feb. 1989), 91–103. On Lope’s filoginia erudita and his views on learned women see Simon A. Vosters, “Lope de Vega y las damas doctas,” in Actas del Tercer Congreso Internacional de Hispanistas, ed. Carlos H. Magis (México, Por la Asociación Internacional de Hispanistas: El Colegio de México, 1970), 909–21. 19. “Soy la rein-de Picardí, / Más que la rud-conoci-/ Más famo-que Doña Oli-, / Que Don Quijo-y Lazari, / Que Alfarach-y Celesti” See La pícara Justina, ed. Bruno M. Damiani (Madrid: José Porrúa Turanzas, 1982), 376. 20. A few examples: Pedro Pablo de Ribera, Le Glorie immortali de’ trionfi et heroiche imprese d’ottocento quarantacinque donne illustri antiche, e moderne…, (Venice: Evangelista Deuchino, 1609), 331 (Oliva is no. 482 on this list of 485 illustrious women); Nicolás Antonio, Bibliotheca Hispana sive Hispanorum… (Rome: Nicolò Angelo Tinassi, 1672), 2.347ff; Fr. Benito Feijóo Montenegro, Teatro crítico universal (Madrid: Lorenzo Francisco Mojados, 1726), vol. 1, discurso XVI: “Defensa de las Mugeres,” 357–58; Damião de Froes Perym, Theatro heroino…e catalogo de las mullieres illustres em armas, letras acçoens heroicas, e artes liberales, 2 vols. (Lisbon: Theotom Antunez Lima, 1736–40), 2. 298–99; Juan Bautista Cubié, Las mugeres vindicadas de las calumnias de los hombres. Con un Catalogo de las Españolas que más se han distinguido en Ciencias y Armas (Madrid: Antonio Perez de Soto, 1768), 131–33. For a bibliography of commentators on Sabuco’s work, see F. Rodriguez de la Torre, “Bibliografía de comentaristas y referencias sobre Miguel Sabuco (antes D.a Oliva ) y su obra,” Al-Basit 13 (Dec. 1987), 233–65.

10 Editor’s Introduction was—and still is—known about her. We know that she was born in Alcaraz, in the archdiocese of Toledo, in 1562, as stated in her baptism certificate, which was published in 1853.21 This document calls her daughter of the bachiller Miguel Sabuco. She was twenty-five years old when her book was published. The surnames Barrera and de Nantes used on the title page of Nueva Filosofia are actually, as we learn from the baptism register, the maiden names of her two godmothers, Barbara Barrera and Bernardina de Nantes. From the same document we also gather that one of her godfathers was a doctor, Alonso de Heredia. Strong documentary evidence indicates that her father, Miguel Sabuco, was an apothecary in Alcaraz.22 We also know that by 1588, the year in which a second edition of Nueva Filosofia was published in Madrid, Oliva was already married to a certain Acacio de Buedo. We know this from her father’s will, written in the same year, which mentions conflicts with his son-­in-law about Oliva’s dowry.23 Finally, it was thought that she died before 1622, the year in which another edition of Nueva Filosofia came out in Braga, Portugal, because in the preface to this new edition we are told that the “authoress” is no longer living, and that her book had hitherto met hostility and “calumny.”24 But this terminus ante quem of Oliva’s death has been disputed recently on the basis of new evidence, as we shall see. Besides these three editions, the book was reprinted in 1728 by the physician Martín Martínez, an enthusiastic supporter 21. J. M. Muñoz y Ferron, “Noticias acerca de doña Oliva Sabuco,” Gaceta Médica IX:10–11 (1853), 73–76, 81–86; E. Pérez de Pareja, Historia de la primera fundacion de Alcaraz (Valencia: Joseph Thomás Lucas, 1740), 208, had already mentioned Oliva’s birth date. 22. This was first indicated by José Marco Hidalgo (Biografía de Doña Oliva Sabuco [Madrid: Librería de Antonio Romero, 1900], 30), based on an entry he found in one of the libros de libramientos of the city council of Alcaraz: “4 de febrero de 1572 = Así mesmo se mandó librar en el dicho mayordomo al Bachiller Sabuco, boticario, 17.200 maravedís de medicinas que se tomaron para los pobres como consta por una tasación del doctor Heredia, Médico.” 23. On Miguel Sabuco’s will, see below, 12–13. 24. Nueva Filosofia de la Naturaleza del hombre, no conocida ni alcançada de los grandes filosofos antiguos: la qual mejora la vida, y salud humana…. Composta por Doña Oliva Sabuco (Braga: Fructuoso Lourenço de Basto, 1622). Oliva’s death is mentioned in the dedication to Dom Joam Lobo Baram D’Albito (“Pello que o Liuro, et sua autora [aiudapois de morta] parece me estâo pedindo o nao tire outravez a luz sem protector que com seu valor o anime, et defenda das calumnias de que o favor de hu Monarcha o nao pode defender…”).

Editor’s Introduction 11 of Oliva Sabuco’s medical theories. In 1734 it was translated into Portuguese and published in Lisbon. In the nineteenth century it was reprinted several times (1847, 1873, and 1888).25 Thus the book kept being read for centuries. It is mentioned in seventeenth-century medical bibliographies such as Lindenius’s De scriptis medicis, and Lipenius’s Bibliotheca realis medica, which listed it under the heading anthropologia.26 In the eighteenth century, Albrecht von Haller included it in his Bibliotheca anatomica, citing the editions of 1588, 1622, and 1728, and summarizing the content with these words: “Man is a tree upside down, the juice of the nerves nourishes the whole body”27—an apt summary of Sabuco’s medical theory. As we shall see, the bold new ideas advanced in Nueva Filosofia circulated in the European medical culture of the seventeenth century, and they gained special prominence in the Enlightenment, when the Spanish literati revived and praised the work of Oliva Sabuco, making her into a heroine of national medical progress. Even in the nineteenth century Oliva was still part of the catalogues of Spanish female “worthies.” She was remembered as a pioneer in the study of the nervous system and of the psychosomatic nature of disease. For centuries, nobody questioned her authorship of the texts collected in Nueva Filosofia, though doubts were entertained occasionally. A nineteenth-century historian of medicine, for instance, while commenting upon the book, 25. On the editions of Nueva Filosofia see José Fernández Sánchez, “Ediciones de la obra de Miguel Sabuco (antes Doña Oliva),” Al-Basit 13 (Dec. 1987), 87–103; and Mercedes Caridad García Gómez, La concepción de la naturaleza humana en la obra de Miguel Sabuco (Albacete: Instituto de Estudios Albacetenses de la Excma Diputatión de Albacete, Serie I, Estudios 62 [1992], 16–17). The editions of 1847 and 1873 were partial: they included only the first and the third dialogues, namely, the Dialogue on Self-Knowledge and that On the Things that Will Improve the State of the World, and Its Commonwealths. 26. See Lindenius [Jan Antonides van der Linden], De scriptis medicis, (Amsterdam: Blaeu, 1651), 502; see also Lindenius Renovatus, sive Johannis Antonidae van der Linden, De Scriptis medicis…, ed. Georg Abraham Mercklinus (Nuremberg: Johannes Georgius Endterius, 1686), 856 (that quotes the Madrid edition of 1588 as Oliva Sabugo, Nova Philosophia de Hominis Natura. In qua Medicorum quaedam Paradoxa refelluntur). Martinus Lipenius [Martin Lipen], Bibliotheca realis medica (Frankfurt: Johannes Fridericus, 1679). 27. A. von Haller, Bibliotheca anatomica (Zürich: Orell, Gessner, Fuessli, 1774), 1.265: “Oliva Sabuga [sic] de Nantes Barrera”:”Hominem esse inversam arborem, succum nervorum totum corpus alere.” On the history of the notion of arbor inversa, see Carl-Martin Edsman, “Arbor inversa,” in Festschrift Walter Baetke (Weimar: Bölhaus, 1966), 85–109.

12 Editor’s Introduction expressed some skepticism at the possibility that a woman could have authored a work of such significance.28 At the beginning of the twentieth century, however, the fame of doña Oliva ran up against a formidable challenge. In 1903 a scholar from Alcaraz, José Marco Hidalgo, who had already written a short biography of Oliva Sabuco29 and was looking for more documentary evidence in the local archives, found and published three notarial records, which seemed to him conclusive proof that the true author of Nueva Filosofia had been Oliva’s father, the bachiller Miguel Sabuco.30 What were these documents and what did they say? The first was an escritura de obligación, dated 10 September 1587, whereby Alonso Sabuco—Miguel Sabuco’s son and Oliva’s brother—pledged himself together with his wife to return a sum of 120 ducats to Miguel Sabuco. This sum had been entrusted to Alonso to cover his expenses for a trip to Portugal, undertaken with the goal of having Nueva Filosofia printed there, so that it could be sold in Portugal and in the Portuguese Indies. Another document was a carta de poder, dated 11 September 1587, by which Miguel Sabuco entrusted power of attorney to his son Alonso for the purpose of going to Portugal to take care of this new edition of Nueva Filosofia. At the beginning of this document, Miguel Sabuco declared himself to be “the author of the book titled Nueva Filosofia, and father of doña Oliva, my own daughter, whom I set up as author only to grant her the honor but not the profit and interest [from the book].”31 A third document is the last will and testament of 28. Anastasio Chinchilla, Anales Historicos de la medicina en general y biografico-bibliograficos de la española en particular, Vol. I, repr. (New York and London, 1967), 303–4, 311. But even in the early eighteenth century, at the heyday of Oliva’s fame during the Spanish medical Enlightenment, Doctor Martínez, a fervent supporter of Sabuco’s ideas, had defended Oliva’s authorship against the charges of those who argued “que esta obra no fue de mujer” (quoted in Luis Sánchez Granjel, Humanismo y medicina [Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca 1968], 22, n12). 29. Marco Hidalgo, Biografía de Doña Oliva Sabuco. 30. José Marco Hidalgo, “Doña Oliva de Sabuco no fué escritora,” in Revista de Archivos, Bibliotecas y Museos, 9:7 (July 1903), 1–13. 31. “autor del libro intitulado Nueva Filosofia, padre que soy de doña Oliva, mi hija, a quien puse por autor solo para darle la honrra y no el probecho ni interes”: Marco Hidalgo, “Doña Oliva de Sabuco no fué escritora,” 4. The two documents are transcribed in Marco Hidalgo’s article: see p. 3 for the carta de obligación, and p. 4 for the carta de poder.

Editor’s Introduction 13 the same Miguel Sabuco, dated 20 February 1588, in which he stated to the same effect: I declare that I composed a book entitled Nueva Filosofia or norm, and another book that will be printed, in all of which I gave and give as author the said Luisa de Oliva my daughter, only to give her the name and the honor, and I reserve for myself the fruit and profit that may result from the said books, and I bid the said daughter of mine, Luisa de Oliva, not to meddle with the said privilege, under penalty of my curse, in consideration of what has been said, beyond which I have made an attestation to the effect that I am the author and she is not. Which attestation is in a legal document executed before the notary Villarreal.32 Marco Hidalgo declared that he had not come across this lastmentioned document among the papers of the notary Villarreal, some of which had been lost.33 He claimed, however, that the documents 32. “Aclaro que yo conpuse un libro yntitulado Nueva Filosofia e una Norma y otro libro que se ynprimyran, en los quales todos puse e pongo por autora a la dicha Luisa de oliba mi hija: solo por darle El nombre e la honrra, y Reservo El fruto y probecho que rretultare de los dichos libros para my, y mando a la dicha my hija Luisa de oliva no se entremeta en el dicho previlegio, so pena de my maldiciòn, atento lo dicho demas que tengo fecha ynformacion de como yo soy El autor y no Ella. La qual ynformación està en unas escripturas que pasà ante Villarreal escribano.” The text of the testament is on pp. 5–8 of Marco Hidalgo’s article, but the relevant part of the document has been transcribed again, with greater precision, by Domingo Henares, El bachiller Sabuco en la filosofía médica del Renacimiento español (Albacete, 1976), 63 and by Rodríguez de la Torre, “El autor y la autoría en la obra de Sabuco,” 203. The three transcriptions vary slightly from each other, but both Henares and Rodríguez de la Torre read “ynprimyran” and not “ymprimieron,” meaning that the verb is in the future not the past tense. I have not seen the document and I quote it here from Rodríguez de la Torre’s transcription. One more transcription of the document, by Waithe and Vintró, is viewable on their website www.sabuco.org (they publish their translation of the document in an appendix to New Philosophy of Human Nature, 322–27). They do not mention the transcriptions by Henares and Rodríguez de la Torre, which well preceded theirs. Like Marco Hidalgo, they read “ymprimieron” and translate consequently. 33. Marco Hidalgo, “Doña Oliva de Sabuco no fué escritora,” 8. However, it is possible that Miguel Sabuco might have simply alluded to the carta de poder executed with the notary

14 Editor’s Introduction he had found were quite sufficient to establish with absolute certainty that Miguel Sabuco was the true author of Nueva Filosofia. Marco Hidalgo’s main argument was that nobody would lie in his will, and that, moreover, no father would threaten to curse a child if not for good and valid reasons. We should notice, however, that Miguel’s testament proves the existence of a quarrel between him and Oliva and her husband on matters concerning her dowry. Specifically, the document mentions a manda, promised by Miguel to Acacio de Buedo, Oliva’s husband, “manda which was not valid for being excessive, and exceeding my capability, as well as for being detrimental to the interests of my other children.” This broken mandate led apparently to a pleito (lawsuit), later resolved, however, by mutual agreement.34 In view of all this, it is certainly interesting that Miguel Sabuco declared himself to be interested in the “probecho y interes,” not the fame and glory deriving from Nueva Filosofia. Clearly, there were financial problems between Oliva and her father, but Marco Hidalgo chose to disregard them as grounds for questioning Miguel Sabuco’s claim to the authorship of the book. There is another point where Marco Hidalgo’s inferences from these documents seem rather shaky. He noticed that Miguel Sabuco claimed to be the author of Nueva Filosofia, but never explicitly mentioned the title of the most directly medical part of the volume, Vera Medicina. Marco Hidalgo solved this problem with no documentary basis at all. He asserted that Vera Medicina was probably written by Oliva’s godfather, the physician Alonso de Heredia.35 Both father and godfather of the lucky girl, he argued, moved by “extraordinary love” for their respective daughter and goddaughter, jointly agreed to let her shine in public as the author of their work, though nothing in the sources even remotely suggested this possibility. Villarreal on 11 September 1587, some months before he made his will. 34. “Item declaro que quando case a Luisa De Oliva con Acacio de Buedo, vecino desta ciudad, le hice cierta manda la qual conforme a derecho no hera balida por ser excesiva y esceder de lo que yo podia y ser en perjuicio de los demas mys hijos, y se tuvo pleito y nos concertamos por bien de paz, e hizo carta de dote el dicho Acacio de Buedo en cinquenta e dos mill quinyientos maravedis que recibió de my en dos viñas y ajuar y ropas y reales; mando los reciva en quenta” (Marco Hidalgo, “Doña Oliva de Sabuco no fué escritora,” 6). 35. Marco Hidalgo, “Doña Oliva de Sabuco no fué escritora,” 11.

Editor’s Introduction 15 Be that as it may, this short article, with its limited documentary evidence, almost sufficed to erase Oliva’s name from the historical record. In the twentieth century, the biographical dictionaries generally include only her father, Miguel Sabuco (“formerly doña Oliva”), and until recently almost all the historians who have analyzed the book uniformly believed in Miguel Sabuco’s claim.36 Marco Hidalgo’s solution seems to me biased by excessive skepticism of female authorship, an attitude typical of early twentiethcentury positivist historiography, and that led unfortunately, in several cases, to the over-hasty denial of the authenticity of texts, which later scholarship would recognize as written by women.37 In 36. Marco Hidalgo’s view was adopted by the author of the first twentieth-century monograph on Sabuco: Benjamín Marcos, Miguel Sabuco (antes Doña Oliva) (Madrid: Biblioteca Filosófica, 1923), as well as by almost all subsequent Spanish scholars. A notable exception was Gregorio Marañón, who, however, simply seems to have been unaware of Marco Hidalgo’s archival findings. See G. Marañón, “La literatura científica en los siglos XVI y XVII,” in Historia General de las Literaturas Hispánicas (Barcelona: Barna, 1953), 951–53. Among the most important contributions on Nueva Filosofia that put implicit faith in Miguel Sabuco’s claim to authorship are Luis Sánchez Granjel, “La doctrina antropológicomédica de Miguel Sabuco,” in Luis Sánchez Granjel, Humanismo y medicina (Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca, 1968), 15–74; Domingo Henares, El bachiller Sabuco; the monographic issue of Al-Basit 13 (Dec. 1987), on Miguel Sabuco; García Gómez, La concepción de la naturaleza humana en la obra de Miguel Sabuco; and Josep Lluís Barona, “Una refutación del galenismo: naturaleza humana y enfermedad en Miguel Sabuco,” in J. L. Barona, Sobre medicina y filosofía natural en el Renacimiento (Valencia: Seminari d’Estudis sobre la Ciencia, 1993). 37. A case in point is that of Trotula, a medica (woman healer) of the Salernitan School (eleventh–twelfth centuries). Her authorship of a treatise on women’s diseases had been disputed already in the Renaissance, but it was in the early twentieth century that it was most aggressively questioned. In 1921 a German historian, arguing exclusively from the evidence of one manuscript (now lost) in which the name Trotula appeared abbreviated with a notation that he read as the masculine suffix us, asserted that Trotula never existed, and that a Salernitan doctor named Trottus had existed instead. John Benton reconsidered the whole issue some years ago, showing persuasively that the text conventionally attributed to Trotula was not really hers, but that another text called Practica secundum Trota is undoubtedly presented, in the earliest manuscript tradition, as the work of a woman (John Benton, “Trotula, Women’s Problems, and the Professionalization of Medicine in the Middle Ages,” in Bulletin of the History of Medicine 59 [1985], 30–53). On the history of the controversy over Trotula’s historical existence and authorship see Monica H. Green, “In Search of an ‘Authentic’ Women’s Medicine: The Strange Fates of Trota of Salerno and Hildegard of Bingen,”

16 Editor’s Introduction the last decades, of course, the attitude has been completely different, if not almost antithetical. There has been a strong historical interest in women authors, and the pendulum of scholarly bias, long hostile to them, has possibly swung all the way in their favor. As we may expect, Oliva’s authorship has been reclaimed recently from a feminist viewpoint, though with none or very little argument to support the claim.38 And since books by women authors sell in these times, it is not surprising that Nueva Filosofia was reissued in Madrid in a partial edition, mainly for commercial, not scholarly, purposes, once again under the name of Oliva Sabuco, although the editor had no new evidence to provide on the authorship issue.39 Even more recently, Dynamis 19 (1999), 35–43. For a thorough reappraisal of the issue of Trotula’s authorship see now Monica H. Green, Introduction, in The Trotula. A Medieval Compendium of Women’s Medicine, ed. and trans. Monica H. Green, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 48–51. 38. The issue of authorship was first argued in Oliva’s favor on purely speculative grounds by Mary Ellen Waithe, “Oliva Sabuco de Nantes Barrera,” in Mary Ellen Waithe, A History of Women Philosophers (Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989), 2.261–84. For another essay that reclaimed Oliva’s authorship from a feminist point of view while offering no argument in support of the claim (besides the speculations already advanced by Waithe, plus a generalized suspicion toward a “proyecto secular de cancelación de autoridad femenina y de genealogia materna que es inherent al orden patriarcal”) see MaríaMilagros Rivera Garretas, “Oliva Sabuco de Nantes Barrera,” in Breve historia feminista de la literatura española (en lengua castellana), ed. Iris M. Zavala (Barcelona: Anthropos, 1997), 4.131–46 (I would like to thank Milagros Rivera for allowing me to consult this text when still in manuscript). Oliva’s authorship is also argued, from a feminist perspective but with no cogent reasons, by Dámaris M. Otero-Torres, “’Una humilde sierva osa hablar’ o la ley del padre: Dislocaciones entre texto femenino y autoría masculina en ‘La carta introductoria al Rey nuestro Seňor’ de Oliva Sabuco de Nantes” in Taller de Letras 26 (1998), 9–27; Dámaris M. Otero-Torres, “Texto femenino/autoridad masculina: problemas de autoría en torno a la Nueva Filosofia de la Naturaleza del Hombre (1587), de Oliva Sabuco de Nantes,” in Lecturas críticas de textos hispánicos: Estudios de literatura española Siglo de Oro, ed. Florencia Calvo and Melchora Romanos (Buenos Aires: Editorial Universitaria, 2000), 2.107–13. The entry on Oliva Sabuco in Women Writers of Spain. An Annotated Bio-Bibliographical Guide, ed. Carolyn L. Galerstein (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986), 283–84, while pointing out that “several male historians in this century claim that the first book was written by her father,” concedes that the issue of authorship is controversial and raises questions “not answered to date.” 39. Oliva Sabuco de Nantes y Barrera, Nueva Filosofía de la Naturaleza del Hombre y otros escritos, ed. Atilano Martínez Tomé (Madrid, Editora Nacional, 1981). This edition includes

Editor’s Introduction 17 Mary Ellen Waithe and Maria Colomer Vintró have argued for Oliva’s authorship of Nueva Filosofia on the ground of what they claim is “new evidence” they have unearthed through research in the local archives.40 In my opinion, however, solving the question of authorship in favor of Oliva, on the ground of inconclusive evidence and pseudofeminist bias, is just as unsatisfactory as the old solution in favor of Miguel, inspired as it was by a positivism strongly flavored with male chauvinism.41 Clearly, the mystery surrounding the true authorship of Nueva Filosofia has not yet been dispelled. Let us go by the evidence. What is known, first of all, of Miguel Sabuco himself? As already mentioned, there is evidence that a Bachiller Sabuco was apothecary in Alcaraz in the 1570s.42 only the first three dialogues. On the many errors in this text see the critical comments by Rodríguez de la Torre, “Bibliografía de comentaristas y referencias sobre Miguel Sabuco (antes d.a Oliva) y su obra,” 261–62, and the review by Álvaro Martínez Vidal in Llull, Boletín de la Sociedad Española de Historia de las Ciencias, 7/13, (1984), 109–10. 40. See below, n52. 41. Another article that has recently revisited the authorship issue in favor of Miguel is Fernando Rodríguez de la Torre, “El autor y la autoría en la obra de Sabuco,” Al-Basit 13 (Dec. 1987), 191–213, which however does not bring any strong new evidence to bear on the issue. He argues that the woodcut signature and rubrica of the author in the first edition of Nueva Filosofia (a rare feature in sixteenth-century books) corresponds to that of Miguel Sabuco’s testament (195–98). He also points out several references throughout the text to the autor (not autora), suggesting that Miguel Sabuco had meant them as a buscapié, i.e., a hint to the true identity of the author. On the issue of the signature, however, it should be noted that another scholar, Domingo Henares, had already compared the signature in the book with that of Miguel Sabuco’s will, as well as with a document from the University of Alcalá signed by the Miguel Sabuco who was a student there. According to Henares, the signatures do not seem to be by the same person (Henares, El bachiller Sabuco, 87). 42. Marco Hidalgo, Biografía de Doña Oliva Sabuco, 30, first located an entry mentioning a “Bachiller Sabuco, boticario” in one of the libros de libramientos of the city council of Alcaraz, dated 4 February 1572 (see above, n22). According to a scholar who has re-examined the archival documentation recently, the correct date of this document is 23 December 1572 (see Aurelio Pretel Marín, Alcaraz en el siglo de Andrés de Vandelvira, el Bachiller Sabuco y el Preceptor Abril: cultura, sociedad, arquitectura y otras bellas artes en el Renacimiento. Albacete: Instituto de Estudios Albacetenses “Don Juan Manuel” de la Excma. Disputacion de Albacete, Serie I. Estudios 111 (1999), 242. In his 1976 book on Sabuco, Domingo Henares argued that the documentation identified by Marco Hidalgo was not conclusive, because the surname Sabuco was rather common in Alcaraz at that time; he also pointed out that Miguel’s son Alonso was called boticario in later documents, so the 1572 entry might have referred to

18 Editor’s Introduction Furthermore, documents from 1542 to 1544 attest that a Miguel Sabuco from Alcaraz was studying canon law in those years at the University of Alcalá de Henares.43 This is interesting, considering the bitter invective against the “murderous burden of law books” written in Latin, for the puzzlement of common people and the fattening of lawyers, denounced by the author of Nueva Filosofia in the dialogue On the Things that Will Improve this World, and Its Commonwealths. The evidence that Miguel Sabuco studied at a prominent university, besides fitting with the title of bachiller (baccalaureate) under which he is mentioned in several documents, fits also with a detail of his testament, namely, the obligation that his son Alonso and his son-in-law Acacio de Buedo, Oliva’s husband, were under, of paying him a yearly sum, partly in books.44 Identifying Miguel Sabuco the apothecary with the Miguel Sabuco formerly student at Alcalá is somewhat hypothetical, however, since the name Sabuco was fairly common in Alcaraz in this period. Going over the city records, for instance, mention has been found of a Miguel Sabuco who was named letrado (presumably, secretary) of the Alcaraz city council in 1590.45 But nothing indicates that this might have been the apothecary Miguel Sabuco, presumed author of Nueva Filosofia. More recently Aurelio Pretel Marín, a scholar who has worked on the local archival records for a book on Alcaraz, has established that there were at least three Miguel Sabucos in the town in this period. Trying to identify the presumed author of Nueva Filosofia among them, he says, is “a difficult and incomplete puzzle.”46 him, though Alonso was only twenty-two at the time (see Henares, El bachiller Sabuco, 72; on the surname Sabuco, documented in the town since the 1450s, 66). 43. These documents from the registries of the University of Alcalá de Henares were first published by Manuel Serrano y Sanz, Apuntes para una biblioteca de escritoras españolas desde del año 1401 al 1833 (Madrid: Biblioteca Nacional, 1903–05), 2.173 (Serrano y Sanz was the first scholar to acknowledge Marco Hidalgo’s 1903 discovery of Miguel Sabuco’s claim to be the author of Nueva Filosofia). On these documents see also Henares, El Bachiller Sabuco, 74–77; and García Gómez, La concepción de la naturaleza humana en la obra de Miguel Sabuco, 14. 44. This detail had already been pointed out by Marco Hidalgo in his 1903 article (“Doña Oliva de Sabuco no fué escritora,” 7 and 10). 45. Benjamín Marcos, Miguel Sabuco, 74; Henares, El Bachiller Sabuco, 67. 46. Pretel Marín, Alcaraz en el siglo de Andrés de Vandelvira, 241–42, 250. Some of these problems of identification had already been raised by Henares, El Bachiller Sabuco, 67–68.

Editor’s Introduction 19 This much is indisputable, however. In the municipal books of Alcaraz there is mention several times during the 1570s of payments on account of medicines for the poor, due to a Bachiller Sabuco who was an apothecary. In the 1580s Alonso Sabuco is mentioned instead, also as an apothecary, so presumably the father’s trade was passed on to the son in those years.47 Notarial documentation on the Bachiller Miguel Sabuco, father of Alonso and Oliva, shows him often in the role of godfather or witness in various transactions, indicating that he was well connected both among the common people and the upper social strata of the town.48 His social level was the rising middle class. So this profile of Oliva’s father emerges: he had studied in the 1540s at the University of Alcalá; he was an avid reader, who bought books every year; he worked as an apothecary (and in this respect, it must be pointed out that considerable knowledge of materia medica and pharmacopeia is displayed by the author of Nueva Filosofia).49 He served the community possibly holding the municipal office of síndico and procurador,50 he belonged to the middle class, and had a social network that included people of presumably higher social standing, like the Dr. Heredia, who was godfather to his daughter Oliva. When considering Sabuco’s possible social network, moreover, it should be noted that sixteenth-century Alcaraz, though a small city, was a site of vibrant humanist learning, centered around the figure of Simón Abril, teacher of grammar and rhetoric for the city in the years 1578–83, 47. Pretel Marín, Alcaraz en el siglo de Andrés de Vandelvira, 243. 48. Ibid, 246. 49. On the considerable knowledge of materia medica possessed by the author of Nueva Filosofia, see María del Carmen Francés Causapé, “Miguel Sabuco Álvarez y la farmacia,” Al-Basit 13 (Dec. 1987), 105–10. Miguel Sabuco’s profile as a literate apothecary was not unusual in this period: see Pretel Marín, Alcaraz en el siglo de Andrés de Vandelvira, 243, for another example of a local apothecary who was the author of literary works. On the role of apothecaries in the early modern Spanish medical establishment, see the fundamental study by John Tate Lanning, The Royal Protomedicato. The Regulation of the Medical Profession in the Spanish Empire (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1985), 230–60. 50. Notarial evidence indicates that a Miguel Sabuco was procurador and síndico for the commune of Alcaraz in the 1560s (Pretel Marín, Alcaraz en el siglo de Andrés de Vandelvira, 242–45). According to Pretel Marín, this may or may not have been the Bachiller Sabuco who was an apothecary; but it is unlikely that the same may have held the high office of letrado of the city in 1590, as suggested by Marcos (see above, n45).

20 Editor’s Introduction a promoter of the reform of academic studies and, like Sabuco, an advocate of the use of the vernacular in law and medicine.51 Let us now examine the new evidence on whose ground Waithe and Colomer Vintró believe they have demonstrated Oliva’s authorship of Nueva Filosofia.52 They point out that of the three documents found by Marco Hidalgo in 1903, only the will survives, and that the sentence where Miguel Sabuco claimed to be the author of Nueva Filosofia, which occurs at the end of the document, immediately preceding the notarial paragraph identifying the testator and witnesses, may have been interpolated after the will was signed by the witnesses. Their main reason for this rather far-fetched hypothesis is that the three priests who witnessed the will would have objected to Miguel’s insertion in this document of a threatened curse against his daughter if she meddled with his privilege to print the book. They argue (but this also seems a bit stretched) that “invocation of a curse was evidence of the practice of witchcraft” and that the three priests would have had a duty to report it to the Holy Office.53 This, they 51. On Alcaraz in this period, see Aurelio Pretel Marín, Alcaraz: un enclave castellano en la frontera del siglo XIII (Albacete: Ed. Fuentes, 1974); see also his more recent study, Alcaraz en el siglo de Andrés de Vandelvira, already cited. See also José Cano Valero, “El siglo de las águilas alcaraceñas,” Al-Basit 13 (1987), 11–42. On the similarities between Simón Abril’s ideas about the use of the vernacular in the sciences and Sabuco’s views, see Luis de Cañigral, “P. Simón Abril y M. Sabuco: Coincidencias programáticas en pedagogia y reforma de la enseñanza, Al-Basit, 13 (1987), 43–54. 52. Mary Ellen Waithe and Maria Elena Vintró, “Posthumously Plagiarizing Oliva Sabuco: An Appeal to Cataloging Librarians,” in Cataloging and Classification Quarterly 35:3–4 (2003), 525–40; see also their previous article, “Fué Oliva o fué Miguel: el caso del Sabuco,” Boletin de Biblioteca Nacional de Mexico 1–2 (2002–03), 11–37. In the Introduction to their translation they do not discuss the authorship issue, referring the reader to the two articles quoted above for corroboration of their claim that Oliva was indeed the author of Nueva Filosofia (Introduction, in Sabuco, New Philosophy of Human Nature, 1). 53. Waithe and Vintró, “Posthumously Plagiarizing Oliva Sabuco,” 533–35. They also point out that Miguel has the title of the book wrong, as he calls it “Nueva Filosofia o norma,” and that he mentions another book that “was printed” (527: they quote the document in translation). They adopt the reading “ymprymieron” (past tense), while the other scholars who have examined the document, Henares and Rodríguez de la Torre, read “ymprymieran” (future tense). See Waithe’s and Vintró’s transcription of the document posted on their website www.sabuco.org, and n32 above for references to Henares’s and Rodríguez de la Torre’s transcription.

Editor’s Introduction 21 claim, is “new evidence” showing that the testament cannot be taken as final proof of Miguel’s authorship. They also point out that the prima facie evidence pointing to Oliva’s authorship has been too easily discounted. To obtain the royal license to print a book, an author had to appear in person before the representatives of the Consejo Real to explain what the book was about. Misrepresentation of either content or authorship would be a risky proceeding, as discovery of fraud entailed punishment. Moreover, Waithe and Vintró found some baptismal records showing that Oliva was still living in Alcaraz in 1596 and 1600, when she and her husband were godparents to some children. This, they point out, is evidence against the claim made by Octavio Cuartero that Oliva and her husband had to leave Alcaraz in disgrace, presumably once the fraud about the authorship became publicly known.54 Finally, they argue on the basis of new documents that neither of the dates conventionally assumed for Miguel’s and Oliva’s deaths are correct. Miguel is mentioned in the 1602 wedding banns of his son Miguel (if he studied at Alcalá in the early 1540s, he would have been at least an octogenarian by then). As to Oliva, contrary to what is said in the preface to the 1622 Portuguese edition of Nueva Filosofia, she was still living in 1629, as indicated by the fact that she is mentioned in the marriage banns of her daughter Luisa de Buedo in that year.55 In their article, Waithe and Vintró do not quote the scholars who have recently examined the archival documents, Henares, Rodríguez de la Torre, and Pretel Marín. They also point out that the promissory note by Alonso de Buedo transcribed by Marco Hidalgo shows that Alonso was aware that the trip to Portugal to print the book in Miguel’s name was a “fool’s errand,” because Oliva held the copyright also for Portugal. But in fact the promissory note as transcribed by Marco Hidalgo does not say that the book will be printed in Miguel’s name. In the testament, moreover, Miguel says that in all the books mentioned he gave and would give as author his daughter Oliva, thus showing that he had no intention of dropping the fictional authorship, though he felt entitled to the profits from the sale of the book. 54. See Octavio Cuartero, Prólogo, in Sabuco, Obras, xxv. He only suggested this as a possibility, due to “el mal éxito que tuvo en la Corte y en las escuelas la filosofía de Doña Oliva” and to some “molesta murmuración entre los vecinos de Alcaraz.” 55. Waithe and Vintró, “Posthumously Plagiarizing Oliva Sabuco,” 535–37. But both documents simply say that Miguel was the son of the Bachiller Sabuco, and that Luisa de Buedo was Oliva’s daughter; they do not say that they were still living at the time of the weddings. See the documents posted on their website www.sabuco.org.

22 Editor’s Introduction None of this, however, does even remotely amount to conclusive proof of Oliva’s authorship of Nueva Filosofia. Though Waithe and Vintró are quite right in pointing out that Oliva’s authorship has been too easily discounted, and their research in the local archives has provided new and valuable documentation, their eagerness to attribute the work to Oliva seems, in the face of the evidence, a bit too much like wishful thinking.56 I believe, as I have already said, that the mystery of the authorship of Nueva Filosofia has not been solved yet. On the side of Oliva’s authorship, the question that looms largest in my mind is: if Oliva’s authorship was a sham, why did none of the contemporaries see through it? As we know, Oliva became immediately famous as a woman prodigy. Indeed, the verses from the Pícara Justina that I quoted above, in listing her among fictional characters such as Don Quixote and Celestina, may have hinted at the fictive nature of her authorship57—the learned Oliva like the Dickensian Mrs. Harris. But as we know, Oliva was a real person, not a fictional character. If she was just an ordinary woman of little or no education, like most women of her time, how could her contemporaries so easily believe in her identity as a learned author? A woman of learning was a rarity but not an impossibility in sixteenth-century Spain; in fact, hundreds of women were writing in this period.58 Oliva’s contemporaries would 56. It is disconcerting, at the very least, that Waithe had already blithely reclaimed Oliva’s authorship, with not a shred of new evidence at all, several years before her research with Vintró in the Alcaraz archives. See her chapter “Oliva Sabuco de Nantes Barrera,” in Waithe, A History of Women Philosophers, 2.261–84. Domingo Henares has scathingly criticized Waithe and Vintró’s arguments in favor of Oliva’s authorship: “Anotaciones al articulo Fué Oliva o fué Miguel? Reconsiderando el caso Sabuco,” text posted on the website www.sabuco.eu, website of the Forum Oliva Sabuco de Castilla-La Mancha y Sociedad Oliva Sabuco de España. Ricardo González, El enigma Sabuco (Albacete: Ricardo González, 2005) has come too late to my knowledge to be included in this discussion. 57. As suggested by Marcel Bataillon, Pícaros y picaresca: La pícara Justina (Madrid: Taurus, 1969), 43. Bataillon argued that the author of Justina, the Toledo physician Francisco López de Ubeda, must have known that Miguel Sabuco was the true author of the book: “Nuestro autor, contemporáneo del bachiller Miguel Sabuco y criado en la misma región de España, conocía, seguramente, el secreto de éste (sólo definitivamente revelado a principio del siglo XX) consistente en que Doña Oliva Sabuco no es sino el testaferro de su propio progenitor” (43, see also 172–73). 58. As shown long ago by Serrano y Sanz, Apuntes para una biblioteca de escritoras españolas desde el año 1401 al 1833. See also Ronald E. Surtz, Writing Women in Late Medieval

Editor’s Introduction 23 probably have heard of celebrated women humanists like Luisa Sigea (ca. 1522–60), Latin teacher to the infanta Mary of Portugal, and author of works in Latin.59 Nueva Filosofia is prefaced by two sonnets in Oliva Sabuco’s honor by a resident of Alcaraz, the licenciado Juan de Sotomayor, suggesting that this local scholar knew Oliva as a woman of learning. I have also come across a new piece of evidence in this respect, another piece of the puzzle that nobody seems to have noticed so far. Oliva was mentioned by a contemporary as an eminent learned woman even before her book came out. She was praised by Cristóbal de Acosta in his Tratado en loor de las mugeres (treatise in praise of women) published in Venice in 1592, but probably written several years earlier, in 1585.60 Since this text, as far as I know, has never been mentioned by any of the historians who have written on Sabuco, I will quote the passage in full: If the world, with so much reason, had not started to praise (…) the great learning of a living Spanish lady, Oliva Sabuco, a native of these kingdoms, I would not have mentioned her now, until the time when I hope to make her name for ever immortal, [that is] when I will send you—which will be soon—the book that this and Early Modern Spain: The Mothers of Saint Teresa of Avila (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995). On women’s literacy in early modern Spain see Nieves Baranda Leturio, Cortejo a lo prohibido. Lectoras y escritoras en la España moderna (Madrid: Editorial Arco/Libros, 2005), esp. 17–64. 59. She wrote a Latin dialogue, Duarum Virginum Colloquium de Vita Aulica et Privata (1552): see the critical edition with Introduction and French translation by Odette Sauvage: Dialogue de deux jeunes filles sur la vie de cour et la vie de retraite (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1970); Louis Bourdon and Odette Sauvage, “Recherches sur Luisa Sigea,” Bulletin des études portugaises 31 (1970), 33–176 (which includes Sigea’s correspondence with various people of her times, including Philip II). See also Inés Rada, “Profil et trajectoire d’une femme humaniste: Luisa Sigea” in Images de la femme en Espagne aux XVIème et XVIIéme siècles, ed. Augustin Redondo (Paris: Presses de la Sorbonne nouvelle, 1994), 339–49; and the monograph by Susanne Thiemann, Vom Glück der Gelehrsamkeit.Luisa Sigea, Humanistin im 16. Jahrhundert (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2006). 60. Cristóbal de Acosta, Tratado en loor de las mugeres, y de la Castidad, Onestidad, Constancia, Silencio, y Iusticia: con otras muchas particularidades, y varias Historias (Venice: Giacomo Cornetti, 1592).

24 Editor’s Introduction learned woman is writing on the new philosophy and nature of man, and on the true medicine. In which you will find—those of you who will read it with attention and without prejudice—all the philosophy and medicine, of the ancients and the moderns, renewed with great cleverness, wisdom and many demonstrations.61 As this passage clearly implies, Acosta was writing before Nueva Filosofia was published (internal evidence in the book suggests that he wrote the Tratado en loor de las mugeres in 1585, two years before Nueva Filosofia came out).62 What do we know of Acosta himself? He was of African origin (“Affricano” is the sobriquet proudly displayed after his name on the title page of his work), probably born of Marrano-Jewish parents. Early in life he moved to Portugal, went to India as a physician to the Portuguese Viceroy Luiz de Ataide in 1568, came back to Lisbon, and served as town physician and surgeon to the municipality of Burgos in Spain from 1576 to 1587.63 His most famous 61. Cristóbal de Acosta, Tratado en loor de las mugeres, 106v–107r : “Y si el mundo con tanta razon no empesara (loque en quanto durar no dexara) de loar el gran saber de una donna Oliva Sabuco dama Española, natural desto Reynos, que oy vive callara yo su nombre de presente hasta el tiempo quelo espero eternizar, quando os embiare (que sa presto) el libro que esta sabia muger compone dela nueva filosofia y naturaleza del hombre, y dela verdadera medicina. En el qual vereis (vos y quien con consideracion y sin pasion lo leyere) con mucha agudeza, prudencia y nomenos demonstraciones revovada toda la filosofia y medicina, de todos los antigos [sic!] y modernos.” The passage is quoted, but without analyzing its implications for the authorship of Nueva Filosofia, by Ana Vargas Martínez, “La autoridad femenina en Cristóbal Acosta: una cuestión de orden simbólico,” in De los símbolos al orden simbólico femenino (ss. IV–XVII), ed. Ana Isabel Cerrada Jiménez and Josemi Lorenzo Arribas (Madrid: Asociación Cultural Al-Mudayna, 1998), 100. 62. A prefatory letter to the volume bears the date 12 August 1585 (Acosta, Tratado en loor de las mugeres, 12r). 63. After 1587, upon the death of his wife, Acosta withdrew to a hermitage, and there he wrote a Tratado en contra, y pro de la vita solitaria, also published in Venice by Giacomo Cornetti in 1592, like his Tratado en loor de las mugeres. On Acosta see Antonio Hernández Morejón, Historia Bibliográfica de la Medicina Española (New York and London: Johnson Reprints, 1967), 3.265–67; and H. Friedenwald, The Jews and Medicine (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1944), 2.445; see also the entry “Acosta, Cristóbal” by Francisco

Editor’s Introduction 25 work is a treatise on Eastern materia medica, Tractado de las drogas y medicinas de las Indias Orientales (Burgos, 1578)64 which is quoted several times in Nueva Filosofia.65 The connection with Acosta leads us to the issue of the intellectual context of Nueva Filosofia. Where did some of the ideas advocated by Sabuco come from? Very sparing and often critical in mentioning ancient authorities, the texts collected in Nueva Filosofia quote frequently and with marked approbation, by contrast, one specific category of works—the books on materia medica written by overseas travelers and explorers, as for instance, besides Acosta himself, Nicolás Monardes’s Historia medicinal de las cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales (Seville, 1565)66 and other works on the materia medica of the new world. Sabuco distinctly mentions new drugs imported from the Americas, such as the china root, and other herbal remedies.67 Sabuco’s keen interest in the new exotic pharmacopoeia fits well with his/her appreciation of Pliny’s Natural

Guerra in Dictionary of Scientific Biography, ed. Charles C. Gillespie (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970–1990), s.v. Interesting notes about Acosta’s work on drugs can be found in Francisco Guerra, “Sexo y drogas en el siglo XVI,” Asclepio 24 (1972), 304–11. 64. The work was translated into Latin by Charles de l’Écluse: Aromatum et medicamentorum in orientali India nascentium Liber (Antwerp: Christophe Plantin, 1582). An Italian edition was published in 1585 in Venice: Trattato di Christoforo Acosta Africano, medico, & chirurgo della Historia, Natura, et Virtu delle Droghe medicinali, & altri semplici rarissimi, che vengono portati dalle Indie orientali in Europa (Venice: Francesco Ziletti, 1585). See Raúl Rodríguez Nozal and Antonio González Bueno, El Tratado de las drogas de Cristóbal de Acosta (Burgos, 1578). Utilidad commercial y materia médica de las Indias orientales en la Europa renacentista (Madrid: Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional, 2000). 65. Sabuco, Obras, 43, 107, 222. 66. Nicolás Monardes (ca. 1512–88), La historia medicinal de las cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias occidentales, facsimile reprint of the 1580 edition, intro. José Maria López Piñero (Madrid: Ministerio de Sanidad y Consumo, 1989). Sabuco quotes Monardes approvingly several times in the Coloquio de auxilios, o remedios de la vera medicina (Obras, 219, 222). 67. Such as “las habas purgantes, el palo para males de riñones, el pimiento de Indias y los piñones de Indias” (see Francés Causapé, “Miguel Sabuco Álvarez y la farmacia,” 109). On Spain’s role in the introduction of exotic materia medica to Europe see José Maria López Piñero and M. L. López Terrada, La influencia española en la introducción en Europa de las plantas americanas, 1463–1623 (Valencia: Universidad de Valencia, 1998).

26 Editor’s Introduction History, the text most often quoted in Nueva Filosofia.68 Clearly, what Pliny meant to Sabuco was an approach to knowledge based on the empiricism of natural history, the detailed observation of plants and animals, as contrasted with the Aristotelian speculative scientia taught in the schools. The Renaissance was a time of unprecedented blossoming for natural history—a blossoming that was going to have even more remarkable developments in the seventeenth century.69 The literature on extra-European materia medica played a key role in the Renaissance renewal of natural history. Sabuco’s work is an example of the keen interest in the new extra-European natural histories. The discovery of the New World had brought a sense of larger horizons also in the field of knowledge, widening the gulf between the ancients and the moderns. Significantly, Sabuco draws a parallel between the novelty of her/his medical views and Christopher Columbus’s breakaway from the conventional limits of the navigable world.70 Acosta’s book is prefaced, among other things, by a “letter to the author” signed by “una dama en nombre de todas las mugeres” (a lady in the name of all women). Who is this mysterious lady? The plot thickens. Did Acosta know Oliva personally, as his text seems to imply? Or was he an accomplice of Miguel’s imposture? We don’t know, but the nature of Acosta’s text suggests a valuable clue in locating the issue of Sabuco’s authorship in its historical context. Acosta’s Tratado en loor de las mugeres is an example of the kind of texts conventionally grouped under the label of Querelle des femmes.71 Like such texts, it purports to defend women from misogynist and scurrilous slander, and it does 68. There are over a hundred textual references to Pliny’s Natural History in Nueva Filosofia, as noticed by Henares, El bachiller Sabuco, 80. 69. On the close connection between natural history and medicine in the Renaissance see Roger K. French, “Pliny and Renaissance Medicine,” in Science in the Early Roman Empire: Pliny the Elder, his Sources and Influence, ed. Roger K. French and Frank Greenway (London: Croom Helm, 1986), 252–81. On natural history as a distinctive Renaissance phenomenon see Brian W. Ogilvie, The Science of Describing: Natural History in Renaissance Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006). 70. Sabuco, Obras, 239–40. 71. In her prefatory letter to Acosta’s treatise, the anonymous lady quotes “Luis Dardano Venetian,” i.e., La bella e dotta difesa delle donne, in verso, e prosa di messer Luigi Dardano… contra gli accusatori del sesso loro (Venice: per Bartolomeo detto l’Imperatore, 1554), which was an important text of the Querelle.

Editor’s Introduction 27 so vigorously, ransacking the repertory of “exemplar history,” ancient and modern, sacred and profane, for cases of women deservedly famous for their learning or their military valor.72 Besides Oliva, he mentions several celebrated women writers of the Renaissance, such as Isotta Nogarola, Isabella Sforza, Marguerite de Navarre, Hélisenne de Crenne, and Christine de Pizan herself, whose book in defense of women he quotes approvingly.73 Interestingly, Acosta adds a comparative perspective to the conventional pro-woman arguments of the Querelle, bringing evidence from his own travels and from other travelers’ reports to argue that women were better treated in foreign cultures, such as among the Aethiops, where—he tells us—they could be monarchs and military leaders. He also stated that outside of Europe women enjoyed great “privileges and freedom” as in Brazil, the coast of Guyana and Malabar, and other parts of the Eastern and Western Indies.74 In Acosta’s work we find therefore a combination of two intellectual novelties, both associated with the rejection of traditional learning—the interest in cosas naturales and exotic drugs from other lands, and the themes of the defense of women typical of the Querelle des femmes. Acosta’s mention of Oliva suggests that her work may have been associated by her contemporaries with the debate on women, a debate that had been going on in Spain since the fifteenth century, when it had been pioneered by the work of Rodriguez de la Cámara, Triunfo de las Doñas (ca. 1440).75 The Querelle des femmes 72. As was in the convention of the genre, Acosta listed women of valor and fame “en virtudes, letras y armas” (Tratado en loor de las mugeres, 44r). 73. Acosta, Tratado en loor de las mugeres, 96r–97r. 74. Acosta, Tratado en loor de las mugeres, 95r. He also perceptively noted cross-cultural differences in marriage customs, such as the contrast between countries where “women are bought”—or, in modern anthropological terms, where marriage involves the payment of “brideprice” by the bridegroom to the bride or to her family—and countries such as Europe, where “women buy their husbands”—i. e., marriage involves the payment of a dowry by the bride’s family to the bridegroom (ibid, 38r). 75. Triunfo de las donas in Juan Rodríguez del Padrón, Obras completas, ed. César Hernández Alonso (Madrid, Ed. Nacional, 1982), 211–58; see Martin S. Gilderman, Rodríguez de la Cámara (Boston: Twayne Pub., 1977). Rodriguez de la Cámara’s Triunfo de las Doñas influenced what is arguably the most important text of the Querelle des femmes in the early sixteenth century, Agrippa’s Declamation on the Nobility and Preeminence of the Female Sex

28 Editor’s Introduction was particularly vibrant in sixteenth-century Spain, the “profeminist” literature being more numerous than the “antifeminist” writings.76 In the 1580s, just a few years before the publication of Acosta’s treatise, other texts in defense of women were published in Spain, such as Juan de Espinosa’s Dialogo en laude de las mugeres (1580) and Juan Pérez de Moya’s Varia historia de sanctas e illustres mugeres en todo género de virtudes (1583).77 So the debate was lively in the years in which Sabuco wrote. It should be noted, moreover, that the association of Oliva with the Querelle des femmes is suggested also by another clue: in his novel La picara Justina (1605), the physician López de Ubeda quoted a “libro del duelo del género femenino” (Book of the Duel of the Female Gender) that later in the text he attributed to “Doña Oliva.”78 I have (see Albert Rabil, Introduction, in Henricus Cornelius Agrippa, Declamation on the Nobility and Preeminence of the Female Sex, ed. and trans. Albert Rabil, Jr. [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996], 19). Besides Rodríguez de la Cámara, other texts of the Spanish Querelle from the first half of the fifteenth century include: Diego de Valera, Tratado en defenssa de virtuosas mugeres (written before 1445), Don Alvaro de Luna, Libro de las virtuosas e claras mugeres (1446), Fray Martín de Córdoba, Jardín de nobles donzellas (ca. 1468). See Agustín Boyer, “Estudio descriptivo del ‘Libro de las virtuosas e claras mugeres’ de Don Alvaro de Luna: fuentes, género y ubicación en el debate,” Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley, 1988. 76. See Jacob Ornstein, “La misoginia y el profeminismo en la literatura castellana,” Revista de Filología Hispánica, 3 (1941), 219–33. On the Querelle des femmes in Spain see María del Pilar Oñate, El feminismo en la literatura española, (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1938); Françoise Vigier, “Public féminin et production littéraire en Espagne, du milieu du XVIème siècle au début du XVIème: traités de défense des femmes et roman sentimental,” in Images de la femme en Espagne aux XVIème et XVIIème siècles, ed. Augustin Redondo (Paris: Presses de la Sorbonne nouvelle, 1994), 103–15; Ana Vargas Martínez, “Lo que está vivo puede llegarnos. Una lectura desde la diferencia sexual de los tratados escritos por hombres a favor de las mujeres (Corona de Castilla, siglo XV),” in De dos en dos. Las prácticas de creación y recreación de la vida y de la convivencia humana, ed. Marta Beltrán, Carmen Caballero, Montserrat Cabré, Milagros Rivera, Ana Vargas, (Madrid: horas y HORAS, 2000), 81–102; The Querelle des Femmes in the Romania, ed. Wolfram Aichinger, Marlen Bidwell-Steiner, Judith Bösch, Eva Cescutti (Vienna: Turia + Kant, 2003). 77. Juan de Espinosa, Dialogo en laude de las mugeres (Milan: Michel Tini, 1580); there is a modern edition, ed. José López Romero (Granada: Ubago, 1996). Juan Pérez de Moya, Varia historia de sanctas e illustres mugeres en todo género de virtudes (Madrid: Francisco Sánchez, 1583). 78. La pícara Justina, ed. Bruno Mario Damiani (Madrid: José Porrúa Turanzas, 1982), 305, 370: “Y aun dicen que, conforme al libro del duelo del género femenino, palabras de mujer a

Editor’s Introduction 29 not been able so far to identify a late sixteenth-century Spanish book with this title; this chimerical text was possibly an invention of López de Ubeda.79 Be that as it may, it suggests that Oliva may have been seen by her contemporaries as a champion of women. While Acosta’s mention of Oliva gives us a glimpse into the intellectual network to which the Sabucos (father and daughter, presumably) were connected, it does not solve the mystery of the authorship of Nueva Filosofia. On the side of Miguel, there is, besides his own claim, the fact that he had a university education and was probably an apothecary—which fits with the knowledge of the law and of materia medica displayed by the author of Nueva Filosofia. On Oliva’s side, there is the fact that the book came out in her name, and that her contemporaries recognized her special status as a woman of learning. Clearly, it is impossible to decide, on the basis of the evidence presently available, whether Miguel or Oliva was the sole author of the book; or whether, as it also seems possible, some kind of intellectual collaboration existed between father and daughter, which turned sour mujer no cargan” (305). “Si supiera el capítulo que en el libro del duelo, que compuso Doña Oliva, trata la venganza que pueden tomar los hombres de las mujeres que les ofenden, no temiera, pues se dispone allí que basta por verganza tomarlas un guante” (370). Earlier in the book Justina praises Doña Oliva for her medical philosophy that sees pleasure and happiness as key to the maintenance of health and life (330). This clearly indicates that the author of La pícara Justina was familiar with the ideas expressed in Sabuco’s Nueva Filosofia. 79. According to Marcel Bataillon, Pícaros y picaresca. La picara Justina (Madrid: Taurus, 1969), 172 n15, this book never existed and was made up by López de Ubeda, probably alluding to “the famous treatise on the duel by Girolamo Muzio, translated into Spanish by Alfonso de Ulloa (Venice, 1555).” In his edition of La pícara Justina, Bruno M. Damiani follows Bataillon on this point (305). Bataillon refers to Girolamo Muzio (1490–1576), Il duello del Mutio iustinopolitano (Venice: Gabriel Giolito de Ferrari, 1550). But Muzio’s text does not mention issues related to women and to the Querelle des femmes. However, a character called Mutio Iustinopolitano appears as one of the speakers in Lodovico Domenichi’s dialogue La nobiltà delle donne (Venice: Gabriel Giolito de Ferrari, 1549), another text of the Querelle des femmes. In this dialogue, Mutio speaks of a “battle” between the defenders and the enemies of the female sex. On Girolamo Muzio see Luciana Borsetto, “L’ufficio di scrivere ‘in soggetto di honore’. Girolamo Muzio ‘duellante’ e ‘duellista,’” Acta Historiae 8:1 (2000), issue on “Honour: Identity and Ambiguity of an informal Code,” 149–58. On Alfonso de Ulloa as a mediator between Italian and Spanish culture see Antonio Rumeu de Armas, Alfonso de Ulloa, introductor de la cultura española en Italia (Madrid: Gredos, 1973).

30 Editor’s Introduction once financial problems emerged between them. It is quite certain, however, that the book was presented to the public as the work of a woman, and for this reason as radically innovative. What I would like to point out is that even if we accept the solution advocated by Marco Hidalgo almost a century ago, we still have an unsolved problem: why did Miguel Sabuco decide to publish the book under his daughter’s name? Marco Hidalgo, as we have seen, thought that he did so out of “too strong paternal love.” On the basis of the content of Nueva Filosofia, I would argue that paternal love had nothing to do with it; and that attributing the work to a woman might have been, on Miguel Sabuco’s part, some kind of promotional strategy, an expedient to emphasize the radical novelty of the book. This is certainly the rhetorical strategy adopted, in no veiled terms, in the letter to the king that serves as a preface to the book. None of the historians who have written on Nueva Filosofia, however, not even those who have recently examined the text from a feminist perspective, have stopped to consider whether something in the content of the book made it particularly appropriate, from a sixteenth-century viewpoint, for a woman author. But in order to do this, we first have to locate Sabuco’s work in the context of the medical debate of its time, and it is to this issue that I turn now.

Moon Milk: The Medical Heresy of Nueva Filosofia The question we should ask is, was Sabuco’s medicine radically innovative in the context of the medical discourse of the late Renaissance? Undoubtedly, the book appears extraordinary to present-day readers. In European intellectual history, there are very few medical works written by women. Furthermore, the great majority of these texts, in the Middle Ages as well as in the early modern period, are exclusively concerned with practical issues of therapy, not with medical theory. A remarkable exception is Hildegard of Bingen’s Causae et curae, which alone, perhaps, can be compared to Nueva Filosofia for range and novelty of vision—indeed, both texts offer a sophisticated and imaginative cosmology. The few medical works written by early modern women are either collections of medical recipes, such as I Secreti medicinali by Isabella Cortese (1561), A Choice Manuall, or Rare and Select Secrets in Physick and Chyrurgery by Elizabeth Grey, countess of Kent (1653); or

Editor’s Introduction 31 the obstetrics manuals written by midwives, from the French Louise Bourgeois to the Dutch Catharina Schrader and the German Justine Siegemund.80 But Nueva Filosofia is completely different from these kinds of texts. Though Sabuco also addresses issues of therapy, the main goal of the book is to establish a new philosophical foundation of medicine, so the focus is on theory rather than practice. But would the book appear radically new to late sixteenthcentury readers? How plausible, in their eyes, would be the selfpresentation of Nueva Filosofia as a book that “was missing in the world”? A focus on Vera Medicina is very useful to answer these questions, because it is here that Sabuco engages most directly with a critique of conventional medicine, explicitly listing “all the truths that the ancients ignored about microcosm and macrocosm.” As we shall see, this list amounts to the rejection of the most basic tenets shared by the Aristotelian and the Galenic doctrines of the body. Next to Aristotle, Galen, and Hippocrates, the authorities criticized include also the Arab authors, Averroes and Avicenna. In Sabuco’s view, the antiquity of authors does not mean much: Garcilaso de la Vega is as

80. See Lynette Hunter and Sarah Hutton, eds., Women, Science and Medicine, 1500–1700 (Stroud: Sutton, 1997). An interesting early modern source listing women medical authors and practitioners is P. F. Schacher and J. H. Schmidt, De Foeminis ex arte medica claris (Leipzig: Langenheim, 1738); it does not mention Sabuco. On women’s recipe collections (most of which are unpublished) see Catherine Field, “’Many hands hands’: Writing the Self in Early Modern Women’s Recipe Books,” in Genre and Women’s Life Writing in Early Modern England, ed. Michelle Dowd and Julie Eckerle (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 49–63. On the role of women as inventors and dispensers of patent medicines see Gianna Pomata, “Practicing Between Earth and Heaven: Women Healers in Early Modern Bologna,” Dynamis 19 (1999), especially 119–31, and the interesting English case presented by Stephen Clucas, “Joanna Stephens’s Medicine and the Experimental Philosophy,” in Men, Women, and the Birthing of Modern Science, ed. Judith P. Zinsser (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2005), 141–58. On Catharina Schrader see “Mother and Child were Saved”: The Memoirs (1693–1740) of the Frisian Midwife Catharina Schrader, ed. M. J. van Lieburg and G. J. Kloosterman, trans. and annot. by H. Marland, (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1987). On Louise Bourgeois and Justine Siegemund see Wendy Perkins, Midwifery and Medicine in Early Modern France: Louise Bourgeois (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1996); Justine Siegemund, The Court Midwife, ed. and trans. Lynne Tatlock. The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).

32 Editor’s Introduction good as Aristotle, Seneca, Plato, or Cicero.81 But Sabuco castigates also some of the modern critics of Galenism, such as a medical reformer like Jean Fernel.82 A critique of Galenism was not unprecedented in the Spain of the late Renaissance. Spanish medicine was vibrant in this period: anatomists like Luis Collado and Juan Valverde, humanist physicians like López de Villalobos, Andrés Laguna, Huarte de San Juan, Luis Mercado, Francisco Valles, all in various ways creatively departed from the Galenist orthodoxy. Humanist medicine, in particular, was the breeding ground for the introduction of new ideas and the rejection of Scholastic views.83 A critic in some ways as radical as Sabuco was Antonio Gómez Pereira, who criticized the Aristotelian notion of concoction as well as the Galenic theory of fevers.84 Even the issue of the uncertainty of medicine, with its implication of medical skepticism, was much discussed in Spain in this period; on 81. Sabuco, Obras, 116. Garcilaso de la Vega (1503–36) was a celebrated poet of the Spanish Renaissance. Sabuco quotes his second eclogue. 82. See below, translation, n110. 83. See Luis S. Granjel, Humanismo y medicina (Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca, 1968); E. Montero Cartelle, “El Humanismo médico en el Renacimiento castellano (siglo XVI),” in J. Riera et al., Ciencia, Medicina y Sociedad en el Renacimiento castellano (Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid, 1989), 19–38; Ana Isabel Martín Ferreira, El Humanismo médico en la Universidad de Alcalá (siglo XVI) (Madrid: Universidad de Alcalá, 1995); Maria Jesús Pérez Ibañez, El Humanismo médico del siglo XVI en la Universidad de Salamanca (Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid, 1998); José Ignacio Blanco Pérez, Humanistas médicos en el Renacimiento Vallisoletano (Burgos: Universidad de Burgos, 1999); M. Á. González Manjarrés, Andrés Laguna y el Humanismo médico (Salamanca: Junta de Castilla y León, 2000); Maria Teresa Santamaría Hernández, El Humanismo médico en la Universidad de Valencia (siglo XVI), (Paterna [Valencia]: Consell Valencia de Cultura, 2003). 84. Gómez Pereira, Novae veraeque medicinae experimentis et evidentibus rationibus comprobatae (Medina del Campo: Franciscus a Canto, 1558); Id., Antoniana Margarita (Medina del Campo: Guillielmus de Millis, 1554). On Gómez Pereira and Sabuco see G. Marañón, La literatura scientífica en los siglos XVI y XVII, in Renacimiento y Barroco, ed. D. Guillermo Díaz-Plaja (Barcelona: Barna, 1953), 3.951–53. See also translation, n66. Sabuco and Gómez Pereira have often been bracketed together, but there were strong differences in their views, for instance on animals, whose capacity for feeling Gómez Pereira denied, whereas Sabuco saw it as evidence supporting his/her theory of the pathogenic nature of the emotions. See Josep Lluís Barona, “Gómez Pereira y el debate sobre la sensibilidad de los animales” in Id., Sobre medicina y filosofía natural en el Renacimiento (Valencia: Seminari d’Estudis sobre la Ciencia, 1993), 105–27.

Editor’s Introduction 33 this topic, Sabuco could draw not only on Pliny, but possibly also on contemporary authors, such as the humanist Pedro Mejía’s Coloquios (1547), which contrasted Scholastic medicine with a practice-oriented medicine por uso y experiencia.85 Even more radically, a few years before the publication of Sabuco’s book, Francisco Sánchez had submitted Scholastic medicine and natural philosophy to a thorough skeptical scrutiny in his work Quod nihil scitur (1581).86 Historians of medicine have usually located Sabuco in the context of humanist medicine. This view was put forward several years ago by Luis S. Granjel in his Humanismo y medicina: Granjel classed Sabuco among the literati who, while not being humanist physicians themselves, shared the humanist doctors’ criticism of Scholastic medicine.87 Sabuco’s book, however, stands apart even in this company. While humanist physicians criticized Scholastic Galenism, they did so with the goal of retrieving a more faithful and authentic Galenic doctrine, based on the philological reading and restoration of the ancient Greek texts. This was definitely not Sabuco’s intention. In Sabuco’s case, as we shall see, the intent was to reject the basic principles of Galenism (and Hippocratism) altogether. Apart from pointing out generic connections between the works of these humanist physicians and Sabuco, nobody has really tried to compare Sabuco’s medical views with theirs, so that the radical novelty of these 85. Pedro Mejía, Coloquios (Sevilla: Ed. Hispalense, 1947) (first Coloquio). García Gómez, La conceptión de la naturaleza humana en la obra de Miguel Sabuco, 29, nn23–24) has pointed out that the issue of medicine’s uncertainty was discussed by several Spanish authors before Sabuco: among them, the fifteenth-century physician Alonso Chirino in his Espejo de medicina, Meñor dano de la medicina y Espejo de medicina, ed. María Teresa Herrera (Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca, 1973); Pedro Mercado, Diálogos de filosofia natural y moral (Granata: en casa de Mena y René Rabut, 1558), diálogo 5; and the celebrated Juan Huarte de San Juan, Examen de ingenios para las ciencias (1575) (Madrid: Editora Nacional, 1976), 138. 86. Francisco Sánchez, Quod nihil scitur, ed. and trans. S. Rabade, J. M. Artola, and M. F. Perez (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1984). (English trans., That Nothing is Known, ed. Elaine Limbrick and Douglas F. S. Thomson [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988]). See Damian Caluori, “The Scepticism of Francisco Sanchez,” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 8:1 (2007), 30–46. 87. As for instance Pedro Mejía in his Silva de varia lección, and Antonio de Torquemada, who censured Scholastic medicine in his Coloquios satíricos (Granjel, Humanismo y medicina, 17).

34 Editor’s Introduction ideas has not been perceived. This novelty is especially apparent in the text we introduce here, the Dialogue on the True Medicine, while most commentators have focused on the first dialogue. Earlier on, in a brief description of the content of Nueva Filosofia, I have already mentioned that the sequence of the dialogues goes from texts addressed to the general public to texts meant only for learned readers, such as Vera Medicina and the two Latin sections that follow it.88 Let us now examine more closely the content of this part of the book, which is clearly dedicated to a medical and philosophical audience. The interlocutors are now two, Antonio the shepherd—the spokesperson of the new medicine—and an unnamed Doctor, a fairly average specimen of his class. Not that we hear him speak much. His part in the dialogue is very limited—he just asks short questions and, with admirable patience, lets Antonio go on and on in the exposition of his views. Indeed, Vera Medicina is not much of a dialogue—it could be justifiably called a quasi-monologue by Antonio. At the beginning, Antonio lists the main tenets of his alternative view of the human body, in health and disease. Thereafter, prodded by the doctor’s questions, he expatiates on some fundamental issues: his conception of nature, his notion of the “critical days” in disease and of causality in medicine, his view of the shape of the brain’s marrow and meninges, his theory of the role of chyle in nutrition. At this point the new and the old medicine are compared around their respective solutions to specific issues. In each of these comparisons (colaciones) Antonio reviews the explicatory power of the old and the new medicine, to the discomfiture of the first and the triumph of the latter. He finally sums up his arguments to prove it all, but the Doctor is not won over: “Not even the whole world would persuade me to stop following my teachers and their authority.” “By God, yes—Antonio replies—I think that even if I were to tell you that tomorrow the sun will rise, you would not believe it.” The Doctor proves obdurate, and yet he asks Antonio to put his theory into aphoristic form (“brief sayings”) so that he can better memorize it. Whereupon, for the benefit of a hard­ headed doctor, Antonio proceeds to repeat and summarize his main 88. It is significant also that the order goes from practical medical issues in the short “Dialogue on the Aids and Remedies of the true medicine” to the theoretically ambitious “True Medicine.” This would fit with the perspective of an apothecary, as Miguel Sabuco was.

Editor’s Introduction 35 arguments in Latin, in a section called “Brief Sayings on the Nature of Man, the Fundament of Medicine” (Dicta brevia circa naturam hominis, medicinae fundamentum). The joke on the Doctor is obvious: learned physicians don’t understand plain language, common sense, and sound logic; they get the idea only when spoken to in Latin and in the form (the aphorism) that they learned to memorize at school. The list of colaciones, or issues on which Sabuco compared the old and the new medicine, is rather puzzling—an apparently haphazard series of disparate topics. We find, in the following sequence, poisons and purgatives, hemorrhoids, aliments, supervening diseases, how the aliment enters the body, “crudities,” drink and food, anger, sweat, “idiopathy, sympathy, and consent,” apoplexy and epilepsy, the diverting of disease, temperaments and actions, the four moistures discovered by Avicenna, semen, the causes of disease, fevers. No scholar of Sabuco, as far as I know, has tried to understand and explain the criteria by which this series of topics was put together. I came across an explanation for it quite by chance. In preparing the translation of Vera Medicina, I had of course to identify the sources of the Latin quotations from Galen, Hippocrates, Avicenna, etc. that are scattered in the text. Only very rarely does Sabuco refer on the margins to the source (title of the work, plus book and section) of the passage quoted, as was customary at the time.89 He or she does it regularly for Pliny and Plato, authors he or she evidently read directly; but not for Aristotle, Galen, Hippocrates, Avicenna. While I was absorbed in this work, I also happened to read one of the very few sixteenth-century medical texts quoted by Sabuco, Francisco Valles’s Controversiae. The way Sabuco refers to this book is strongly polemical: “If that man rich in wisdom, the Doctor Valles, Royal Physician, will turn his attention to these studies [of mine], he will be able to write anew not only his Controversiae, but all of medicine.”90 Francisco Valles (1524–96), who

89. See Anthony Grafton, The Footnote: A Curious History (London, Faber & Faber, 1997). 90. Vera philosofia de natura mistorum, hominis, & mundi, antiquis oculta, in Sabuco, Obras, 411: “Si ad haec studia ille sapientia floridus Vallis Doctor Medicus Regius, animum convertit, non solum controversias, sed totam denuò poterit componere medicinam.” The Waithe-Vintró-Zorita translation is seriously misleading on this point: the sentence is rather inexplicably rendered as: “If only that Doctor Valles, Royal Physician, florid with wisdom,

36 Editor’s Introduction taught medicine at Alcalá, where Miguel Sabuco was a student,91 was a key figure of Spanish medical humanism, and one of the most significant representatives of the “Hippocratic Galenism” of the late Renaissance. His Controversiae, the book Sabuco mentions, had a European readership and influence.92 In this book, Valles reviewed the most controversial aspects of Galenism, trying to suggest solutions that were often based on a more philologically correct reading of the original Greek text. It is quite certain that the author of Nueva Filosofia (whether Oliva or Miguel Sabuco) was thoroughly familiar with Valles’s Controversiae, though she or he never quoted it directly on any specific issue, aside from the thrust cited above. In comparing Valles’s Controversiae with Sabuco’s text, I realized that almost all of Sabuco’s quotations from the ancient medical authors, Galen and Hippocrates especially, come second hand from Valles’s Controversiae, as is shown below in the notes to the translation. Not only did Sabuco ransack Valles for quotations from Hippocratic and Galenic sources, he or she also used the Controversiae as a guide to the key issues in the medical debate of the time. In fact, for almost every item of the list of colaciones mentioned above, there is a corresponding section in Valles’s book.93 So in Vera Medicina Sabuco was competing with Valles by offering a solution to questions for which Galenist doctrine had not provided a satisfactory answer—questions on which, consequently, there was lack of consensus in the medical community. The growing body of literature on controversial topics of medical doctrine, which was published under the title of controversiae, contradictiones, had committed himself to these studies, not just [to the study of] bad quality or ametry of qualities” (New Philosophy of Human Nature, 293). 91. On medical studies at Alcalá in Valles’s times see Ana Isabel Martín Ferreira, El Humanismo médico en la Universidad de Alcalá (siglo XVI) (Madrid: Universidad de Alcalá, 1995). On Miguel Sabuco’s studies at Alcalá, see above, n43. 92. Francisco Valles, Controversiarum medicarum et philosophicarum libri X (Alcalà: J. Brocarius, 1556). See José María López Piñero and Francisco Calero, Los temas polémicos de la medicina renacentista: las Controversias (1556) de Francisco Valles (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, 1988), with an Introduction by López Piñero and a translation of a selection from the Controversiae by Francisco Calero. 93. With the exception of only two sections, on apoplexy and epilepsy, and on the diverting of disease: see notes to the translation, below.

Editor’s Introduction 37 disputationes medicae in the late Renaissance,94 and of which Valles’s book is a prominent example, shows that medicine was going through a period of conceptual fragmentation, due to the coexistence and rivalry of several theories or paradigms. Sabuco was aware of this fact, and indeed at the beginning of Vera Medicina, drawing on Pliny, he or she argued that the multiplicity of medical doctrines and sects was a permanent feature of the history of medicine. On this background of theoretical pluralism and confusion, Vera Medicina claimed to provide an answer to the puzzles that academic medicine had left unresolved. Comparing Valles’s Controversiae with Sabuco’s colaciones makes clear the very different profile and intent of the two authors. For each controversial topic, Valles tries to find a solution based on his philological learning, on his deep knowledge of the vast corpus of Galenic works and of medical literature in general, ancient and modern, and finally—last but not least—on his experience in medical and anatomical practice. His is truly a humanist doctor’s perspective— bent on combining erudition with firsthand observation to amend and ameliorate the body of knowledge inherited from the ancients. Valles is interested in reforming, not in destroying, Galenism. Sabuco’s intention is quite different: each controversial topic is dealt with not with the cumbersome weapons of philology and erudition, but with the bare hands, so to speak, of a quick intellect, capable of speedily grasping the essentials of issues, a keen interest in the observation of common experience, a brilliant, dazzlingly visionary imagination. In this respect, it is somewhat misleading, I think, to class Sabuco among the humanist physicians. Not only was the author of Nueva Filosofia not a physician, as she or he insisted—she or he was not a humanist scholar either. Sabuco’s philological learning was quite thin (Nueva Filosofia’s Latin seems rather awkward to me)95 and her/ his reading of the classics rather limited. Seeing how often Galen and Hippocrates are quoted second-hand in Nueva Filosofia, I am quite tempted to take at face value its author’s declaration that she/he never studied medicine, and her/his tongue-in­-cheek assertion 94. See Lipenius, Bibliotheca realis medica, under the entries controversiae, contradictiones, and disputationes medicae. 95. On Sabuco’s Latin see Samuel García Rubio, “La obra latina del Bachiller Sabuco. Introducción y traducción,” Al-Basit 13 (1987), 217–21.

38 Editor’s Introduction to have read Hippocrates and Galen only for “eight days.”96 Sabuco was certainly a “quick study”: she/he had a clear grasp of the basic issues of Galenism, but was no Galen scholar, nor did she/he want to be. Sabuco was not interested in correcting and reforming Galenist doctrine. Nueva Filosofia’s aim was to clear Galenism out of the way, in order to make room for a thoroughly new medicine. As is the case for most innovators, however, Sabuco’s ideas were a mix of old and new.97 I have strong doubts, for instance, that she or he may be properly considered a “forerunner of the experimental method,” as Henares called the author of Nueva Filosofia.98 Against this view militates, as Granjel rightly pointed out, Sabuco’s uncritical acceptance of Pliny’s natural history.99 An even more telling argument, in my opinion, is the fact that Sabuco’s notion of experience is conventionally Scholastic. When Sabuco talks of experimento, for instance, the word is used in the medieval sense of experimentum to denote common experience, observation unrelated to doctrine.100 Sabuco uses it in fact to refer to natural phenomena that can be observed by everybody, such as the tides.101 Sabuco is not a Baconian ante litteram, as so often he/she has been taken to be.102 The model of Nueva Filosofia’s “empiricism” is the collection of exempla: “Nature teaches by example, not by logic,” Antonio states trenchantly 96. Sabuco, Obras, 256 (see below, translation, 119). 97. As rightly argued by García Gómez, La concepción de la naturaleza humana en la obra de Miguel Sabuco, 127. 98. Henares, El bachiller Sabuco, 102. 99. Granjel, “La doctrina antropológico-médica de Miguel Sabuco,” in Id., Humanismo y medicina, 29, n31. 100. See translation, n158. On the Scholastic meaning of the word experimentum, see Jole Agrimi and Chiara Crisciani, “Per una ricerca su experimentum-experimenta: riflessione epistemologica e tradizione medica (secc. XIII­–XV),” in Presenza del lessico greco e latino nelle lingue contemporanee, ed. Pietro Janni and Innocenzo Mazzini (Macerata: Pubblicazioni della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia dell’Università degli Studi di Macerata, 1990), 9–49. 101. It should be noted, however, that in one case Sabuco brings up as evidence in support of her/his cosmology some specific observational data related to the “comet” of 1572, referring to the “observations of Cornelius, Iuntinus and others” (Vera philosophia de natura mistorum, in Sabuco, Obras, 417). See Fernando Rodríguez de la Torre, “Sabuco y el ‘cometa’ de 1572,” Al-Basit 20 (Feb. 1987), 5–36. 102. See section 5, below, of this Introduction, 69.

Editor’s Introduction 39 at the end of the book.103 But the “examples” are drawn indifferently either from common experience or from other people’s reports (Pliny and the modern natural historians, such as Monardes and Acosta), without any clear sense of the distinction between first-hand and reported evidence, or any strong urge to critically evaluate the latter. Nor is Sabuco interested in proving her/his theory by means of firsthand anatomical inquiry. Talking about the origin of the nerves—an anatomical problem that was obviously crucial to proving the overall argument advanced in Nueva Filosofia—Antonio states his view but rather scornfully leaves to the anatomists the tedious work of verifying it in dissection. “I can only tell you things from the viewpoint of theoretical understanding; it is your task, Mr. Doctor, to find them out through anatomical work.”104 In line with present day interest in psychosomatic medicine, most recent studies of Sabuco’s work have identified its main novelty in the idea that the emotions are the primary cause of disease. The common view in Galenic medicine, in contrast, was that disease derived essentially from the imbalance of the humors. In Galenism, the passions of the soul were supposed to affect health only indirectly, as an external cause, like the other “non naturals” (air, food and drink, sleep and waking, exercise and rest, excretion and retention). If anything, it was the body that could affect the soul—a view that Galen had expressed in Quod animi mores corporis temperamenta sequantur—rather than 103. “Haec est (mi Doctor) vera phisis mundi, & eius rerum naturalium, haec vera philosophia delectans animam, quia veras causas cognoscit, quas ipsa natura exemplis docuit, non logica” (Vera philosophia de natura mistorum, in Sabuco, Obras, 419: “This is, Doctor mine, the true nature of the world and its things, this is the true philosophy that delights the soul, because it gives knowledge of the true causes, which nature itself taught by examples, not by logic.”) 104. Sabuco suggests here that it is for the medical doctors to corroborate the new medicine through a specific program of research on the anatomy of the nerves. “I presume that the nerves intrinsic to the substance of the brain are born in the anterior cell and those that form the membranes in the posterior cell (namely, the spinal marrow)—knowledge of which, Mr. Doctor, you could achieve by industrious anatomical inquiry.” Sabuco, Obras, 331. Cf. below, translation, 202). Elsewhere Antonio seems to imply, in contrast, that no anatomical evidence can be forthcoming on some issues because la anatomia estè oculta, that is, the anatomy of some bodily structures is hidden, and it cannot be established by dissection (see Sabuco, Obras, 290, and translation, 156n191). Sabuco makes the same point in Dicta brevia circa naturam hominis, medicinae fundamentum (Obras, 363).

40 Editor’s Introduction the soul the body.105 For Sabuco, in contrast, it is primarily the soul that influences the body, and the soul indeed is the chief cause of disease. Sabuco follows Plato in positing a very close sympathetic relation between body and soul and arguing that health consists primarily in their concord.106 Sabuco’s conception of the soul, of its three parts, or faculties, and her/his understanding of sense perception, which is based on the notion of “species,” or incorporeal representations of reality, basically follow the Aristotelian-Thomist doctrine, also accepted by the Arabs.107 But out of these traditional elements she/he developed an imaginative new theory of the psychogenesis of disease. Sabuco locates the soul in the brain, seen as the most important organ of the body, “the root of man” and the source of nutrition, thanks to its moisture. The species, i. e., the images of things, reach the brain through the five senses and imprint themselves on the brain’s moisture. When the species of something repulsive or frightful reaches the brain, the innermost of the two membranes that envelop the brain, namely the pia mater (“the hand of the soul,” as Sabuco calls it) tries to shake off the repulsive species, but in so doing it shakes off also the brain’s moisture, thus making it fall. This falling juice turns into noxious catarrh, and wherever it falls in the body it makes that body part sick. This “flux,” or fall of the brain’s juice can be triggered also by other causes (such as poisons, exposure to excessive heat or cold, bad food, etc.) but it is chiefly due to the emotions of the soul. Interesting and innovative as this theory may appear to us, it was probably not, from an early modern perspective, the most 105. García Ballester has argued that one cannot speak of psychogenesis of disease nor of psychotherapy in Galen: see Luis García Ballester, Alma y enfermedad en la obra de Galeno: traduccion, y commentario del escrito Quod animi mores corporis temperamenta sequantur (Valencia, Granada: Secretariado de publicaciones de la Universidad, 1972) (Spanish translation of Quod animi mores) 131–47. But see Fady Hajal, “Galen’s Ethical Psychotherapy: Its influence on Medieval Near Eastern Physicians,” Journal of the History of Medicine 38 (1983), 302–29. For an English translation of Quod animi mores, see “The Soul’s Dependence on the Body,” in Galen: Selected Works, trans. with introduction and notes P. N. Singer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 150–76. 106. On Plato’s influence on Sabuco in this respect see García Gómez, La concepción de la naturaleza humana en la obra de Miguel Sabuco, 24–28. 107. García Gómez, La concepción de la naturaleza humana en la obra de Miguel Sabuco, 19, 21, 77ff, 84.

Editor’s Introduction 41 radically new aspect of Sabuco’s thought. A keen interest in the way the soul may affect the body was rather trendy in late sixteenthcentury philosophy and medicine.108 Nueva Filosofia was unusual only in the emphasis it put on the emotions as the primary cause of disease, and also for the detailed physiological mechanism that it suggested to explain the actual process whereby the emotions bring about illness. What was then really novel and heterodox in Sabuco’s views? What was the medical heresy of Nueva Filosofia? In the true medicine, Mr. Doctor—says Antonio—you have to skip from the liver with its red blood to the brain with its white juice (…). The true medicine changes your ideas on the location of the root and of the natural faculty, moving it from the liver to the brain. The true medicine also changes your ideas on the nutritive juice, identifying it in the white chyle carried by nerves and membranes, rather than the red blood.109 The main innovation in Sabuco’s medicine is the rejection of the conventional hierarchy of bodily organs and fluids shared by the Aristotelian and Galenic views of the body. In spite of their differences (the Aristotelian body was centered on the heart, whereas Galen gave great importance to the liver, seen as the organ of sanguification)110 the Aristotelian and the Galenic body held in common several fundamental features, first of all the primacy of blood as the main agent of nutrition. It is this primacy of blood that is challenged most consistently in Vera Medicina. For Sabuco, the chief organ in the body and the source of nutrition is not the heart, as in Aristotle, nor 108. See García Gómez, La concepción de la naturaleza humana en la obra de Miguel Sabuco, 110, 117, 131–32. Renaissance authors as various as Vives, Antonio de Guevara, Erasmus, and Paracelsus all shared a deep interest in the soul’s influence on the body. In the early seventeenth century this interest would be even more keenly pursued in medical works such as Thomas Feyens’s De viribus imaginationis Tractatus (1608), and Fortunio Liceti’s De rationalis animae varia propensione ad corpus (1634). 109. Sabuco, Obras, 298–99; cf. below, translation, 164. 110. On the differences between Aristotle and Galen on this issue see Charles R.S. Harris, The Heart and the Vascular System in Ancient Greek Medicine: from Alcmaeon to Galen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), 121–22, 160, 173, 323–29.

42 Editor’s Introduction the liver, as in Galen, but the brain, because the main nutritive humor is not blood (as in both Galen and Aristotle) but the brain’s “white juice.” The brain, not the heart, nor the liver, is the true organ of sensation, nutrition, and growth. From the brain derive diseases and death: “The brain is the cause and workshop of all diseases’ humors. There, in the brain, reside the feelings, passions, and motions of the soul; there is the seat of sense perception; there is the root.”111 Man is a tree upside-down, whose root (the brain) is up, while its branches (the limbs) are down. The first role of the brain is to nourish and feed, like a root, the entire body. How did Sabuco’s theory depart from the conventional view of the assimilation and distribution of food? According to Galenic doctrine, the aliment was supposed to turn into chyle in the stomach by a process of “concoction.” Chyle then passed through the intestines, where the veins of the mesentery (or middle intestine), called the “meseraic veins,” carried it to the liver. The liver received the chyle, turned it into blood, and sent it out to the veins, which in turn carried it to all body parts. Stomach and liver were thus seen as the essential organs in the nutrition process. Here is, in contrast, how the thing goes according to Sabuco. The brain is “the prince of the house,” while the stomach is just “the kitchen” where part of the brain’s food is prepared. The stomach is described as “a pot set on a trivet”—the trivet being formed by three organs, the heart, the liver, and the spleen, also called the “servants in the kitchen,” or the three “live coals” that, with their heat, cook the food for their lord and master, the brain. Aliments, however, are processed not only by concoction (by the heat of the stomach, as in the conventional view) but also by compression (in the mouth) and by evaporation (during sleep). The brain receives from below (from the mouth and stomach) the processed aliment, or chyle, “by sucking and drawing it up through the esophagus, in the same way in which a piece of felt soaks up a liquid.” Also, during sleep the vapors created by the processing of food in the stomach rise to the brain, which, thanks to its cold and humid nature, transforms these vapors into chyle. Thus all chyle produced in the body goes up to the brain, which then, root-wise, distributes it to every body part by means of the nerves. Branching out from the brain, the nerves extend from the 111. Sabuco, Obras, 241; cf. below, translation, 101.

Editor’s Introduction 43 interior of the body all the way to the skin, which is nothing but a “nerve” covering the whole body.112 According to Sabuco, blood is just a by-product of this process. Some of the white chyle is turned into red blood by passing though the heart, liver, and spleen—the servant organs—but this red blood has only a supplementary role in nutrition. “I do not deny that there is an interior, refocillating nutrition by means of the blood— says Antonio—But I deny that the chyle is carried from the stomach to the liver by the meseraic veins of the intestines.”113 Here Sabuco touches on one of the most debated aspects of Galenist physiology in the late Renaissance—indeed, one of the issues that would eventually lead to the decline of Galenism in the seventeenth century. The transit of the chyle to the liver through the meseraic vessels was a matter of increasing doubt and controversy among late sixteenth-century anatomists. Though not an anatomist, Sabuco was aware of these debates. Antonio pokes fun at the Galenists who “per miseraicas misero ingenio, omnia perturbarunt”114—“with their miserable 112. The conventional Galenic view of the skin was that it was a sanguineus nervus. “Est enim [cutis] velut sanguineus quis nervus, certissime media existens nervi et carnis, ac si et confusis ambobus facta esset” (Galen, De complexionibus, I.9, trans. Burgundio da Pisa, ed. R. J. Durling, [Berlin-New York: de Gruyter, 1976], 46). For Galen, the skin does not contribute to nutrition nor to the distribution of the aliment, and it is not an important part of the body (see Galen, De causis morborum, in Opera, ed. Kühn, 7.25). See Danielle Jacquart, “A la recherche de la peau dans le discours médical de la fin du Moyen Age,” Micrologus XIII (2005): La pelle umana/ The Human Skin, 498, 501–2. In contrast, a new interest in the skin developed in sixteenth-century anatomy and medicine: see Mariacarla Gadebusch Bondio, “La carne di fuori. Discorsi medici sulla natura e l’estetica della pelle nel ‘500’” in the same issue of Micrologus, 537–70. The idea that the skin is formed by the nerves, which dilate when reaching the outward parts of the body, was advanced by the Italian anatomist Costanzo Varolio (1543–1575), author of an important text on the anatomy of the brain and the optical nerves, De nervis opticis (1573). Sabuco never mentions him explicitly, but may have read or heard of De nervis opticis, as he/she seems to have adopted Varolio’s view of the skin as an expansion of the nerves. On Varolio see Dictionary of Scientific Biography, ed. Gillespie, s.v. 113. Sabuco, Obras, 336: cf. below, translation, 208. Valles (Controversiae, lib. 1, cap. 14: De nutrientibus succis, 20r-v) argues the more conventional view that blood is the principal agent of nutrition. 114. Vera Philosophia de natura mistorum, in Sabuco, Obras, 395. The Waithe-Vintró-Zorita translation completely misses this point by arbitrarily rendering “miseraicas” as “miseries”:

44 Editor’s Introduction intellect, confused everything for the sake of the meseraic veins.” (Notice the pun of misero ingenio and miseraicas, somewhat lost in translation). Denying the transit of chyle through the meseraics, as Sabuco did, was no small matter. It implied radically questioning the nutritive function of blood, which was serious heresy from a Galenist viewpoint.115 The blood’s nourishing role would be upheld as a basic tenet of Galenist orthodoxy in the medical schools up to the first half of the seventeenth century, though the impossibility of verifying anatomically the transit of the chyle to the liver would lead finally to the demise of the whole Galenic theory of nutrition. The primacy of blood was a cornerstone of the conventional view of the body also because it explained the origin of sexual fluids— semen and milk. Here also Sabuco strongly opposes the received view. The traditional theory of the origin of milk and semen was that they were derived from blood. Both the Aristotelian and the Galenic doctrine argued that these white fluids were the final result of the concoction of blood, which took place primarily in the blood vessels (for Aristotle; for Galen, also in the breasts and the testicles). Antonio finds this theory simply ridiculous: “It is good for a laugh to say that sperm and milk are red blood, which becomes white in the vessels.”116 The ancients, Antonio says, misunderstood the relationship and the respective roles of the white and the red fluids.117 By wrongly assuming the preeminence of blood among the bodily fluids, they did not realize that the red humor is in truth derived from the “white juice” of the brain. The primary fluid in the body is not the blood but the “white juice” carried by the nerves, from which milk, semen and blood itself originate. “Where are those who through miseries with dull wits messed up everything?” (New Philosophy of Human Nature, 281). 115. Significantly, it was on account of this unorthodox view that the London College of Physicians reprimanded Stephen Bredwell in 1610 for spreading Sabuco’s “paradoxes,” and in particular the denial of the transit of the chyle to the liver by way of the meseraic vessels (see below, section 5 of the Introduction, 79). 116. “Es cosa de risa lo que dicen, que la esperma, y la leche son sangre colorada, y que en sus vasos se buelve blanca” (Sabuco, Obras, 281–82: cf. below, translation, 147). 117. “Ignorantia officiorum succi albi, & rubei” is listed among the “things the ancients ignored about the nature of micro and macrocosm” (Vera philosophia de natura mistorum, in Sabuco, Obras, 425).

Editor’s Introduction 45 But where did Sabuco get his/her notion of a “white juice” distributed by the brain through the nerves? In Vera Medicina Antonio says that the white juice corresponds to the “four moistures discovered by Avicenna.” Though he also claims that Avicenna did not understand the full implications of his “discovery,” it is clear that he considers it an important precedent of his view of the white juice’s nutritive role. According to Avicenna, next to the four primary humors (blood, phlegm, yellow bile, black bile), there were four other “secondary moistures,” which had an alimentary function.118 In order to understand the significance Sabuco gave to this notion derived from Avicenna, it is interesting to compare how Valles talks about it in his Controversiae and how Antonio discusses it in the colacion devoted to this issue in Vera Medicina. Valles and Sabuco dealt with this topic under exactly the same title—“On the four moistures discovered by Avicenna.”119 Antonio’s argument, however, is very different from Valles’s. Valles was interested primarily in arguing that Avicenna had not actually “discovered” the four moistures but had inferred their existence from Galen’s doctrine. He was defending Galen’s supremacy over Avicenna, whom he considered a “barbarous” author.120 Moreover, he does not 118. Avicenna, Liber Canonis, Lib. 1, fen 1, cap. 1: De Humoribus (facsimile of 1507 Venice edition, Hildesheim, Georg Olms, 1964, f. 4v). Avicenna called the four moistures ros, cambium, gluten, humor in extremitatibus. For Sabuco these all correspond to the “white juice” of the brain. “This juice or white blood is what Avicenna discovered and called ‘the four moistures.’ This white juice is the principal matter from which grow all the body parts that are called ‘white,’ as well as the red flesh. But in this latter case it shares the work with the blood, the blood being the second matter, that ministers to the first and principal matter by humidifying and warming the white juice, the nerves and the whole body with the veins, which are like the streams and sprinklers in a garden. (…) Avicenna called this juice, or white blood, ‘the four moistures,’ but he did not quite understand what it really is. He called one moisture ros or ‘dew,’ another cambium, etc.” (Sabuco, Obras, 280–81: cf. below, translation, 145–46). 119. See Valles, Controversiae, lib. 1, cap. 22: De secundis humiditatibus quas invenit Avicenna (On the second moistures discovered by Avicenna) 24v–25v. 120. Ibid, 24v. In this period, the influence of Avicenna in medical culture was declining. At the beginning of the sixteenth century the Canon had been a ubiquitous feature of the medical curricula at most European universities; but by the middle years of the century the humanist critics of Arabic medicine had succeeded in either ending or limiting its use. In Spain, where innovation in medical studies spread rapidly in this period, teaching based on the Canon was abolished in 1565 at the University of Alcalá de Henares, where Valles taught

46 Editor’s Introduction seem interested in discussing their role in nutrition, which, in contrast, is what interests Sabuco most. This is not surprising, because Valles accepted the Galenic view of nutrition as substantially correct. He had already discussed the topic of the “nutritive juices” (nutrientes succi) in a previous controversia, where he refuted Aristotle’s view that the blood is the only aliment of all body parts, and he upheld what he saw as the correct Hippocratic/Galenic theory, namely, that the blood was the primary nutritive element, though it shared this function with some other humors. In Valles’s view, the “secondary moistures” were just a minor supplement to the Galenic doctrine.121 In contrast, Sabuco used Avicenna’s notion of the four alimentary moistures to subvert the whole framework of the Galenist theory of nutrition, by arguing that these “secondary moistures” are in fact one and only fundamental humidity, which has a primary nutritive function, and is none other than the brain’s “white juice.” Linked with Avicenna’s notion of the four moistures was another concept that had great significance in Sabuco’s theory—the concept of humidum radicale (radical moisture).122 In discussing the four moistures, Avicenna had singled out one of them, the fourth humidity, or humidum radicale, as something that derived from semen and was present in the body from the very beginning of life to the moment of death. Avicenna saw the humidum radicale as playing a fundamental role in the origin and sustenance of life, in direct relation to the body’s “innate heat.” The “innate heat” (calidum innatum) was the central category for the understanding of life in ancient medicine and natural philosophy. In both the Aristotelian and the Galenic views of the body, the innate heat was the main vital principle—the factor that brought about the “concoction” of food in the stomach, thus 1557–72 (see Nancy G. Siraisi, Avicenna in Renaissance Italy: The Canon and Medical Teaching in Italian Universities after 1500 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), 77; 82 on Valles’s critique of Avicenna in his Controversiae. See also Luis García Ballester, Historia social de la medicina en la España de los siglos XIII al XVI. I. La minoría musulmán y morisca (Madrid: Akal, 1976), 89. 121. Valles, Controversiae, lib. 1, cap. 14: De nutrientibus succis, 20r-v. 122. On the history of this concept see Thomas S. Hall, “Life, Death and the Radical Moisture,” Clio medica 6 (1971), 3–23; Peter H. Niebyl, “Old Age, Fever, and the Lamp Metaphor,” Journal of the History of Medicine 26 (1971), 351–68; and Michael McVaugh, “The Humidum Radicale in Thirteenth-Century Medicine,” Traditio 30 (1974), 259–83.

Editor’s Introduction 47 ensuring the preservation of the life of the single animal. It was also the factor that allowed the processing of blood into semen, thus making possible the propagation of the species. Death was the extinguishing of the innate heat. Thus life and death were understood fundamentally through the polar categories of hot/cold. Also the qualities humid/dry were considered relevant to the vital processes, moistness being, like heat, a feature and requisite of life. But humidity had never received from the ancients the kind of theoretical elaboration and prominence that had been given to the innate heat.123 Starting with Avicenna, in contrast, the notion of humidum radicale acquired an importance comparable to that already enjoyed by the calidum innatum as a constitutive element of life.124 Avicenna thought that the innate heat could not perform its vivifying function without the radical moisture, which he saw as indispensable to the innate heat in the same way as fuel is necessary to the flame. After Avicenna, from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, the concept of humidum radicale enjoyed enormous fortune, becoming as ubiquitous in medicine and natural philosophy as that of calidum innatum, and acquiring new significance in fields such as alchemy and theology. Physicians and alchemists discussed it especially in connection with the issue of the prolongation of life. Since death was due to the drying up of the radical moisture, could a humidifying regimen or drug retard this process and postpone death? Theologians used it as a tool to understand in natural-philosophical terms the issue of the “veritas naturae humanae,” namely the imperishable core of each person’s corporal identity that would be reconstituted at resurrection. 123. This may have been due to the fact that the qualities hot/cold were considered active, while the qualities humid/dry were considered passive. A treatise attributed to Galen, Introductio sive medicus (in Opera, ed. Kühn, vol. XIV, cap. 9, 698) mentions the distinction drawn by Athenaeus, a physician of the Pneumatic School, between active (poieticà) qualities (namely hot/cold) and passive (ulicà) qualities (humid/dry): see Harris, The Heart and the Vascular System in Ancient Greek Medicine, 238. In general, on the ancient theories of calidum innatum see Everett I. Mendelsohn, Heat and Life: The Development of the Theory of Animal Heat (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964). On the notion of vital heat in Aristotle, see Gad Freudenthal, Aristotle’s Theory of Material Substance: Heat and Pneuma, Form and Soul (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995). 124. See McVaugh, “The Humidum Radicale in Thirteenth-Century Medicine,” on the importance of Avicenna’s Canon in establishing this concept in medical doctrine.

48 Editor’s Introduction So the concept became the object of a complex and prolonged debate, stretching from Albertus Magnus and Arnald of Villanova to Van Helmont and William Harvey—a debate that has been only partly charted by historians as yet.125 In line with the medical tradition, Sabuco talks of the radical moisture when trying to explain death. Antonio argues that the radical moisture is not consumed by heat, but only by age and by the emission of semen, plus, coherently with his whole view of disease, by the flux of the brain juice caused by the emotions.126 But he also gives a new and fascinating reinterpretation of the humidum radicale in terms of the correspondences between micro-and macrocosm. One of the most intriguing aspects—perhaps the most intriguing aspect—of Sabuco’s book is the new cosmological significance that Nueva Filosofia gives to the category of humidum radicale.127 Sabuco’s cosmology is summed up in the final dialogue in Latin that concludes Nueva Filosofia, “Vera philosophia de natura mistorum, hominis, & mundi, antiquis oculta,”128 125. See now the important study by Chiara Crisciani, “Aspetti del dibattito sull’umido radicale nella cultura del tardo medioevo (secoli XIII–XV),” in Actes de la “II Trobada internacional d’estudios sobre Arnau de Vilanova,” ed. Josep Perarnau (Barcelona: Institut d’Estudis Catalans, 2005), 333–80. See also, in the same volume, Giovanna Ferrari, “Il trattato De humido radicali di Arnaldo da Villanova,” 281–331. On the concept of humidum radicale in Harvey and Van Helmont, see Hall, “Life, Death and the Radical Moisture,” 15–17. 126. The notion that “evil thoughts and anxious care of the mind dry up the Natural Moisture” had already been advanced by Roger Bacon’s Libellus… de retardandis senectutis accidentibus in the thirteenth century (quoted by Hall, “Life, Death and the Radical Moisture,” 12). 127. The possible sources of Sabuco’s notion of humidum radicale deserve further study. It is interesting to note, in this respect, that Paracelsus saw the function of the radical moisture in the body as analogous to that of the root in the tree, thus employing the tree metaphor elaborated by Sabuco (Paracelsus, Die beiden Bücher De renovatione et restauratione und Vom langen Leben, in Sämtliche Werke, ed. K. Sudhoff and W. Matthiessen, 15 vols. (Munich and Berlin: Oldenbourg, 1922–33), 3. 201–45, quoted by Hall, “Life, Death and the Radical Moisture,” 14). J. L. Barona has pointed out that Sabuco uses the metaphor of distillation to understand the process of absorption of food in the body, raising the issue of the possible connection between Sabuco’s ideas and the diffusion of Paracelsianism and iatrochemistry in Spain (Barona, “Una refutación del galenismo: naturaleza humana y enfermedad en Miguel Sabuco,” 133–34). 128. “The true philosophy, unknown to the ancients, of the nature of mixed bodies, of man and of the world.”

Editor’s Introduction 49 where the Doctor asks Antonio to talk about the nature of the world. This is the most daringly speculative part of the book, where Antonio expatiates on the nature of life, redefining the Aristotelian categories of generation and corruption. He also reformulates the conventional theory of the vital functions, respiration, nutrition, generation, and the relationship of matter and form, boldly concluding with a list of “the main errors of the ancients, and things they ignored about the nature of microcosm and macrocosm” and a table of correspondences between micro-and macrocosm.129 Within Sabuco’s view of the correspondences between microand macrocosm, sun and moon stand respectively for the heart and the brain of the world. “The sun, heart of the world, gives warmth and life; the moon, brain of the world, gives moisture and growth with its white chyle, or milk, which is water.”130 But just as in the microcosm Sabuco reverses the Aristotelian primacy of the heart over the brain,131 so also in the macrocosm the traditional hierarchy of sun and moon is turned upside down. Just as the brain is more important than the heart, so has the moon primacy over the sun. Like the brain feeds the body, so does the moon feed the world. In the microcosm, the seat of the radical moisture is the brain. In the macrocosm, the humidum 129. A table of correspondences between micro-and macrocosm, titled “Similitudines parvi, & magni mundi,” is given at the end of Vera philosophia de natura mistorum (Sabuco, Obras, 427). For an example of the conventional Aristotelian version of the microcosm-macrocosm correspondences, see the mnemonic table described by H. D. Saffrey, “L’homme microcosme dans une estampe médico-philosophique du seizième siècle,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 57 (1994), 89–122. On the idea of microcosm and macrocosm in early modern Spanish culture see Francisco Rico, El pequeño mundo del hombre (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1986), 169–70 on Sabuco. 130. Sabuco, Obras, 384: “Sol cor mundi calefacit, & vivificat, Luna mundi cerebrum chilo albo, vel lacte, id est aqua humectat, & humido crescere facit.” On moon/sun symbolism in Sabuco see Domingo Henares, “De lo luminoso en Filosofía: La metáfora de la luz en Miguel Sabuco,” Anales del Centro Asociado de Albacete 1 (1979), 69–72. 131. “Erravit Aristot. assignans particulam principem, quae medium locum tenet, scilicet, cor in animali, truncum vero in plantis…” (“Aristotle erred in attributing the role of principal organ to that part that is in the middle, namely, the heart in the animal and the trunk in plants”). Antonio goes on to state that “cerebrum esse particulam principem sentiendi, alendi, atque augendi, non cor, nec epar” (“the brain is the principal organ of perception, nutrition and growth, not the heart, nor the liver”): Vera philosophia de natura mistorum, in Sabuco, Obras, 394–95.

50 Editor’s Introduction radicale is identified with a primordial element called “milk of the moon” (leche de luna, lac lunae). The moon milk, Sabuco says, is a constitutive element of all living forms. All living beings “have a relic and flavor of the moon,”132 and like the moon they wax (grow in health) or wane (decline in disease). Following the moon, all life and health processes go through phases of cremento (increment) and decremento (decrement). Also the brain moisture waxes and wanes like the moon, from which it is originally derived: “The humors swell with the waxing of the moon, and the brain in the skull rises like the water does in the rivers and the sea. All this is done by the moon, mother and wet nurse, with her milk, chyle of the world, which is water.”133 Every juice, that is, chyle present in the living forms, is the milk of the moon, and with the moon it ebbs and flows, like water. The moon wet nurse, with her milk, or chyle , either in its dense form, which is water, or its rarefied form, [which is air], … gives nourishment to all living beings.134 In Sabuco’s cosmology there are only two elements, earth and water, because air and fire are seen, respectively, as rarefied and even more rarefied water.135 All beings live surrounded by a watery 132. Sabuco, Obras, 125: “tienen una reliquia, y sabor de la Luna.” 133. Sabuco, Obras, 98. 134. “Omnis succus, vel chilus formae vegetabilis lac Lunae est, cum illa (ut aqua) crescit, decrescit. Luna nutrix lacte suo, vel chilo, hoc est, aqua concreta & rara, … omnes formas vegetabiles nutrit” (Vera philosophia de natura mistorum, in Sabuco, Obras, 396). 135. “Ad has generationes materiam praestant spherae duae posteriores, scilicet, terra, & aqua, aer enim eius filius aqua rarefacta est, aether rarior coelum rarissima, bene dixit, qui omnia duo esse dixit, scilicet, terram, & aquam” (Vera philosophia de natura mistorum, in Sabuco, Obras, 386; cf. 399: “Duo enim tantum sunt elementa, scilicet, terra, & aqua”). Revising the conventional theory of the four elements (earth, water, air, fire) Sabuco denies that there is such an element as fire: “The beginning of the mistake was to assert that air is hot and humid, and oppose it to earth, and to conjecture (divinare) a sphere of fire, and oppose it to water… In the world there is no such thing as a sphere of fire” (Vera philosophia de natura mistorum, in Sabuco, Obras, 392). Also Girolamo Cardano had removed fire from the number of the elements (see Nancy G. Siraisi, The Clock and the Mirror:

Editor’s Introduction 51 “environment” (ambiens), the aquatic animals by water in its dense form, and the terrestrial animals by water in its rarefied form, which is the air.136 The moon nourishes all living beings in two ways, “from her two breasts”137—with her thick milk (water), and with her thin milk (air). Sabuco has a fascinating notion of “environment” (ambiente, ambiens) as formed by the “moon milk” surrounding and feeding all forms of life. The environment performs a double role of nutrition, as water to drink and as air to breathe. Air nourishes both externally, through the skin, and internally, when inhaled.138 In other words, we are nursed by the moon milk by drinking and breathing, as well as by direct contact with the air around us: Just in the same way in which a nursing animal fosters her little ones from the outside, through the contact with her skin, and from the inside, with her own milk, thus also nature, or rather the Moon, feeds all the Girolamo Cardano and Renaissance Medicine [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997], 63 and Alfonso Ingegno, Saggio sulla filosofia di Cardano [Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1980], 223–32). In the early seventeenth century, the existence of only two elements, earth and water, was argued by some anti-Aristotelian authors, for instance in the heterodox theses by Antoine de Villon and Étienne de Clave censored by the Sorbonne and suppressed by the Parlement of Paris in 1624: see Didier Kahn, “Entre atomisme, alchimie et théologie: la réception des thèses d’Antoine de Villon et Étienne de Clave contre Aristote, Paracelse et les ‘cabalistes’ (24–25 août 1624),” Annals of Science 58 (2001), 241–86 (see 250, from the text of the IX thesis : “Or ce Monde sublunaire est composé seulement de deux Elemens comme des parties integrantes, sçavoir de Terre et d’Eau; car l’aire ne differe point essenciellement de l’eau”). Another author who argued that only earth and water are the primordial elements was Anselme Boece de Boodt in his Gemmarum et Lapidum Historiam (1609). I have consulted the French translation: Le Parfait Joaillier, ou Histoire des Pierreries (Lyon: Jean-Antoine Huguetan, 1644), book 1, chap. 8, 17. 136. Vera philosophia de natura mistorum, in Sabuco, Obras, 387: “Omnia intra aquam chilum mundi degunt, & omnes formas, primae & secundae vitae ambiens nutrit, vel concreta, vel rara, concreta aquatilia rara terrestria.” This “environment” is constantly going through processes of condensation and rarefaction, which explains meteorological phenomena such as rain, clouds, wind, etc. (Ibid, 388–89). 137. “Gemina ubera sua” (Vera philosophia de natura mistorum, in Sabuco, Obras, 386). 138. Ibid, 387: “Ambiens bina officia praestat, hoc est, duplicem nutritionem formis primae vitae, alteram exterius per cutem, alteram interius inspiratione.”

52 Editor’s Introduction beings generated by the Sun with the drink of her milk and with the contact with her environment.139 What is startling in Sabuco’s reconceptualization of the humidum radicale as the primordial element of moon milk is the fact that it gives cosmological primacy to humidity over heat. Heat comes from the sun, and moisture comes from the moon. But, as we know, for Sabuco the brain is more important than the heart, therefore the moon is more important than the sun, and moisture is more important than heat. It is this rejection of the primacy of heat, both in the microcosm and in the macrocosm, which seems to me the most “heretical” aspect of Sabuco’s theory. The sixteenth-century debate on the respective roles of calidum innatum and humidum radicale is still yet to be reconstructed by historians in all its complexity.140 But my impression—though I should hasten to add that it is just an impression, and that more research is necessary on this issue—is that the primacy of the calidum innatum was rarely questioned within medical circles, where it was one of the most tenaciously held axioms of School doctrine.141 139. Ibid, 388: “Ut nutrix animal catulos fovet exterius tactu suae cutis, & interius lacte, ita natura, vel potius Luna potu sui lactis, & tactu sui ambientis nutrit omnia à Sole genita.” Cf. Ibid, 422: “Animal gemino ubere Lunae lactatur, hoc est gemino ambiente, aqua, & aere, id est, lacte Lunae concreto, & raro: sed illud, id est potum, rarius; hoc, id est, inspirationem crebrius suggit à matre, tactum verò cutis continenter.” (“The animal sucks milk at the double breast of the moon, that, is, the double environment formed by water and air, namely, the moon milk in dense or rare form. Of the first, that is, water, the animal partakes from time to time; of the second, that is, air, the animal sucks more often from the mother, and by contact through the skin continuously”). 140. But see the contributions by Michael Stolberg, “Die Lehre vom ‘calor innatus’ im Lateinischen Canon medicinae des Avicenna,” Sudhoffs Archiv 77:1 (1993), 32–53; Michael Stolberg, “Das Staunen von der Schöpfung: ‘Tota substantia’, ‘calidum innatum’, ‘generatio spontanea’ und atomistiche Formenlehre bei Daniel Sennert” in Gesnerus 50 (1993), 48–65. 141. A useful source to reconstruct the debate is Caspar Hofmann’s Syntagma de calido innato et de spiritibus (Jena: Tobias Oehrling, 1686), which examined the various notions of calidum innatum in Galen and in several medieval and early modern authors, among them Peter of Abano, Telesio, Paracelsus, Argenterio, Giovan Battista da Monte, Fernel, Valleriola, Cesalpino, Francisco Valles, Gómez Pereira. As late as the mid-seventeenth century, the primacy of calidum innatum was argued in doctoral theses presented to the Paris medical faculty, the bastion of Galenist orthodoxy. See H. T. Baron, Quaestionum medicarum quae

Editor’s Introduction 53

Echoes of the Querelle des Femmes in Early Modern Medicine Sabuco’s reversal of the traditional hierarchy of heat over moisture, and sun over moon, appears even more startling if we consider the deeply entrenched gender connotation of sun/moon symbolism in the Renaissance—the sun being consistently represented as male and the moon just as consistently being characterized as female.142 At first sight, also Sabuco seems to follow this conventional gender symbolism. The father Sun, with his rays, impregnates the mother earth, and he excites and vivifies every seed for the generation of plants and animals. The Moon feeds all beings generated by the Sun, either born of the earth or of animal, with her milk, chyle of the world, which is water, dense and rare.143 “The sun and the moon—Antonio states—share the labor: the sun generates, the moon nourishes.” In generation, the Moon provides matter, the Sun form, and together [they create] life (…) The Sun is the formal cause, the Moon is the material cause, and both perform generation, which is the conjunction of matter and form with life.144 circa medicinae theoriam et praxim, ante duo secula, in Scholis medicinae Parisiensis agitatae sunt et discussae, serie cronologica (Paris: Hérissant, 1752). 142. See Heide Wunder, “Er ist die Sonn’, sie is der Mond”: Frauen in der Frühen Neuzeit (Munich: Beck, 1992), 261–68; on sun symbolism more generally see Le Soleil à la Renaissance. Sciences et mythes (Bruxelles: Presses Universitaires de Bruxelles, 1965). 143. Vera philosophia de natura mistorum, in Sabuco, Obras, 387. 144. “Sol et Luna dividunt operam, Sol gignit, Luna nutrit” (Vera philosophia de natura mistorum, in Sabuco, Obras, 385). “Luna materiam, Sol formam, vitamque simul generatione praestat (…) Ille causa formalis, haec materialis existit: & ambo generationem perficiunt, quae materiae, & formae cum vita coniunctio est” (Ibid, 397–98). On the association of the sun with males, and of the moon with females, see also Coloquio de las cosas que mejoran este mundo, y sus Repúblicas, in Sabuco, Obras, 192:“The Sun helps the generation of males, and the moon that of females: and thus the absence of the moon and presence of the sun, which

54 Editor’s Introduction At first sight, this view seems to echo the Aristotelian theory of reproduction, according to which the female brought passive matter to generation, while the male provided the active principle of form. But in fact Sabuco’s notions of form and matter are quite different from Aristotle’s. For Aristotle, matter and form were conceived as polar opposites: matter was passive while form was active, and the mediating principle between them was “privation” (formlessness, or privation of form).145 For Sabuco, in contrast, form and matter are related to each other not as opposites but as cooperating partners, held together by amicitia, friendship.146 Form and matter, sun and moon, male principle and female principle, all cooperate actively in the reproduction of life. For Sabuco, saying that the moon, as the female element, contributes the material element to generation does not mean that the female has only a passive role, as it did for Aristotle. Saying that the sun, as the male element, gives form to the new life does not mean, as it did in Aristotle, that the male role in procreation will be in summer and with no moon, will favor the male gender, and the absence of sun and presence of moon, which will be in winter in the full moon, will favor the female gender.” 145. For Aristotle all “substances,” or objects in the terrestrial realm, are composites of form and matter. Form, the active principle or agent, combines with matter, the passive recipient of the form, to produce a specific object. Matter, form and “privation” (absence of form) are the constitutive elements of change: form is what comes to be, privation is what passes away, and matter is what stays the same throughout the change (the substratum of change): see Aristotle, Metaphysics, 12.2, 1069b; Physics, I.7–8, 189b–192b. 146. Sabuco, Obras, 290: “Every matter has a friendship with its form, and it is barred from taking any other form except the one with which it has friendship. The philosophers would have done better had they spoken of friendship [between matter and form] rather than of ‘privation,’ and they certainly were wrong in affirming this category of ‘privation.’ The right thing to say is that materia, amicitia, and forma (matter, friendship, and form) coexist in the mixed substance, and that the mixed substance lasts as long as does the friendship that ties matter to a particular form. Thus I would say: generatio est actio materiae in amicam formam: Generation is the action of matter on a friendly form.” (Cf. translation, 155–56 and n189). In Vera philosophia de natura mistorum, Sabuco is scathingly satirical about the Scholastic category of “privation” as the connecting link between the concepts of matter and form, saying that it led to “many controversies and sterile disputations”; “certè privatio intellectus fuit,” it showed a “deprivation” of intellect in the philosophers (Sabuco, Obras, 402–3). The Aristotelian category of “privation” was also criticized by Francesco Patrizi in his Discussiones Peripateticae (1571–81): see Luc Deitz, “‘Falsissima est ergo haec de triplici substantia Aristotelis doctrina’: A Sixteenth-Century Critic of Aristotle—Francesco Patrizi da Cherso on Privation, Form, and Matter,” Early Science and Medicine 2:3 (1997), 227–50.

Editor’s Introduction 55 is superior to that of the female. For Sabuco, sun and moon, the male and the female principles, are not arrayed hierarchically, with the male predominating over the female, as in Aristotle. If anything, reading Sabuco’s theory of generation in the context of Sabuco’s cosmology, one could argue that the female element is presented as more important than the male. As we have seen, Sabuco employs the traditional categories of hot/cold, wet/dry, but gives primacy to moisture over heat. In ancient medicine as well as in the Renaissance, the hot/cold, wet/dry dichotomies were also crucial in the definition of sexual difference and sexual hierarchy. As most Renaissance medical texts repeat,147 woman is cold and humid, man is hot and dry. Each gender is characterized by a positive (hot, humid) and a negative (cold, dry) quality. Sabuco does not change the definition of the female principle: the moon (in the macrocosm) and the brain (in the microcosm) are still defined as cold and humid.148 In the traditional model, however, the conceptual couple hot/cold (in which man occupies the positive pole) was more important than the couple moist/dry. The traditional argument for woman’s inferiority was that she was endowed with a lower level of innate heat.149 In Sabuco’s theory, in contrast, preeminence is given to the couple humid/dry, in which woman occupies the positive pole. The humidum radicale is more important than the innate heat. The humid/ cold organ, the brain—often described with feminine metaphors150— is more important than the organs which are the seats of the innate heat, such as the stomach and the heart. While such a symbolic reversal of gender hierarchy was undoubtedly a daring novelty for the times, we should consider that in the last decades of the sixteenth century the traditional vision of 147. See Ian Maclean, The Renaissance Notion of Woman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 30–35. 148. On the brain as “cold and moist” see translation, 100. 149. Maclean, The Renaissance Notion of Woman, 30–35. Huarte de San Juan’s Examen de ingenios (1575) used the notion of the female cold and moist complexion to argue that women are intellectually inferior to men: see Elvira Arquiola, “Bases biológicas de la feminidad en la España moderna (Siglos XVI y XVII),” Asclepio 40:1 (1988), 297–315. 150. For instance: “la señora que está en el celebro” (“the lady that is in the brain” [Sabuco, Obras, 199]).

56 Editor’s Introduction sexual difference was seriously questioned in European medicine. As Ian Maclean showed many years ago in a book that remains fundamental, The Renaissance Notion of Woman, at the end of the sixteenth century one can notice a sort of medical version of the Querelle des femmes—a “curious combination of doctors claiming to be Galenists and feminists,” that is, believing “against Aristotle, that men and women are equally perfect in their sex.”151 According to Maclean, “it is possible to argue that there is a feminist movement in medical spheres” in the late sixteenth century—which is particularly striking when compared to the strong conservatism on gender issues that we find in works of theology of the same period. We should try to assess the innovative content of Sabuco’s Nueva Filosofia also by comparing it with the “feminist Galenism” of the late Renaissance. Maclean showed that in the second half of the sixteenth century the Aristotelian / Scholastic view of woman as “imperfect male” and “error of Nature” was rejected by a vast number of doctors, and replaced with the idea that both sexes are equally important in reproduction, each being seen as perfect according to its own function. The female sex was no longer thought to be the imperfect and incomplete version of the male. Thus the Spanish physician Luis Mercado—a contemporary of Sabuco—wrote in 1579: “I don’t believe that the female is more imperfect than the male. The perfection of all natural things has to be investigated in relation to Nature’s intention (…). And considering the goal for which woman has been created, I am led to believe that she is equally as perfect as man.”152 In the same years Girolamo Mercuriale expressed an identical opinion in his Roman lectures on women’s diseases: “I marvel at Aristotle, who said that women and all females are monsters. But if we only consider the importance of women in the propagation of the species (…) as well as 151. Maclean, The Renaissance notion of woman, 28–46, cit. on 29. See also Anne-Liese Thomasen, “Historia animalium contra Gynaecia in der Literatur des Mittelalters,” Clio Medica 15 (1980), 5–23. This intriguing aspect of late Renaissance medical culture deserves further investigation. 152. Ludovicus Mercatus (= Luis Mercado), De mulierum Affectionibus (Venice: Felice Valgrisi, 1587), 2nd ed., 7: “Non existimo foeminam esse viro imperfectiorem. Nam omnis naturalium rerum perfectio (…) ex fine naturae intento quaerenda proculdubio est… Quibus sane rationibus moveor, ut credam, habito respectu ad finem foeminam esse aeque perfectam viro.”

Editor’s Introduction 57 the usefulness of women for a good and happy life (…), we clearly see that the female is certainly not a monster, as argued by Aristotle, but on the contrary a primary goal of Nature’s intention.”153 Some years later, in his Historia anatomica humani corporis, the Montpellier physician André Du Laurens would condemn the Scholastic definition in even stronger terms: “Saying that woman is an error, or false step, of Nature, is unworthy of a true philosopher—it is a barbarous opinion.”154 Similar statements are surprisingly frequent in medical and anatomical texts of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, particularly in the treatises on female diseases, a Hippocratic genre that went through a revival in this period.155 Some late Renaissance anatomists abandoned the Galenic homology of the male and female genitalia (uterus = inverted penis, ovaries = testes), which had

153. Hieronymus Mercurialis (= Girolamo Mercuriale), De Morbis Muliebribus Praelectiones (Venice: Giunta, 1591), 3rd ed., 1–2 (1st ed. 1582). Mercuriale had Mercado’s De mulierum affectionibus reprinted in Venice in 1587. For similar views see Martinus Akakia, De morbis muliebribus, in Gyneciorum sive de mulierum tum communibus, tum gravidarum, parientium, et puerperarum affectionibus & morbis (Strasbourg: Zetzner, 1587), 745; Rodericus a Castro (= Rodrigo de Castro), De universa muliebrium morborum medicina (Hamburg: Froben,1603), 126–31; Johannes Varandeus (= Jean de Varanda), De morbis et affectibus mulierum (Lyons: Bartholomeus Vincentius, 1619), 2 (see Maclean, Renaissance Notion of Woman, 103 n9). 154. André Du Laurens, Opera anatomica in quibus historia singularum partium accurate describitur (Frankfurt: Peter Fischer, 1595), 2nd ed. (first ed. 1593), 280–81: “Verum haec Aristotelis & Galeni opinio nobis non probatur. Naturam enim in foeminae, non minus quam maris generationem intendere existimamus, & foeminam Naturae erratum ac prolapsionem dicere, indignum est Philosopho.” An English anatomy manual of this period, which borrowed extensively from Du Laurens, repeated this opinion word for word: “But this opinion of Galen and Aristotle we cannot approve. For we think that Nature as wel intendeth the Generation of a Female as of a Male: and therefore it is unworthily said that she is an Error or Monster in Nature” (Helkiah Crooke, Microcosmographia: A Description nd of the Body of Man [London: W. Jaggard, 1615]; I quote from the 2 ed., London: Thomas & Richard Cotes, 1631, 271). 155. See the texts collected in the Gynaeciorum libri, ed. Hans Kaspar Wolf (Basle: Thomas Guarin, 1566). This collection was republished with additions in 1586 and 1597: see Helen King, Midwifery, Obstetrics and the Rise of Gynaecology: The Use of a Sixteenth-Century Compendium (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 1–8, 29–64. On the deep difference between the Hippocratic and the Aristotelian view of the female body see Helen King, Hippocrates’ Woman: Reading the Female Body in Ancient Greece (London: Routledge, 1998).

58 Editor’s Introduction always been used to stress women’s inferiority.156 In late sixteenth­ century anatomy there was a new attention to the specificity of the female body—a new sense that female anatomy could not be simply constructed by analogy from the anatomy of the male, but it required instead, to use Du Laurens’s words, a “peculiaris historia,” a specific research and description.157 This is indicated also by the new interest in the uterus, which, far from being described as an inferior organ, now evoked admiration and eulogy.158 It is shown by the “rediscovery” of the clitoris, which went with a new, eager interest in phenomena such as hermaphroditism and female homosexuality.159 Most significantly, the “feminist Galenists” used Galen’s authority to refute the Aristotelian 156. In De usu partium (Opera, ed. Kuehn, vol. 4: lib. XIV, cap.6, 158–65; Eng. Trans. On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Body, trans. with intro. and commentary Margaret Tallmadge May [Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1968], 2.628–32), Galen had stated that all the genital parts that are found in man are present also in woman, but inside rather than outside. Galen thought that the ovaries produced the female semen, and called them “female testicles.” In 1593 André Du Laurens reviewed this classical topic, arguing against Galen’s doctrine (Du Laurens, Opera anatomica, 274; see Maclean, Renaissance Notion of Woman, 33, and Winfried Schleiner, “Early Modern Controversies about the One-Sex Model,” Renaissance Quarterly 53 (2000), 180–91). But the traditional view was still widespread; for an example see A. Piccolomini, Anatomicae praelectiones explicantes mirificam corporis humani fabricam (Rome: Bartolomeo Bonfadini, 1586), 184, which closely followed the Galenic doctrine as stated in De usu partium. It should be noted, however, that anatomical texts such as Du Laurens’s provide strong evidence against the view of Thomas Laqueur and Londa Schiebinger, who have claimed that a “one-sex model” of sexual difference dominated early modern medical culture (Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990]; Londa Schiebinger, Nature’s Body: Gender in the Making of Modern Science [Boston: Beacon Press, 1993]). On this contentious issue see, most recently, Michael Stolberg, “A Woman Down to her Bones. The Anatomy of Sexual Difference in the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries,” Isis, 94 (2003), 274–99; and Laqueur’s and Schiebinger’s rejoinder in the same issue of Isis, 300–6, 307–13. See also Helen King, “The Mathematics of Sex: One to Two, or Two to One?” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History: Sexuality and Culture in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, 3rd series, 2 (2005), 47–58. 157. Du Laurens, Opera anatomica, 269. On the interest for the interior of women’s body in Renaissance anatomy, see Katharine Park, Secrets of Women: Gender, Generation, and the Origins of Human Dissection (New York: Zone Books, 2006). 158. Maclean, Renaissance Notion of Woman, 33. 159. See Katharine Park, “The Rediscovery of the Clitoris: French Medicine and the Tribade, 1570–1620” in The Body in Parts: Fantasies of Corporeality in Early Modern Europe,

Editor’s Introduction 59 theory of generation, namely, the view that women do not have semen, and that they provide only passive matter (the menstrual blood) to the formation of the embryo.160 According to Galen, the female semen contributed actively to the shaping of the fetus; and although woman’s contribution was supposed to be inferior to man’s (since her semen was supposed to be colder and less active than that of the male) this view was undoubtedly an improvement over the Aristotelian doctrine, that gave women only a passive role in reproduction. By emphasizing Galen’s argument in favor of the existence of female semen, and woman’s active contribution to generation, the Renaissance Galenists tried to correct the radical asymmetry between the sexes implied by the Aristotelian model. It is important to note, however, that the Galenist feminists of the late sixteenth century were not the first to question the Aristotelian/Scholastic view of woman. This view had already been challenged at the beginning of the sixteenth century in the debate on women that goes under the name of Querelle des femmes. Some of the anti-Aristotelian ideas we find in the Galenist feminism of the second half of the century were first rehearsed in the Querelle by the authors, men and women, who were trying to rebut a long tradition of misogynist stereotypes.161 Medical arguments against the conventional ed. David Hillmann and Carla Mazzio (New York: Routledge, 1997), 171–93, especially 177–78. 160. On the differences between the Aristotelian and the Galenic theories of generation, see the classic account by Erna Lesky, Die Zeugungs-und Vererbungslehren der Antike und ihr Nachwirken (Mainz-Wiesbaden: Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, 1950), 1344–1417. See also A. Preus, “Galen’s Criticism of Aristotle’s Conception Theory,” Journal of the History of Biology 10 (1977), 65–85; Michael Boylan, “The Hippocratic and Galenic Challenges to Aristotle’s Conception Theory,” Journal of the History of Biology 15:1 (1984), 83–112; Sophia Connell, “Aristotle and Galen on Sex Difference and Reproduction: A New Approach to an Ancient Rivalry,” Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 31:a.3 (2000), 405–27. 161. On the use of medical arguments in the Querelle, see Marc Augenot, Les champions des femmes: Examen du discours de la supériorité des femmes, 1400–1800 (Québec: Presses de l’Université du Québec, 1977), 107–17 (but this aspect of the Querelle deserves further study). On the Querelle see also Constance Jordan, Renaissance Feminism: Literary Texts and Political Models (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990); Die europäische Querelle des femmes. Geschlechterdebatten seit dem 15. Jahrhundert, ed. Gisela Bock and Margarete Zimmermann, (Stuttgart-Weimar: Metzler, 1997).

60 Editor’s Introduction view of woman’s inferiority were woven in the texts of the Querelle since the book that can be considered the Urtext of the genre in the Renaissance, Agrippa’s De nobilitate & praecellentia foeminei sexus (1509, pub.1529).162 In contrast with the Aristotelian image of woman as an error of nature, Agrippa stressed the mirabilia—the wonders— of the woman’s body.163 Most significantly, using Galen and Avicenna against Aristotle, Agrippa countered the traditional argument that woman contributes only passive matter to the embryo, and has therefore only an inferior role in reproduction. In fact, he argued, “nature gave women a higher role than men in procreation, as we can see clearly because only the female semen, as testified by Galen and Avicenna, gives matter and nourishment to the fetus, whereas the man’s semen [does that] only minimally, as it enters the fetus only as an accident of the substance.”164 For Aristotle, the notion that woman contributed the material element to the embryo, while the male semen provided an exclusively spiritual component, was key to proving the inferiority of woman’s role in generation. Agrippa used the same notion to argue just the opposite—man does not bring anything material to generation, and therefore his contribution is inferior. It would be worth examining in more detail the use of medical arguments in the texts of the Querelle of the first half of the sixteenth century, some of which, as for instance Jean Bouchet’s Triumphes de la noble & amoureuse dame (1530), included a section on female diseases, and seem thus to have anticipated the revival of the Hippocratic genre of gynecological treatises in the second half of the sixteenth century.165 It is also interesting to notice that some 162. Agrippa, Declamation on the Nobility and Preeminence of the Female Sex, above, n75. 163. Agrippa, Declamation, 59. 164. Agrippa, Declamation, 56–57: “Galeno et Avicenna testibus, solum muliebre semen est materia & nutrimentum foetus, viri autem minime quod illi quodammodo ut accidens substantiae ingrediatur.” It is interesting that this medical reason for woman’s superiority (her greater part in generation) was already mentioned by a fifteenth-century Spanish pioneer of the Querelle, Rodriguez de la Cámara, in his Triunfo de las Doñas, (ca. 1440) (see Augenot, Les champions des femmes, 19). For Rodriguez de la Cámara’s influence on Agrippa, see Rabil, Introduction to Agrippa, Declamation, 19. 165. Among the texts that bring medical arguments to the defense of women, Augenot mentions François Habert, Louënge et haultesse du sexe féminin (1541) and especially François de Billon, Fort inexpugnable de l’honneur féminin (1553), which argued that women live

Editor’s Introduction 61 texts of the Querelle were written by medical doctors, as for instance the Paradoxe pour les femmes (1553) by the French physician and anatomist Charles Estienne,166 inspired by the celebrated Paradossi of the mysterious Italian physician (and probably heretic) Ortensio Lando.167 The strategy of argumentation in the Querelle relied heavily on paradox—turning the common opinion upside-down—an appropriate figure of speech for introducing ideas that ran counter to the conventional doctrine.168 In Lando’s Paradossi (1544), for instance, we find a defense of the propositions that “Woman is more excellent than man” and that “Aristotle was not only an ignoramus but also the wickedest man of his times.” In the latter paradox, it is the doctrine of generation of “that blockhead moron Aristotle” that is singled out as an object of scorn.169 longer than men and therefore “fulfil more than men the intention of Nature” (Augenot, Champions des femmes, 109). 166. Charles Estienne, “Pour les Femmes, Déclamation XXIII,” in Paradoxes: ce sont propos contre la commune opinion… (Paris: Charles Estienne, 1553), 148–58 (cited in Augenot, Champions des femmes, 19). There is a modern edition of Estienne’s Paradoxes, ed. Trevor Peach (Geneva: Droz, 1998). 167. Paradossi cioe, sententie fuori del comun parere, novellamente venute in luce (Venice: Bernardino Bidoni, 1544). Lando is also supposed to be the author of another contribution to the Querelle, the volume Lettere di molte e valorose donne, nelle quali chiaramente appare non esser ne di eloquentia ne di dottrina alli huomini inferiori (Venice: Gabriel Giolito, 1549). See N. Bellucci, “Lettere di molte valorose donne… e di alcune pettegolette, ovvero: di un libro di lettere di Ortensio Lando,” in Le “carte messaggiere.” Retorica e modelli di comunicazione epistolare: per un indice dei libri di lettere del Cinquecento, ed. A. Quondam (Rome: Bulzoni, 1981), 255–76. On Lando’s mysterious identity see Silvana Seidel Menchi, “Chi fu Ortensio Lando?” Rivista storica italiana 106 (1994), 501–64. 168. On the use of paradox in the Querelle des femmes see Rosalie Colie, Paradoxia epidemica. The Renaissance Tradition of Paradox (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), 102 ff. See also Augenot, Champions des femmes, 19 for several examples of Querelle texts written in the form of paradoxes; and Anne R. Larsen, “Paradox and the Praise of Women: from Ortensio Lando and Charles Estienne to Marie de Romieu,” Sixteenth Century Journal 28:3 (1997), 759–74. On the paradox as a vehicle of new ideas, see Rosalie Colie, The Resources of Kind: GenreTheory in the Renaissance, ed. Barbara K. Lewalski (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), 308 ff.; and Le paradoxe en linguistique et en littérature, ed. R. Landheer and P. J. Smith (Geneva: Droz, 1996). 169. Lando, Paradossi, 78v–85v (on woman’s excellence), 94r–95r (on Aristotle: “Quel buffallaccio, ignorantone [di Aristotele] errò bruttamente dicendo che lo seme dava solamente

62 Editor’s Introduction So the Querelle des femmes, which is usually analyzed only as a form of literary discourse, made inroads also within medical learning. We can perceive echoes of the Querelle in the texts of the Galenist feminists of the late Renaissance, where what may have been originally just an intellectual game, a display of ingenuity through the elaborate defense of what most people would consider preposterous (that woman is excellent, and that Aristotle was an idiot), became a serious program of medical and anatomical research on the female body. As we saw above, some clues suggest that Oliva Sabuco’s name was associated with the Querelle des femmes in Spain: Cristóbal de Acosta mentioned her in his Tratado en loor de las mugeres, and La pícara Justina attributed to her an unidentified (so far), “libro del duelo del género femenino.”170 We can better understand why Oliva may have been perceived by her contemporaries as a champion of women if we compare the content of Nueva Filosofia with the arguments of the Galenist feminists. Like them, Sabuco also argued for a balanced view of the male and female role in reproduction. Both the male and the female semen—Antonio says—are needed in generation: “The semen of both is necessary, because if there is no conjunction of the man’s and the woman’s seed, there is no generation.”171 But in Sabuco’s theory there is no hierarchical difference between the male and the female semen; they are both derived from the “white juice” of the brain, both are a “relic,” in each male and female being, of the fundamental vital element, the moon milk.172 For the Renaissance Galenists, as originally for Galen, in contrast, the female semen was less perfect than the male and had a correspondingly more limited role in the formation of the embryo. Due to an inadequate amount of innate heat, the female body was unable to process blood up to the highest stage of concoction necessary for the production of perfect semen; it could only turn blood into milk, a less refined liquid, and into an inferior kind of semen. To this defect of heat, one had to add the consequences of the difference between the male and female testicles. The female, Galen had argued, lo principio motivo al sangue mestruale, si che egli avesse ragion solo di opifice e non che di quello si componesse l’animale”). 170. See above, 28. 171. Sabuco, Obras, 147. 172. See above, 44.

Editor’s Introduction 63 “has smaller and less perfect testicles, and the semen produced in them is necessarily scantier, colder and more humid (because these qualities necessarily derive from the defect of heat).”173 So the Galenist feminists did not radically question the inferiority of woman in generation sanctioned by the Aristotelians—they merely mitigated it. In fact, the dogma of male physical superiority was shared, although with varying intensity, by both Aristotelians and Galenists. For both of them, the dogma was based on the metaphysical primacy of the innate heat, as well as on the centrality of blood as the basic fluid from which semen and milk were supposed to derive.174 In the feminist Galenists, as Maclean noted, “woman does not seem to achieve complete parity with man (…). Although the female sex is no longer defined negatively as species privata, i.e., as lacking some male characteristics, the perception of female difference and specificity is still based on the assumption of gender hierarchy.”175 In contrast, Sabuco put deeply into question the axiom that was the cornerstone of the traditional view of woman’s inferiority—the centrality of blood and of innate heat. This was the bold paradox argued in Nueva Filosofia.176 Compared with the “feminist Galenism” of the Renaissance, Sabuco’s intellectual strategy appears much more radical. Nueva Filosofia questioned the basic premises shared by both the Aristotelian and the Galenic concept of the body. In lieu of the primacy of the innate heat, it posited the primacy of the humidum radicale; in lieu of the centrality of blood, it placed, at the very root of life, the female white juice—the moon milk. The categories defining the male and the female were unchanged, but their hierarchical order was turned upside down. Sabuco’s Nueva Filosofia reversed the hierarchy of the 173. Galen, De usu partium, in Opera, ed. Kuehn, vol. 4: lib. XIV, cap. 6, 164 (Eng. Trans., vol. 2, 631). 174. On the common assumptions of the Aristotelian and the Galenic theories of generation, see Lesky, Die Zeugungs-und Vererbungslehren der Antike, and for a concise summary, Gianna Pomata, “Blood Ties and Semen Ties: Consanguinity and Agnation in Roman Law,” in Gender, Kinship and Power, ed. M. J. Maynes, B. Soland, U. Strasser (London: Routledge, 1996), 51–57. 175. Maclean, Renaissance Notion of Woman, 45–46. 176. Sabuco was aware of the paradoxical nature of the theories advanced in Nueva Filosofia, as shown by the fact that some of the views expressed in Dicta brevia are presented under the heading “Dicta, & paradoxa, circa naturam hominis” (Sabuco, Obras, 373).

64 Editor’s Introduction sexes that was at the core of the Renaissance model of the body. We can now better understand why the author of this book, whoever she or he was, decided to publish it under a woman’s name.

Aftermath: Sabucus Hispanus in England and Beyond And now let us examine the history of the reception of Nueva Filosofia.177 Did the book influence the development of research in this period? Or was it a short-lived oddity that quickly vanished from the intellectual landscape of early modern European medicine? Here also, as we shall see, there is a mystery that waits to be cleared, and my research offers some new elements toward its solution. Momentous changes took place in medical research in the decades after the publication of Nueva Filosofia. The 1620s, in particular, witnessed two extraordinary events—the first descriptions of the lymphathics (1627) and of the circulation of the blood (1628)—two discoveries that fundamentally questioned the conventional Galenist view of the functioning of the body. These novelties inaugurated a period of rapid growth in anatomical knowledge, which would establish beyond all doubt, in the eyes of many European scholars, the superiority of modern anatomy over the anatomy of the ancients. In Spain, however, in marked contrast with the late sixteenth century, the seventeenth century was a period of stagnation and conservatism in medical ideas—a period, in fact, when Galenist orthodoxy was restored even in those medical schools where Vesalian anatomy had formerly flourished.178 It is therefore not surprising that Sabuco’s heterodox ideas seem to have been forgotten in Spain in this period. 177. A starting point for this history was provided by F. Rodríguez de la Torre, “Bibliografia de comentaristas y referencias sobre Miguel Sabuco (antes D.a Oliva) y su obra,” Al-Basit 13 (Dec. 1987). His list, however, is far from complete, and mostly limited to Spanish authors. He does not mention, for instance, the references to Sabuco in Lipenius, Lindenius, and Haller (see here above, nn. 26, 27) and most of the authors mentioned below in this section. 178. The Medical Faculty of Valencia, the center from which the Vesalian reform of anatomy had spread all over Spain in the sixteenth century, became a stronghold of Galenist orthodoxy in the following century. The decline of anatomical research and teaching was a widespread feature of Spanish medical culture in the seventeenth century. See Alvar Martínez Vidal and José Pardo-Tomás, “Anatomical Theatres and the Teaching of Anatomy in Early Modern Spain,” Medical History 49:3 (July 2005), 251–80.

Editor’s Introduction 65 Spanish physicians rediscovered Sabuco only in the first decades of the eighteenth century. The new appreciation of Sabuco’s work was due to the doctors Boix y Moliner and Martín Martínez, who both advocated a “sceptical” or “rational-empiricist” approach to medicine, in strong contrast with the Scholastic dogmatism that still prevailed in Spanish medical schools.179 In 1716, in the prologue to his Hipócrates aclarado, Boix y Moliner praised Sabuco’s “wonderful discovery” of the “suco nérveo,” a new medical concept he himself adopted in his book. He also claimed that Sabuco’s “discovery” had anticipated the views of several English physicians, “Glissonio, Warton, Willis, Carleton, …who read this woman’s volume but purposefully kept her name hidden, in order to appropriate for themselves the glory of such wonderful discovery”180 (the allusion is to Francis Glisson, Thomas Wharton, Walter Charleton, and the great anatomist of the brain, Thomas Willis). In fact, Boix y Moliner, as he himself admits, did not read Sabuco’s work until after finishing his own book, when “a friend” lent him Nueva Filosofia, which he perused, rejoicing to find out how much his own ideas coincided with those of Doña Oliva. In all likelihood, the friend who lent him Nueva Filosofia was the physician Martín Martínez, who wrote the “Censura” authorizing the publication of Hipócrates aclarado. In the “Censura” Martínez had sung Oliva’s praise: 179. This episode of Sabuco’s posthumous fame has been carefully reconstructed by Alvar Martínez Vidal, “Los orígenes del mito de Oliva Sabuco en los albores de la Ilustración, Al-Basit 13 (Dec. 1987), 137–51, which I follow here. On Boix y Moliner and Martínez as representatives of an innovative “sceptical” approach to medicine, see Maria Victoria Cruz del Pozo, Gassendismo y Cartesianismo en España: Martín Martínez, Mèdico Filósofo del siglo XVIII (Seville: Universidad de Sevilla, 1997) (on Boix y Moliner see 29n64). Martínez taught anatomy at the Hospital General in Madrid. He advocated a “sceptical Hippocratism” in his dialogue Medicina sceptica y Cirugia moderna (1722), where he criticized both Galenism and iatrochemistry. 180. Miguel Marcelino Boix y Moliner, Hippócrates aclarado, y sistema de Galeno impugnado, por estar fundado sobre dos aphorismos de Hippócrates no bien entendidos: que son el tercero y veinte y dos del Primer Libro (Madrid: Blás de Villanueva, 1716), Prólogo, fols. XXX–XXXI. In the text of the book (82) Boix y Moliner mentioned Francis Glisson, William Cole, Walter Charleton and Giovanni Alfonso Borelli” as “the first to navigate these waters” (“los primeros, que han navegado este golfo”), i.e., the theory of the “nervous juice.” See Martínez Vidal, “Los orígenes del mito de Oliva Sabuco,” 146–47.

66 Editor’s Introduction Why should we attribute the glory of this theory [of the suco nérveo] to the English, when long before them (…) it was made public by that learned Spanish heroine, doña Oliva Sabuco, who, to the shameful disgrace of our sex, had the courage in the year 1587 to publish a new system against Galen and the vulgar system of the Arabs?181 It was Martínez in fact who played the leading role in the revival of Sabuco’s fame during the Spanish medical Enlightenment. He enthusiastically mentioned Sabuco’s ideas in his most important works, Medicina Sceptica (1725) and Anatomia completa del hombre (1728). In 1728 he also promoted the publication of a new edition of Nueva Filosofia, to which he appended an earnest eulogy of Sabuco.182 Martínez saw “doña Oliva” as a pioneer of enlightened medical thought, and especially as a forerunner of the new medical doctrine of the “suco nérveo,” which he himself advocated. The main tenet of this new doctrine was that the first agent of the body’s nutrition was not the blood, as in the Galenist orthodoxy, but the “nervous juice,” distributed to all body parts via the nerves. After Hippocrates, the first to revive this theory was our doña Oliva Sabuco, from whom the English authors took it, although keeping, as it were, a foot in both camps and seeing the blood also, not only the nervous juice, as the agent of nutrition. These authors, moved perhaps by the intention of making their ideas less controversial, or of not abandoning altogether the common medical opinion, in which they also had been raised, tried to establish by rational argument 181. Martín Martínez, Censura, 15 October 1716, in Boix y Moliner, Hipócrates aclarado, fol. XIV (Martínez Vidal, “Los orígenes del mito de Oliva Sabuco,” 147). 182. Martín Martínez, “Elogio de la Obra de nuestra insigne Doctriz doña Oliva Sabuco,” in Nueva filosofía de la naturaleza del hombre (Madrid: Imp. Domingo Fernández, 1728) (the Elogio is reprinted in Martínez Vidal, “Los orígenes del mito de Oliva Sabuco,” 144–45). This was the fourth edition of Nueva Filosofia: see José Fernández Sánchez, “Ediciones de la obra de Miguel Sabuco (antes Doña Oliva),” Al-Basit 13 (Dec. 1987), 95–96.

Editor’s Introduction 67 and experimentation (razones, y experiencias) that the immediate, though partial, matter of nutrition is this nervous juice, thus moderating the radical views of doña Oliva, as well as producing proofs that she had not been able to offer, since with her, these ideas had been more like a Sybil’s inspired frenzy (furor Sibillico), the product of a fiery imagination, rather than a real [medical] system.183 Martínez further substantiated the accusation of plagiarism against the “English authors” by suggesting that Sabuco’s ideas were brought to England by Philip II himself,184 and by asserting that the first English scholar to adopt them was Sir George Ent. “The learned Ent—out of whose mouth, if we are to believe Charleton, learning itself seemed to speak—together with all his English Society, built the famous system of the nervous juice over the fine fancy of this woman, but they made themselves liable to the black reproach (nigra nota) of not quoting her.”185 So the revival of Sabuco’s ideas in the Spanish Enlightenment had a strong nationalist and anti-English bent. One of the most influential literati of the period, Father Feijóo, lamented in 1726 that Sabuco’s theory of the nervous juice had been stolen by the English: “This system, neglected by the incurious Spaniards, was eagerly embraced by the curious English, and today we receive it from strangers as if it were their discovery, when it was actually our own.

183. Martín Martínez, Anatomia completa del hombre (Madrid: por los Herederos de Don Miguel Francisco Rodriguez, 1752), 405–6. This work came out originally in 1728 (see Cruz del Pozo, Gassendismo y Cartesianismo en España, 32–33)—the same year in which Martínez published his Elogio of Sabuco in the new edition of Nueva Filosofia. 184. Martínez, “Elogio”: “Pues es muy de creer, que aviendo escrito en tiempo de Phelipe Segundo, y dedicado al Rey su libro, quando este Principe passò à Inglaterra, passasse la tal obra, de donde desfrutaron los Ingleses la India, que esconde en tan breves hojas, haciendola mas suya, que del Paìs que la produxo” (Martínez Vidal, “Los orígenes del mito de Oliva Sabuco,” 145). Martínez’s hypothesis is totally untenable, since Philip II visited England only on two occasions, in 1554–55 and in 1557, long before the publication of Nueva Filosofia (1587). 185. Martínez, “Elogio” (Martínez Vidal, “Los orígenes del mito de Oliva Sabuco,” 145).

68 Editor’s Introduction Oh, the tragic fate of the Spaniards!”186 Drawing a striking parallel between intellectual authorship and imperial dominions, Martínez wrote that the English “exploited the Indies hidden in those few leaves [of Sabuco’s book] and made them their own even more than the very country that had actually produced them.”187 Just as the English had challenged Spain’s supremacy overseas, they had got ahead of the Spaniards in medical matters by unfairly passing off as their own Sabuco’s pioneering work. Thus a legend developed that credited Sabuco as the originator of the theory of the “nervous juice.” Neither Martínez nor Feijóo brought up any specific textual evidence for their claim against the English authors in general, and George Ent in particular; but the accusation stuck, and found credit even in England. As late as 1847 the English poet Robert Southey followed Feijóo in praising Sabuco for having taught “the English first, and afterwards the physicians of other countries, the theory of nervous diseases.”188 186. Fray Benito Jerónimo Feijóo Montenegro, Theatro Crítico Universal (Madrid: Imp. de L. Francisco Mojados, 1726), 1:357–58; see also vol. 4 (Madrid: Imp. de L. Francisco Mojados, 1730), 416. Feijóo repeated the accusation of plagiarism in a later work, again pointing an accusatory finger at George Ent, as Martínez had done before him: Feijóo, Cartas eruditas y curiosas, vol. 3 (Madrid: Imp. De los Herederos de Franc. Del Hierro, 1750), 348–49; vol. 5 (Madrid: Imp. De los Herederos de Franc. Del Hierro, 1760), 242–43: “La invencion del Succo nerveo, de que fuè Autora la Célebre Española, Doña Oliva de Sabuco… reproduxo despues, segun se dice, come hallazgo propio, un Inglès, llamado Encio.” The charge of plagiarism against an unspecified “Medico Ingles” was also made by P. Estevan Pérez de Pareja, Historia de la primera fundacion de Alcaráz (Valencia: Joseph Thomás Lucas, 1740), 206. Feijóo was a friend of Martínez and shared his views on medical and philosophical matters. It should be noted, however, that Feijóo was not convinced of the existence of the “nervous juice.” In 1760 he wrote that “la realidad del Succo nerveo aùn no està decidida; dudandose, con razon, de ella, aun despues de los esfuerzos, que mi intimo Amigo, el ingenioso Doctor Martínez, hizo para probarla” (Cartas eruditas, 5.242–43). See Gregorio Marañon, Las ideas biólogicas del Padre Feijóo (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1934); to be supplemented with Thomas F. Glick, “El Escepticismo en la Ideología científica del Doctor Martín Martínez y del Padre Feijóo,” Asclepio 17 (1965), 255–61. 187. Martínez, “Elogio”: “desfrutaron los Ingleses la India, que esconde en tan breves hojas, haciendola mas suya, que del Paìs que la produxo” (Martínez Vidal, “Los orígenes del mito de Oliva Sabuco,” 145). 188. Robert Southey, The Doctor (London: Longman, 1847), 7.177–95, 211–226. See also Southey’s Common Place Book, fourth series (London: Longmans, 1851), 484, 689. Southey owned a copy of the first edition of Nueva Filosofia, now in possession of the Hispanic So-

Editor’s Introduction 69 In the nineteenth century more hyperbolic claims were added to the Sabuco legend. Spanish scholars and historians asserted that Oliva Sabuco had been a precursor of Bacon and Descartes,189 that she had anticipated Stahl’s “animism” (the idea of the soul as vital principle), the physiology of the passions of Alibert, the ideas of Bichat,190 and so on. All these assertions were simply based on vague similarities between the ideas of these authors and those expressed in Nueva Filosofia. They were not supported by textual evidence, as none of these authors ever cited Sabuco, nor could be proved to have known, either directly or indirectly, Sabuco’s ideas. In contrast with this nineteenth-century grandiose view of Sabuco’s influence, recent scholarship has drastically scaled down these claims. It has been argued that Sabuco’s ideas had little or no impact on seventeenth-century medicine; and the notion of Sabuco as the originator of the theory of the “nervous juice” has been debunked as a “myth.”191 ciety of America. The copy bears the inscription in Southey’s hand: “This book contains the first theory of nervous diseases, for which all physicians are bound to bless the memory of Doña Oliva Sabuco” (see Karl Ludwig Selig, “Sabuco de Nantes, Feijóo, and Robert Southey,” Modern Language Notes 71 [June 1956], 415–16). 189. Regarding Descartes, the originator of the claim was Feijóo himself (“Esta gran muger fuè delante de Renato Descartes en la opinion de constituir el celebro por unico domicilio de el Alma racional, aunque estendendiola à toda su substancia, y no estrechandola precisamente à la glandula pineal, como Descartes” [Theatro Crítico, 1.358]). Eloy Bullón (Los precursores españoles de Bacon y Descartes, Salamanca, Imp. de Calatrava, 1905, 200) called Sabuco a precursor of Bacon. 190. On Sabuco and Stahl see Alain Guy, “Miguel Sabuco, psicólogo de las pasiones y precursor de la medicina psicosomática,” Al-Basit 13 (Dec. 1987), 111–24; and García Gómez, La concepción de la naturaleza humana en la obra de Miguel Sabuco, 153.On Sabuco as precursor of Alibert see Juan Mosacula, Elementos de Fisiología Especial ó Humana (Madrid: Hijos de Catalina Piñuela, 1830), 2.159–60. On Bichat see Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo, La Ciencia Española (Madrid: A. Pérez Dubrull, 1887), 3.286 (“Doña Oliva estableció antes de Bichat la diferencia entre la vida orgánica y la de relación, y buscó la unidad fisiológica en el sistema cerebro-spinal”). 191. In his important study Humanismo y medicina, Granjel argued that Sabuco had no influence before the Enlightenment (30), following Guardia, who denied that Ent, Willis or Charles Lepois owed any ideas to Sabuco: see J. M. Guardia, “Philosophes Espagnols. Oliva Sabuco,” Revue philosophique de la France et de l’Étranger 22:2 (1886), 292 (on Lepois see here below, n193). On the “myth” of Sabuco in the Spanish Enlightenment, see Alvar Mar-

70 Editor’s Introduction Once again, I think that the issue needs to be reexamined on the basis of the evidence, old and new. On the one hand, it is clear that Sabuco’s influence has been claimed, in some cases, on the dubious ground of a superficial analogy between his/her ideas and those of later medical authors. For instance, some nineteenth-century Spanish historians of medicine argued that an innovative French physician of the first half of the seventeenth century, Charles Lepois, borrowed heavily from Sabuco in his book Selectiores Observationes et Consilia de praetervisiis hactenus morbis (1618).192 Lepois’s book was a collection of Observationes, or case-histories, of those diseases that, he argued, were caused by an excess of serum, the watery part of blood. He advanced the theory that “a watery or serous colluvies hitherto ignored by physicians” collected in the head as in a “reservoir or basin.” From there, this fluid irrorated and humidified all bodily parts; but when in excess it caused many illnesses, including the hysterical diseases, which Lepois claimed derive from the head, not from the uterus, as formerly believed, and could therefore affect also men.193 Lepois also argued that the emotions, such as fear or joy, can “agitate, perturb and somehow inflame the spirits” and consequently the blood, tínez Vidal, “Los orígenes del mito de Oliva Sabuco en los albores de la Ilustración,” Al-Basit 13 (Dec. 1987), 137–51. 192. This was first argued by Chinchilla, Anales Históricos de la medicina en general y biógrafico-bibliográfico de la española en particular (Valencia, 1841; repr. New York and London, 1967), 1.311; and by Antonio Hernández Morejón, Historia bibliográfica de la medicina española (Madrid, 1843; New York and London: Johnson Reprints, 1967), 3.338; it was repeated by Eloy Bullón, Los precursores españoles de Bacon y Descartes, 200. 193. Charles Lepois, Selectiorum observationum et consiliorum de praeter visis hactenus morbis affectibusque praeter naturam ab aqua, seu serosa colluvie et diluvie ortis liber singularis (Pont-à-Mousson: Carolus Mercator, 1618). The book was reprinted in 1639 as Piso Enucleatus (see below, n195) and again in 1650, 1714, 1733 (with a preface by the great clinician Boerhaave). Both Chinchilla and Hernández Morejón argued that Lepois’s “fourth theorem” drew on Sabuco. This is what the fourth theorem says: “Caput est castellum seu labrum accomodatum distributioni seri, sive aquae membra omnia, quae animali cientur motu, irrorantis ac humectantis, et speciatim instrumenta gustus incolumitatis quidem eorum retinendae, et causae sine qua non gustus gratia” (The head is a castle or basin adapted for the distribution of the serum, or water, that bedews and humidifies all the parts which are put in animate motion, and in particular the instruments of taste, for the sake of keeping them in good condition, and the indispensable cause of taste itself). I quote from the third edition (Leiden: Franciscus Hackius, 1650), 38.

Editor’s Introduction 71 causing fever.194 Lepois never mentioned Sabuco in his book, and the resemblance of his ideas with Nueva Filosofia is rather dubious. The fluid he believed to be the cause of disease is the serous part of blood, not the “white juice” carried by the nerves, as in Sabuco. In Lepois’s view, the emotions agitate and heat the blood, they do not cause the fall of the “white juice” from the brain, as in Nueva Filosofia. There is no real evidence to support the claim that Lepois was “inspired” by Sabuco, as several historians have kept asserting even recently.195 On the other hand, new research has unearthed direct and unequivocal evidence that in the 1620s Sabuco’s book was being read with great interest outside Spain. In Italy, the philologist and Counter-Reformation polemist Kaspar Schoppe wrote to the physician Johannes Faber in 1620 to say that he had brought from Spain “an excellent (insignem) book by a certain Spanish woman, wherein a new philosophy and medicine are promised—a book that was published in Madrid in spite of the physicians’ vain protests.” Schoppe wrote to his correspondent that he had undertaken to translate the book into the Tuscan language (hetruscorum sermonem) and reported having found a printer-bookseller who agreed to publish it at his own expense.196 The planned translation, 194. Lepois, Selectiores observationes, 576: “spiritus exagitant, perturbant, atque quodammodo inflammant. Spirituum incensio per animae perturbationes frequentissima causa diariae.” 195. Antonio Palau y Dulcet, Manual del Librero Hispanoamericano (Barcelona: Libreria Palau, 1966), 2nd ed., 18. 215) wrote that Lepois “se inspira en la obra de Sabuco.” In the Introduction to their translation of Nueva Filosofia, Waithe, Vintró, and Zorita claim that Lepois “cited Sabuco’s influence on his own views regarding diseases common to both men and women” (New Philosophy of Human Nature, 3), for which they give as reference “C. Pisonis certis conclusionibus physico-pathologicis comprehensae” (Nancy 1618; with no page numbers). Such a book does not exist; the first, 1618 edition of Lepois’s work bears the title Selectiores Observationes et Consilia de praetervisiis hactenus morbis. There is, however, a summary of Lepois’s text by Bernhard Langwedel, titled Piso enucleatus sive Observationes medicae C. Pisonis certis conclusionibus physico-pathologicis comprehensae (Hamburg: Jacopus Rebelinus, 1639). Neither Lepois’s book nor Langwedel’s Piso enucleatus contains any reference to Sabuco. 196. Biblioteca Nazionale dell’Accademia dei Lincei e Corsiniana, Rome: Fondo Faber, MS vol. 421, 259r–v: letter of Kaspar Schoppe to Johannes Faber, dated 21 July 1620: “Velim te scire, me ex Hispania mecum attulisse insignem librum cuiusdam feminae hispanicae, quo nova philosophia et nova medicina promittitur editum Madriti frustra reclamantibus medi-

72 Editor’s Introduction however, never seems to have come out. It is not clear, at the present state of research, why a Counter-Reformation polemist like Schoppe was interested in such a heterodox book as Nueva Filosofia.197 More obvious, in contrast, is the reason why Sabuco’s book attracted the attention of an iconoclast such as the French physician and chemist Étienne de Clave, coauthor of some radically anti-Aristotelian theses that were condemned by the University and the Parlement of Paris in 1624. De Clave explicitly mentioned Oliva Sabuco in his Paradoxes, ou Traités philosophiques des Pierres et Pierreries (1635). Interestingly, he listed her next to some prominent sixteenth-and early seventeenth-century opponents of Aristotle (Francesco Patrizi, Sébastien Basson, Tommaso Campanella and Pierre Gassendi). “This learned Spanish woman Dona Catharina Oliva—he wrote— refutes him [Aristotle] on several topics, to the point of calling some

cis […]. Facit eius libri mentionem P. Andreas Schottus in hispaniae bibliotheca. Curavi ex hispano convertendum in hetruscorum sermonem, et inveni typographum vel potius bibliopolam, qui suis impensis velit prelo subicere.” Schoppe refers to the book by the Belgian Jesuit Andreas Schott, Hispaniae Bibliotheca, seu de academiis et bibliothecis (Frankfurt: Claude de Marne and heirs of Johan Aubry, 1608). The Italian translation of Nueva Filosofia, to be published by the Florentine bookseller Matteo Galassi, was going to be titled “Nuova filosofia e nuova medicina di Oliva Sabuco donna spagnuola tradotta di lingua spagnuola da Petronio Rosanda. Opera curiosissima nella quale si insegna nuova filosofia della natura dell’huomo non conosciuta né compresa dalli grandi filosofi e medici antichi la quale migliora la vita e salute humana.” Petronio Rosanda was one of Schoppe’s pseudonyms. I am very grateful to Sabina Brevaglieri for referring me to this source, and for kindly allowing me to quote from her transcription of the manuscript. 197. On Schoppe see Herbert Jaumann, ed., Kaspar Schoppe (1576–1649), Philologe im Dienste der Gegenreformation (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1998). None of the essays in this collection mentions that Schoppe had medical interests; his interest in Sabuco may have been simply that of a curious general reader. However, his correspondent Johannes Faber (1574–1629), physician and naturalist, had certainly many professional reasons to be interested in Sabuco’s work. Faber was directly involved in the Accademia dei Lincei’s effort to publish Francisco Hernández’s so-called Mexican Treasury, a huge manuscript collection on Mexican materia medica and natural history (see David Freedberg, The Eye of the Lynx: Galileo, His Friends and the Beginning of Modern Natural History [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002], 245–73).

Editor’s Introduction 73 opinions Aristotelian nonsense (badineries Aristoteliques).”198 For de Clave, Sabuco was definitely part of the anti-Aristotelian camp.199 This evidence clearly shows that in the 1620s and ’30s Sabuco’s book was being read in Italy and France. But what about England? What about the claim that some English medical authors pilfered the ideas of Nueva Filosofia and spread them around as their own? Is there any evidence that Sabuco’s book was known, read, and discussed in England in this period? Medical debate in England in these years was centered on Harvey’s discovery of the circulation of blood. A group of members of the Royal College of Physicians, George Ent, Francis Glisson, Thomas Wharton, Walter Charleton, Thomas Willis, all of whom saw themselves as Harvey’s disciples, developed a program of anatomical research aimed at spelling out the implications and consequences of Harvey’s discovery.200 Together with Aselli’s first description of the lacteals (later to be called the lymphatics) (1627), Harvey’s De motu cordis (1628) strongly put into question the conventional view of the transformation of chyle into blood and, most 198. Étienne de Clave, Paradoxes, ou Traitez philosophiques des pierres et pierreries, contre l’opinion vulgaire (Paris: chez la veuve Pierre Chevalier, 1635), 186. Like Sabuco, De Clave rejected the traditional Aristotelian doctrine of the four elements claiming that the elements were just two, namely, earth and water (see Hiroshi Hirai, “Les Paradoxes d’Etienne de Clave et le concept de semence dans sa minéralogie,” in Corpus. Revue de Philosophie 39 [2001], 45–71, especially 51). On de Clave’s anti-Aristotelian theses see Didier Kahn, “Entre atomisme, alchimie et théologie: la réception des thèses d’Antoine de Villon et Étienne de Clave contre Aristote, Paracelse et les ‘cabalistes’ (24–25 août 1624),” Annals of Science 58 (2001), 241–86. The critics of Aristotle mentioned by de Clave (Patrizi, Basson, Campanella, and Gassendi) were protagonists of early modern intellectual history. On the least well known of them, Sébastien Basson, see C. H. Lüthy, “Thoughts and circumstances of Sébastien Basson: Analysis, micro-history, questions,” Early Science and Medicine 2:1 (1997), 1–73. 199. It is therefore misleading to define Sabuco as a “neo-Aristotelian,” as Waithe, Vintró, and Zorita do in their Introduction (New Philosophy of Human Nature, 16–17); the perception of Sabuco’s contemporaries was quite different. Waithe, Vintró, and Zorita write that “Sabuco shares with Aristotle his holistic concept of being (as form and matter) in relation to the body (as a material part) and the mind/soul (as its formal organization into a whole living human being)” (16). But in fact Sabuco’s notions of form and matter are quite different from Aristotle’s: see above, n146. 200. On Harvey’s group see Robert J. Frank, Jr., Harvey and the Oxford Physiologists: A Study of Scientific Ideas (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980).

74 Editor’s Introduction significantly, the Galenic theory of the nutritive role of blood. One of the most important effects of the revolution in the understanding of the body brought about by the discovery of circulation was the questioning of the key role of blood as the main agent of nutrition. This nourishing function had been traditionally attributed to the blood carried in the veins, which was supposed to be qualitatively different and separate from arterial blood—and of course that did not make sense any more once it was known that the same blood circulated through arteries and veins. An alternative model of the nourishment of the body became necessary, because the new notion of blood as swiftly circulating was incompatible with the Galenic theory of nutrition.201 This is how Thomas Willis posed the problem in his celebrated Cerebri Anatome (1659): Since the circulation of the blood made it clear that the blood nowhere stagnates and arrests its flow for a long time, but instead (…) it is always carried around as in a circle, it started to be questioned whether its fluid be nutritive or not, considering especially that the rapid flow of blood, with its strong current, seemed more likely to erode the banks through which it ran, taking away some particles from them, rather than adding something to them.202 The question was, what nourished the body, if the blood carried in the veins did not? The “mystery of nutrition” raised by the adoption of the circulation theory was an object of keen interest for the members of the Harvey group, Ent, Glisson, Wharton, Charleton, Willis. It was precisely as an answer to this physiological puzzle raised 201. For a sketch of the Galenic theory of nutrition as it was understood in sixteenth-and seventeenth-century medicine, see Jerome J. Bylebyl, “Nutrition, Quantification and Circulation,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 51: 3 (Fall 1977), 369–85. 202. Thomas Willis, Cerebri Anatome: cui accessit Nervorum Descriptio et Usus (Amsterdam: Gerbrandus Schagen, 1666), 189: “A quo sanguinis Circulatio innotuit, planeque constitit ipsum nullibi stagnare, ac diu subsistere, sed motu reciproco semper velut in circulo deferri; in dubium vocare coepit, utrum latex ejus nutritius sit, necne: Praeterquam enim quod rapidior sanguinis, velut Torrentis, decursus ripas quas interfluit atterere, illisque particulas quasdam auferre, potius quam aliquid iisdem affigere posse videatur.”

Editor’s Introduction 75 by the circulation that they developed their theory of the “nervous juice.” Francis Glisson, in particular, dealt explicitly with the issue in his Anatomia Hepatis (1654).203 He postulated the existence of a nervous circulatory system, besides those formed respectively by the blood and by the lymph ducts. According to Glisson, the nerves carried a juice to all the parts of the body. The nervous juice originated in the stomach and glands of the intestines; from there it was carried to the brain by means of the six couples of nerves of the brain. The nervous juice’s main function was to nourish the so-called partes spermaticae of the body, that is, those originally formed in the embryo from the male semen (tendons, ligaments, membranes, and the testes). There was a clear echo of Galenic ideas in the notion of partes spermaticae,204 but Glisson’s view departed from Galenic orthodoxy on a very significant item—he argued that semen itself derived from the nervous juice. “Semen in fact does not seem to be made out of blood, but out of a much more bland (suavis) matter, which is carried by the nerves.”205 Interestingly, Glisson presented the idea of the existence of a nervous juice, serving the purpose of nourishing specific body parts, as well as the notion that this juice is the original matter of semen, as a joint result of his team work with George Ent and Thomas Wharton.206 He especially stressed Ent’s role in introducing the new ideas: “First of all I say that not all the parts of the body are nourished by blood. 203. Francis Glisson, Anatomia Hepatis (Amsterdam: Johannes Ravesteinius, 1659): “De actione et usu lymphae­ductuum, sive Canalium aquosorum” (482–552). 204. The notion of partes spermaticae goes back to Galen: see Lesky, Die Zeugungs-und Vererbungslehren der Antike, 180f. 205. Glisson, Anatomia hepatis, 499. He provided the following anatomical arguments in support of this view: “For these [the nerves] are scattered in the parenchyma of the testes in by far much more quantity and more intimately than arteries and veins: and for this reason the testes’ inner substance tends to be white rather than red (albicat, non autem rubescit). Furthermore, the testes’ tunic seems to be no other than a dilation and expansion of the nerves that reach them; from which little nerves are sent in all directions towards the middle of the testicles where, converging, they form an oblong nervous vessel (vas nervosum), which clearly ends up in the channel of the epidydimis; all of which can be clearly seen in the testes of horses, bulls, pigs, and other big animals” (499–500). 206. Glisson, Anatomia hepatis, 500: “Idque ita sese habere, una cum D. Entio, & D. Whartono, nuper planissime deteximus.”

76 Editor’s Introduction This question was raised and lately solved by my very close friend and very learned colleague Dr. George Ent in his Apologia pro circulatione sanguinis against Parigiano.”207 And specifically on the theory of the derivation of semen from the nervous juice Glisson added: “This opinion was stated already some time ago by Ent, when we conversed in private discussions on anatomical matters (as it was our custom as colleagues at the time).”208 In fact, Ent, a close friend of Harvey’s and strenuous supporter of his views, had stated in his Apologia pro circulatione sanguinis (1641): “I don’t believe that semen is made out of blood, not even indirectly. I rather think that it originates from a nutritive juice (succus nutritius), although concurrently with the heart’s virtue.”209 Other friends and protégées of Ent’s, Thomas Wharton and Walter Charleton, adopted the notion of the nutritive function of the nervous juice, and also the idea that semen derives from it. Wharton, in his Adenographia (published in 1656, two years after Glisson’s Anatomia hepatis) stated that semen derives not from blood but from “a most superior juice, far superior even than blood”—the nervous juice.210 Charleton, in his Oeconomia animalis (1659), wrote at length about the distribution of the nutritive juice by means of the 207. Glisson, Anatomia hepatis, 488: “Primo itaque aio, non omnes partes sanguine nutriri. Quaestionem hanc ante annos aliquot proposuit, lateque asseruit amicus summus meus et Collega doctissimus D. Georgius Entius, in Apologia sua pro circulatione sanguinis, adversus Parisanum” (italics in the original). Emilio Parigiano (= Parisanus) was a critic and opponent of Harvey. See Roger K. French, William Harvey’s natural philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 228–37. 208. Glisson, Anatomia hepatis, 496–97: “Hanc quoque sententiam D. Entius jamdudum asseruit, cum in privatis colloquiis (uti Collegarum aliquot tunc temporis mos erat) de rebus anatomicis confabularemur.” 209. Ent’s Apologia pro circulatione sanguinis came out in 1641. I quote it from Ent, Opera omnia medico-physica (Leiden: Petrus van der Aa, 1687), 355: “Non arbitror, semen ex sanguine confici; imo ne mediate quidem. Potius existimo, id e succo nutritio (accedente tamen cordis virtute) originem ducere.” On Ent, see Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 4.377; George Clark, A History of the Royal College of Physicians, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964–72), 1.287f.; Charles Webster, The Great Instauration: Science, Medicine and Reform, 1626–1660 (London: Duckworth, 1975), 316–17. 210. Thomas Wharton, Adenographia (Wesel: A. ab Hoogenhuysen, 1671), 182: “succus nobilissimus, ipso sanguine longe nobilior.” Wharton explained that circulation had made the ancient theory of semen untenable: “Putarunt veteres, tam venas, quam arterias, materiam

Editor’s Introduction 77 nerves.211And finally another member of the circle, Thomas Willis, in his celebrated work on the anatomy of the brain (1659) argued that the primary nourishing fluid in the body was carried by the nerves and derived from the brain.212 As Dietlinde Goltz has stressed in an important article,213 Ent, Glisson, Wharton, Charleton, and Willis—the group that came to be known as the “English school” in the European medical discussion on the origin of semen214—presented their ideas on the nervous juice as thoroughly new. Although the idea of the derivation of semen from the brain was extremely ancient (pre-Aristotelian, in fact),215 they never mentioned or quoted any of the ancient authors, such as Plato, who had argued for the derivation of semen from the brain and the spinal marrow. Clearly, they viewed their theory of the nervous juice as entirely modern, a new answer to a new problem posed by the discovery of circulation. Traditionally, the nerves were supposed to make possible the movement of muscles and the transmission of sensory impressions. Ent, Glisson, Wharton, and Willis gave them a new function—the nutritive role, which could no longer be attributed huic operi suppeditare. Dato autem circuitu sanguinis, venae ab hoc munere eximendae sunt” (Ibid, 182). 211. Walter Charleton, Oeconomia animalis, novis in medicina hypothesibus superstructa, et mechanice explicata (London: R. Daniel and J. Redman, 1659), Exercitatio X: De distributione succi nutritii per nervos, 222–55. 212. Thomas Willis, The Anatomy of the Brain and Nerves, London, 1664 (facsim. ed., Montreal: McGill University Press, 1965), ch. 20, 131–36. Another member of the London College of Physicians, John Betts, described a succus lacteus to be found in all vegetable and animal forms; but this succus is for him the chyle, not the fluid contained in the nerves: John Betts, De ortu et natura sanguinis (London: E. T. for W. Grantham, 1669), 3–12. 213. Dietlinde Goltz, “Samenflüssigkeit und Nervensaft. Zur Rolle der antiken Medizin in den Zeugungstheorien des 18. Jahrhunderts,” Medizinhistorisches Journal 22:2/3 (1987), 135–63 (especially 142). 214. See Michael Ettmueller, Opera omnia: nempe Institutiones medicinae (Frankfurt: sumptibus Johannis Davidis Zunneri, 1688), 38: “Materia seminis non (…) est succus per nervos adjectus uti volunt Angli, in specie Charleton exercit. 10 et Warthonus.” Martin Schurig, who reviewed all theories on the origin of semen in his Spermatologia historico-medica (Frankfurt: sumptibus Johannis Beckii, 1720) wrote of a “schola anglica” (“English School”) that argued the derivation of semen from the succus nerveus. 215. Galen himself had called it “an ancient theory” (quoted by Lesky, Die Zeugungs-und Vererbungslehren der Antike, 1242–43).

78 Editor’s Introduction to blood. A new physiology was necessary, because the old views on the nourishment of the parts and on the origin of bodily fluids—based on the centrality of blood—did not make sense any more. Paradoxically, one consequence of the discovery of the circulation was to displace the ancient primacy of blood as the agent of nutrition and the origin of the seminal fluid. For a while, this key role passed to something nobody had ever seen—the nervous juice.216 There is definitely an uncanny resemblance between the views of the “English school” and the new vision of the body expounded by Sabuco in Nueva Filosofia. The pivotal concept in both cases is the substitution of the nervous juice for blood as the key agent of nutrition and the origin of the seminal fluid. In Sabuco’s text, this idea is advocated only in speculative terms. In the works of the English physicians, arguments are drawn from an intensive practice of anatomical research. But the similarity of the overall thesis is undeniable, although Sabuco had claimed a central role for the nervous juice in a context as yet untouched by the revolutionary hypothesis of the circulation. Somehow, Nueva Filosofia had suggested an answer to the physiological puzzle posed by Harvey’s discovery much before the problem had even been raised. Is there any evidence that Ent, or any other member of Harvey’s group, had some knowledge, direct or indirect, of the ideas advocated in Nueva Filosofia? As it happens, there is—and it concerns first of all Harvey himself. From the records of the Royal College of Physicians we learn that on 25 June 1610 a licentiate named Stephen Bredwell appeared before the College under the charge of having offended in several ways. Among other things, the charge was “that 216. The theory of the succus nerveus was controversial. For a survey of the various views see Albrecht von Haller, Elementa Physiologiae corporis humani (Lausanne: Julius Henrind cus Pott, 2 ed., 1777–78), 7.539–42. On the history of the concept of succus nerveus, see the monograph by Álvaro Martínez Vidal, Neurociencias y revolución científica en España: la circulación neural (Madrid: CSIC, 1989); Goltz, “Samenflüssigkeit und Nervensaft. Zur Rolle der antiken Medizin in den Zeugungstheorien des 18. Jahrhunderts,” 135–63; and the still useful articles by E. Clarke, “The Neural Circulation: The Use of Analogy in Medicine,” Medical History 22 (1978), 291–307; “The Doctrine of the Hollow Nerve in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in Medicine, Science and Culture: Historical Essays in Honor of Owsei Temkin, ed. L. G. Stevenson and R. P. Multhauf (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1968), 123–41.

Editor’s Introduction 79 he had wrongly promulgated the paradox of Sabucus Hispanus.”217 The brief description of these ideas given in the record leaves no doubt that the medical heresy the College was trying to suppress was that of doña Oliva herself, although metamorphosed in male garb (why “Sabucus Hispanus”? Had Miguel’s claim to authorship leaked out by then?) Bredwell was accused of having spread Sabuco’s errors on “the transit of the chyle through the umbilical stretch of the meseraics, the omnifarious (omnigenis) fibers of the esophagus, the nutrition through the skin, and other things.”218 Indeed, Sabuco had denied that the liver received the chyle from the so-called meseraic veins of the intestines, listing it among “the errors of the ancients.” The author of Nueva Filosofia had, moreover, questioned the function conventionally attributed by the anatomists to the fibers of the esophagus, and had asserted that nutrition took place also through the skin.219 Bredwell’s “errors” are recognizably Sabuco’s 217. Royal College of Physicians, London, Archives and Manuscript Collections: “Liber Annalium Collegii Medicorum Londinensium Tertius ab anno 1608 ad annum 1647” (MS on microfiche,) vol. 3 fol. 6b (hereafter “Liber Annalium”): “quod paradoxon Sabuci Hispani … male promulgavit.” This episode was cursorily mentioned by Sir George Clark, A History of the Royal College of Physicians of London (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964), 1. 200–1. Bredwell was the son of another Stephen Bredwell, himself the son-in-law of the eminent surgeon John Banister, who had successfully defied the authority of the College in 1587. Bredwell the elder was admitted to practice by the College after the plague epidemic of 1593 (Clark, History of the Royal College of Physicians, 1.139, 142). Bredwell the younger had already been reprimanded several times for his insolence and disregard of the College’s rules (Clark, History of the Royal College of Physicians, 1.200; see also Margaret Pelling, Medical Conflicts in Early Modern London: Patronage, Physicians, and Irregular Practitioners 1550– 1640 [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003], 70 nn50, 51). Bredwell seems to have had a penchant for heterodox medical ideas and a connection with Paracelsian circles. See Allen G. Debus, The English Paracelsians (New York: Watts, 1965), 78, 98, 170, 175, 183. 218. “Liber Annalium,” vol. 3, fol. 6b. :”quod paradoxon Sabuci Hispani de chyli transitu, mesaraicarum tractus umbilicalis usu, fibris oesophafagi omnigenis, nutritione per cutem, et aliis male promulgavit.” 219. Sabuco, Obras, 336: “niego que [el higado] tome chilo por las venas miseraycas de los intestinos”; cf. 345: “Y assi por no entender esta raìz, y su oficio, y jugo suyo (ò chilo blanco de la nutricion en la manera dicha) vinieron à dàr todo este oficio, y la natural, ò vegetativa al higado, y otros yerros, como el de la simiente, y leche, y chilo por las miseraycas de los intestinos, y otros muchos yerros, que nacen unos des otros.” See translation, 208: “I deny that the chyle is carried from the stomach to the liver by the meseraic veins of the intestines”; and 218: “So, because they ignored this root and the office and juice thereof (the juice being

80 Editor’s Introduction ideas. It is interesting that, of all Sabuco’s views, Bredwell selected especially the heterodox theory of nutrition. It is a sign that even before the discovery of circulation, the Galenic doctrine of nutrition was no longer considered persuasive by some doctors, and that alternative explanations were eagerly looked for. Bredwell submitted to the College’s reprimand, owning himself wrong and paying a fine.220 One of the fifteen inquisitors who made him recant was William Harvey.221 As a member of the College, he was bound to defend Galenist orthodoxy, no matter what private doubts he might have entertained on the matter.222 We thus know that Sabuco’s ideas were circulating in London around 1610, thanks to Bredwell’s libellus; and that eighteen years before publishing De motu cordis Harvey had heard of the radical rejection of Galenism advocated by an obscure Spanish author. Fifty years after this episode, Sabuco’s traces had not disappeared in England. Ent quoted Oliva Sabuco’s Dialogo de la vera medicina (Oliva once again, not Sabucus Hispanus!) in the manuscript of his Praelectiones academicae—the lectures he gave at the College in April 1665. We can thus establish as a fact that Ent had read Sabuco’s book, though his mention of Oliva is rather offhand: “Oliva Sabuco fancied, that nature had plac’d a narrow neck, & a cold brain above ye stomach; that so ye heate thereof (which the white chyle of nutrition, as has been said) the ancient authors mistakenly attributed this office and the natural and vegetative faculty to the liver, falling into a series of additional errors regarding semen, milk, and the transit of chyle from the intestines to the liver through the meseraic veins—errors that are all related to each other.” See also translation, n348. On the fibers of the esophagus, see translation, n192. On nutrition through the skin, see Introduction, above, 51. 220. But he did not sign the short form of apology and submission which was tendered to him (“Liber Annalium,” vol. 3, fol. 7b). 221. See Geoffrey Keynes, The Life of William Harvey (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), 63–64. Quoting from the manuscript of the “Liber Annalium,” Keynes erroneously transcribed “Sambucus” for Sabucus (64). 222. He must have had definite doubts when he became censor for the College in 1625 and 1627 (De motu cordis came out in 1628). “He was censor again in 1629, the year after the book appeared and Harvey was in the anomalous position of a radical innovator examining candidates for the orthodoxy on which the college insisted.” Roger French, William Harvey’s natural philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 135–36. Drawing on Keynes, French also has the erroneous transcription “Sambucus” for Sabucus (136).

Editor’s Introduction 81 naturally ascends) might be repress’d, and kept in from flying away.”223 Further research is needed to assess more precisely the influence that Sabuco’s views had on Harvey’s own work, as well as on the work of Ent and his friends.224 But the evidence seems to suggest that some of the ideas advocated in Nueva Filosofia had some remarkable developments on English soil.225 In the last decades of the seventeenth century, Sabuco’s work found interested readers also outside of England. An Italian physician, Leonardo di Capua, cited it approvingly in 1681 in his book on the 223. Royal College of Physicians, London, Archives and Manuscript Collections: MS of George Ent, “Praelectiones academicae,” 50, of the manuscript’s pagination. The reference is to Sabuco, Obras, 142: “the neck is high over the shoulders to keep the soul apart from the mess of the kitchen, and for the brain’s cold to better oppose resistance to the heat of heart and stomach.” 224. Some of the ideas expressed in Ent’s Praelectiones seem strikingly similar, at first sight, to those advocated in Nueva Filosofia, especially on the issue of nutrition. But what seems worth reexamining in this respect is especially Harvey’s work on generation. In his Exercitationes de generatione animalium (London: typis Du-Gardianis, 1651), Harvey gave crucial employment to the notion of “radical moisture” (see De generatione, exercitationes 71,72: Disputations Touching the Generation of Animals, trans., intro., and notes by Gweneth Whitteridge [Oxford: Blackwell, 1981], 374–90)—a notion that had great significance for Sabuco, as we know. Harvey used the concept of radical moisture to find a tentative answer to the problem raised by his dissections of animals, which had proved that after coition nothing was to be found in the womb. He advanced the hypothesis that some time after intercourse, the female produced a “colliquament,” a primigenial or radical moisture, from which the embryo developed. Acknowledging his debt to the Arabs, Harvey considered the radical moisture one of Avicenna’s “secondary humors.” But differently from Avicenna and other authors, Harvey saw the radical moisture as the female contribution to generation. While most proponents of the notion of humidum radicale in ancient and Arabic medicine, as well as in medieval Europe, had associated the radical moisture with male semen, Harvey associated it with the female contribution to generation. For a discussion of Harvey’s ideas on the radical moisture, in relation to the theory of generation, see Hall, “Life, Death and the Radical Moisture,” 16–17; and Walter Pagel, William Harvey’s Biological Ideas (New York: Hafner, 1967), 257–60; James J. Bono, The Word of God and the Languages of Man. Interpreting Nature in Early Modern Science and Medicine (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995), 108–22. 225. More generally, it should be noted that recent historiography is reconsidering the role and influence of Spanish authors on English culture in the early stages of the Scientific Revolution. On the Iberian origins of some of Francis Bacon’s epistemological insights and metaphors, see for instance Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, “Iberian Science in the Renaissance: ignored how much longer?” Perspectives in Science 12:1 (2004), 86–124.

82 Editor’s Introduction uncertainty of medicine.226 A highly unconventional thinker (he even criticized the exclusion of women from the study of medicine!) Leonardo di Capua was a member of the Neapolitan Accademia degli Investiganti, which tried to spread in Southern Italy the new experimental approach to natural philosophy heralded by Francis Bacon and Robert Boyle.227 Rewriting the history of medicine from a sceptical perspective, di Capua mentioned Sabuco among the critics of Galenism: But I know not how I have hitherto forbore to mention one, who, altho a woman, deserves yet to be reckoned amongst the greatest Scholars, I mean the Lady Donna Oliva Sabuco (…) Now she being abundantly furnished with more than masculine Wit, and Understanding, couragiously imployed both her Brains and Mind in the Investigation of Natural things.228 Most interestingly, di Capua, who, differently from Martínez and Feijóo, cannot be accused of a Spanish nationalist bias, noted that Sabuco had been unfairly deprived of the recognition to which she was entitled as the first proponent of a new theory of nutrition: Some of the most famous Authors have laid claim to many things, falsely boasting themselves to have been the first Discoverers of them (as about the manner, 226. Parere del Signor Lionardo di Capua divisato in otto Ragionamenti, ne’ quali partitamente narrandosi l’origine, e ‘l progresso della medicina, chiaramente l’incertezza della medesima si fa manifesta (Naples: per Antonio Buleison, 1681). This work went through four editions between 1681 and 1714. Many thanks to Andrea Carlino for referring me to this text. 227. The first part of the book was translated into English in 1684 for the benefit of the Royal Society, with a dedication to Robert Boyle: The uncertainty of the Art of Physick, together with an Account of the innumerable Abuses practised by the Professors of that art, clearly Manifested by a Particular Relation of the Original and Progress thereof…, made English by J(ohn) L(ancaster) (London: printed by Fr. Clark for Thomas Malthus, 1684). On Leonardo di Capua’s relation with Boyle, see Salvatore Serrapica, Per una teoria dell’incertezza tra filosofia e medicina. Studio su Leonardo di Capua (1617–1695) (Napoli: Liguori, 2003), 5–8; 81–90. For di Capua’s view on women and medicine see Parere, 6. 228. The uncertainty of the Art of Physick, 97.

Editor’s Introduction 83 which Nature uses in distributing the Aliment to all the Parts of an animated Body) whereof she had full knowledge long before, and gloriously publish’d them in her Books.229 In this period, another Italian reader of Sabuco was Luigi Ferdinando Marsili, the polymath scholar who founded the Istituto delle Scienze in Bologna after the model of the Royal Society. Marsili mentioned Sabuco’s ideas in an unpublished work called “Genealogical Tree of the birth and progress of medicine.” Again in the perspective of a critical and skeptically oriented history of medicine, like di Capua, Marsili listed Sabuco among the critics of Galenism.230 For both Leonardo di Capua and Marsili, at the end of the seventeenth century, Oliva Sabuco was as a reformer of medicine whose name deserved to go next to the illustrious names of the great medical innovators of the century, giants of the history of medicine such as Aselli, Harvey, van Helmont, Glisson, and Willis. 229. The uncertainty of the Art of Physick, 100. As in England, the problem of nutrition was intensively discussed in the Neapolitan circles to which di Capua belonged. See his preface to Tommaso Cornelio’s Progymnasmata physica (Venice: Bartolomeo Nicola Moreschi, 1683), where Leonardo stressed Cornelio’s interest in the problem of nutrition posed by Aselli’s and Harvey’s discoveries. 230. Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna, MS 87: Luigi Ferdinando Marsili, Miscellanea rerum naturalium, fascicolo C: Arbore Genealogico d(e)l Nascim(ento) e progresso d(e)lla Medicina…, cc. 61–62: “D. Oliva Sabuco… stabilì che l’huomo fosse pianta travolta, le cui radici sien nel cervello; onde un bianco sugo dipartendosi s’en vada il tronco, i rami, e tutto il rimanente a nutrire: tal sugo bianco vuol che sia freddo, e umido, e che nel fegato faccendosi rosso: caldo e umido altressi divenga, e che nel cuor finalmente scambiato in sangue, in caldo , e secco si muti. Il calor del cuore crede ella, che serve al huomo, come il caldo alle piante, e che ‘l bianco sugo faccia l’uficio de quattro elementi, che scorra dal cerebro cotal sugo per la pelle, per i nervi, e per le delicate particelle, ò membrane, che vogliam dire, delle vene, mà che poi in rosso, e sanguigno umor convertito, per altre vie, cioè per le vene, e per l’arterie ritorni. A questo sugo ove sia tralignato fuor dalle proprie vie sboccando, per tutt’altre parti del corpo sconvenevolmente vada, penetrando contro il preveduto ordinamento della natura. Tutto adunque il florido, vigoroso stato di quest’arbore vol ella, che dalle radici, cioe a dire dal cerebro avenga, la dove se quella che pia Madre si appella, e la dura Madre tocca della Pia, stiano ambedue sollevate, e distese e quasi al cranio appiccate, all’ora si vegga verdegiante, e fiorita tutta la pianta, mà se mai divengan vizze, ò alquanto s’abassino, languisca essa parimenti, e quando finalmente la pia madre sia dalla dura totalmente staccata, all’ora non possa avere a niun modo più vita.”

84 Editor’s Introduction We can safely say, in conclusion, that Nueva Filosofia had some influence on the medical culture of the seventeenth century, though the exact nature and extent of this influence remain to be determined. We should notice, however, that Sabuco’s ideas were read as a paradox, in the peculiar sense that this term had in early modern natural philosophy, namely, as a mental tool for thinking along unconventional lines and challenging the received view231— and it is in the epistemic genre of the paradoxa that we should place Nueva Filosofia. In this light we should also reconsider the issue of authorship. In a small town in Spain at the end of the sixteenth century, somebody—Oliva? Miguel?—thought that a female author was a fitting champion for a medical paradox, especially for one that implied such a radical revision of the orthodoxy. She or he might have thought, in addition, that such a paradox had a better chance of standing out conspicuously amid the throng of medical novelties if advocated by that rara avis in terra—a woman of letters. Apparently, our mysterious author was right; Nueva Filosofia was not quickly forgotten. Its visionary seeds found a receptive ground in the European circles that were at the forefront of innovation in seventeenth-century medicine. The revolutionary attack on Galenism launched under a woman’s name had lasting consequences on European intellectual history—consequences that are yet to be fully explored.

231. In early modern medicine and natural philosophy, the title Paradoxa denoted works that advanced ideas contrary to the received view. On the Renaissance use of paradox as a vehicle of intellectual innovation, see Rosalie Colie, The Resources of Kind, 308 ff.

Note on the Translation The present translation is based on the text of the Dialogo de la vera medicina as it appeared in the first edition: Nueva Filosofia de la Naturaleza del hombre, no conocida ni alcançada de los grandes filosofos antiguos: la qual mejora la vida y salud humana. Compuesta por doña Oliva Sabuco (Madrid: Pedro Madrigal, 1587), 199r–308v. I have also taken into account the minor changes introduced in the second edition (Nueva Filosofia de la Naturaleza del hombre, no conocida ni alcançada de los grandes filosofos antiguos: la qual mejora la vida y salud humana. Compuesta por doña Oliva Sabuco,… enmendada, y añadidas algunas cosas curiosas, y una Tabla [Madrid: Pedro Madrigal, 1588]). For purposes of comparison, I have also used the modern edition (Oliva Sabuco de Nantes, Obras, ed. Ricardo Fé with a prologue by Octavio Cuartero [Madrid: Establecimiento tipográfico de Ricardo Fé, 1888], 235–355), which reproduced the text of the first edition, tacitly amending it with the minor variants introduced in the second edition, plus some modernization of spelling and punctuation. I have relied on this edition for the indication of the portions of Sabuco’s text that were censored by the Inquisition in 1632, which the editor Ricardo Fé indicated in the text in italics. My main goal has been to be as faithful as possible to the original, avoiding linguistic and conceptual anachronism. To this end, I have rendered Sabuco’s terms and concepts, to the best of my knowledge, with the corresponding terms used in early modern English medical language. For the purposes of clarity and legibility, however, I have often had to break down Sabuco’s very long sentences into shorter ones. Though departing from the original punctuation, I have kept the original paragraphs, with one exception: following modern usage, I have introduced paragraphs before each speaker’s speech in the dialogue, although this is not always the case in the original text. I have also scrupulously kept to the original division of the text in sections, together with the original subtitles. Sabuco often interpolates words, parts of sentences or entire sentences in Latin in the text. I have kept this Latin in the text, followed immediately by a translation in quotation marks, so that the reader may always easily 85

86 Note on the Translation and unequivocally distinguish the meaning of the Latin portion from the rest of the text. I have consistently italicized all Latin words, though they are not always italicized in the original. Words in square brackets are words that I felt I needed to add (as sparingly as possible) to make the sense clear. All the translations in the notes are mine, unless otherwise stated. When Sabuco quotes classical authors, the wording does not always correspond to that found in present-day editions of the classics. Whenever that was the case, I have preferred to translate the quotation myself, referring the reader in the notes to the translation of the corresponding passage in a modern critical edition of the work in question. I have indicated Sabuco’s marginalia as marginal notes. In the notes to the translation, my primary goal has been to explain, as concisely as possible, the meaning of those terms and concepts used by Sabuco that belong to the philosophical and medical language of the Renaissance, and that may be unfamiliar or obscure to present-day readers. I have also explained the criteria I used in selecting the appropriate rendering of those terms. I have tried to identify all the references to ancient, medieval, and early modern medical and philosophical sources contained in the text. My overall goal has been to give the reader at least some of the background knowledge necessary to understand and locate Sabuco’s work within the conceptual framework of late Renaissance medicine. In this respect, the present translation differs significantly from the translation by Mary Ellen Waithe, Maria Colomer Vintró, and C. Angel Zorita (Oliva Sabuco de Nantes Barrera, New Philosophy of Human Nature Neither Known to Nor Attained By the Great Ancient Philosophers, Which Will Improve Human Life and Health [Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007], 177–252). My translation was done independently of their work, and it was completed before their book was published. The criteria I followed are very much at variance from those they seem to have adopted. Motivated by the questionable goal of presenting Sabuco as a forerunner of modern ideas, they have taken many liberties with the text that seem unjustified and unjustifiable to me. First of all, and most disturbingly, they often render Sabuco’s concepts with terminology that is anachronistic and inappropriate for the early modern period. For instance, they translate la natural

Note on the Translation 87 (by which term Sabuco refers to the Aristotelian concept of the natural soul), as “the biological soul”—though the term “biological,” of course, did not exist in early modern language. Other glaring anachronisms are their rendering of simiente (semen, or seed) as “heredity,” ventosidad (ventosity) as “gas,” estomago (stomach) as “digestive system,” etc. A frankly grotesque example of their recourse to anachronistic terminology in order to present Sabuco as a pioneer of modern ideas on the nervous system is their rendering orificios y principios de los nervios (the orifices and the beginnings of the nerves) as “the synapses and dendrites of the nerves” (195): the adoption of modern anatomical terminology is surely both unnecessary and, in this case, misleading. Similarly anachronistic is their rendering of the names of diseases: Sabuco’s phthisis, morbo galico, and tabardillo become tuberculosis, syphilis, and typhus, with no word of warning to the reader as to conceptual difficulties involved in directly equating early modern and modern disease concepts. On the other hand, when Sabuco employs specialized medical terms referring to specific conditions, they render it with generic expressions. So, for instance, Sabuco’s hidropesia (dropsy) becomes “edema,” timpanites (tympanites) becomes “bloated abdomen,” anasarca becomes “bloody edema” (213, 221), etc. Thus they put into Sabuco’s mouth words that she (or he) could not possibly have used, and take out of Sabuco’s mouth the technical terms that she (or he) did actually use—terms that are obviously an important part of the text, as they indicate Sabuco’s familiarity with the specialized medical language of the time. Another problem is their apparent unfamiliarity with important categories of early modern medical culture, such as “spirits,” “innate heat,” and “radical moisture”—categories that have a central significance in Sabuco’s work. They translate espiritus (or spiritus in Latin) as “essences” (see their 246 n38), which is definitely misleading because English medical texts of the Renaissance invariably used the term “spirits” to indicate the spiritus of Galenic physiology. Similarly, they do not seem aware of the implications of the concepts of calor nativo (innate heat) and humido radical (radical moisture), which they translate erratically—a lack of consistency that suggests a lack of awareness of their conceptual significance. At times their unfamiliarity with early modern medicine leads them

88 Note on the Translation into error, as for instance when they render los pulsos se varian as “heartbeats are irregular” (204)—a translation that is flawed because the concept of pulse in early modern medicine did not correspond to that of heartbeat, as the pulsing of the arteries was not seen as related primarily to the heart but to the movement of the “vital spirits” (which is also how Sabuco understood it: see here, n175 below). This would suffice to make their translation generally unreliable. But unfortunately there is more: they have arbitrarily omitted parts of sentences, entire sentences, and in some cases almost whole pages of the text. These omissions are sometimes indicated by ellipsis points, sometimes they are not indicated at all, nor is the reader informed of the reasons that prompted such omissions. Ancient Greek and Roman names are reported with imprecision, so that they sometimes become unrecognizable: Prodicus becomes Prodocius, Chrysippus becomes Crispus, Charmis become Charinas (179–80). A well-known figure of Roman antiquity, Marcus Cato the Censor, whom Sabuco quotes from Pliny, becomes “Marcus Canton,” and unable to identify this mysterious personage of their own making, Waithe, Vintró, and Zorita speculate in a note that he is “probably the Roman physician Marcus Valerius Martialis” (180 and 245 n16). Latin sentences reported in their text contain an unacceptably high number of typos, suggesting serious unfamiliarity with that language, or serious insouciance in whoever proof­read the translation. It is truly a pity that what purports to be “a critical edition” of Sabuco’s work, as stated in the book’s jacket, has been marred by so many inaccuracies and errors. To point out all these inaccuracies and errors would have been a very long and pointless task; I limited myself, in the notes to the present translation, to indicating only some of the points where my understanding of the text differs significantly from theirs, and where their interpretation is, in my opinion, seriously flawed. Two recent studies on Sabuco have come out when this book was already at copy-editing, and so unfortunately too late for me to be able to include them in my research for the introduction and the translation: Rosalía Romero Pérez, Oliva Sabuco 1562–1620, Filósofa del Renacimiento Español (Toledo: Almud, Centro de Estudios de Castilla-La Mancha, 2008) and Marlen Bidwell-Steiner, Grosse Welt— kleine Welt—verkehrte Welt: die philogyne Naturphilosophie der

Note on the Translation 89 Renaissance-Denkerin Oliva Sabuco de Nantes y Barrera (Innsbruck: Studien Verlag, 2009), which contains a translation into German (at pp. 127–208) of Sabuco’s Dialogue on the True Medicine.

The True Medicine, and True Philosophy, Unknown to the Ancients, in Two Dialogues, Composed by Doña Oliva Sabuco Barrera, Born and Living in the City of Alcaraz A dialogue on the true medicine, deriving from the nature of man, which true medicine shows clearly and evidently how the written medicine in common use is wrong in its main principles. Herein is given to the world the true medicine, whereby one can avoid early or accidental1 death. Also brief and concise sayings on the nature of man.2

1. Violenta: Sabuco uses the adjective violento in a peculiar sense, to signify what does not belong to the nature of something, and acts on it from the outside. Violento is usually opposed to natural or propio, meaning what pertains to the intrinsic nature of something. See Acad. Autorid. (1739): Violento = lo que está fuera de su estado natural, situación, u modo. I have usually translated violento as “accidental,” except in a few cases where “extrinsic” (in the sense of coming from the outside) or “occasional” seemed to be a better rendering. Waithe-Vintró-Zorita always translate violento as “violent,” but this seems to me misleading, particularly with reference to death. Muerte violenta for Sabuco is not “violent death,” as they translate, but “accidental death” caused by disease, as opposed to “natural death,” that is, death due to the extinguishing of the vital principles of heat and moisture. Another possible translation would be “unnatural,” but I have avoided this term because of the possible confusion with the expression “non natural,” which Sabuco uses, and which had a specific meaning in Galenic medicine: the six “non-natural” things (res non naturales) being the six things necessary to health, but liable by abuse or accident, to become the cause of disease, viz., air, food and drink, sleep and waking, exercise and rest, excretion and retention, the passions of the soul. 2. The section titled Brief Sayings on the Nature of Man, The Foundation of Medicine is a summary in Latin of what is expounded in the preceding dialogues. It is not translated here to avoid repetition. For a translation into Spanish see Samuel García Rubio, “La obra latina del bachiller Sabuco: Introducción y traducción,” Al-Basit, 13 (Dec. 1987), 221–32.

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92 The True Medicine

Letter in which Doña Oliva asks for help and protection against the rivals of this book3 To the most illustrious Sir Don Francisco Zapata, Count of Barajas, President of Castile and of His Majesty’s State Council, Doña Oliva Sabuco, his humble servant, wishes health, grace, and eternal happiness. It is a natural thing, most illustrious Sir, that similarity of condition and effort brings about love, affection, and desire to serve. I have seen in Your Illustrious Lordship a concern and commitment—a concern that is so unusual and rare, so neglected and so infrequently practiced—to improve this world and its nations, by addressing their many and serious faults with an intellect so excellent and extraordinary that is more than enough to recognize and correct these faults; with a discernment and a judgment superior to those of Solomon, ever triumphant over human deceit and guile, emulating the ancient model of your generous and exalted ancestors in the service of your King and Lord. In this same concern and commitment I myself, though unworthy of such a grand task, have for many years followed your blessed example like a shadow, in my own way. Hence I resolved to entrust this work of mine to you, and to ask for Your Illustrious Lordship’s assistance, because my book declares and denounces two great errors, which bring ruin to the world and its nations. And these errors are the following: the nature of man is misunderstood and ignored; and for this reason, medicine is also mistaken. This error derived from philosophy’s wrong principles, as wrong indeed is a great and the most important part of philosophy. Wrong are the notions of medicine and philosophy that are studied in the Schools, and they deceive and mislead the world, causing much serious harm. If the King our Lord, and Your Illustrious Lordship in his name, were pleased to grant me favor, and to order that some wise men be summoned (since it is a matter of great moment for reforming His Majesty’s world, and for improving the knowledge, health, 3. This letter to the Count of Barajas precedes Vera Medicina in the 1587 edition. In the 1888 edition it was placed immediately after the dedicatory letter to the king at the beginning of the whole book (see Sabuco, Obras, xlv–xlvi). Francisco Zapata de Cisneros y Ossorio was made count of Barajas by Philip II in 1572. He was president of the Council of Castile and of the Royal Council 1583–92. He died in 1594.

The True Medicine 93 and life of man), I will prove all this to them, and I will provide evidence showing that philosophy and medicine are wrong, that the world is deceived, and that the true philosophy and medicine are contained in this book of mine. This same book, and myself with it, though unworthy, I offer and entrust to your Illustrious Lordship (who represents the King’s Person) and place under your wings and protection. Although I feel undeserving of such favor, it is at the very least a matter of such import and significance to the world, and to His Majesty’s service, that it deserves the high favor and protection of Your Illustrious Lordship, for the sake of bringing the light of truth to the world, so that future generations may benefit from philosophy, and the joy and happiness that philosophy brings; all the more so considering that past generations got a taste only of dark ignorance and torment, which were caused by false principles. Thus error was born out of error. Vale, “farewell.” Omnia vincit veritas (“Truth conquers all”)

Dialogue on the True Medicine The people who speak in this dialogue on the true medicine are the Doctor, a physician, and Antonio, a shepherd. Doctor: God save you, Mr. Antonio. I have been looking forward to this chance of meeting you, since yesterday in town your friends Veronio and Rodonio told me that you have been speaking of new things, in opposition to the written medicine. But surely, Mr. Antonio, you must be crazy to dare say and assert new things, and establish a new medical sect at odds with the common opinion we received and held from such great men of antiquity as Galen, Hippocrates, and Avicenna. Antonio: Not I, Mr. Doctor, but truth itself dares to do such a thing—truth, that was born in Heaven, and has great strength and boldness. As I examined the nature of man, the true medicine clearly derived and sprang therefrom—the true medicine, born from the true nature of man. The ancient philosophers not having understood the nature of man, the ancient physicians mistook medicine in its main principles. You cannot deny, Mr. Doctor, that the written medicine, which you use, is uncertain, inconstant, and fallacious, and that its end and effects turn out to be unpredictable, wrong, and doubtful, whereas we see clearly that the other arts have reliable and true effects and results, with no variation or fraud. Such is the case with Arithmetic, Geometry, Music, Astrology, and the other arts, that deliver what they promise, and whose results always turn out to be certain and true. Such is not the case with medicine, as you can plainly see: medicine is deceptive, uncertain, and unstable. It is clear, therefore, that the medical art is flawed in its very roots and foundations, because it does not bring forth the promised results. All too often we hope for nice apples, so to speak, and what we get from it instead are wild roses, galls,4 and medlars. All of which will make a 4. Agallas: oak-galls or oak-apples, an excrescence produced on trees, especially the oak, by the action of insects, but believed in early modern times to be the fruit of the oak: OED refers to Turner, Herbal, II, 1562, 109b: “a gall is the fruite of a oke and especially of the lefe.”

95

96 The True Medicine reasonable person doubt and even say, perhaps, that this man, though a shepherd, is right and that the ancients were but men like him. Doctor: I won’t say that, because I’m certain that the ancients wrote very well, and they are my teachers. Does not the whole world follow them? This novelty of yours must be delusion or folly. Antonio: You cannot deny, Mr. Doctor, that medicine has been inconstant, and that it has changed very often;5 that it was long banned in Rome, where many wise men put no faith in it, nor did they seek for a cure from a physician, for the reasons that I have said, which are of great weight. The Saracens and the people of the Kingdom of China do not allow physicians, and there is more population in those countries than in Spain. Indeed, those very same ancient and serious authors considered medicine a very difficult art, declaring that life is short, art is long, judgment difficult, experience deceptive, etc. Hippocrates said that full and complete certainty cannot be reached in medicine. Nor can you deny, Mr. Doctor, that the ancients were men as we are, and that their sayings could not force the nature of man to be such as they said it to be. Human nature remained what it was and their sayings did not change it. And being men they could be wrong. Indeed many times medicine was mistaken and changed, as you can see in Pliny,6 where he says that no art was ever more unstable and mutable than medicine, and that it varies every day. Pliny7 reports the many changes that medicine went through since the times of Aesculapius. He says that all the cures and remedies that were found useful were written down in the Temple of Aesculapius, and that Hippocrates put them together, giving birth to the medicine that is called Clinical. Afterwards his disciple Prodicus founded the medicine named Iatralepticen,8 whose tenets and rules were reformed subsequently by the physician Chrysippus. Then Chrysippus’s disciple Erasistratus, grandson of Aristotle, changed 5. Marginal note: The changes that medicine went through. 6. Marginal note: Lib. 29. c. 1. 7. The references to Pliny in Sabuco’s marginal notes do not always correspond to our standard edition of the Historia naturalis. I always give the correct reference in the note immediately following Sabuco’s marginal note. The following history of medical sects is closely based on Pliny, NH, XXIX. ii.4–ix.29 (Loeb, 8.183–201). 8. Iatralepticen: “ointment cure.”

The True Medicine 97 much of this medicine. This same Erasistratus received a hundred talents from King Ptolemy for curing the king’s father Antiochus. Next came Acron, the physician who started another sect, which was called Empirical, from experience. Then came Herophilus, who condemned and put an end to the medical schools, rules, and sects mentioned so far. Subsequently Herophilus’s sect was forsaken in its turn; and such was also the fate of Asclepiades’s sect, which was reformed by his disciple Themison. In turn Themison’s sect was reformed by Antonius Musa, who saved the divine Augustus from a dangerous illness by reversing the treatment.9 It would be endless to mention the changes and variations that the art of medicine has undergone and still undergoes today. The physician Vettius established another sect. Next came Thessalus, who swept away all the former sects, and called himself Iatronicen10 in his monument. His sect in turn lost credit and authority because of new rules established by the physician Crinas. These rules were presiding over the fate of the Romans when the physician Charmis came from Marseilles and criticized the received opinions, and gave new rules. In this time a Roman knight had this epitaph carved on his tombstone: Turba medicorum perij, which means: a crowd of physicians killed me. Because of these vagaries, changes, and uncertain results of medicine, when its inconstancy was known, seen, and experienced, the physicians were thrown out and banished from Rome, and the Romans lived for more than six hundred years without doctors, though not without medicine. And people would have done right had they persevered in this view till the present day, because of all the medical sects and reforms mentioned so far, the one that you currently use and follow is the most wrong, vain, and devoid of the substance that we hope for. Doctor: Surely your judgment must be wrong, vain, and idle, since you have taken to this fallacy and delusion. 9. Con contraria medicina. Sabuco closely follows Pliny’s text, which has contraria medicina. I follow Rackham’s translation (Pliny, NH, Loeb, 8.186). 10. Iatronicen: a Greek expression meaning “the conqueror of physicians” (see Pliny, NH, Loeb, 8.186). Waithe, Vintró, and Zorita arbitrarily translate it as “iatrogenic” (a modern term meaning physician-caused illness: see New Philosophy of Human Nature, 180 and 245, n12), which is certainly an error.

98 The True Medicine Antonio: It was no fallacy or delusion, but the opinion of Marcus Cato, that wise and excellent man, of whom Pliny reports that he spoke these very words: Marcus, my son, I’ll tell you in due course what I think of these Greeks, and how it is good to maintain a distance from their literature and not make a close study of it. I will prove it. Keep this in mind as the saying of a prophet: when the Greeks pass on their literature to us they will corrupt all our culture, and all the more so when they send us their physicians. They all joined in a conspiracy to murder foreigners with their medicine, which they do for a fee, so that their slaughter may be more creditable and legitimate. They also gave authority to their texts by writing in Greek, because had they been in the Roman tongue, and therefore understandable, not even shepherds would give them credit. They make experiments11 at the cost of our lives. Only in this art is anyone allowed to profess himself a physician without being one, and in no other is fraud more dangerous and harmful, and less subject to punishment: only the physician is allowed to kill with impunity (all of which is said by Pliny in the cited place,12 not by me). Pliny concludes that no art is more unsteady and changeable, just as no art is more profitable.13 Doctor: Truly, Mr. Antonio, what you say shows an unsteady and changeable mind. However, since you wish to make this argument, come to the point: tell me these novelties of yours, whereby you say you are going to improve and rectify medicine, making it valid and true. Antonio: I don’t ignore that the beginning of a new thing is doubtful and difficult to admit in the minds of men, as was the case with Columbus’s opinion at the time of the Catholic King Don Fernando,14 when he claimed that there was another world beyond the sea, which seemed to everybody so new and unheard-of that for a long time they did not believe him, until after much pressing they 11. Experiencia: meaning here “experiment” not in the modern sense, but purely empirical, non philosophical knowledge as in the medieval Scholastic notion of experimentum (on which see below, n158). 12. Marginal note: Pliny, ibid. 13. Pliny, NH, XXIX, vii. 14–viii.18 (Loeb, 8.191–95). 14. The 1587 text had “en tiempo del Emperador Carlos V” (204v), a mistake that was corrected in the 1588 edition.

The True Medicine 99 decided to try and find out through experience whether perchance the man was right. And thus his view was proved true and found to be right, as everybody knows. I ask the same trial and experience for my novelty. I don’t want people to believe me but to believe the experience and truth of the thing itself. Thus, giving glory to God (whence comes all good) I will begin to declare what I think. Doctor: First tell me, Mr. Antonio, the general principles of your medicine, so that we can see the end and cause of your intent, and we can speak thereof. Antonio: First I’d like to know the general principles of your ancient medicine: tell me how they define health and sickness, life and death. Doctor: They define health as symmetry, that is, the proportion and balance of the humors. They define sickness as ametry,15 that is, the imbalance and disproportion of the four humors. They say: Morbus est constitutio quaedam praeter naturam à qua actio primo viciatur.16 “Disease is a condition outside the ordinary course of nature, which condition first damages the action of the affected body part.” Antonio: Let’s leave aside Latin and Greek, and speak our language. Too many evils in the world are due to the sciences (and especially the laws) being in Latin. Doctor: In plain speech then: disease, or sickness, is a condition out of nature, which in the first place vitiates and damages the action of the affected body part. Antonio: To say that, Mr. Doctor, is like saying “it is a certain I don’t know what,” and to say “out of nature” means just as little. Such a definition is like something unknown and uncertain. It is as if I said: I don’t know what it is, I don’t know how it is. It is a rambling way of

15. Ametria: I have translated “ametry,” which was used in early modern medical English to indicate the imbalance of the humors (see OED, s.v.) in Galenic terminology. 16. See Galen, De sanitate tuenda, lib.1, cap. 5 (Opera, 6.21): “ut si nimirum sanitas affectus secundum naturam actionem perficiens, contra morbus affectio praeter naturam actionem laedens” (“If evidently health is a condition according to the ordinary course of nature, which performs correctly the action [of the body parts], disease, on the contrary, is a condition outside the ordinary course of nature, which damages their action.”)

100 The True Medicine speaking. Don’t tell me more, Mr. Doctor, because I believe that what you say is indeed written on paper, but it is not so in the nature of man. Doctor: Then tell me your propositions and general principles, do not keep me waiting for them. Antonio: I am pleased to tell you my opinion in some short propositions, which are the following, and one day we shall prove them. First, the stomach is hot and dry in the inflow;17 the brain is cold and moist. Second, every disease or sickness in man is caused primarily by this contrast of coldness and heat: I mean, the coldness in the brain and the heat in the stomach. Diseases derive from this contrast; but the action is only of the coldness and of the heat, and this is the conjunct cause18 of disease. 17. En la influente: it is not clear what Sabuco means here. The adjective influens was used in late medieval medicine to indicate the kind of heat and moisture peculiar to the organs and alimented and preserved in them by nutrition, as distinct from the innate heat and moisture that intrinsically belonged to each being from the first moment of life. So Peter of Abano, for instance, spoke of two kinds of heat, calidum innatum and calidum influens, as well as of two kinds of moisture, humidum radicale and humidum influens (or nutribile): see Conciliator differentiarum philosophorum et medicorum (Venice: Giunta, 1520), fols. 160ra–161ra. So Sabuco may mean here that the stomach is hot and dry, and the brain is cold and moist, with respect to the inflow of nutrition they receive; or in other words, that the stomach is kept hot and dry by the process of nutrition, while the brain is kept cold and moist by the same. Later in the text Sabuco speaks of calor influente of the stomach, and of nutricion influente, in the sense of nutrition absorbed from a surrounding medium (or ambient nutrition). So the meaning here seems to be that the ambient nutrition of the brain is cold and moist, while that of the heart is hot and dry. 18. Causa conjunta: in the language of Scholastic medicine it indicated the proximate and necessary cause of disease (as in the Aristotelian notion of “most proximate cause”: see Aristotle, Metaphysics, VIII. iv. 5–6, trans. H. Tredennick [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980], Loeb Aristotle 17.417), namely, the factor closest to the disease in the chain of causes, and the one that must necessarily be there for the disease to occur. On the concept and definition of causa coniuncta, as the one “inter quam et morbus non est causa media” (“between which and the disease there is no intermediate cause”) see Francisco Valles, Controversiae medicarum et philosophicarum libri X (Alcalá: J. Brocarius, 1556) IV 4, 83r. Francisco Valles (1524–96), who taught medicine at Alcalá, where Miguel Sabuco, Oliva’s father, was a student, was one of the most significant representatives of what medical historians have called the “Hippocratic Galenism” of the late Renaissance. See José María López Piñero and Francisco Calero, Los temas polémicos de la medicina renacentista: las Controversias (1556) de Francisco Valles (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones

The True Medicine 101 Third, the feelings of the soul—wherein is the humanity of man—are the primary cause of man’s life, death, and sickness. Fourth, the brain is the cause and workshop of all diseases’ humors. There, in the brain, reside the feelings, passions, and motions of the soul; there is the seat of sense perception; there is the root and the natural faculty or part of the soul which is the agent of growth;19 there are life and breathing.20 From the brain derive diseases and death. There, in the brain, is the animal faculty, with the irascible and

Cientificas, 1988), with an introduction by López Piñero and a translation of a selection from the Controversiae by Francisco Calero (translation cited hereafter as Controversias), introduction, 8. Valles’s Controversiae had a European readership and influence. It is quite certain that the author of Nueva Filosofia (whether Oliva or Miguel Sabuco) was thoroughly familiar with Valles’s Controversiae, though she or he never quoted it directly on any specific argument. However, in the Latin text that concludes Nueva Filosofia, “Vera philosophia de natura mistorum, hominis, & mundi, antiquis oculta,” Sabuco wrote: “Si ad haec studia ille sapientia floridus Vallis doctor medicus Regius, animum convertit, non solum controversias sed totam denuò poterit componere medicinam” (“If that man rich in wisdom, the Doctor Valles, Royal Physician, will turn his attention to these studies, he will be able to write anew not only his Controversiae, but all of medicine”) (352r–v in the 1587 edition). As argued in the Introduction (36–37) Sabuco used the Controversiae as a guide to the key issues in the medical debate of the time, including the question of the causes of disease (see below, n177). She or he also ransacked the text for quotations from Hippocratic, Galenic and Aristotelian sources. As will be shown below, almost all the quotations from these authors in Sabuco’s text come second hand from Valles’s Controversiae. 19. Vegetacion: Sabuco uses the term to indicate the principle of growth and the action of growing. Following convention, Sabuco distinguishes three faculties or parts of the soul: the natural part, which has a vegetative force and is common to plants, animals, and man, the animal part, which gives sense and motion, and is shared by animals and men; and the intellective, which is common to men and angels. See Coloquio del conocimiento de si mismo, 7. Aristotle had distinguished nutritive, sensitive, and rational souls, all located in the heart. Galen had distinguished three “faculties,” the natural faculty (located in the liver), the animal faculty (located in the brain), and the vital faculty (located in the heart). Unconventionally, Sabuco locates all the faculties or parts of the soul in the brain. On the theory of the soul in Renaissance philosophy see Katherine Park, “The Organic Soul,” in The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, ed. Charles B. Schmitt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 464–84. 20. Anhelacion: cf. Anhelito: aire respirado de la boca (from Laguna, Dioscorides, ed. 1733, t. 2, p. 11, Acad. Autorid.)

102 The True Medicine concupiscible parts,21 since these cannot exist without the “species,” that is, the images of things.22 Fifth, disease is a fall, or otherwise said a catarrh, defluxion, or decrement23 (all of which words mean the same thing) of the moisture (juice, or chyle24) of the brain, which damages the body part where it falls. In other words, disease happens when the root (namely, the brain) stops performing its role in consequence of the falling of the pia mater,25 which sends down the juice that should instead flow upwards. Disease has nothing to do with the liver, because the natural faculty in the liver cannot make mistakes, it is learned without a doctor. In fact nature provided the liver with a receptacle (the gallbladder) wherein it drives out and sets apart, as in a gutter, the bad juice that would be harmful. In the liver, therefore, no bad

21. On the animal faculty see above, n19. The notion of irascible and concupiscible parts of the soul derives from Plato. Plato had distinguished a rational soul (located in the brain), an irascible soul (located in the heart), and a concupiscible soul (located in the liver). The irascible was the part of the soul in which courage and passion were held to reside; and which was superior to the concupiscible part, in which the appetites were located. 22. Especies: I have translated “species” in the sense common in Renaissance philosophical language, as indicated in OED: “meaning or image of something, as constituting the immediate object of sense perception.” On Sabuco’s view of the role of species in the functioning of the soul see below, n29. 23. Cremento (increment) and decremento (decrement) are key terms of Sabuco’s philosophy, referring to the rising and falling of the brain and its fluid, in correspondence to the waxing and waning of the moon. Cremento implies health and growth, while decremento implies disease and decay. The Greek word catarrous (Lat. catarrhus), employed in medical language, meant literally “a flowing down,” and it is in this sense that Sabuco uses it. 24. Chilo: chyle referred to the liquid mass of food and drink, as processed in the stomach. Sabuco uses the term in this specific sense (see for instance Coloquio del conocimiento, 144), or usually, more in general, to indicate the nutritive juice that the brain distributes to the whole body. 25. Pia mater: an anatomical term referring to the membrane that forms the innermost of the membranes enveloping the brain, the other being the dura mater. The Greek term was meninges. The term pia mater was the Latin rendering of the Arabic umm-raqīqah (“thin or tender mother”—the same word in Arabic signifying both a mother and a covering). The OED quotes Vicary, Anatomy, IV (1548–77): “It is called Pia Mater…for because it is so softe and tender over the brayne that it nourisheth the brayne and feedeth it, as does a loving mother with her tender childe.”

The True Medicine 103 humors are created, only good ones, because the natural faculty there cannot err, as has already been said. Sixth, health is the cessation of this fall, flux, or decrement of the brain’s moisture. In health, the brain receives this moisture for its own nourishment and for the performance of its office, which is to feed and nourish all the body, like a root does. This office of nutrition is performed by the membrane called pia mater, which, erect and swollen with this juice, or chyle, pours it out towards the crown of the head, or the cowlick,26 for the growth of the skin. This moisture is a white juice, also called chyle, which the brain, as the root of the human being, receives in three ways: first by pressing, as in a winepress, or grinding and squeezing the food, which is done in the mouth when one chews; second by evaporation, as in an alembic or distillery, the vapor rising when the aliments are still in the stomach during sleep; third by decoction, when the aliments’ juice passes into the liquid humor—the drink in the stomach—in which the food is cooked by the stomach’s heat. The brain, or main root, takes this juice or white chyle from the stomach by sucking and drawing it up through the esophagus, in the same way in which a piece of felt soaks up a liquid. The brain then sends and distributes it to all the branches by way of the anterior nerves, as well as the nape of the neck (i.e., the deputy of the brain), which is the trunk, or stalk, stemming from this root, as will be better explained below. Seventh, nutrition and health are the cause and workshop of the good humors. The cause of the unwholesome humors, which bring about the sickness of this tree, lies in the tree’s root, namely in the brain. The causes of unwholesome humors are threefold: the bad quality of food; the humors’ own viscous and cold condition; the inversion of the humors’ route, when the moisture that used to go up from the stomach to the brain and to the pia mater, falls down instead from the brain to the stomach. The latter happens when the pia mater stops performing its action and proper function of root, which is to take and send up suitable juice or chyle to the branches. The same 26. La vertice, o remolino. Remolino: “el retorcimiento del pelo en redondo, que se forma en alguna parte del cuerpo del animal, especialmente en lo mas alto de la cabeza, ò en la frente” (Acad. Autorid. 1737). I translate remolino as “cowlick.” What Sabuco seems to mean is the point on the top of the head where the hair starts to grow in a circle.

104 The True Medicine juice that is beneficent when it flows upwards becomes harmful when it falls down: it then obstructs the pathways of nutrition, invading them with an unwholesome juice, similar to the gum in trees. And the ways of nutrition being blocked, the brain cannot taste or take the aliment in its first cavity, which is the mouth, nor send it to its second root, or cavity, which is the stomach, for later use. The brain cannot taste or swallow the aliment, because it does not accept it either for itself or for its second root.27 Thus the brain stops performing its office of root as well as its vegetative function, which consists in receiving and giving good juice to the branches; instead it gives them bad and harmful juice. The juice’s bad quality, not suitable for taking the shape of the parts of the body, is caused primarily by the passions of the soul, together with the movement of the pia mater, and the adversities mentioned in the Colloquy.28 Indeed the main cause of the bad juice is the spiritual passions, which are peculiar to man, and this is why man has so many diseases that the other animals do not have. All this is done by the pia mater with the juice of nutrition: when the pia mater is raised, it sends the juice upwards for the growth of the skin, and in this case we have health. When instead the pia mater is sunken, more or less, it makes the juice fall down and turn bad—causing to fall what should go up—and in this case we have disease. So when the pia mater is raised and undisturbed it gives health, whereas when it is more or less sunken or shaken it causes diseases—which diseases take their name from the affected body parts. Eighth, the passions of the soul—such as wrath, anger, fear— shake up and throw away the brain moisture together with the “species,”

27. The second root is the stomach, the brain being the first root. 28. Allusion to the first dialogue in Nueva Filosofia, the Coloquio del conocimiento de si mismo (for a summary of which see Introduction, 3–4) 58–90. The adversities (contrarios), or things that harm health, mentioned in the Coloquio are: first of all, the bad passions of the soul, such as fear, despair, hatred, shame, anger, sloth, jealousy, but also good feelings in immoderate degree, such as excessive love, joy, and pleasure. Also: the plague, the evil eye, poisons, sudden change of place involving change of air and water, weather changes and the phases of the moon, greed and overeating, overwork and fatigue, excessively loud sounds, bad smells, seeing gory or dirty things, bad quality of food or too great a variety of flavors in it, lack of food, intellectual work after meals, any too intense action either of the soul or of the body, a wound or a blow, excessive cold and heat, excessive exposure to heat, etc.

The True Medicine 105 or image, of the loathed object, which settled in the moisture,29 as in the example we mentioned above, of the animal wounded in the foot by a knife,30 and others that will be given below. This is done by the soul with the greater or lesser movement of the pia mater. Ninth, false fever is a movement, flight, or dispersal of the innate heat of the stomach, and of its principal members, the heat dispersing in the whole body while running away from its opposite, the cold humor and spirit31 fallen from the brain. The cold humor arrives and operates by contact. 29. Sabuco believes that the species, or images of things, imprint themselves on the brain’s moisture. See Coloquio del conocimiento de si mismo, 124–25: Rodonio asks Antonio what the “species” are. Antonio replies: “Have you seen a mirror, which represents to you all the things that are in front of it? Those figures and incorporeal appearances, which occupy no space, are called species. They enter by the sense of sight in the following way: the incorporeal image (figura) of the thing seen reaches the transparent glazed door (vidriera) of the eye and passes through it, going through a cañito (small channel) (which is a hollow nerve) to the common sense, the first cell of the brain located in the forehead. As soon as the species gets there, it is seen, understood, and evaluated by the intellect, which tells the will what it is, since the will is there in the brain, and not in the heart. The heart, being a fleshy member, is unsuited for the reception of the species.” 30. Allusion to Coloquio del conocimiento de si mismo, 49–50: an animal wounded in the paw “kicks around a lot (dà muchas coces à menudo) with the hurting paw, trying to shake off the pain, and it would shake off the paw itself if it were made of soft and easily separable matter.” Similarly, the pia mater tries to shake off the repulsive species and in so doing it shakes off the brain’s juice, causing the juice’s fall. 31. Espiritu. The notion of “spirit” (most often, “spirits” in the plural) was very important in Renaissance medicine. Originally based on the Galenic notion of pneuma, the doctrine of “vital” and “animal” spirits was central to the explanation of important physiological processes. Briefly and roughly stated, in Galenic physiology the liver, the source of the veins, was thought to transform the aliment into blood and “natural spirits.” The heart, the source of the arteries, turned the natural spirits into “vital spirits,” which the arteries carried to energize and vivify all body parts. In the network of arteries at the base of the brain (the so called rete mirabile) the vital spirits were further transformed into the animal spirits, which the nerves carried from the brain to the muscles, to give them the power of motion and sensation. So the animal spirits, also nourished by the air breathed in, were considered responsible for consciousness, sensation, and voluntary movement. See Owsei Temkin, “On Galen’s Pneumatology,” in Owsei Temkin, The Double Face of Janus and Other Essays in the History of Medicine (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), 154–61. In the sixteenth and early seventeenth century the notion of spirits was intensely debated by physicians and philosophers. See James Bono, “Medical Spirits and the Medieval Language of Life,” Traditio

106 The True Medicine Tenth, true fever is a flight of the heart’s innate heat,32 which flees from the cold and humid spirits falling from the brain, just like hot and dry vapor flees from the cloud, and in this same flight it flares up. The false fever is analogous to throwing water over hot iron or coals inside a glass: it will leave the iron cold and the glass hot. Otherwise said, fever is withdrawal and flight of the heat from its native place, where it performed its task—a flight caused by the heat’s contrary, the cold moisture falling from the brain. This happens both in the microcosm and in the macrocosm.33 Eleventh, the shivering cold sensation that precedes the rising of temperature34 in a fever is a cooling of the nerve that envelops all the limbs (i.e., the skin),35 due to the touch of the cold humor or spirit fallen from the brain. In health this humor springs up, surging through the skull and the seams of the cranial bones (called commissures),36 starting from the crown of the head and spreading to the skin of the head, and from there to the skin of the whole body.

40 (1984), 91–130 and the essays in Spiritus, ed. Marta Fattori and Massimo Bianchi, (Rome: Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 1984). 32. Calor nativo. On the concept of innate heat see Introduction, 46–47. 33. Namely, in man (microcosm) and in the world (macrocosm). On Sabuco’s view of correspondences between micro-and macrocosm see Introduction, 49–50. 34. La calentura: Sabuco means by calentura the warming of the body which is a fundamental sign of fever. I have translated “temperature,” for lack of a better term, and because “temperature” is the term we currently use in daily life to indicate the phenomenon Sabuco is referring to. But the word should not be taken in the sense of “measurable bodily heat,” a meaning that calentura certainly did not have in this context. As far as I can see, Sabuco uses calentura and fiebre as basically synonyms. 35. The idea that the skin is formed by the nerves, which dilate when reaching the outward parts of the body, was advanced by the Italian anatomist Costanzo Varolio (1543–75), author of an important text on the anatomy of the brain and the optical nerves, De nervis opticis (1573). Sabuco never mentions him explicitly, but may have read or heard of De nervis opticis, as she (or he) seems to have adopted Varolio’s view on the skin as an expansion of the nerves. On Varolio see Dictionary of Scientific Biography, ed. Charles Coulston Gillespie (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970–76), s.v. 36. Commissures: in Renaissance anatomy, the term referred to the seams of the cranial bones.

The True Medicine 107 This happens by virtue of the three pillars of health,37 which have the power of propelling and discharging the humor upwards through the skin. Thus the diseases in which one feels a chill, that is, those that go by way of the skin, are not dangerous, unless they take the internal pathway to the principal members of the stomach. This is why, at the beginning of a fever, when one feels shivery, the face changes color, turning white, and the nose turns cold. The internal fall of the juice, due to the collapse of one of the three pillars of health, causes the temperature, for nature (which aims at self-preservation) tries first to send the humor through the less damaging route, which is the external one by way of the skin, thus discharging the unwholesome and unsuitable humor through the pores and seams of the skull. This is the reason why the shivering cold sensation sometimes lasts as long as the temperature. Usually nature first tries to send the damage that way, but when she cannot do that any longer the humor falls internally. Thus the temperature always follows and the shivering comes first, since the coldness of the humor falling through the skin cannot but lead to a shivery, chilly sensation. But when the humor falls internally it is very damaging, since it causes the flight of the innate heat of the heart, liver and stomach: and this flight, more or less intense, is the temperature, which is the scattering of the innate heat all over the flesh. The temperature lasts as long as this fall, flux, or decrement of the humor goes on: so it can be ephemeral when it lasts just one day, or a tertian or quartan fever. The intermissions of the tertian, quartan, or quintan fever happen in this way: nature, which desires self-preservation, accepts, for one day or two, the nourishment that gives her increment, in order not to go into a total decay. But after this happens for one or two days, all the juice that collected in those intervals of health turns bad and unwholesome, and when enough has collected it starts falling again in the said manner, causing first the chill and then the temperature. This happens after one day in the tertian fever and after two days in the quartan. When there is not such intermission of healthy nutrition and increment, and the cold humor falls uninterruptedly, then the 37. Of the three “pillars” or empentas (supports) of health two are spiritual (cheerfulness and good hope) and the third is physical (the good functioning of the stomach): see Coloquio del conocimiento, 44–45.

108 The True Medicine temperature is continuous. To sum up: the shivering cold sensation is humor that springs up through the skull and its seams, spreading to the skin; and febris, fever, is a flight of the heart’s heat from its opposite, namely, the cold and humid spirits that fall internally from the brain. It is ridiculous how many sundry and contradictory things the medical authors have written on this matter.38 Twelfth, accidental death by illness39 is a flux or decrement of the brain’s moisture, which falls continuously while the brain refuses it, and decreases until the heat of the stomach—the second harmony— is entirely dissipated.40 Thirteenth, sudden death is a great fall of the brain’s juice, due to a great sinking of the pia mater, enough to smother and extinguish the heat of both the stomach and the heart. It happens, as will be said below, to healthy, rich, and happy men at the beginning of their climacteric years.41 Fourteenth, natural death is the drying out of the brain, its nerves, membranes,42 and skin, due to many small or lesser falls of the humor, which individually do not suffice to damage the minor harmony of the stomach. But after many of these, the brain becomes so dry that it can no longer humidify itself, and death comes without a temperature and almost without pain. Indeed, Plato says that in this

38. The explanation of fever was indeed one of the most hotly debated issues in Renaissance medicine, and one that was often used to criticize Galenist orthodoxy. See, for an overview, Iain M. Lonie, “Fever pathology in the sixteenth century: tradition and innovation,” in W. F. Bynum and V. Nutton, eds., Theories of Fever from Antiquity to the Enlightenment (London: Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 1981), 19–44. In underlining the variety of medical opinions on this topic, Sabuco might be alluding to the discussion on the nature of fever by Luis Mercado (1525?–1611), who in his De febrium essentia, causis, differentiis, dignotione et curatione libri (Valladolid: B.a sancto Dominico, 1586) had listed an astonishing number of varying medical opinions on this topic. On Mercado, who taught at Valladolid and was physician to Philip II, see Juan Riera, Vida y obra de Luiz Mercado (Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 1968), 51–59, on his work on fevers. 39. Muerte violenta de enfermedad: see n1 above. 40. On the two harmonies, the major one of the brain and the minor one of the stomach, see point 15 below in the text. 41. Literally: major decrement. 42. Telas.

The True Medicine 109 case people die with pleasure.43 To sum up: accidental death by illness and sudden death are due to the extinction of the heat; natural death is due instead to the drying up of the moisture. Fifteenth, in man there are two harmonies or concords. The major harmony is in the royal palace, where the prince of this house dwells in his royal hall, which is the brain. The other, minor harmony is in his servants’ kitchen, the stomach, where his food is prepared and his servants send up to him the best and most subtle part of the chyle or juice that is decocted there by the heat of the three live coals44 over which the stomach is placed as a pot on a trivet— namely, the heart, the liver, and the spleen. This minor harmony is upset only by bodily things, such as bad and harmful food, or also by the unwholesome humor falling from the major harmony, as has been said. In contrast, the harmony of the prince of this house, since it is the seat of the rational soul, is upset primarily by the spiritual “species” of things repugnant and abhorrent to the soul. When these images enter the seat of the soul, there is discord of soul and body (this is what disease is, according to Plato)45 in the manner said.46 But the major harmony can be upset also by the juice of bad and harmful food; and when this happens the harmony of the stomach is also spoiled. In turn, when the minor harmony is upset by causes of its own, it damages also the major harmony, causing more flux and decrement, and thus further damage to the other harmony. To sum up: these two harmonies are in accord with each other, and it is not possible for the one to be damaged without damaging the other also. Indeed, I tell you, it is all one and the same thing, because the stomach and the throat (or esophagus) originate in the skin of the mouth and tongue, which in turn originates in the pia and dura mater, which derive from the brain. Thus the stomach originates from, and depends upon, the pia

43. See Plato, Timaeus 81E, tr. R. G. Bury (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981, Loeb 9.219). 44. Ascuas: embers or live coals. 45. Marginal note: In Timeo. 46. See Plato, Timaeus, 87C–D (Loeb, 9.237: “For with respect to health and disease, virtue and vice, there is no symmetry or want of symmetry greater than that which exists between the soul itself and the body itself.”)

110 The True Medicine and dura mater, not from the nerves of the brain’s sixth conjugation, as will be better argued below. Already in these statements you have seen very clearly a sample of my views—the lion is recognized by its claws—and you can already see the true medicine starting to show at the horizon,47 to ameliorate this world. What do you think now, Mr. Doctor, of your symmetry and ametry? Ametry is already in the healthy, not in the sick, because nobody measures oneself without reason.48 The ancients thought it was an egg and it is a chestnut, and they were mistaken in the first principles and foundations of medicine. Doctor: I won’t stop following the ancients, who were my masters, and who understood and knew all that it is possible to know. How could a Galen, a Hippocrates, an Averroes, an Avicenna, and such great men, ever be wrong? I would be a fool to believe it; I’d rather believe that you are wrong. Antonio: Yet they all admitted that future generations could know more than they themselves knew. Socrates said: I know only one thing for certain, namely, that I know nothing. Aristotle compared posterity to children on the shoulders of giants, who see what the giant sees and even farther. Themistius49 said: all we know cannot counterbalance the much we do not know.50 By borrowing your knowledge from the ancients, Doctor, you choose to deprive the world of what they gave to the world, namely, the possibility of improving knowledge and reaching farther, since time is the inventor of all things. They were mistaken in the principles only; but just as an error that is small at the beginning becomes great by the end, so they went wrong in almost all their medicine. Their medicine in fact is correct 47. Por el collado. Literally, through the mountain-pass. 48. The 1587 text had: porque no ay trigo que medir (because there is no wheat to measure, or, abandoning the metaphor, there is nothing to measure). This was changed in the 1588 edition to: porque nadie se mide sin razon: nobody measures oneself without reason. The meaning seems to be that some degree of ametry (lack of measure or of humoral balance) is already in the healthy, otherwise no one would feel the need to be moderate in eating and drinking in order to stay healthy. 49. Marginal note: Super 2. de anima. 50. Themistius was a fourth-century CE commentator on Aristotle’s works: the reference here is to his commentary on De anima (see Themistius, On Aristotle on the Soul, trans. Richard B. Todd [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996]).

The True Medicine 111 only in a few things.51 Hippocrates got it right on the disease called angina, or quinsy,52 and other illnesses of which he said that the humor fell from the head. The ancients also got it right, though in a confused way, as to the diseases of the eyes, ears, nose, mouth, teeth, jawbones, and mouth of the stomach, of which they said that the humor fell from the head.53 In all other diseases they mistook causes and principles, whence many errors ensued in all of medicine. If you want, I’ll tell you the reason that led them astray. Doctor: I’ll be delighted to hear it. Antonio: The errors of the ancients derived from this reason: the brain does not perceive itself nor can it feel any harm or damage it receives, or any of its own actions, alterations, or change, because it is all one thing and perception implies a relation between a sensible object, passive, passively, and an act of sensation, active, actively. Just as the eye sees other things but not itself, the sense of smell smells other things but not itself, and the sense of touch feels other things but not itself, likewise the brain does not perceive or realize its own insanity or madness. In consequence the brain does not perceive its own damage until the damage is diverted and moves away from the brain to the fleshy or nervous parts, where it is felt—but this damage is secondary not primary. The ancients thought that this secondary damage originated in the place where it is felt and that its cause was also in the same spot, and they attributed it to an ametry of the humors in that area. And because man ignores this primary cause, i.e., the brain that cannot perceive itself, Pliny said: man does not know why he lives or dies. For this reason it is difficult for man to know himself, because all sensations, alterations, and changes are in the brain, and man cannot feel or perceive them because they are all one and the same thing. Doctor: Was it not enough to tell them they were mistaken, without pointing out the reason why they went wrong? Antonio: Thus the brain does not feel its damage until it has spread to some fleshy parts, nor does it feel or perceive all the principal operations of man. And since the beginning and primary cause of all 51. Marginal note: What is ignored is more than what is known. 52. Angina, o esquinacia. Quinsy referred to an inflammation or swelling of the throat. 53. Namely, that these diseases were due to the humor falling from the head.

112 The True Medicine diseases is the brain’s defluxion or decrement, which the brain does not perceive, man does not know where the illness comes from, or its cause or origin, until the disease is already settled inside the body and the second damage (i.e., the humor moved by the first cause) departs from the brain’s marrow54 and goes to make a third damage, that is felt and that starts usually in the fleshy parts, membranes, and nerves of the head—and this is the headache. From there it goes to make a fourth damage (being harmful, as said) to the body part where it happens to stop. This fourth damage is manifold: if it goes to the stomach it makes a fifth damage, chilling the stomach and dispersing its heat and repelling the heat the stomach receives from the three live coals (that is, heart, liver and spleen). This fifth damage leads to a sixth one, which is the flight of the heat from its native place, where the heat performs its task. This sixth damage in turn causes two others: one is the temperature, namely the dispersing of heat through the flesh; and the other is undigested food, since decoction cannot take place for lack of heat in the stomach. This is the reason why people in this condition do not feel like eating for several days, as has been noticed. The lack of appetite is also due to the fact that the humor falling to the stomach serves as aliment to it. Each of these two consequences of the sixth damage [the rise of temperature and the undigested food] then proceeds to make further damage of its own. The temperature consumes the remaining moisture of the brain, and the undigested food leads to oppilation,55 stopping the regular nourishment of the brain. As a consequence of these two processes, the brain wastes away and gets more and more depleted, and with the failing of the stomach’s well-balanced heat (one of the three pillars of health, which the brain itself had brought down), the brain collapses more and more, until it consumes the heat to the extent that life and the presence of the soul are no longer possible, and the sick person dies of continuous fever.

54. Medula: Sabuco uses the term medula with reference to the brain (medula del celebro) and to the spine (medula espinal). “Marrow” was used in medieval and early modern medical English to indicate the inner substance of the brain (see OED, with examples from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries). 55. Opilacion: oppilation, meaning obstruction, was a term currently used in early modern medicine to indicate the blocking of the body’s pathways or channels.

The True Medicine 113 Moreover, the temperature causes frenzy. Just as the brain’s coldness spoiled the so-called natural faculty, so the dispersed heat in reaching the brain spoils the animal faculty, and insanity and frenzy are the consequence. The trouble is similar to what happens to the thrush that makes itself the birdlime with which people catch it. I say that insanity ensues because the “species,” the images of things in the brain, get mixed up and blurred as they melt with the extraneous heat, or they utterly dissolve, as shaped wax is dissolved by heat, or they retain their shape but collapse. Hence it seems to many sick people that the house is tumbling down on them, because the image of the house, entering the brain, settles in the falling moisture, and so it seems to them as if the house itself is falling down. Or it can happen that the “species” are covered by the smoke and darkness caused by the flux. Because of this failing of the “species” and the disarray of the coldness in the brain’s harmony, the intellectus agens (“the acting intellect”) cannot use reason in the proper way, but only in the way we see in insanity and frenzy. This same fall of the “species” is also the reason why bashful orators lose their memory while speaking in a high assembly or in the presence of kings, because embarrassment, or a sense of shame,56 can also bring down the “species,” as has been said.57 The same accounts for loss of memory during illness, as in the case of Messala Corvinus, who forgot his own name, or the man hit by a stone, who forgot the Greek alphabet, or the man who, after a fall, could not remember his mother’s name and that of his relatives, or another man who during illness forgot the names of his slaves. The brain’s flux or decrement can affect with catarrh58 the anterior part of the head, where the first cell59 of the brain is located, the seat 56. Verguenza: embarrassment, shame, implying fear of losing honor: see Coloquio del conocimiento, 34–35. 57. See Coloquio del conocimiento, 34–35. 58. catarrizar: padecer catarro (to suffer from, be affected with catarrh) according to Martin Alonso, Enciclopedia del Idioma (Madrid: Aguilar, 1958), s.v. (which quotes only one example from Sabuco; same in Dicc. Hist. , s. v.). 59. Celda: the brain was thought to have three cells, or ventricles, each being the seat of a particular mental faculty. This view was originally formulated by Galen, and seems to have spread thanks to Nemesius of Emesa’s fourth-century CE treatise, De Natura hominis. The Galenic-Nemesian division of the rational soul into three faculties located in the three ventricles of the brain (common sense and imagination in the front, reason in the middle,

114 The True Medicine of common sense, through its seven pairs of nerves: in which case it causes diseases of the eyes, ears, nose, mouth, chest, stomach— diseases that are not very dangerous. But at other times, the catarrh affects the middle cell of the brain, which is the seat of judgment, or the posterior cell, where memory is located. These two cells are in communication with each other through the passages that exist between them. When these two cells are affected with catarrh, the noxious humor goes down through the nape of the neck (the deputy of the brain) and its sixty-three nerves. In this case diseases are more dangerous, because these sixty-three nerves, except for the seven pairs that run to the arms and the other seven that run to the legs, serve the interior parts of the body, such as the tissues and membranes, the diaphragm, the mediastinum,60 the pleura,61 as well as the principal members, heart, liver, and spleen. Of these nerves I suppose that the anterior ones enter the very substance and body of the heart, liver, and spleen, whereas the posterior form the tunics and membranes that cover them, such as the pericardium (i.e., the heartstrings62), the two tunics of the liver and those of the spleen. So when the noxious humor falls down from the brain through the brain’s deputy63 and runs through the posterior or anterior nerves and their arteries to the memory in the hinder) was commonplace in the Middle Ages, but it began to be questioned in the Renaissance. Sabuco’s contemporary Juan Huarte, for instance, in his Examen de ingenios para las ciencias (1575) argued that all the mental faculties were present in each of the three ventricles of the brain (see Grazia Tonelli Olivieri, “Galen and Francis Bacon: Faculties of the Soul and the Classification of Knowledge,” in The Shapes of Knowledge from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, ed. Donald R. Kelley and Richard H. Popkin [Dordrecht: Springer, 1991], 69, 79 n65). Sabuco, in contrast, seems to have accepted the traditional view. 60. Mediastino. Mediastinum = a membranous middle septum or partition between two cavities of the body, especially that formed by the inner two walls of the pleura, separating the right and left lungs (OED). 61. Pleuresis. In early modern medical language pleuresis indicated a disease of the pleura, not the pleura itself, which was called pleura: see for instance the entries pleuritis or pleurisis and pleura in Juan Alonso de Fontecha, Diccionario médico (Alcalá de Henares: L. Martínez Grande, 1606), s. v. Sabuco, however, consistently uses pleuresis to refer to the pleura: the context makes it clear that the reference is to the body part and not to the disease, as in this case. 62. telas del corazon. 63. The nape of the neck (also identified as spinal marrow). Cf. Coloquio del conocimiento, 48.

The True Medicine 115 heart, then the danger is the worst, because the humor disrupts and drives away the heat and flame of the most important of the three live coals—the heart. The damage is less serious when the noxious humor runs through the nerves and veins of the liver, and even less when it goes to the spleen. Therefore, diseases and fevers are more dangerous when the noxious humor runs to the said membranes and the more important members, because they disperse and drive away the innate heat of the three live coals. When the stomach’s heat and harmony stay in their native place and perform their office, it is conducive to health, and so this is one of the already mentioned three supports, or pillars, which sustain human life and make the brain perform its health function. If that noxious humor or viscous phlegm that fell from the brain goes to the pleura, we have pain in the side, and this very same pain (which is a fifth damage) makes the humor fall even more, thus increasing the damage. If the humor goes to the kidneys, it damages them by producing thick phlegms and stones. If it goes to the loins,64 it causes pain there. If it goes to the bladder,65 it injures that part by plugging up the channel with thick phlegms or a stone. A stone is formed from those phlegms in the same way in which the sediments left by the water of many baths grow one on top of the other, each layer hardening the layers underneath. When a stone thus formed plugs the bladder’s channel, death ensues. Therefore we can say that the stone also derived ultimately from the brain in the form of phlegm, just as all the other diseases derive from the brain. If the humor goes to a body part hit by a blow or wounded by a knife, the pain debilitates that part, and nature sends there, to help the weak part, so much humor that the part is corrupted and turns into an abscess, or it becomes putrid and inflamed, and the pain of that part makes so much humor fall that it is everywhere and in all the pathways, and it goes to the principal members, heart and liver, dispersing their heat, and fever ensues. Therefore the cause of the fever is the pain (which is one of the harmful things that make the humor fall from the brain, as said) and 64. Hijada = ijada. 65. Bexiga: I presume Sabuco is speaking of the gall-bladder here, and not of the urinary bladder, because of the reference to a channel in it, whereas of the urinary bladder it is said that it has no channel (see below 159). Elsewhere she (or he) calls the gall-bladder la bexiga del higado.

116 The True Medicine not, as claimed by Galen, the heat of the affected part, which heats up the neighboring part, which in turn heats up the one next to it, and so on and so forth, until it heats up the whole body: and this is what temperature is according to Galen, ut in bubone, “as in a bubo.”66 Galen was right about the heat caused à putredine (“by putrefaction”), when there is inflammation; but he was wrong as to the main cause of fever (as I would err also, if I didn’t laugh at him, as I do). He was also wrong about temperature, movement and its causes, the heat of the sun,67 the cold, and all the rest of it. Indeed, the cause that he considers natural68 is the opposite in itself, because nature diverts the harmful humor and makes receptacles for it, such as glandulae,69 dry pustules, cysts, wens, goiters, breast-cancers,70 and the gallbladder of the liver, and it does 66. Bubo: an inflamed swelling. See Galen, De causis morborum, in Opera, 7.4–5: “Iam et quae putrescunt in animantis corpore, alia calorem quendam immoderatum his in partibus, in quibus putrent, efficiunt, […], alia autem ubi simul universum corpus calefecerint, febrem excitant.[…] Nam in bubonis et inflammationibus et erysipelatis atque omnibus adeo calidis morbis semper contingens pars atque continua ipsa quidem primum calorem excipit, deinceps vero et vicinae parti impertitur, et haec rursus sibi proximae, atque ita ad insiti caloris principium ubi pervenerit intemperies, totum celeriter corpus principii percipit affectum.” The conventional Galenic theory of fever was that it was caused by the heat generated by the putrefaction of the humors. In Spanish medicine the criticism of this theory of fever had been a cornerstone of the attack on Galenism by an important medical writer, Gómez Pereira (1500–1558). In his Novae veraeque medicinae experimentis et evidentibus rationibus comprobatae (Medina del Campo: Franciscus a Canto, 1558), Pereira had argued that fever was not generated directly by putrefaction, but was the effect of the accelerated motion of the heart and arteries, produced by nature in the effort to get rid of the harmful humors: “Nature produces fever to this end, that the superfluities which harmfully affect the human body may be dispelled, or concocted and expelled through the sensible passages of the body, which are opened by the febrile heat” (quoted in Lonie, “Fever Pathology,” 39). See José Jimenez Girona, “La esencia de la fiebre en Gómez Pereira.” Asclepio, 18–19 (1966–67), 439–56. 67. calentura del sol: meaning calor (heat) in Spanish trans. of Cauliac, Cirugìa, 1555, quoted in Dicc. Hist. It may refer here to sunstroke or heatstroke, a pathological condition due to excessive exposure to the hot sun. 68. I.e., the heat of a neighboring part. 69. las landres: glandlike tumors, esp. in the neck and inguinal parts, sometimes associated with scrophula. Glandulae in English: OED quotes Lanfranc. Cirurg, 207: “Also blood is medlid with great fleume & melancolie, and engenderth glandulas and scrophulas.” 70. Secas, lupias, lobinillos, papos, zaratanes. For zaratanes as breast-cancers see Luis Mercado, De mulierum affectionibus, lib. I, cap. 17, 123r.

The True Medicine 117 the same in fruit on the tree, as one can see. So nature does not give to proximity the role Galen attributed to it. The rise of temperature is not or cannot be anything but the dispersion of the heat of the heart or the liver from its native place, and this heat is dispersed by the cold and wet spirits that fall first from the brain, because the spirits of the heart are hot and dry. The latter are firelike and more active, the first are watery instead; and because of this opposition in their nature the spirits of the heart flee from the spirits falling from the brain, in the same way that the ray flees from the cloud, and in fleeing it flares up and radiates through the air. Similarly the cold spirits flee from the hot ones—just as wise men avoid foolish and tiresome people—and in this way they bring on the temperature. Daily fever occurs only when the spirits fall by themselves and not together with the humor. The pain causes the fever, more or less high, and not by proximity but in the following way: the brain, since it feels the whole body, feels also the aching part and it cries internally over it, just as the child cries externally with tears. When a body part hurts, the brain behaves like a mother who loves a sick child very much and all the time sends to ask how he is doing, and sends him many kinds of presents, because his pain hurts her so much. Likewise the brain immediately sends to the aching part the lighter messengers, namely, the spirits, and after them it sends humor to help as much as it can. The brain sends so much humor that it does damage; the brain does as the thrush, itself making what is going to injure it.71 The brain acts like a child who has a little bird that he loves very much, and when he sees the bird hanging its head and about to die, he stuffs the bird’s mouth with bread in order to save it, and by doing so makes it die even sooner. Among the causes of cold diseases, Galen lists temperature due to idleness, when he says that, Si fuliginis speciem referat,72 “if it 71. See above, 113: the thrush itself makes the birdlime with which people catch it. 72. See Galen, De causis morborum, in Opera, 7.11–12, where otium (idleness, or lack of exercise) is listed among the causes of cold diseases. The specific words Si fuliginis speciem referat do not occur in this text; Sabuco seems to be summarizing Galen’s argument, which is that in the bodies of people who don’t exercise enough a fuliginosus vapor (sooty exhalation) is created, which can bring on a fever or extinguish the innate heat, causing death. “At si in animalis corpore veluti fuliginosa quaedam ac fumida excrementa tunc constiterint, alius erit nativi caloris affectus; alius vero, si solum vapor quidam suavis atque optimus exhalarit[… ] In constipato vero corpore quod fumosum alit excrementum, aut febris ac-

118 The True Medicine brings on a kind of sooty exhalation,” idleness may in that case lead to a fever. I believe you’ll laugh at this if you remember what we said about idleness in the preceding dialogue.73 The ancients, seeing that lack of exercise causes thick humors, paralysis of the legs, numb, inert, and contracted toes, and the gout, came to the opinion expressed by Galen. But actually the way in which idleness causes these diseases is that it makes the brain and its juice very watery, thin, runny, and prone to fall even for small causes—this is how idleness causes the said diseases. This is also why children die at an early age, when the brain is watery, tender, and fluid; one third of the population does not reach adulthood for this reason. Similarly a little cold kills the new shoots of the vine, which does not happen when they are older and hardier. Soot, Mr. Doctor, is good for making catmia, or atutia74 and also for smoking sardines, but not for explaining fever. What Galen said about the heat of the sun,75 cold, and fatigue as causal factors of disease is ridiculous, the general cause of disease being in fact the defluxion and decrement of the brain, as I said in this book when talking about the harmful effects of the sun and fine weather, cold and fatigue—and where you can read it so that we don’t repeat the same thing twice.76 Doctor: To think that a mere simpleton of a rustic, who did not study medicine, has the nerve to ridicule such eminent authors and to reform all of medicine, without having studied it and with no books… Antonio: What are you mumbling about under your breath? Farewell, I go back to take care of my sheep, lest they graze in a wet cendetur, ob interclusum interius fuliginosum vaporem; aut praefocabitur extingueturque nativus calor” (16–17). Waithe, Vintró, and Zorita translate “si fuliginis speciem referat” as “if it appears erratically, as lightning” (New Philosophy of Human Nature, 190). They have evidently mistaken fulgor (lightning) for fuligo. 73. See Coloquio del conocimiento, 39–41, where Sabuco argues that idleness brings on diseases by making the brain’s humor more prone to fall. 74. Catmia (also spelled catimia or cathimia): copper or zinc oxide. In spagiric medicine used to indicate “las concreciones o coagulaciones que se hacen en los hornos en que se funde oro o plata” (Dicc. Hist.) Atutia: a medicinal ointment made with copper sulphate. 75. Calentura del sol: see above, n67. 76. See Coloquio del conocimiento, 89–90, where Sabuco explains how exposure to sun, cold, or fatigue can lead to illness by affecting the brain’s humor and making it fall.

The True Medicine 119 field and catch a little cold or a cough. You hold on to whatever opinion and belief you want. Doctor: Come back here, Mr. Antonio, I was only joking. Which book is that—single and solitary—that you keep at your farm? Antonio: The book is a Pliny.77 You said truly that I did not study medicine. But a shepherd boy, with no experience of arms, and with only a small stone and a sling vanquished and killed the giant Goliath. Yesterday I saw a big snake asleep under yonder tree, and a small spider come down the tree hanging from its yarn,78 and with cunning and wile, after looking where it could hurt the snake the most, enter the snake’s ear and sting next to the brain.79 I saw the snake, after the poison had reached the brain and knocked down its juice, turn over and go into fits and whirl around, until it fell dead; and the spider, without as much as breaking its yarn, went back up its tree. See, Mr. Doctor, how sharp wit is more powerful than mere force? Indeed, you spoke the truth when you said that I did not study medicine, because if I had, I would have been so bewildered by it and by so many authors and contradictory opinions that, following their lead, I’d never have discovered or ascertained these truths of the true medicine, since many clever persons who studied medicine—confused by so many authors and such a variety of opinions—did not find or come upon the true medicine. I have had enough, in eight days, of reading Hippocrates and Galen, and reviewing the foundations of their medicine while staying in the city. In these eight days I got ready for this wrangle and debate, to be able to engage in dispute with you and your teachers, in the same way that odd creature, the Ichneumon,80 gets ready to fight the snake a few days in advance, rolling in mud and drying in the sun

77. Pliny’s Natural History is indeed the book Sabuco quotes most frequently in Nueva Filosofia. On Pliny’s significance for Sabuco and in Renaissance medicine see Introduction, 25–26. 78. Marginal note: Plin. lib. 10. c. 74.



79. See Pliny, NH, X.xcv.206: “A spider swings by a thread on to the head of a snake stretched out beneath the shade of its tree, and nips its brain with its jaws so violently that it at once gives a hiss and whirls giddily round, but cannot even break the thread by which the spider hangs, much less get away, and there is no end to it before its death” (Loeb 3.425). 80. Marginal note: Plin. lib. 8. c. 24.

120 The True Medicine until it feels well equipped with its armor of dry mud.81 In all of which you can see how much more powerful is sagacity with a few arms than strength with many arms, and how much more powerful nature is than art, and will prevail over it. Doctor: And so, Mr. Antonio, only with nature without art you want to know more than the ancients, who had both nature and art on their side? Antonio: I don’t know anything, I will only tell you the truths I perceive, without refuting anybody. If you don’t want to believe them, put them to the test of experience, and believe experience, not me. But now, Mr. Doctor, tell me all the diseases whose cause the ancients attributed to the brain and its flux. Doctor: The diseases are the same ones you have already mentioned: ophthalmia,82 angina, ailments of the mouth of the stomach,83 and the rest: also apoplexy and epilepsy they say are caused by obstruction of the brain by a humor coming up from the body. Antonio: They should better have said by the viscous juice and humor falling down from the root (i.e., the brain), which carries first the humid and cold spirits. And given that this humor will reach the mouth of the stomach won’t it go an inch84 farther? And if an inch why not two? And if two why not three? If three why not four, thus reaching all the members of the body? And if it falls to the chest as catarrh, won’t it reach the pleura? And won’t it then reach the heart, however much it is kept safe in its royal palace? Even more so considering that the heart is under the dominion of the brain, the prince of this house, from which it receives its aliment, that is, the white juice, which the brain sends to it, as to all the other parts of the body, through the anterior and posterior nerves, originating in the spinal marrow. Consequently, just as the front part of the first cell of the brain can send catarrh to those parts you mentioned, won’t the middle cell and the back cell also send catarrh, through the spinal marrow and its nerves, to those body parts that pertain to them and to which they provide, with their nerves, the white juice, or chyle, running through the nerves and 81. Pliny, NH, VIII, 36.88 (Loeb, 3.65). 82. Optalmia. Inflammation of the eye. 83. Boca de estomago: upper orifice of the stomach. 84. Un dedo: literally, a finger.

The True Medicine 121 membranes? Of this white juice—ignored by the ancients who for this reason stumbled into many errors—we will speak later on. Doctor: You said, Mr. Antonio, that there are two harmonies in man. Will you please fully explain to me those harmonies and the differences between them? Antonio: Besides what has already been said, the second kind of difference between these two harmonies is that, since the stomach’s heat partakes of the nature of fire and cannot stay still in one place but strives to reach its sphere high in the heavens,85 it needed the brain’s coldness to keep it down in place, with its contrast and resistance. This is the reason why the neck is narrow, because in that narrow space the cold could better resist the heat.86 To this purpose the natural coldness of the brain is helped by the refrigerating effect of the external87 air, so that the cold that the brain sends to the stomach is further cooled down in the passage, and the brain also partakes of the cold air to preserve its coldness. Thus the natural coldness of the brain and the external coldness of the inhaled air make the stomach’s heat stay still in place, contrary to its nature. So air comes in cold, in inhaling, and goes out warm, in exhaling, and if this is destroyed, health is destroyed. There is another difference, which is that the brain (the prince’s harmony) eats twice, while the stomach (the harmony of his servants in the kitchen) eats once. Initially the brain eats the food raw in its first cavity (which is the mouth) thanks to the sense of taste and flavor, which the pores and suckers88 of tongue, throat and palate, and the holes of the maxillary89 bone, give to the mouth. The brain, by means of its power of attraction, takes from the mouth the best part of 85. By its nature, fire (conventionally, one of the four elements, with earth, water, and air) tends to move upwards. Later, however, Sabuco will explain that fire is not truly an element, being instead, like air, only a rarefied form of water. See below, n123. 86. This is the point that George Ent quoted in his 1665 London lectures : “Oliva Sabuco fancied that nature had placed a narrow neck and a cold brain above the stomack so that the heat thereof (which naturally ascends) might be repressed and kept in from flying away” (see Introduction, 80–81). 87. Literally: accidental (accidental). 88. Aceptabulos: cf. aceptabula in Pliny: the suckers or cavities in the arms of polypi: NH, X.xlvi.85 (Loeb, 3.218). 89. Vasilar: surely a typographical error for masilar (maxillary)?

122 The True Medicine the juice of the food pressed and ground by the teeth. Additionally, the brain eats the food cooked in its second cavity, which is the stomach: of this cooked food, as soon as it gets there, his servants in the kitchen send him up the best and most refined part. The brain receives it through the esophagus thanks to its power of attraction, in the same way in which the roots of barley, and many other plants, send up the aliment to the spike, top or seed of the plant through the hollow of the stalk. Thus the servants send up the best and most refined juice, which tends to go up, while the more earthy part tends to stay down. The raw food taken at the entrance (in the mouth) can be much more harmful than the cooked food sent up by the servants, because the latter is in accordance with the very first root (the navel), conforming to the order of nature­-mother—and nature-mother cannot err; while the food that is taken in the mouth is in accordance with nature-stepmother,90 and with the second root (the brain), whose sensual taste and appetites, being depraved and unrestrained, are the cause of the defluxions and catarrhs that are the second cause of all diseases. The first causes move this second general cause, from which are born all diseases. By naturemother I mean the one that is sustained by the root of the navel; while by nature-stepmother I mean the one that is sustained by the root of the brain, the second root, which nature provided for the sake of growth with sensual tastes and appetites, which can go astray.91 The harmony of the kitchen reaches its point of perfection with the increase of heat and the diminution of moisture in youth. The harmony of the prince reaches its high point with the increase of the coldness and dryness contingent92 to old age. These changes are brought about by the four qualities: [ hot, cold, moist, dry].93 Moisture, and with it sleep, starts at its peak in the child, and gets steadily less and less: its natural movement is to go backwards with the passing 90. Sabuco distinguishes between natura madre and natura madrasta. I have preferred to translate nature-mother and nature-stepmother rather than, as would also be possible, mother nature and stepmother nature, because the expression “mother nature” is often used without a specific meaning, whereas Sabuco has a very specific conception of natura madre. 91. On nature-mother and nature-stepmother, see also below, 126–27. 92. Literally: accidental. 93. On the four qualities and their significance in ancient and Renaissance medicine see Introduction, 55.

The True Medicine 123 of time and the emission of seed. At the same rate in which moisture decreases, dryness increases. Heat, on the other hand, starts at a minimum, and grows till man has reached the perfection of his form, his estate, and maturity. Heat increases because the natural moisture diminishes, as happens in wood, which burns the better the drier it is. While the heat is growing in this harmony (the stomach), the coldness grows at the same rate in the other principal harmony (the brain), so that it may counterbalance the heat and keep it quiet in its own place. Meanwhile moisture diminishes with its natural movement, which is inversely related to the passing of time and the emission of seed, as in plants. With this supervenient94 dryness, the brain’s harmony reaches its high point where it performs its task at its best, because with the cold the “species,” or images of things, are clearer and better imprint themselves, and with dryness they are better retained. Intellect, reason, and will, which together are the soul, work more effectively and freely with the “species” in dryness, because moisture does not allow the intellectus agens (“the acting intellect”) to move swiftly along those pathways, while putting together the “species” and reasoning, as happens in humid sleep and humid childhood when the intellect does not do its work right. Consequently, the increase of cold is necessary to achieve the following effects: the distinctness of the “species,” the counterbalance to the stomach’s heat, and the supervenient dryness, whose increase allows the optimal imprinting of the “species” and optimal working of the soul. Similarly in the other harmony the supervenient heat grows for the purpose of cooking a greater quantity of food and thus increasing the body, and reaching the perfection of the human form. So man reaches his perfection in quantity (in bodily size) thanks to the minor harmony, and his perfection in quality (in mental power) thanks to the major one. Heat increases until man reaches this state of perfection and maturity. But once this is reached, the major natural decrement (the climacteric) soon begins, with the changes it brings about. At maturity, heat makes the strongest opposition to cold, heat and cold being equal and counterbalancing each other; and moisture, meanwhile diminished by half, corresponds exactly to the dryness, which grew in the same proportion. 94. Adventicia: adventitious, coming from the outside, extrinsically added, not intrinsic.

124 The True Medicine This is the state of man’s prime and the top of the mountain, and the true climacteric time, with danger of death.95 From then on, on the way downhill of this sad journey, coldness steadily gains ground over heat, surpassing it, and so does dryness over moisture. The minor accidental decrements that occur in this descent are more dangerous, because they further weaken the brain, which is already weaker because of its own movement and natural decrement; so that the brain wastes away in two ways, and what only one factor could not do is accomplished by these two joint processes, and death ensues. Alternatively, coldness and dryness gain ground until natural death, when the radical moisture96 ends its natural course. The radical moisture is at its highest at the beginning of life; it is down by half in adulthood, and it is totally gone at death like its companion heat, which is low at the beginning of life, equal in quantity to the coldness, and is at its lowest at the end of life. In contrast, coldness and dryness are at their highest at the end of life. Up and down this major ladder, and over this framework and foundation of life go the extrinsic,97 adventitious, and accidental increments and decrements, which are said to be minor, and which can shorten or delay this descent or decline, and are the cause of all diseases and accidental deaths. These minor decrements happen because of the causes named in the Colloquy,98 causes that make the cold moisture or juice of the brain fall down and decrease. This moisture goes to the minor harmony of the kitchen, or to a body-part, and subdues its opposite, heat, dispersing it and driving it away from its native place, where it performed its office. This flux, or decrement, is of three kinds, varying by quantity, by quality, and by the place it affects.99 In quantity, it has many degrees: the smallest is when the falling humor is just a little ventosity100 and 95. Marginal note: Of the state of maturity, or adulthood. 96. Humidad radical. Like innate heat, humidum radicale, or radical moisture, was an essential principle of life. On the notion of humidum radicale in medieval and Renaissance medicine see Introduction, 46–48. 97. Violentos: see above, n1. 98. See above, n28. 99. Marginal note: The varieties of the falling humor. 100. Ventosidad: wind or flatulence, caused by the falling spirits. Ventosity was the term used in sixteenth-and seventeenth-century medicine.

The True Medicine 125 saliva, which is discharged, and remedied with a belch and a spit. The ventosity is remedied with a yawn. The biggest is a fall of the moisture and spirits from the brain in such large quantity that it plugs up the orifices and openings of the nerves, putting an end to movement and to sense perception, or depriving the heart of its innate heat and motion, and extinguishing its heat. With their contact, the cold humor and spirits smother the innate heat of heart and stomach, and this brings instant death. In between these two extremes there are many degrees. The flux also varies by quality: sometimes only the spirits fall, sometimes what falls is a watery moisture, which is the choler, a hot humor that is of two kinds,101 sometimes what falls is a viscous humor, which is phlegm, stickier than bile. Sometimes one of these two, choler and phlegm, falls more than the other, sometimes they fall in the same quantity. Sometimes what falls is melancholic humor, almost black, with its own varieties. The brain does not generate blood but chyle for the growth of the body and for the production of semen, which it sends by the spinal marrow and by the skin of the loins. The blood in the brain is the best and most aerial part of the blood, sent to the brain by its servants, the liver and the heart. Blood serves as second matter for the brain’s aliment, as will be clarified further on. The flux varies especially by place, according to where it falls and goes through, where it stops and harms; and the various illnesses take their names from these places, because the ancients thought and believed that the humors originated in the place where they are felt and which they damage, as has already been said. Bear in mind, however, that the whole house of this prince gets some damage, although the major damage is felt just in one place. Part of the ventosity falls together with the viscous humor, as one can see from the bubbles in the phlegm, and then the affected part gets even more swollen. And because the entire house receives some damage, one must take care to cure the whole and not just the affected part, as will be said more clearly later on. Doctor: You spoke, Mr. Antonio, of nature-mother and nature-stepmother. Upon your life, will you tell me how that is?

101. The yellow and the black choler.

126 The True Medicine

Of the Two Natures: One that Gives Birth, One that Gives Growth Antonio: I find, Mr. Doctor, that nature is like two sisters who help each other, and what one cannot do the other gets done: one is nature-mother, who gives beginning and form, the other is naturestepmother, who gives growth and perfection. In the microcosm (i.e., in man) nature-mother operates providentially as pure nature, without the interference of man’s free will, except for the principle of semen, until the time when she gives birth to the living being and entrusts it to its animal mother and to the great mother earth, so that these two may raise and bring to perfection what she initiated; and not being able to do more for it, she provides it with milk and then with teeth, and leaves it on its own. These two natures act in different ways: nature the provident mother acts without giving the option of free will; she nourishes the living being through the navel without error or disease. Nature-stepmother nourishes it through the mouth, by means of the brain’s sense of taste and appetite, which in contrast does have a free will. With nature-mother, the brain eats, without choice, food that is already cooked, and made suitable, and available in only one way. With nature-stepmother the brain eats in two ways: raw food at the entrance [in the mouth] and then cooked [in the stomach]. Nature-stepmother cannot raise her foster-child without many mistakes, increments and decrements, which she makes him go through every day with the extrinsic102 movements of the twenty-four hours and of the waxing of moon, sun, and planets, and with these increments and decrements she throws him into a quandary.103 As he grows up, moreover, she gives him also the passions of the soul, as well as non-natural aliments104 and the free will105 of the sensitive appetite 102. Violento. 103. traelo à la çacapella: the sense seems to be that nature-stepmother embroils the human being into something like a loud, confusing strife (zacapella). 104. Alimentos no naturales. These are presumably all the aliments that are part of the “six non naturals”, that is, food and drink, and the air breathed in. The natural aliment for Sabuco is the brain’s juice, as stated below. On the six non naturals see above, n1. 105. Alvedrio. This word was censored by the Inquisition (see Sabuco, Obras, 264). On the Inquisition’s censorship of medical books see José Pardo Tomás, Ciencia y censura; la Inqui-

The True Medicine 127 through another place, i.e., the root of the brain. And since the aliments provided by this stepmother are not natural (as were instead those of nature-mother) man has necessarily many excrements, that is, feces and dregs, which are what is left over once the juice, which is his natural aliment, is extracted from food. Extracting the juice from the non-natural aliments and examining what should be eaten was assigned to the principal part, namely, to the brain, and to its sense of taste. And since the brain’s free will is not restricted and checked by the mother, the brain makes many mistakes because of its freedom, such as eating what is not suitable. These mistakes, brought about by the vagaries of the sense of taste, cause the accidental decrements of the sensitive faculty.Thus the embryo at first is similar to a plant, and takes on the faculties of the vegetative soul; then it is like a sentient animal, and takes on those of the sensitive soul. At this stage, although it is potentially a man, the embryo has no place or aptitude for the office of the heavenly soul, because of the great moisture. But once it has ascended part of the natural course, meanwhile losing some of the moisture that was an obstacle to the functioning of the heavenly soul, it becomes a rational being, and a man, and at that point he is subject to the accidental decrements due to the soul’s passions. These passions work most effectively on the soul, which is located in the brain, because they are akin and similar to the soul, just as air works best in smoke and vapor. There are other ills due to nature-stepmother, such as the ills that are evident cause of harm in the macrocosm (namely, the world), such as a blow or a knife wound. All diseases derive from these four kinds of accidental and extrinsic decrements, namely, those of the sensitive soul, of the vegetative soul, and those brought about by obvious causes (such as a blow or a knife wound). All the causes of these four kinds of decrements have their opposite in the causes of four kinds of increments, since there is no decrement without increment. For instance, if sadness causes decrement, happiness will cause increment; if the bad juice of food causes decrement, the good juice will cause increment. If the waning of the moon causes decrement in man, the moon’s waxing will cause increment. If the bad smell causes sición española y los libros científicos en los siglos XVI y XVII (Madrid: CSIC, 1991), 191–227.

128 The True Medicine decrement, the good smell will cause increment. With these four kinds of increments, whose varieties have already been described, this root (the brain) grows and makes its branches grow; with their opposites, instead, the root and its branches shrivel. The effects of the brain’s action operate also on the brain itself, because it is the root and the door for the aliments and the principle of growth, and it takes only the juice and not the waste. This is the reason why what grows most in newborn babies is the head, that is, the brain. And since the head has four kinds of increments it has also in consequence many kinds of excrements, such as a great quantity of long hair, mucus in the nostrils, rheum in the eyes, wax in the ears, sweat on the forehead, tears in the eyes. All of these excrements are natural, when there is health and the brain is in increment. But in illness, when the brain is in decrement due to any of the four kinds of causes, the head can have other, non-natural excrements. These causes all lead to a general one, which is the flux, or catarrh, or decrement (which is all one and the same thing), namely, the fall of the juice (chyle, or aliment) that the root had for the purpose of converting it into substance of its own and of its branches. These causes strike the root violently, so that it falls and stops performing its office. Whereupon the brain’s harmony is destroyed, and the brain no longer performs its task, which is to take and give the nutritive juice. And the juice that used to go up falls down and becomes unwholesome, and it goes to harm all the servants of the house, destroying the minor harmony of the stomach. All diseases derive from this single general cause, namely, the harm done by the cold juice in falling down to the minor harmony (the stomach). The minor harmony itself is not capable of causing such fundamental damage. Such serious damage is caused only by the soul and by the soul’s passions, which throw down the juice, together with the “species” of the repulsive object by means of the movement of the instrument, that is, the pia mater—as has been said. Only man is susceptible to this general cause; neither the other animals nor plants are susceptible to it. Plants are susceptible only to two kinds of causes, those acting on the vegetative faculty and the ones coming from the outside, such as a knife wound. As for animals, they are susceptible to three: those acting on the sensitive faculty or on the vegetative faculty, and the external ones. In fact

The True Medicine 129 the more stupid animals are, the less they get sick, and the more intelligent among them are proportionally more prone to sickness. This is the reason why the elephant is susceptible to several diseases, as Pliny says.106 Man is susceptible to four kinds of causes. The most important (so much so that it almost eclipses all the others) is what comes from the soul, namely, the feelings that make man a man, and this is the reason why man has many diseases, because the feelings operate as if in their own element, being spiritual and operating on spirit,107 as has been said. The feelings cannot operate in the minor harmony of the stomach because they are moved by the “species” of things seen or understood, as in the case of the anger due to an injury, or of things anticipated by the soul, as in the case of fear. Neither the “species,” nor the act of understanding or perceiving them, can be located in the heart or in the liver or in the humor. It is clear in fact that they must be located in the brain, because it is there that they do damage, although the damage can’t be felt there, because it is one and the same thing.108 This is not so because of an imperfection of the brain, but rather because it is one and the same thing; the brain is the principle of perception, therefore it has the active but not the passive power of sensation.109 It is clear, as is noticed daily by the surgeons, and as was stated also by Fernel,110 that the brain’s 106. See Pliny, NH, VIII.x.28–29 (Loeb, 3. 22–23). 107. Espirituales en el espiritu. By translating espiritu as “essence” Waithe, Vintró, and Zorita entirely miss this point. Cf. New Philosophy of Human Nature, 198. 108. The brain cannot perceive that it is damaged because brain and sensation are one and the same thing. 109. Tiene accion y no passion propia. The brain can feel other things, but cannot feel itself. 110. Jean Fernel (1497–1558) was one of the foremost medical writers of the sixteenth century. Sabuco might have found him particularly interesting because of his innovative use of Platonic ideas in medicine. Sabuco may especially have been interested in Fernel’s discussion of the issue of the location of the senses (whether in the brain or in the “instruments,” i.e., eyes, nose, etc.). Fernel’s opinion on this point was, unconventionally, that the senses are located in the brain, not in the instruments, or rather, more precisely, that sensation derives from the meninges, while motion derives from the brain, as shown by the fact that “the body of the brain is agitated by constant movement but possesses no sense of touch; on the other hand the meninges do, though they are motionless, as we have observed by touching [them] when the skull has been opened by an injury” (The Physiologia of Jean Fernel, trans. and annot. John M. Forrester [Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2003], bk 5, chap.

130 The True Medicine marrow does not feel anything, even if it is cut. All the motions and actions start and end up in the brain’s marrow; but if the marrow was endowed with sensation passive, “passively,” it would need some other principle through which to communicate its sensation, in which case this other—and not the marrow—would be the true principle. The marrow is like the sun, which vivifies everything but cannot vivify its own self. Nor, by the same token, can either the intellect, understanding a “species,” or the will, loathing the same “species,” move from their place in the brain to the heart.111 And even if they could (which is impossible), where could they put the loathed “species?” Unless, Mr. Doctor, you imagine it carved in a seal and imprinted on the flesh of the heart, so that, as you claim, the feeling of anger and the boiling of blood that accompanies it,112 according to you, would be located in the heart. It is clear, however, that anger is in the brain and not in the heart, as will be proved below. Moreover, after a moment or a day or a month, the same “species” is again in the brain through the imaginative faculty, and it does almost the same damage; likewise when people remember an injury, as it smarted then it smarts now.113 On seeing the cause of anger, the face turns pale, one starts shaking all over, and the heart’s pulse is altered, and when it is felt in the pulse it is already the fourth effect 10, p. 353). In the same context Fernel also writes that “the body of the brain [the marrow] is devoid of sensation, and so is the marrow in the spine or nerves” (353)—the argument that Sabuco is referring to here. However, Fernel’s argument on this issue was summarized and discussed by Valles, Controversiae, lib. 2, cap. 26, 47v–48r (Controversias, 196–200)—a book with which Sabuco was familiar. So this reference does not mean that Sabuco actually read Fernel. Valles did not refer to Fernel’s Physiologia (1567) but to an earlier version, De naturali parte medicinae (1542), lib. 6, cap. 10. For an overview of Fernel’s role in Renaissance medicine, see John Henry and John M. Forrester, Introduction, in The Physiologia of Jean Fernel, 1–8. 111. The words al corazon (to the heart) were censored by the Inquisition (see Sabuco, Obras, 267). 112. Galen defined anger as a “blazing of heat in the heart”: “ira non simpliciter augmentum, sed veluti fervor est caloris in corde” (De sanitate tuenda, lib. 2, cap. 9, in Opera, 6.138). See also De causis morborum, cap. 2 (ibidem, 7.4): “Ira quae fervor quidam est caloris cor obsidentis ob motum immoderatum, qui per totum corpus nonnunquam diffusus febrem accendit.” On Sabuco’s view of anger see below, 186–88. 113. Literally: it was here then, and it is here now (luego aqui estuvo, y aqui se està).

The True Medicine 131 of the primary cause. What we have said of the feelings of anger and sorrow is true also of all the other feelings. Your boiled blood—Mr. Doctor—is good for making sausages, but not for explaining anger. What falls down turns into humor (as has been said) and proceeds to do damage. Humors are not generated in the liver, because in the liver only nature-mother performs her office—nature-mother, who cannot make mistakes and operates without free will and without the motions of the soul, differently from the brain. It is actually the other way round:114 nature-mother provided the liver with a receptacle for the bad choler, which the liver receives from its harmful element (which is the gall) in order to collect there the bad stuff, so that the individual does not perish. It is indeed nature’s custom, for the preservation of the individual, to provide many receptacles where the harmful humor can be kept apart and contained, such as plague-buboes, cysts, cancers, wens, lumps, stones, etc. Nature does the same also in plants and fruits on the tree: so if a melon or citron is damaged when it is still on the tree, nature collects and contains the bruised part and turns it into a lump, so that it stays inert in that place without spoiling the rest of the fruit, and later, when the fruit is ripe, only that part is bitter while the rest of the fruit is preserved healthy and undamaged. Therefore, Mr. Doctor, you can believe this truth: Radix, & officina, boni, & mali succi est cerebrum: “The root and workshop of all humors, good and bad, is the brain.” Here you’ll see, Mr. Doctor, how ridiculous it is to say that fever spreads by contact, the heated part transmitting heat to the one next to it, and that to another one, and so on and so forth until the whole body is heated, according to your theory of fever. We have seen before that it is not so; rather, we have seen that nature does the opposite.115 It happens in that way only when the affected body part burns so much from the putrefaction of the great quantity of humor fallen from the brain that the pain makes it even weaker: then that body part burns like fire, and sets also the neighboring parts on fire. But the temperature there is due only to 114. Far from causing the fall of damaging humor, as the brain does, the liver has been endowed by nature-mother with a receptacle, the gall-bladder, where the harmful humor, the gall, is kept separated and contained, so that it cannot spread to the other body parts. 115. Nature tries to contain the harmful humor, so that it does not spread to the neighboring parts.

132 The True Medicine the humor that keeps falling from the brain through the nape of the neck, or spinal marrow, because the brain keeps being weakened by the pain. The part of the humor that goes to the heart and liver causes the temperature, while the part of the humor that goes to the part that hurts causes the swelling and heat of that part. Such swelling and heat can be due either to the motion of the humor and the narrowness of the part, or to the circumstance of the falling humor being choler.116 If the part goes into putrefaction, it burns like fire. All of this the brain perceives and cries about, and would like to remedy, just like the prince of a house would like to help his servants; so the brain sends a remedy to the part, but this remedy does even more damage. Eating and feeding by means of this root (the brain) derive from nature­-stepmother—hence these imperfections. If man fed always from the navel, the original root, according to the rule of naturemother and wise wet nurse, and not according to the brain’s arbitrary will and taste, he would not fall into so many illnesses. Thus plants do not get sick so often, because they feed from their root following the rule of nature and not their arbitrary will. Therefore it is clear that the great quantity of various raw juices and flavors that the brain takes in when food and drink first enter the mouth are the main cause of diseases and of the decrements of the sensitive soul, because naturemother, without interference of man’s arbitrary will, does not err, nor does she err in the liver. From the evidence, reasons and authorities I have already mentioned, it is clear that when nutrition is performed by nature-mother, the increments are much smaller.117 This is shown also by the waxing and waning of the moon, by the growth of plants and of the three round-shaped things118 that increase and decrease with the moon:119—as can be seen in oysters, clams and sea-shells, 116. Choler is a hot humor. 117. Nutrition performed by nature-mother leads to smaller increment, or growth, but brings with it no risk of decrement. 118. Marginal note: Plin. lib. 2 c. 99. 119. See Pliny, NH, II. cii. 221 (Loeb 1.349): “shells increase in size as the moon waxes.” As mentioned in Coloquio del conocimiento, 68, the three round-shaped things are: oysters and clams, the cat’s eye, and the “round spot” (mancha redonda) of the panther, which are supposed to grow and shrink with the moon. But elsewhere in the Coloquio, on 97, the three things are said to be: the pupil of the cat’s eye, the round spot of the panther, and the stone

The True Medicine 133 in every vegetable root, and in what is observed by surgeons [in deep wounds of the head], namely, that the brain swells out of the skull with the full moon.120 It is also shown by the marrow and by the tides of seas and rivers. And if the brain follows necessarily the movement of the moon in waxing, it must also follow the moon in waning, and the same is true also for all the other kinds of increments. It is clear then that the harmful humor is generated by these decrements by motion (namely, by the falling down of what used to go up) and that from this humor derive all diseases, because of the contrast between the coldness of this humor and the heat of the stomach and of the other parts. That death can be caused by these minor decrements or by the major decrement of the brain is proved and shown clearly by people dying of foul smells, as happens for instance to latrine cleaners, and by the case of the people called Astomi,121 who can die because of bad odors,122 and also by sudden death due to anger, and to the “species” of an abhorred thing. It is clear that these deaths are not caused by ametry of the humors, as will be proved later on. The four elements gave to man and to every vegetable form only the natural mixed substance, which is a fifth thing, resulting

called senites (selenites?). On the stone called selenites, supposed to grow and shrink with the moon see Laguna, Dioscorides, lib. 5, cap. 116, p. 563. 120. This may be a reference to Gabriele Falloppio, De ulceribus (1563), where Falloppio said that he had observed in dissection that the skull and brain swell more in the full moon than in the waning moon: “Debetis scire, quod in pleniluniis, quando luna lucet tota nocte, calvaria tota turgeat & humiditate referta sit: quando autem non est plenilunium, calvaria non prorsus expletur à cerebro, sed adest spatium aliquod, & vasa, quae colligant, sunt aliquantulum distracta. Et hoc sciatis esse verissimum, quod ego in dissectionibus observavi” (I quote from the text of De ulceribus in appendix to G. Falloppio, Opera omnia [Frankfurt: apud haeredes Andreae Wechelii, 1600], 60). But Sabuco may also have got this notion from hearsay. Waithe, Vintró, and Zorita understand it metaphorically and translate: “…during Full Moon, people go ‘out of their gourds.’” But Sabuco is referring specifically to “la evidencia de los Cirujanos, que en plenilunio se sale del casco.” Sabuco refers to the same phenomenon several times later in the text: see below, 139, 143, 144, 215. 121. Marginal note: Plin. lib. 7. c. 2. 122. See Pliny, NH, VII. ii. 24–26 (Loeb, 2.523) : “the Astomi tribe , that has no mouth […] and live only on the air they breathe and the scent they inhale through their nostrils […] can easily be killed by a rather stronger odor than usual.”

134 The True Medicine from the mixture of the elements.123 Moon and Sun, mother and father, gave man his qualities. His two movements man took instead from the stars and the heavens:124 by the two movements I mean the natural, intrinsic movement, which has only one major increment and decrement, and is subject only to two adverse forces, the passing of time and the emission of semen; and the extrinsic movement, which occurs daily, and is subject to very many adverse forces. There is in man a flavor of everything in the world, and man took something from everything, not only from the four elements, so that it would be more perfect, because all that is more perfect works more perfectly. Aristotle said: it is necessary that this world be in close contact with the motions of the heavens, so that all its virtue may be ruled from 123. Conventionally, the four elements were considered to be earth, water, air, and fire. But later in the book Sabuco argues that there are in fact only two elements, earth and water, because air and fire are just transformations of water, in a rarefied and even more rarefied form. See Vera philosophia de natura mistorum, in Sabuco, Obras, 386 : “Ad has generationes materiam praestant spherae duae posteriores, scilicet, terra, & aqua, aer enim eius filius aqua rarefacta est, aether rarior coelum rarissima, bene dixit, qui omnia duo esse dixit, scilicet, terram, & aquam.” “The last two spheres, namely, earth and water, provide the matter for these generations. Air, son of the water, is in fact rarefied water; the ether is even more rarefied water, and the heaven is water in its most rarefied form. Well spoke he who said that all things are made of just two elements, namely, earth and water.” Revising the conventional theory of the four elements, Sabuco especially denies that there is such an element as fire: “The beginning of the mistake was to assert that air is hot and humid, to oppose it to earth, and to conjecture (divinare) a sphere of fire, to oppose it to water… In the world, there is no such thing as a sphere of fire.” (Vera philosophia de natura mistorum, in Sabuco, Obras, 392). Also Girolamo Cardano had removed fire from the number of the elements. See Nancy G. Siraisi, The Clock and the Mirror. Girolamo Cardano and Renaissance Medicine (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 63; and Alfonso Ingegno, Saggio sulla filosofia di Cardano (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1980), 223–32. In the early seventeenth century, the existence of only two elements, earth and water, was argued by some anti-Aristotelian authors, for instance in the heterodox theses by Antoine de Villon and Étienne de Clave censored by the Sorbonne and suppressed by the Parlement of Paris in 1624. See Didier Kahn, “Entre atomisme, alchimie et théologie : la réception des thèses d’Antoine de Villon et Étienne de Clave contre Aristote, Paracelse et les ‘cabalistes’ (24–25 août 1624),” Annals of Science (58) 2001, 241–86 (see 250, from the text of the IX thesis : “Or ce Monde sublunaire est composé seulement de deux Elemens comme des parties integrantes, sçavoir de Terre et d’Eau; car l’aire ne differe point essenciellement de l’eau”). On Sabuco’s theory of the elements see above, Introduction, 50–51. 124. Marginal note: Man has an intrinsic (propio) and an extrinsic (violento) movement.

The True Medicine 135 there.125 It is clear that the maker of nature did not command the generation of the mixed forms only to the elements (which are low both in place and in substance) but also to all the stars, the sun and the moon, the planets and the heavens. Thus man has a flavor also of the heavenly bodies, and like them has two movements, intrinsic and extrinsic,126 and the moisture in his root rises and falls, and it can pour down, like rain in the macrocosm, which is the moisture or milk of the moon. Thus some people, when they are ill, say that it rains, although it is fair weather, because their brain is raining and dripping. So it is clear that man is always in motion, this motion being both intrinsic and extrinsic:127 he increases and decreases in a natural way with the major intrinsic motion, and in an accidental way with the minor extrinsic motions. In this respect man follows and imitates the sun and the moon, and for this reason man is never the same,128 and cannot be contained in one being, just as we cannot dip twice into the same water of a running river.129 Man has a flavor of everything in the world, not just of the elements, because from water up to the heavens everything is in constant motion.130 Water and air go rotating 125. The reference is probably to Aristotle, On the cosmos, 397a (see Aristotle, On Sophistical refutations; On Coming-to-be and passing away; On the Cosmos, trans. D. J. Furley [Cambridge, MA: Harvard Universitiy Press, 1955], Loeb Classical Library, 381–83). Sabuco, however, is not quoting but summarizing the passage from Aristotle. 126. propio y violento. 127. natural y violento. 128. Marginal note: Plato in Theeteo. 129. See Plato, Theaetetus, trans. Harold North Fowler (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977), Loeb, 7.149; see also 43: “Nothing whatever is one …but it is out of movement and motion and mixture with one another that all things become which we wrongly say ‘are’—wrongly because nothing ever is, but is always becoming.” Theaetetus is the Platonic dialogue in which Socrates expounds the notion that all things are always in some kind of motion or flux, and that nothing is in itself unvaryingly one. In the Coloquio del conocimiento de si mismo, 132, Sabuco quotes the Theaetetus to the same purpose. 130. Sabuco shares the Aristotelian and medieval world view in which the universe was imagined as made of concentric spheres, the earth, the heaviest element being immobile at the center, surrounded first by the sphere of water, than the sphere of air, then that of fire, followed by the ten heavens, plus the final empyreum. All these spheres, except the first (the earth) and the last, the empyreum, were thought to be constantly moving. See Coloquio en que se trata de la compostura del mundo, come està, 172–76. Though basically sharing this traditional view, Sabuco argues that air and fire are just rarefied water. On Sabuco’s cosmol-

136 The True Medicine above the earth. The clouds rotate with the air, and also fire, which is more rarefied air, is always rotating above the sphere that they called “fire,”131 going from east to west, without ever standing still; and so also the heavens, with their natural lightness, are always moving in a circle. God gave them this nature, task and office, and commanded them to move from east to west, and this command will last forever, just as in a well-regulated household, where the master is wise, each servant does his appointed task from the time he first received his orders, without the drawback of the master having to repeat his instructions every day. Thus once and for all, at the time of creation, the Creator assigned to all the nature of the universe the office and task that it must perform, as a whole and in its parts, and so this task is done. Therefore nature is constantly in motion, and of its mixed parts only the first and the last spheres are immobile, because they were ordered to be so, as it was necessary for the quiet of the Creator and of the eternal spirits, as well as for the quiet of the animals on earth. Man therefore took the mixed substance from the elements, while from the sun, the moon, all the stars and the heavens he took conditions, nature and motions, his two movements corresponding to the two kinds of increments, natural or intrinsic and accidental or extrinsic. The natural and intrinsic movement, as we said, has only two adverse forces, which cause its major decrement, namely, the passing of time and the emission of semen. Semen is the end of naturestepmother, which gives completion, and the principle of naturemother, which gives origin.132 Nature-mother gives this principle to her sister, nature-stepmother, so that the latter may put it into shape for the preservation of the species, which she cannot accomplish by herself. And nature-mother gives this principle to nature-stepmother to her cost and detriment, paying back in better coin, with this principle of semen, what she receives from the other. The two natures in fact help each other: nature-stepmother aids nature-mother by giving her another principle of form, because that of nature-mother ogy and astronomical interests, see Fernando Rodríguez de la Torre, “Sabuco y la cometa de 1572,” Al-Basit 20 (Feb. 1987), 5–36. 131. Sabuco believes that fire is not a specific element, but in fact only rarefied air. See above, n123. 132. Nature-stepmother is called perficiente and nature-mother is called principiante.

The True Medicine 137 is soon exhausted. What she gives her over and over, to pay her back abundantly at her own cost, is a defective principle of mere matter, so that nature-mother may turn it into a perfect principle with form. And thus they help each other by exchanging different principles— one principle that is the only imperfection in man, and another perfect principle, whereby man understands all the nature of the universe. Nature-stepmother contributes her part so that the embryo reaches the vegetative state,133 and the maker and nurturer of nature gives man form and utmost perfection by sending the soul from heaven. The soul also has and keeps the properties and conditions of its origin and cause, and it has the flavor of a divine and heavenly thing. It keeps a flavor of [the divine] untiring intellect, pure and eternal act, and of the [divine] reason and will, subtle, light, impassible, of infinite capacity and forethought of the future. The soul is the most perfect principle that nature-mother gives to her sister and companion, nature-stepmother, which gives completion, thanks to the good help from the Lord (the first cause) and the maker of these two natures. The second principle is that of animals: in some it is proportionally more perfect, in others less perfect, as in those that are born from eggs. The lioness bears a raw and lifeless piece of flesh, and by sniffing it and roaring over it she finishes the process of giving it life. The she-bear also generates raw matter, and by licking it and rubbing it with her own body and heat she gives it full life.134 Eggs do not receive life from the principle of nature-mother, but instead from nature-stepmother, thanks to the heat of the sun or of the animal that gave them birth. The crocodile bears eggs,135 although it is a large animal, and it gives them life with its own heat.136 Fish bear eggs, which are given life by the fish’s own heat in the gills137 or by the heat of the sun. The torpedo fish138 bears

133. El ser de planta: the condition of a plant, endowed with the vegetative soul. 134. See Pliny, NH, VIII.liv.126 (Loeb, 3.91). 135. Marginal note: Plin. Lib. 8 c. 36. 136. See Pliny, NH, VIII.xxxvii.89 (Loeb, 3.67). 137. gangallas: or agallas, gills. 138. Marginal note: Plin. Lib. 9. C. 51.

138 The True Medicine eggs in one pouch and then puts them into another pouch, and there they receive life.139 Animals’ lives last in proportion to the moisture and the amount of semen they originally received, together with life, from nature-mother. Thus some live for a long time and generate offspring many times, others live for a short time, and others for an even shorter time, down to some animals and plants that live only one day and reproduce only once. There are many small animals and worms that live no more than one increment of the sun:140 they are born when the sun gets closer and die when it moves farther [from the earth], and they emit their seed only once, and soon their life is over. Such is the case with the silkworm, the caterpillar, the green-spotted worms, the locust, which deposit their seed, hidden, for the next increment of the sun. Similarly plants vary according to their moisture. Many herbs last only for one increment of the sun and cast their seed once, such as the melon, the cucumber, the pumpkin, the lettuce and others. Others last two summers, others three, and so forth. Trees also vary similarly. There are trees in the Indies that bear fruit and seed only once and then die. Thus seed and time are related and are the two adverse forces that by themselves, as we have already mentioned, bring to an end the course of nature-mother, in the absence of extrinsic decrements due to nature-stepmother. These extrinsic decrements are more effective and dangerous in the being that receives at birth from nature-mother the greatest amount of moisture, as is the case with man. This moisture of nature-mother, with its course of intrinsic motion, is the ladder and foundation over which move the minor decrements mentioned in the Coloquio.141 From all this it can clearly be seen that Hippocrates was wrong, and so were all those who said: Calor nos interimit qui corpora produxit: “The same heat that generated the bodies also kills us.”142 139. Torpedo: the electric ray. See Pliny, NH, IX.lxxv.165 (Loeb, 3.275): “The electric ray … produces exceedingly small eggs inside it, shifting them to another part of the womb and emitting them there.” 140. That is, one year. 141. Cf. Coloquio del conocimiento, 58–90. 142. Sabuco is quoting Hippocrates (second-hand, in all likelihood) from Valles, Controversiae, lib. 6, cap. 1, 124v (Controversias, 348) where Valles reports that Galen, in De marcore,

The True Medicine 139 He should have said, speaking peculiariter, “specifically,” of man: the soul gave us life, the same soul kills us by means of its passions. And speaking of animal and plant he should have said: moisture and heat give life, coldness and dryness bring death. Or he should have said: time and seed give life, time and seed take it away. All this means that it is not heat that consumes the radical moisture. The truth is that heat does not consume the original but only the adventitious moisture. The loss of adventitious moisture is restored by drinking and eating. The radical moisture instead is affected intrinsically only by the passing of time and the emission of semen, and only accidentally by the other decrements. Since the seat of the radical moisture is especially the brain, the brain also goes through increments and decrements. Natural death is when the brain reaches the point of maximum coldness and dryness. Accidental death is when the brain’s cold humor falls down like a downpour of rain, vanquishing and extinguishing the heat of the kitchen.143 But the brain does not feel these movements of increment and decrement, just as you do not feel yourself grow, and as you are not aware of your own madness. One can see with one’s own eyes that the brain swells out of the skull during the full moon, and goes down during the new moon. But the brain cannot perceive this, for the reasons already mentioned. The brain follows the moon, and its humor goes up and down with the moon, from which it received moisture and coldness. This moisture goes up and down, and in the form of catarrh it pours down like rain, usually following the moon. So vapors fall down, and it rains more heavily when the moon is waning, while vapors rise when the moon is waxing. Doctor: You say, Mr. Antonio, that the intrinsic motion of the radical moisture has only two adverse forces which bring it to an end, namely, the passing of time and the emission of seed. I’d like you to explain to me which are the necessary movements144 of time. cap. 3, criticized the opinion of Hippocrates to the effect that “calor nos occidit qui corpora produxit” (the same heat that generated the bodies also kills us), arguing in fact that this was never said by Hippocrates himself. See Galen, De marcore liber, in Opera, 7. 675–76. The heat referred to here is, of course, the calidum innatum, the innate heat that was thought to be the basic principle of life, together with the radical moisture. 143. The kitchen being the stomach. 144. Los forzosos.

140 The True Medicine Antonio:145 The first increment and decrement of time is that which the sun makes daily in twenty-four hours with extrinsic motion, rising and setting in this fashion. The increment is the presence of the sun, the decrement is its absence when the earth is in darkness, all of which happens in twenty-four hours. There are plants and animals that live but one day; in one day their life begins and ends. The second increment and decrement of time is that of the moon, which is completed in thirty days. The third is that of the sun, which takes one year across the zodiac, coming near to the earth and moving away from it. The increment is the sun’s presence and the heat, the decrement is its absence and the cold, as we have already said. The fourth is that of the planets, which complete their course in many years. Every living thing’s intrinsic and fundamental course of life is comprised within these movements of time and the movement of seed. The emission of seed is like pulling out a man from another man, an animal or many animals from another animal, a plant or many plants from another plant. It is like moving forward or going up a step of the ladder of one’s own life, and getting closer to its end, and for this reason every animal grows sad,146 because every day that increment elapses that the sun makes in the twenty-four hours. In man and in animals it is in this way. By night the moisture and cold from the moon grow, and the moon prevails, and thus man and animals sleep at night and recover their moisture. As Virgil says: Iam nox humida coelo praecipitat suadent que cadentia sydera somnos.147 By day, in the sun’s presence, heat and dryness grow, and when we are awake, moisture and coldness decrease. These decrements are repaired each day: the loss of moisture is repaired from the inside, per se, with food, drink and sleep, and from the outside with the fresh air and a humid place. Sleep is a way to correct the dryness caused by the vigil in the brain. Heat is restored and 145. Marginal note: Necessary decrements of time. 146. Presumably, at nightfall. 147. Aeneid 2.8–9: Et iam nox umida caelo praecipitat suadentque cadentia sidera somnos (“Now, too, dewy night is speeding from the sky and the setting stars invite to sleep.” trans. H. Rushton Fairclough, Loeb Classical Library [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978], 1.295).

The True Medicine 141 reintensified, per se, with the moistness of the morning and the body’s movement in walking, and accidentally148 with food and drink, if they are appropriate in quantity and quality, in which case the stomach’s heat clasps them tight, and rubbing against them like the rays of the sun rub against a solid object, gains more strength and increases (per accidens: “accidentally”149). And the pulse will be stronger in the middle of the day than in the middle of the night. Fire (I mean the heat of the sun)150 and air did not enter into the mixing of the bodily substance as much as earth and water did (the latter two making up the bulk of the body). And though air and fire became part of the bodily mixture, some of each kept its own form without mixing in man. Such is the case of the spirits of the brain and heart, and of the stomach’s heat, which surrounds the aliment, and of the heat and light of the eyes. In these parts, in man as in every living being, air and fire almost kept their original form as air and as the vital, benevolent flame of the sun (and not of earthly fire). When nature has been restored, the night’s moisture together with sleep restores also the brain’s spirits, the loss of which is made up with a yawn (yawning is to recoup the spirits that have diminished there). Thus people yawn after sleep or after any little emotion. These spirits of the brain are the first to fall down, since they are very easy to move: it suffices to see somebody else yawning. The spirits of the heart are preserved with the air constantly breathed in. The inflowing151 heat of the stomach is preserved thanks to the resistance opposed to it by the brain’s coldness, and it is restored in the same way and reintensified by being surrounded by cold. Thus the day is hot and dry, the night is moist and cold. The night brings decrement, the day brings increment, and for this reason in the morning, with the sun, the sick improve, whereas with the decrement in the night they get worse. For the same reason more people die during the night than during the day, pain gets worse, and the pulses

148. Meaning here: from the outside. 149. As in n148 above. 150. See above, n123: Sabuco believes that fire is not an element in itself, being very rarefied water. 151. Influente: see above, n17.

142 The True Medicine are unsteady.152 Pliny says, quoting Aristotle, that in the Gallic Ocean it happens regularly, as it has been observed, that all the sick die during the sea’s decrement, or low tide.153 The increment and decrement of the moon has great influence, although man does not feel it. Pliny154 says that monkeys feel the absence of the moon and get sad,155 and so do all animals whose brain rises and falls with the moon, as stated by Avicenna. The same holds for every moist substance, as has been said more amply above, to which I shall refer. Avicenna and his commentators say that in treating the sick one should not use evacuation156 either at the beginning or at the end of the lunar month but only in the middle, because the effervescent humors grow with the waxing of the moon and so grow the brain in the skull and the water in the rivers and sea. Galen says that the 152. Los pulsos se varian. Waithe, Vintró, and Zorita translate: “heartbeats are irregular” (New Philosophy of Human Nature, 204). This is, in my opinion, anachronistic and misleading, because nowhere in the text does Sabuco connect the pulse with heartbeat, nor did such a connection exist in Galenic medicine, where the pulse was related first of all to the motion of the arteries themselves. Galen’s understanding of pulsation was very different from ours. As explained by Vivian Nutton, “for him, the heart and the artery contracted simultaneously, and arterial expansion and contraction were two separate and active movements. In contraction, sooty superfluities were forcibly expelled; in expansion, atmospheric air was taken in to cool and, mixing with blood in the heart, to generate vital pneuma or spirit. This vital spirit was largely responsible for creating and maintaining the pulsative faculty which existed within the actual coats of the arteries” (“Roman Medicine, 250 BC to AD 200,” in Lawrence I. Conrad, Michael Neve, Vivian Nutton, Roy Porter, Andrew Wear, The Western Medical Tradition, 800 BC to AD 1800 [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995], 68–69). So what was inferred from the pulse, for the purpose of diagnosis, was first of all the activity of the vital spirits, not of the heart. Sabuco also understands the pulse as indicating the activity of the spirits: see below, n175. 153. See Pliny, NH, II.ci.220 (Loeb, 2.349): “To this (…) Aristotle adds that no animal dies except when the tide is ebbing. This has been widely noticed in the Gallic Ocean, and has been found to hold good at all events in the case of man”. 154. Marginal note: Lib. 2. c. 98. 155. Pliny does not talk about the effect of the moon on apes in the place cited by Sabuco (n154 above), but at VIII.lxxx.215 (Loeb, 3.151): “[apes] are depressed by the moon waning and worship the new moon with delight.” 156. Evacuation: all remedies aimed at clearing out the morbid humors from the body, usually by bloodletting but also vomit, purgation, etc.

The True Medicine 143 movement of the moon effects great changes in all the humors,157 which is also shown by the experiences158 noticed by Avicenna, which are the following. The marrow grows inside the bones with the waxing of the moon, and it goes down with the moon’s waning. Rivers and seas swell and rise when the moon waxes, whereas they go down when the moon wanes. And it was said: Luna absorvet nobis medulas: “The moon sucks up our marrow.” Hence Avicenna’s statement that one should not draw blood159 during the new moon, because at that time the humors are at low ebb, and they are not ebullient.160 His commentators say that from the beginning to the middle of the lunar month both the strength of the sick person and the humors grow, whereas from the middle to the end they go down. Others observe 157. See Galen, De diebus decretoriis, lib. 3, in Opera, 9.900–13: Sabuco quotes from Valles, lib. 7, cap. 18: “An ad mittendum sanguinem et expurgandum cavere oporteat concursus et oppositions astrorum” (“Whether in order to let blood or administer purgation it is advisable to consider the conjunction and opposition of the stars”). Valles summarized Galen’s view in these very words: “Constat vero, dicente Gale. lib. De diebus decretoriis 3, lunae motum magnas in humoribus omnibus mutationes facere” (156v : Controversias, 385). 158. Experimentos: the word is used here in the medieval sense of experimentum as observation unrelated to doctrine, or not capable of philosophical explanation by final causes: mere experience. See Jole Agrimi and Chiara Crisciani, “Per una ricerca su experimentumexperimenta: riflessione epistemologica e tradizione medica (secc. XIII–­XV)” in Presenza del lessico greco e latino nelle lingue contemporanee, ed. Pietro Janni and Innocenzo Mazzini (Macerata: Pubblicazioni della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia dell’Università degli Studi di Macerata, 1990), 9–49. 159. Literally: one should not use evacuation (no se haga entonces evacuacion). 160. See Avicenna, Liber Canonis, lib. 1, fen 4, cap. 21, De ventosis (facsimile of 1507 Venice edition, Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1964, 77r): “Quidam autem praecipiunt ut ventose in principio mensis non apponantur quoniam humores nondum amoti fuerunt neque ebullierunt: neque in fine mensis quoniam humores tunc sunt minuti: sed in medio mensis quoniam humores sunt ebullientes, et in sui augmento luminis in corpore lune augmentum sequentes: et augmentatur cerebrum in craneis et aqua in fluminibus accessiones et recessiones habentibus.” (“Some prescribe that one should not apply cupping-glasses either at the beginning of the month, because the humors have not yet been discharged and have not effervesced , nor at the end of the month, when the humors are reduced, but in the middle of the month because then the humors are in an effervescent state, and grow following the increment of the moon’s body and light, and at that time also the brain grows in the skull, and so does the water in rivers that have high and low tides”). Valles discusses this issue in lib. 7, cap. 18, 156v (Controversias, 384–85) saying that Avicenna was talking only about cupping and his commentators extended this rule to all evacuations.

144 The True Medicine that in medical treatment one should pay attention not only to the time of conjunction of moon and sun (the new moon) but also to their time of opposition (the full moon),161 arguing that the full moon makes the humors swell and grow. All speak by guesswork, without truly understanding the crux of the matter as to the increments and decrements. These and all the other errors of medicine derived from failing to recognize the principle, first workshop, and general cause of the humors, which is the brain, from which the humors fall, causing all diseases, with the many varying circumstances already mentioned. So it should be noted that in healthy people the brain grows and takes more juice from the food while the moon is waxing, and it swells out of the skull in those who are convalescing from an open wound [in the head],162 whereas with the waning moon it goes down. It is ocular evidence,163 and the same should be kept in mind for all increments. Let us first understand what happens in the healthy, and soon thereafter we’ll see how things go in the sick. In the healthy, who do not have any of the said four kinds of decrements of nature-stepmother,164 the brain’s marrow grows with much juice, which it takes and gives. It takes the raw juice as it enters its first cavity—the mouth—and it takes the cooked juice from the second cavity—the stomach—where it is cooked by its servants; and it turns this juice into chyle, or white blood, just as the liver makes red blood.165 Of this white juice, the brain and the pia mater send forth a great part, especially during sleep, through the skull and its commissures and through the hollow pores of the skin. The juice 161. Conjuncion, opposicion: astronomical terms indicating the relative position of two heavenly bodies as viewed from the earth. Conjunction referred to sun and moon occupying the same position, and was equivalent to the new moon. Opposition referred to sun and moon being in opposite positions from each other, and was equivalent to the full moon. 162. See above, n120. Waithe, Vintró and Zorita misunderstand the point: “Convalescents and the wounded become lunatics then” (New Philosophy of Human Nature, 205). 163. Esta visto al ojo: literally, it is visible to the eye. 164. Natura perficiente, i.e., nature that gives completion, previously identified as naturestepmother. 165. In Galenic medicine the liver was the organ that turned chyle into blood. Sabuco does not question this view.

The True Medicine 145 starts at the top of the head and spreads through all the skin, which is a nerve that covers the whole body.166 The vegetative faculty operates principally through the skin, as one can see from the fact that a broken branch does not wither if part of its bark is undamaged, and that a tree keeps living and bearing fruit, even though its trunk is rotten and hollow, if part of its bark is still in good condition. It can be seen also in a cut finger that heals faster if the skin, or part of it, is undamaged. In all large animals there is a white flesh next to the skin, which is called fat, as for instance in the pig. Also, the brain sends this white juice through all the nerves, anterior and posterior, thus feeding all the nerves, the bones and marrows, big and small, and all the white parts of the body. This juice or white blood is what Avicenna discovered and called “the four moistures.”167 This white juice is the principal matter, from which grow all the body parts that are called “white,” as well as the red flesh. But in this latter case it shares the work with the blood, the blood being the second matter, that ministers to the first and principal matter by humidifying and warming the white juice, the nerves and the whole body with the veins, which are like the streams and sprinklers in a garden. The white juice is more active and formative than the blood, and the blood serves it as second matter, as has already been said. From this white juice, together with the blood, is formed the red flesh (that is, the muscles) from inside the nerves: the nerve opens up, stretches, and turns into a membrane, enveloping and holding within itself the muscle or red flesh. Avicenna called this juice, or white blood, “the four moistures,” but he did not quite understand what it really is. He called 166. See above, n35. Waithe, Vintró and Zorita miss the point: “From [the vertex] it is distributed to the rest of the body epidermis through a nervous system that pervades the entire body” (New Philosophy of Human Nature, 205). 167. On the four moistures see Avicenna, Liber Canonis, Fen 1, cap. 1: De Humoribus, f. 4v. Avicenna calls them “second moistures” in the sense of second humors, the first humors being blood, phlegm, yellow choler, and black choler or melancholy. According to Avicenna, the second moistures were also four in kind, and they had mainly a nutritive function. This is why they were also called alimentary humors. See for instance T. Johnson’s translation of Ambroise Paré, Works, 1678, I.vi.9: “The Arabians have mentioned four other humors which they term Alimentary” (OED).

146 The True Medicine one moisture ros or “dew,” another cambium, etc.168 This white juice is to the body what the earth is to plants, and, keeping to the same simile, the blood is like irrigation, the heart’s heat is like the sun, breathing is like the air. The best part of this white juice is sent through the spinal marrow—which is the trunk of this tree—to the nerves that originate and branch out from the spinal marrow, and to the seminal vessels. In the seminal vessels the best part of this white blood is cooked again and given the quality of sperm by the kidneys and by the testicles. If sperm is not discharged in coition, it turns into grease, which is the fat part of the tissues. The sensitive and motive faculty does not spread by irradiation, it spreads by means of this white juice, which the ancients ignored, because it is of the same color as the nerve and it is hidden, so that it doesn’t show. We said that when there is no coitus, the white juice that should have turned into semen forms instead a fat tissue on top of the kidneys. But contrariwise if there is much demand of sperm because of frequent coitus, nature stops all the ways that are meant for the increase of the individual, and she provides for the species. One can see this clearly in animals that after much coition become thin and skinny, as you can notice in stallions, cocks, and wild boars, and in men, who end up dying of it. And to fatten the pig or the sow and other animals, people use the expedient of castrating them in order to stop the discharge urged by the testicles, and soon the animals fatten 168. See Avicenna, Liber Canonis, Fen 1, cap. 1: De Humoribus, f. 4v. This is how Avicenna defines the four kinds of “second moistures”: “Una est humor in foraminibus extremitatum parvarum venarum contentus (…) Alia est humor per omnia simplicibus transiens membra sicut ros, qui in nutrimentum converti est aptus: cum corpus nutrimento caret (…) Tertia est humor qui parum ante congelatus est: et est nutrimentum quod in substantia membrorum ex parte complexionis conversum est.(…) Quarta est humor qui est intus in membris simplicibus a principio natitivitatis:per quem partium eorum continuitas existit: cuius principius est ex spermate.” (“The first humor is contained in the openings of the extremities of the small veins (…). The second is a humor that goes through all the body parts like a dew, and it is apt to be converted into nutriment when the body lacks nutriment (…) The third is a humor that had been solid until a while before, and was converted into the substance of the body parts (…) The fourth is a humor that is present in the single body parts since birth, and thanks to which there is continuity of the parts, and it is derived from sperm”). The second humor was called ros, the third was called cambium and the fourth gluten, while the first had no specific name.

The True Medicine 147 up. This happens also in man: if sperm is not emitted, the white juice goes the other way and the individual grows fat. It is good for a laugh to say that sperm and milk are red blood, which becomes white in the vessels.169 Do not marvel, Mr. Doctor, at what I have told you of this white blood and its great workings, since you can see what it accomplishes in the uterus of the female, where it makes a whole new animal with the help of the menstrual blood that gives it sustenance and irrigation. It is surely more to make a new body from scratch than to further develop one that is already there. Hence I conclude that the brain is the place where semen is generated and made. It is well shown, by analogy, by the structure of many seeds and fruits, such as walnuts, almonds, or peaches, and any other fruit whose seed is safeguarded and protected by many layers of rinds, peels and shells, as you can see in the almond, which has also its own skin, flesh, pericranium and skull; and if it does not have the dura mater, it does at least have the pia mater, and next to it the marrow, and within the marrow the root. All seeds are like this, each in its own way. The other operations done by the increment are described in the dialogue on self ­knowledge.170 So far you have seen, Mr. Doctor, what the increment of this juice, or white chyle, does in a healthy man. It remains for us now to see what the decrement does in the sick man, when the same juice turns unwholesome, which is the following. In health, all that juice or white blood, being suitable, makes the whole body and its parts grow by means of the nerves and with the help of blood. But in sickness that same juice turns bad, unwholesome, and unsuitable, and it goes by the same ways to harm some body part, as has already been said. First the spirits fall, then the watery humor (the two kinds of choler171), then the viscous humor (the phlegm); the latter can be seen in belches, 169. Both the Aristotelian and the Galenic theory of generation argued that semen derived from blood. According to Aristotle, blood was processed and turned into semen in the blood vessels, the testicles playing no significant part in this process. For Galen, in contrast, the transformation of blood into semen started in the blood vessels but was completed in the testicles. In both cases, however, semen was formed from blood. According to Sabuco, in contrast, semen derives from the white juice of the brain. See Introduction, 44. 170. See Coloquio del conocimiento, 44–53. 171. The yellow and the black choler.

148 The True Medicine yellow mucus from the nostrils, foam and sputum from the mouth, tears from the eyes. Depending on the kind of humor that falls and on the place that it harms, the diseases take different names, as has been said. When this happens, the brain wastes away and stops performing its office of root—the office, namely, of taking and giving that juice. Such is the accidental decrement of the brain due to all the said causes and to the other kinds of decrements. I call it “accidental,”172 because the natural and necessary decrements due to the time of the day, the time of the moon, the time of the sun and the planets, can take place without causing appreciable disease; and the same is true of other very small decrements, that do not noticeably cause disease.

Of Critical, or Otherwise Said, Decretory Days173 When the decrements are very strong, and the brain’s decrement is such that the humor falls in enough quantity to cause disease, we will say that if the humor started to fall with the full moon, it will fall in greater quantity the closer it gets to the new moon, if the cause equally perseveres, as for instance in fat people,174 because the waning of the moon tends to promote the falling of the humor. If instead it starts with the new moon, even if the cause is the same, the falling humor 172. violento. 173. In Hippocratic and Galenic medicine, critical or decretory days were those when a “crisis” or turning point of a disease was expected, and on the ground of which a prognosis could be made as to the probable ending of the illness with either recovery or death. Already in antiquity, the concept of critical days was connected with astrology. In the third book of De diebus decretoriis (“On decretory days”), Galen linked the critical days in illness to the motions of the moon. In medieval and early modern astrological medicine, the role of astrological factors in the causation of the critical days was further stressed and elaborated. It was argued that not only were the critical days determined by the phases of the moon and by the position and motion of the planets, but also that therapy (especially the administration of drugs and of bloodletting) should be done only on astrologically propitious times, and therefore required scrupulous attention to the planetary positions. Astrological causation of the critical days was contested by some sixteenth-century physicians, such as Mainardi and Fracastoro. See Anthony Grafton and Nancy G. Siraisi, “Between the Election and My Hopes: Girolamo Cardano and Medical Astrology,” in Secrets of Nature. Astrology and Alchemy in Early Modern Europe, ed. William R. Newman and Anthony Grafton (Boston, MIT Press, 2001), 69–132, especially 87–89. 174. Because fat people have more moisture in their brain.

The True Medicine 149 will be less than with the full moon, because in this case the moon’s waxing does not help the process. If the cause is reduced, the recovery will be proportionally faster in the period from the new to the full moon than in the period from the full to the new moon, in more or less measure according to circumstances. This influence of the moon explains what is called the “crisis” of disease, which is another concept that is confused and obscure in your medicine. The crises are due to the quarters of the moon; the two quarters that are most influential are the one that ends up with the full moon, which is conducive to health, and the one that ends up with the new moon, which instead is conducive to sickness. The other two quarters are of middling influence and significance. So the decrement and diminution of the brain correspond to an increment and growth of the humor in the affected part where the humor settled, and consequently of disease. Conversely, the brain’s increment and growth, when it accepts the nutritive juice, will correspond to the lessening of humor and of the disease. These circumstances are signaled by the pulses, because the pulse gives indication of the spirits that fall and go to the heart and from there to the arteries.175 What is said of the moon is true also for the increment and decrement of the sun, both in the day and over the year: the sun also has its four quarters, and its presence, in the course of the day and of the year, has the same effect on health. The four quarters of the sun are the following: the first, and the one most conducive to increment and health, is the period from the vernal equinox to the summer solstice; in contrast, the period from the autumnal equinox to the winter solstice, when the sun moves farther away from us, is more conducive to the brain’s decrement and to the increase of illnesses and humors. The other two quarters are, in their efficacy, in between these two, and just as disease has circumstances that make it more or less strong, so also has health. But these quarters differ from each other more in terms of the cold than of health and disease. We said that in health the main part of the white juice, serving the vegetative faculty, spreads through the skin to the branches, and 175. The text literally says: “The pulses follow these circumstances, because of the spirits that fall [from the brain] and go to the heart, and from there to the arteries.” This suggests that for Sabuco the pulse is related to the movement of the spirits.

150 The True Medicine when it is increasing it goes up through the skull and its commissures. Hence it follows that the vegetative faculty will receive help or hindrance from the state of the skin and cortex, as when the skin gets drier or thicker or harder. In old people, for instance, the drying and hardening of the skin (as well as of the brain, nerves, and membranes) means that they have little vegetative faculty, but in their case this is positive because it helps the process of natural death. Many animals, such as snakes, lizards, cicadas, and others, change their dry skin, and nature provides them with a new, moister one, so that they can grow and be rejuvenated and live longer. The same happens in trees that change their bark, shedding the old and dry one to take on a new, green, and humid bark, as do vines, and for this reason have a long life. Other animals change only the scurf and crust on top of their skin, and others change their hair and horns every year, as is the case with the stag. The stag hides in the thick of the woods and does not come out until it has new horns, its natural weapons. When the stag’s horns are dry and cannot grow any more, they fall off, and the white juice forcibly discharged by the pores of the skull makes new tender horns, which grow. And the stag does not come out of the woods until it feels armed with its new big horns and has tried them, sharpening them on the rocks. You see here, Mr. Doctor, that man is subject to four kinds of movements, increments and decrements, besides the principal one of the radical moisture (pertaining to nature-mother), which is the foundation and ladder upon which go the other four (pertaining to nature-stepmother),176 like the waves of the sea wash over each other but do not impede each other. The four kinds of movement are the following. The first are those peculiar to man and caused by the soul with its feelings, passions and perturbations. These have paramount influence on man’s health and life. The second are those peculiar to all animals, and depending on the sensitive soul, such as pain, bodily fatigue, sleep, respiration, and taste.

176. The two natures are referred to here as natura del principio and natura de perfection, which were identified formerly, respectively, with nature-mother (the one that gives birth) and nature-stepmother (the one that brings the born being to completion).

The True Medicine 151 The third are those proper to all plants, such as good or bad aliment: if a plant’s root is watered with bad or poisonous water or is covered with quicklime or hot ashes, it dies because of the bad aliment, as would an animal or man. The fourth are those that are called procatarcticae, viz. antecedent causes,177 such as a blow or a knife wound, which are common to all—men, animals, and plants—as are also those related to the weather and to the air that surrounds us. The breathed air affects only animals and man and is of great efficacy, but the surrounding air affects all, including plants, by humidifying or drying, warming or cooling through the pores. In plants indeed one can see its efficacy. The air takes on the quality of the place it goes through, and thus if cold comes from the northern region (in which case it is called called Cierço, the north wind), it kills the plants; and if it comes very hot from the eastern region, such as the Solano, or east wind, it makes them wilt. The surrounding air entering through the pores, when very hot or very cold, kills both plants and animals, as can be seen in the month of August or when it snows. The air that is breathed in by animals has more consequences than you may think, Mr. Doctor. Many decrements have to do with it, such as the air-plague, or the diseases one catches from the air such as the contagious plague, which enters the body with the air breathed and causes a decrement that kills, or the diseases one catches from foul smells or lethal fumes.

177. procatarticos: antecedent. Galen distinguished between antecedent (procatarcticae) and preceding causes of disease. He called antecedent those pathological factors external to the body (such as, for instance, very hot or very cold weather) and preceding causes the consequent pathological processes internal to the body, triggered by the antecedent cause. So, for instance, when somebody falls ill as a result of being chilled or overheated, the chill or the heat are the antecedent cause, while the processes triggered inside the body by the chill or heat are the preceding cause of the illness. See Galen, On Antecedent Causes, ed., trans. and intr. R. J. Hankinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), esp. 47–48 of the Introduction, for a clear explanation of these concepts. It is interesting to note that Galen’s De causis procatarcticis was little read and discussed in the Renaissance. However, Francisco Valles quotes it at length in his discussion of causality in medicine in the Controversiae (lib. 4, cap. 3, 81v-87v ), and it is presumably from this book that Sabuco derived the concept and the terminology of causality in medicine.

152 The True Medicine Some diseases also are caught from the air, by contact or through the eyes and the pores, such as the evil eye.178 The air mixed with a good smell sustains the brain, as has been said, because the spirits are nourished by the air. The spirits of the brain take wonderful nourishment from air mixed with a good smell. These spirits sustain the brain when the brain does not accept any juice from food, in the same way that the chameleon lives only on air and the salamander on fire. Also fish and birds, when food is very scarce, sustain themselves on the aliment they breathe. For this reason all the good smells, such as the aroma of fresh bread, of spicy stews, and quince jelly are of great help to the sick who don’t eat. By these increments and decrements you have well understood the nature of man and its movements. Man’s nature is always in motu, “in motion,” either in increment or in decrement, and you have understood by now that increment means health and a good life, whereas decrement means disease and a sad life, in varying degrees; and that ametry is the consequence of the harm done by the brain, whence the humor falls, to the body part where the humor goes, which body part loses its humoral symmetry because of the ametry that reaches it externally179 from the brain. So you should not think that the ametry starts in the affected part, because in fact it starts in the brain.

Question of the Shape of the Brain’s Marrow, Membranes, Skull, Scalp, and Crown of the Head Doctor: What is your opinion, Mr. Antonio, of the shape of the brain’s marrow, and of the cowlick180 or crown of the head? Antonio: I think that those shapes that look like long white worms, one next to the other [which one sees in the brain], are like the fibers and filaments of this root, and every worm-shaped filament corresponds to a nerve, or part of it, just as every nerve corresponds to a part of the body. Every nerve filament has its counterpart in a particle of muscle of red flesh; and of these minute particles of flesh—which, cut crosswise, are like what we call close-shaven 178. Aojar. On Sabuco’s ideas on the evil eye, see Coloquio del conocimiento, 61–62. 179. Violentamente. 180. Remolino: see above, n26.

The True Medicine 153 hair—each has its counterpart in a nerve filament, and is nourished by it with the chyle, or white juice, which the root sends through these nerve filaments. Doctor: But how will this chyle run through the nerves, which are solid, not hollow? Antonio: Nature has more wonders than that: the trunks of the oak-tree, of boxwood, of coral, the bones, the teeth, ivory, are all harder and denser than the nerves, and yet the chyle percolates through them and all are nourished by it and grow, as you know. The bottom of the marrow, called the “cradle,” is like a pool, always full of that white juice. At the moment of death one finds the white juice fallen all the way down to the bottom of the marrow, from which a bit of phlegm is still found hanging.181 The crown of the head, or cowlick,182 I call the staircase of nature, because nature uses this staircase, which has a spiral form, like a shell, to go up and down, as one can clearly see in lightweight things, that go spiraling when they fall to the ground, as also does the wind when it rises. When the wind blows close to the ground, one can see that it makes a great whirl raising dust and light things; this is not due to the clashing of two winds but to the spiral movement the wind makes in rising, as on a spiral staircase. This spiral staircase is used by the birds when they fly up, and by the animals when they lie down, for instance by the dog when it crouches down. It is used by herbs, which have no hard stem to keep them upright. Nature used this spiral-staircase shape in every kind of snails and seashells to cover them with a house from head to tail. So the cowlick, or crown of the head, is the spiral staircase through which the root sends up its white juice to the branches, and this juice spreads through the skin making the branches grow. This juice also makes the white flesh called fat,

181. Phlegm is the last humor to fall and that is why it is found hanging from the mouth of the dead. Cf. Coloquio del conocimiento, 47: “ como se vè cada dia en una cabeza de carnero, y se puede vèr en las de los hombres, despues de muerto, queda colgando un pedazo de fleugma, como gargajo de la medula de los sessos” (“As one sees daily in cattle, and as one can see in men, right after death a piece of phlegm hangs from the head, like a spit of the brain’s marrow”). 182. Remolino. See above, n26.

154 The True Medicine next to the skin, with no admixture of blood, and thus fat differs in its qualities from the red flesh. This white juice is more active and formative than blood. Discharged by the seminal vessels, which are like the shoots in a plant, it engenders offspring, as has been said, while if it stays inside, it increases the bulk of the body. Of this juice, when it is unwholesome and falls through the skin, are born lice, mites, chilblains, boils, goiters, cancers in man, crab lice, ticks, and other animalcules we find in animals. People may die of too many lice, as happened to the emperor Arnulphus,183 to Callisthenes of Olynthus, to Munius the jurist in jail, to Plato, and to the poet Alcman.184 In cadavers, worms come out of the brain and its marrow sooner than out of the flesh (from the spinal marrow, moreover, a certain snake is generated, as Pliny relates). If the brain and spinal marrow are removed immediately from a dead animal, the putrefaction of the flesh will be much slowed down. From the brain’s juice, when it is unwholesome and falls internally, are generated and formed earthworms, worms, and other animals, and in some cases snakes. Pliny185 says that when Pherecydes of Syria died, a great number of snakes came out of his body.186 When Antiochus, king of Syria, the emperor Maximianus, and the queen of Barcelona, Feretrina, died, a great quantity of worms came out of their bodies. This happens according to the variety of that unwholesome humor, which in turn derives from the variety of food. For this reason man can be affected by new and unprecedented diseases, depending on the active power of the falling unwholesome humor. This active power of the humor derives from the difference and variety of food, because 183. Marginal note: Plutarc. 184. See Plutarch, Lives, Sulla XXXVI, trans. Bernadotte Perrin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990–2001), Loeb, 4.44, which lists among people who “were eaten of worms and died: Alcman the lyric poet, Pherecydes the theologian, Callisthenes of Olynthus, who was kept closely imprisoned, and Mucius the jurist”. Cf. Pliny, NH, XI, xxxviii, 114 (Loeb, 3.503), who mentions the poet Alcman as a victim of those “worms” that are born “in the hair of living people, a foul growth that caused the death of the dictator Sulla,” as well as of Alcman. 185. Marginal note: Lib. 7. c. 51. 186. See Pliny, NH, VII.li. 172 (Loeb, 2.621): “The Syrian Pherecydes expired with a swarm of maggots bursting out of his body.” The Latin text has serpentium multitudo: serpens can mean both snake and maggot, and Sabuco translates as snakes (colebras).

The True Medicine 155 each matter has a certain friendship with its own form and does not accept any other form. So we see that in man the humor falling through the skin always generates lice, whereas in cattle it generates ticks, in the dog dog-ticks. And we see that the urine of pigs always makes fleas, the dung of donkeys makes beetles, their flesh makes worms, the first rain of autumn makes the blue flowers of the fields. One kind of soil always produces one kind of grass and animals, and no other. Bees are always born from a putrefied ox;187 land scorpions from putrefied crabs, as says Pliny.188 Wheat, beans, and galls generate their grubs. From the vapor of wine are born gnats, which become flies. In one kind of water one finds always the same kind of fish, in another kind of water another kind of fish. In conclusion, every matter has a friendship with its form, and it is barred from taking any other form except the one with which it has friendship. The philosophers would have done better had they spoken of friendship [between matter and form] rather than of “privation,”189 and they certainly were wrong in affirming this category of “privation.” The right thing to say is that materia, amicitia, and forma (matter, friendship, and form) coexist in the mixed substance, and the mixed substance lasts as long as the friendship lasts that ties matter to a particular form. Thus I would say:190 generatio est actio materiae in amicam formam: “Generation is 187. Marginal note: Lib. 9. Cap. 31. 188. The section on land scorpions in Pliny has no reference to this belief: see NH, XI.xxx.86 (Loeb, 3.485). The reference may be to NH, IX.li.99 (Loeb, 3.229) where Pliny says: “the bodies of crabs also when they expire are transformed into scorpions during the draught.” 189. Privacion. Privatio was a term in Aristotelian logic indicating the negative or opposite of the eighth category, habitus. Habitus signified disposition, power, and act to be something, while privation indicated the lack thereof. Matter was defined as privation of form, therefore as its opposite (matter being passive and form being active). Sabuco seems to propose here a non-Aristotelian view of matter and form: they are related to each other not as opposites but as cooperating partners, and both are active in generation. In the Aristotelian theory of generation, in contrast, matter was totally passive and acted upon by form. In Vera philosophia de natura mistorum, Sabuco is scathingly satirical about the Scholastic category of “privation” as the connecting link between the concepts of matter and form, saying that it led to “many controversies and sterile disputations”: “certè privatio intellectus fuit,” it showed a “deprivation” of intellect on the part of the philosophers (Sabuco, Obras, 402–3). See above, Introduction, 54 and nn145 and 146 to the Introduction. 190. Marginal note: Sed melius in vera philosophia (“But better in the true philosophy”).

156 The True Medicine the action of matter on a friendly form.” I would also say: Putredo est fuga caloris aeris, & aquae fugientes amicitiam importunae terrae: “Putrefaction is a flight of the heat of the air, and the waters fleeing the friendship of unsuitable earth.” The pia and dura mater undoubtedly descend all the way down to the mouth, although this cannot be seen by anatomy,191 forming the two skins of the tongue and the palate, whereby in the mouth (the first cavity) the root takes the juice from food, with the pressing and squeezing done by the teeth. The same pia and dura mater descend to form the esophagus, or gullet, with its two tunics and its transverse structure suited to the goal of drawing up the juice or chyle from the stomach by attractive virtue, in the same way in which a liquid is soaked up by a piece of felt thanks to the felt’s texture. Such was the final cause of the esophagus’s structure, and not what the anatomists imagine.192 The same pia and dura mater descend further down to form the ventricle, or stomach. From the stomach, by means of its orifices or suckers, they take the juice of food, drawing it up in order to administer it through the pores and commissures of the cranium (which are like the knots in plants). Through these pores and commissures they send the juice up to the pericranium, which in turn sends it to the fleshy part of the skin, and the latter in its turn sends it to the scarf-skin, the skin’s outer layer, which starts from the cowlick, or crown of the head. From there, the juice spreads through the whole skin, giving growth to all the body. And this is the principal growth of the body. The first to take the juice is the pia mater. Not being attached to the dura mater, the pia mater can transmit the juice to the dura mater by contact only when the pia mater is erect. The dura mater is attached and bound to the cranium by some nerves that run through the cranium. So the pia mater has room for going up and down: the air breathed in reaches the pia mater and makes it rise all the time (as one 191. aunque la anatomia estè oculta: lit., although the anatomy is hidden. The meaning is that the extending of the pia and dura mater to form the skin of the mouth cannot be seen by anatomical inspection. 192. The transverse structure of the villi or filaments in the esophagus and stomach was supposed to be related to those parts’ vis expultrix, power of expulsion (see for instance Fernel, Physiologia, book 5, chap. 6, p. 329). Sabuco explains it instead as functional to the brain’s power of attracting or sucking up the chyle from the stomach.

The True Medicine 157 can see clearly in the movement of the crown of the head in babies) so that it can administer the chyle to the dura mater. Since the divine soul has its seat and abode in this royal palace or mansion, where it performs its animal functions by means of the “species” or images of things—whether repulsive and sad, or beloved and cheerful—the pia mater moves with every feeling or discord of the soul, praeter naturam, “out of the ordinary course of nature.” The pia mater is, so to speak, the hand of the soul: the soul moves it, shakes it, knocks and brings it down in varying degree by means of the dreaded and sad “species” that the soul tosses and throws away from itself. Whereupon the pia mater stops performing its natural office of administering the chyle to the dura mater, because when the pia mater falls, there is no more contact between pia and dura mater, and so also the growth of the skin stops. The chyle, which is a clear liquid when it goes up, turns thick and viscous in falling down, like the gum in trees. And based on where it falls, disease ensues. The falling spirits move and alter the pulse. On the other hand, the “species” of beloved, pleasant, and cheerful things make the pia mater rise, which then performs its office by contact with the dura mater, and gives health. In the movements up and down, in the rising and falling, in varying degree, of the pia mater, are comprised all the movements, alterations, passions, and changes that happen in man—none of which does man perceive. The pia mater is raised and lifted up by the three pillars that support it in the performance of its office—namely, happiness and cheerfulness, good hope, and the well-regulated heat of the second harmony, the stomach. In conclusion, diseases and death consist in the falling down, in varying degree, of the pia mater, while health consists in the elevation, erection, and rising of the same. The passions of the soul per se, “by themselves,” shake, move, or lift the pia mater, whereas the bad or good chyle does the same per accidens, “accidentally,” by increasing or decreasing. The cranium and its division in two main parts193 and in many smaller pieces, its pores, hollows, and commissures, were designed so that the juice of the root could spring up for the growth of the skin, which is the most important growth. These passageways are in the 193. Tablas: literally, boards, tables.

158 The True Medicine animal what knots and joints are in plants, namely, the place where plants send out their shoots and juice. This is the purpose194 of this structure of the cranium, and not the prevention of headache, as imagined by the anatomists.195 The longer the cranium stays supple and porous, the longer the life of the animal. Animals that don’t have commissures in the cranium have a short life. Life’s brevity is due principally to the hardness and dryness of cranium and skin; life’s length is due to the opposite. This is why those animals that have big horns and shed them have long lives, because this shedding is due to the suppleness and moistness of the cranium. The skin196 is to animals what the bark is to trees. In the animal the skin starts at the top of the head; in the plant the bark starts at the root. Through skin or bark runs the vegetative juice, and the longer the skin and bark stay soft and moist, the longer lasts the life of animal or plant. Thus those animals and plants that shed the old skin or bark and put on a new, tender cover, are long-lived, as one can see in snakes and animals that change their skin, or in trees that change their bark, such as the vine and the pomegranate. In animals that retain the old, dry skin, the skin forms impenetrable crusts; and in trees that keep the old, dry bark, cracks develop in the trunk’s bark, as in the pine and oak tree. The white juice that makes the skin grow first fills or inflates the hollows of the lean, red flesh, because this kind of flesh is stronger thanks to the irrigation and help of the blood; then it covers the body with the fat, white flesh, with no help or admixture of blood. The larger part of this vegetative juice goes by way of the skin of the loins or of the back, and for this reason the skin in those parts is

194. Causa final = literally, final cause. 195. The skull’s commissures were supposed to allow for the venting of hot vapors from the head, thus preventing headache. 196. Cuero. Here, as also in other places, Waithe, Vintró, and Zorita translate cuero as flesh, so they have “Flesh is to animals what bark is to plants” (New Philosophy of Human Nature, 213). Rendering cuero as flesh seems inaccurate to me in general, but it seems particularly misleading here, where Sabuco is drawing an obvious parallel between the skin in animals and the bark in plants.

The True Medicine 159 thicker and the hair longer (as grass grows taller in well-watered soil), and from there it spreads to the belly where the skin is thinner. This juice that goes by way of the loins enters also the kidneys and it turns into sperm. Urine is the excrement, or the earthy part, of the skin’s growth, like the sediment left by the salty water of the sea. Urine percolates and passes through the loins and the thin parts of the belly, it drains in the hollow and goes through the bladder, which is a solid part, with no channel inside.197 The chyle that goes from there to the two branches, which are the legs, is of better quality and it carries little excrement. This excrement is discharged through the pores of the sole of the foot: this is why the feet smell. When by some misfunction the growth of the skin does not filter and discharge this excrement thoroughly, it brings on the dropsy, because the excrement stays contained inside the skin of the belly, without percolating inside. This also causes pain in the loin, because the chyle, still mixed with its excrement, is thick and viscous and cannot pass through all the membranes, and it thus leads to scabies, boils, and other diseases of the skin.

Of the Chyle, or Juice, and its Varieties Doctor: What is your opinion on the chyle? Antonio: My opinion is clear: the matter of nutrition is the same as the matter of generation, and the chyle is the very same seed or fruit that the root—the brain—sends to the sprouts—the seminal vessels—through the trunk. The only difference between the chyle of nutrition and the chyle of generation is that the latter is whiter and thicker, because it has gone through the root and trunk and has been refined by the kidneys and testicles. Thus also, when semen is not discharged through coition and turns into fat, the fat that forms in the area of the testicles is different from the fat that forms right under the skin, in the same way in which suet198 differs greatly from the lard of 197. Passa la bexiga, sana, entera, y sin meato ninguno. It was believed that the bladder had no orifice, except in its neck. See Valles, Controversiae, 66r: “nullum vesica praeterquam in cervice videtur osculum habere.” See also below, n402. 198. Enjundia.

160 The True Medicine the swine,199 which grows next to the pig’s skin. In the nursing female this chyle turns into milk, for the nurturing of the species. And therefore I say that the chyle has a liquid and clear component, which percolates and springs up to the skin through the cranium and its commissures, as one can see in sweat, tears, and in the watery part of blood, which all look like clear water. The liquid similar to barleywater that is found in the ventricle200 is not chyle yet; it becomes chyle only when the root takes it and draws it up to itself and distributes it to the branches, where it is transformed, just as the chyle of plants turns dark or red in some fruits. And just as in trees the same chyle that, in health, used to flow up clear and liquid, to form stem, fruit, and leaves, turns color in falling down, and becomes an unwholesome and viscous like gum, causing sickness—in just the same way also in man the chyle, which the pia and dura mater were supposed to send up to the skin through the cranium and its commissures for the growth of this tree, falls down in case of disease, and its thick and watery parts turn color. The watery part turns green or yellow, and these are the cholers, while the thick part turns into phlegms and melancholic humors (there is also a white melancholic humor201) and other different kinds of humors, whose existence I don’t deny. And the part of the chyle that curdles with blood, such as phlegm and pus,202 is the viscous and unwholesome part that fell through the veins. So the most clear and liquid part of chyle is that part which the root sends to the skin. Just as the chyle varies in plants203 (one can see that it is yellow

199. Tozino gordo. I have translated enjundia with suet, and tozino gordo as lard of the swine. Enjundia is defined as: “unto y gordura de qualquier animal” (Acad. Aut. 1817) and lardo as “el gordo del tocino” (Acad. Aut. 1734). OED has for suet: “the solid fat around the loins and kidneys of certain animals” and for lard: “the fat of a swine” quoting Topsell, Four-f. Beasts, 1607: “The fat of the Swine they commonly call Lard which groweth betwixt the skin and the flesh.” 200. Ventriculo: the ventricle of the stomach. 201. The melancholic humor was supposed to be the black choler, or bile: Sabuco argues that there is also a white variety of choler, besides the yellow and the black ones. 202. Ebraças, o podre. 203. Marginal note: Varieties of the chyle in animals. This marginal note is not present in the 1587 edition; it was added in the 1588 edition of Nueva Filosofia.

The True Medicine 161 in the celandine, milk-white in the spurge204 and in the fig-tree, waterlike in the vine, black in mulberries) so does the chyle vary also in some animals. When the animal is afraid, the chyle that falls through the skin is so clear, liquid and transparent that it takes the color of whatever is close to it, with the help of the ventosity [caused by the falling spirits], as happens in those animals that turn color when they are scared. This effect of turning color or breaking wind out of fear is not, as Pliny thinks,205 a deliberate or instinctive act of the animal to get rid of the danger; it is rather an effect of fear, which makes the ventosity fall vehemently from the brain through the skin, together with the liquid and transparent juice. Similarly in other animals fear makes the hair and skin stand on end, and this is due to the same cause, namely, the falling [of the ventosity] through the skin. The ventosity that falls internally is the cause of animals breaking wind. Thus also some fish, when afraid, muddle the water with the humor that falls from their brain out of their mouths, as has been observed in the cuttlefish and the squid, which discharge a black, inklike liquid from their mouths when they realize that they are caught and have lost their freedom. This is caused by fear, not by their instinctive reaction to get themselves free. Also the crickets and the young sparrows drip yellow water and spittle from their mouths when they are caught and lose their freedom. In other animals, when they are in danger and fear, the skin swells and stiffens with much ventosity that falls with the liquid humor, as happens to the badger206 and the porcupine. This is not a deliberate or instinctive reaction, in order not to be bitten by the dogs, or for any other purpose, but a consequence of fear. In other animals what falls from their brains out of their mouths is stuff similar to gall or rennet, as happens in the beaver. Observing it, people thought that this stuff was the beaver’s gall or rennet, and that the beaver was deliberately choosing to vomit it, 204. Lechetrezna, lat. Tithymalus: spurge, a plant with a milklike sap (part of the genus Euphorbia in botanical terminology). OED refers to Biggs, New Disp. 1651, par. 79: “Celandin weepeth a golden juice and spurge a milky one.” 205. See Pliny, NH, VIII. li-lii.122–24 (Loeb, 3.87–89). 206. Sabuco uses the Latin term melis, cf. Pliny, NH, VIII. lviii. 138 (Loeb, 3.99): “Another case of ingenuity in alarm is that of the badgers: they ward off men’s blows and the bites of dogs by inflating and distending their skin.”

162 The True Medicine knowing that people hunt it to get that substance.207 In other animals, when they are captured, what falls from their brains out of their mouths is a white juice similar to milk, as happens in the salamander described by Pliny, who says that the salamander is shaped like a lizard, and that the white juice from its mouth extinguishes fire like frost does, and is very harmful to that part of the human body which it happens to touch.208 In other animals, the loss of freedom makes them vomit, as in the case of the crocodile, which throws up the bodies it recently swallowed when it is caught prisoner by the people on the island of Tentyrus. These people have a special skill with the crocodiles and catch them by throwing a lasso around them and pulling them captive to the shore; the crocodiles are naturally afraid of them. The crocodile vomiting is a consequence and effect of fear, and its cause is the humor falling to the stomach, and not the shouts and yells of the people of Tentyrus209—cuncta errore plena, “all full of errors.” In other animals, so much humor falls from the brain that they die immediately [after they are caught] and do not survive in captivity. The elephant, when it goes through its yearly distemper or frenzy210 in the springtime, discharges an oily humor from the ears, and this is because of the love and desire for its female companions. When the elephants are in this frenzy they kill every living being, and for this reason, as soon as that humor starts flowing from their ears, people immediately tie them up with strong chains. When the male viper whistles, calling and inciting the moray to mate,211 it drips its juice, or poison, or saliva, out of the 207. The castoreum, used for medicinal purposes. 208. See Pliny, NH, X. lxxxvi.188 (Loeb, 3.413): “It [the salamander] is so chilly that it puts out fire by its contact, in the same way as ice does. It vomits from its mouth a milky slaver, one touch of which on any part of the human body causes all the hair to drop off, and the portion touched changes its color and breaks out in a tetter.” 209. See Pliny, NH, VIII. xxxviii, 93–94 (Loeb, 3. 67–69): “The people from the island of Tentyrus are hostile to crocodiles: they dive into the river and mounting on their backs as if riding a horse, when they yawn with the head thrown backwards to bite, insert a staff into their mouth, and holding the staff at both ends with their hands drive their prisoners to the land as if with bridles, and by terrifying them merely with their shouts compel them to disgorge the recently swallowed bodies for burial.” 210. The estrus. 211. See Pliny, NH, IX.xxxix.76 (Loeb, 3.213): “Morays are commonly believed to crawl out on to dry land and to be impregnated by copulating with snakes.”

The True Medicine 163 mouth, from the great desire and torment of lust, and not because of the viper’s will or purpose, as the naturalists imagined. The boar foams at the mouth with white saliva in the desire and ardor of lust, as well as when it is angry, or when it fights with another animal. In the silkand cotton-worms, when they are getting old, a viscous and sticky phlegm falls from the brain in filaments; with these filaments they build their cocoons, and from then on they stop eating and their root makes their bodies shrink, after having brought them to full growth. In conclusion, this juice or chyle which the main root takes with its attractive virtue from its first and second cavity in the three ways already mentioned (compression, decoction, evaporation) is white, clear, and liquid in its way up, in man as well as in animals and some plants. In taking this juice from the aliments in the first cavity [the mouth], man is more prone to error than are the animals, because he chooses his food freely based on the way the food looks and tastes, while the animals choose it only by the sense of smell. But animals in turn are more prone to error than the plants, because the latter eat only the chyle provided by nature-mother, and they are born and grow only in the soil that has juice suitable to them. When the man’s root does not perform its health function, which is to take and give the juice through skin, nerves and membranes, man does not feel like eating, nor can he take or swallow food: in other words, he does not take juice either from the first or the second cavity. In this case, man doesn’t enjoy food in the first cavity [the mouth], but rather he finds it repulsive and rejects it, and he cannot even swallow it, so that he cannot send it to the second cavity [the stomach]. Physicians were quite wrong in attributing thirst and hunger to the stomach and the power of sensation to the sense organs, such as sight to the eye, taste to the palate, etc. The senses are only messengers or instruments for carrying the message to the prince and root of this house, that is, the brain. In the brain is all sensation, thirst, hunger, and every motion or perturbation, as argued by Plato when he said:212 Caput membrum divinissimum reliquorum membrorum princeps, cui totum corpus Dij parere iusserunt, motuum omnium compos fore excogitaverunt. “The head is the most divine member of the body, the prince of all other parts. The gods appointed the whole body to obey the head, and they 212. Marginal note: In Timeo.

164 The True Medicine designed it so that it would be the master of all the motions.”213 The physicians also were wrong in not seeing that the feeding root is the part that first takes the juice from the food, as one can see clearly in plants, which are fed by their roots, through which they absorb their chyle, made of earth and water. In conclusion, Mr. Doctor, in the true medicine you have to skip from the liver with its red blood to the brain with its white juice, and to the pia mater, which handles it.214 The true medicine changes your ideas on the location of the root and of the natural faculty, moving it from the liver to the brain. The true medicine also changes your ideas on the nutritive juice, identifying it in the white chyle carried by nerves and membranes, rather than the red blood. In lieu of ametry, the true medicine has the decrement, or misfunction of the root, when it stops performing its office of taking and giving [the juice]. In lieu of symmetry, the true medicine has the increment of the root and its healthy action, which is taking and giving [the juice]. All this was given to you by nature’s maker. And this may suffice for a shepherd, who did not study medicine. This is the true medicine, thanks to which you can see the extent to which the written medicine was wrong. I beg the pardon of Messrs. Galen, Hippocrates, Avicenna, Averroes, Aetius, Fernel,215 and all the rest of them, for all these truths could not be said without slighting them, but through no fault of mine, just as it is not the light’s fault when it dispels the darkness. Indeed, I believe that if they were to come back to life, they would not mind learning this true medicine, considering how much they loved and sought the truth, and that their commitment was to search for it everywhere and to give it to the world. Rather, they would rejoice in finding what they had been looking for, and would judge their loss to be a great gain, and in their magnanimity and generosity 213. Translation is mine. Cf. Plato, Timaeus, 44 D–E, p. 99 Loeb ed. where the translation from the original Greek is somewhat different from the Latin version used by Sabuco: “The head is the most divine part and reigning over all the parts within us. To it the gods delivered over the whole of the body as they had assembled to be its servant, having formed the notion that it should partake in all the motions that were to be.” 214. The main innovation in Sabuco’s medicine is that the natural faculty is located in the brain, not in the liver, and the main nutritive humor is not blood, but the brain’s white juice. 215. Ancient Greek and Roman authors (Galen, Hippocrates, Aetius), medieval Arabic authors (Avicenna, Averroes) and a modern one (Fernel) are conflated here into a tradition of “written medicine” with which Sabuco finds fault. On Fernel see above, n110.

The True Medicine 165 they would put the public and general good above their own particular and private advantage. For this ignorance of themselves, Mr. Doctor, I blame more the ancient philosophers than the physicians, because the latter followed the philosophers, who investigated and examined physics and the nature of mixed bodies, as well as metaphysics, but neglected to examine their own physis, or nature. They were cognizant of what was going on in the house of other people, but ignorant of what was happening in their own house. They wished to learn what there is beyond this world, at the other end of the last heaven, and ignored what was in their own body, head, and soul. From this ignorance of the philosophers derived the errors of the physicians in the main foundations of medicine. Both philosophers and physicians left untouched the best part of philosophy, the part that is most useful to man. Let us now bring our topic to conclusion (cuncta errore plena, “all these things are full of mistakes”). Go with God, Mr. Doctor, back to your city and to your business; leave me to my solitude with these lambs and these birds in the trees, which don’t know how to lie. I only make this fair request: since you have tried Galen’s and Hippocrates’s medicine for two thousand years, try my sect just for one year. You know very well how wrong the old medicine has turned out to be: during this present year you have seen an infinite number of children die of smallpox, while your medicine was unable to bring any relief. In an issue of such paramount importance to the world, it is reasonable to try every way and leave no stone unturned in order to find what you are looking for. By doing that, you will trust in experience and truth, not in me. Doctor: As far as it goes, that seems a fair request, and I grant it to you. If some day you have something to say on another topic, I’ll be there for my own sake. Antonio: Si Deus nobis ocia fecerit—“If God will have given us leisure”216—with health and life, whenever I talk about another subject, I shall let you know.

216. Translation is mine. The quotation is adapted from Virgil, Eclogues, I.6: “Deus nobis haec otia fecit” (trans. H. Rushton Fairclough [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978], Loeb Classical Library, Virgil 1.3: “It is a god who wrought for us this peace.”

166 The True Medicine

New and Old Medicine Compared and Contrasted: the Old Medicine Refuted217 Doctor: It now remains, Mr. Antonio, in order to satisfy me, that we compare the view of some diseases in the old written medicine with that of your new medicine, so that such comparisons and contrasts may further clarify all that has been said so far. Antonio: I’m glad, Mr. Doctor, to come to such comparisons and contrasts. However, I do not intend to take a long time over them, and to expatiate in refuting what has been said by others. It will be enough to make a mark, like a good swordsman in a duel, and to tell the naked and clear truth. The ancient physicians identify three causes of accidental death, namely suffocatio caloris, vehementia morbis, facultatis imbellis resolutio, “the smothering of the heat, the vehemence of the disease, the exhaustion of the weak faculty.” They should have said [only] suffocatio caloris, “the smothering of the heat,” and they should have said that this smothering of the heat, which leads to sudden death, is in principio, “originally,” fuga caloris, viz. “a flight of the heat” from its opposite [the cold from the brain]. The heat can be extinguished at the onset, in the middle or at the end [of life], according to the strength and quantity of the cold humor falling from the brain to the stomach and to the heart to vanquish the heat and to expel it from its place (as was already said). According to its greater or lesser quantity, the cold humor vanquishes the heat in the beginning or in the middle or final stage [of life], when the heat is losing strength and its opposite is gaining it. Once the heat is failing, putrefaction ensues, the scarcity of 217. Colaciones, o cotejas, y refutaciones: lit. “Comparisons, contrasts and refutations.” In this part of the text, Sabuco deals with controversial issues in sixteenth-century medicine, comparing the account given in the conventional view with the new one she (or he) proposes, and arguing that many difficulties and inconsistencies of the old medicine may be solved thanks to this new medical theory. Many of these issues were discussed in Valles’s Controversiae, which seems to have been a source used by Sabuco as a guide to the medical debate of the time, as well as a repository of quotations from the ancient medical authors. Hereafter, in the note after the title of each section, I will indicate the chapter of Valles’s Controversiae that Sabuco’s section is based on (giving in parentheses also the reference to the Spanish translation of the Controversiae cited in n18, whenever available).

The True Medicine 167 heat being the cause of putrefaction, because the strong heat eterogenea separat, & coquit: “divides and cooks heterogeneous things.”

Comparison and Refutation: On Poisons218 On poisons there is much disagreement: which ones are harmful by kind (genere) and which by quantity (quantitate), and how they work in bringing about death, is controversial. All these perplexities are ended and solved thanks to what has been said above on the decrement219 due to poison. Poison is some bad substance that, coming in contact in various ways with the brain’s marrow, quickly spoils all the moist substance of the brain (just as one drop of gall makes a whole glass of water turn bitter) and makes it fall with more or less intensity, depending on its own virulence (that is, by kind) or amount (that is, by quantity). So poison can kill in a short or in a long time; or it can stop, in which case the brain’s juice stops falling and starts to go up and grow, and health returns. At long last, thanks to this general cause and source of all decrements, or diseases, all these controversies are finally clarified, and the true causes are identified, with no need for more comparisons. We can see it clearly in the case of poison, because the account given by the old medicine is that the poison cannot kill nisi sit putrefaciens, “unless it leads to putrefaction,”220 and we know that putredo (“putrefaction”) cannot develop repente, “suddenly,” but only over a long period of time. But, on the other hand, we know that there are poisons that kill instantaneously as soon as they get in contact with the brain, and even poisons that, if put in clothes or shoes, penetrate the pores with their virulence and, upon reaching the brain, immediately knock down the humor with so much impetus that in a moment it chokes the heart’s heat, bringing death. This sudden effect could not be caused à putredine (“by putrefaction”), which operates instead over a long time, by gradually reducing the heat. The basilisk221 killed instantly both the rider and the horse with its poison, which 218. Cf. Valles, Controversiae, lib. 9, cap. 10: De venenis, 184r–v. 219. Decremento: decrement in the sense of humor falling from the brain. 220. As argued by Valles, Controversiae, 184v. 221. Marginal note: Plin. lib. 8. c. 21.

168 The True Medicine rose through the spear.222 So in conclusion, everything will be clear now, since we know the general cause and also the internal causes, hitherto ignored. No longer can one say of many difficult issues: ignoro causam: “I don’t know the cause.” Nor could now Galen say of natural death: nulla evidens ratio est, quae monstret mortem eventuram praeter experimentum: “There is no evident reason that explains why death will come; it is merely known empirically.”223 Nor could he say that natural death is due to an increase of excrements. Natural death is actually a flight humidi motu proprio, non violento, “of the moisture with its own natural motion,” which is desicatio cerebri multis parvis decrementis, “a drying up of the brain due to many small decrements,” with the concurrence of the dryness of skin, nerves, and membranes.

Comparison and Refutation: On Purgative Remedies224 Of purgative remedies Galen says that they all damage the ventricle of the stomach, and especially the stomach’s mouth. He also says that sometimes the purgative remedy turns into an aliment for the body, whereas at other times it turns into a pernicious and deleterious poison. He also says: Purgantium omnium medicamentorum natura contraria est naturis corporum, quae expurgantur: “It is in the nature of all purgative remedies to be harmful to the bodies that are purged.”225 He 222. See Pliny, NH, VIII.xxxiii. 78 (Loeb, 3.59): “It is believed that once one [basilisk] was killed with a spear by a man on horseback and the infection rising through the spear killed not only the rider but also the horse.” 223. The reference to Galen comes from Valles’s Controversiae, lib. VI, cap. 1, where Valles quoted Galen, De marasmo, cap. 2: “Itaque dicente Galeno nulla est evidens ratio demonstrans mortem eventuram: Sed experimentum” (124r; cf. Controversias, 345)—the very words that Sabuco reports. The Galenic text itself is worded rather differently: “Hactenus igitur experientia sola senium necessarium est ac secundum naturam, quemadmodum sane et ipsa mors” (“That old age and even death itself are necessary according to nature, is based purely on experience”). See De marcore liber, in Opera, 7.666–704, cit. on 672. Experimentum here has the medieval Scholastic sense of something known only through experience rather than through philosophical knowledge: we know empirically that natural death occurs, but we cannot account for its causes (see above, n158). 224. Cf. Valles, Controversiae, lib. 9, cap. 2: De vi deleteria expurgantium, 173v–174r. 225. This, as well as the other opinions of Galen reported in Sabuco’s text, are taken verbatim from the section in Valles, Controversiae, cited above, n224, 173v. Valles reports that Ga-

The True Medicine 169 also says that no purgative remedy can be useful and helpful without also doing some damage. All of which, confused and contradictory as it is, is simply ridiculous, unless one reinterprets it in the light of the general cause we have identified, thus saying: every purgative remedy has the quality and force of pulling and drawing matter to the stomach from the head and from other parts, and what the purgative remedy draws from the brain always damages the mouth of the stomach (a damage to the mouth of the stomach, like also some headache, is a consequence of all flux or falling of the humor). Therefore, since the purgative remedy draws humor principally from the brain, it favors the decrement and boosts what is causing the disease and, so to speak, it pulls in the opposite direction of the healing process. It is as if, in order to straighten up a leaning tree, one were to pull it with a rope in the direction in which it is falling, instead of pulling it in the opposite direction. In the use of purgative remedies the written medicine does the opposite of what is needed for healing, so much so that it is discredited every day and with just reason, since men can see how many people die daily because of purging, though they were suffering only from minor ailments. On the streets one can hear people say: “the purge killed him,” “the purge is tough on the body,”226 “those who did not take purgatives are still living,” etc. People trust old women healers more than they trust the physicians. The reason is that old women treat the sick with plasters, poultices, and external remedies because they don’t know how to prescribe purgative remedies, which they don’t understand and, even less, dare using. So, even if they are wrong in what len wrote in the second book of De ratione victorum: “Purgantium enim omnium medicamentorum natura, corpora quae expurgantur naturis contraria est” (173v). See Hippocratis de acutorum morborum victu liber et Galeni commentarius, II, 12, in Opera, 15.540–41; see also ibid, 537 (on purgative remedies damaging the mouth of the stomach); De simplicium medicamentorum temperamentis ac facultatibus, III, 24, in Opera, 11.611: on purgative remedies turning at times into an aliment or into a poison for the body: “Idcirco purgantium medicamentorum, ubi forte purgatione frustrantur, quaedam extra quam quod noxam corpori nullam afferunt, etiam alimentum homini praebent, alia vero in corruptionem ac tanquam in venenum vertuntur. Prorsum enim medicamentum purgans vel cum uno saltem humorum, qui in corpore sunt nostro, similitudinem obtinet, non autem perpetuo permixta est vis aliqua velenosa, quamobrem nec perpetuo, licet non purget, injuria afficiet, verum concoctionem recipiet talemque producet humorem qualem trahere natum erat.” 226. La purga se lleva en el cuerpo.

170 The True Medicine they do, at least they are right in avoiding this minor error of treating the sick with purgative remedies (which are downright harmful because they favor the cause of disease by pulling and drawing the humor from the head). Thus, although they don’t understand the disease and proceed in a blind way, old women are successful in their cures, because nature helps them, and consequently people trust them more than they trust the physicians. From all this, it should be clear that no purgative remedies should ever be administered in order to help discharge the humor from the mouth during a flux, or decrement, or during a fever, lest they draw more humor from the head and make things worse (as has been said in the “Dialogue on the remedies of the true medicine”),227 with the exception of purging per sedem,228 which should be administered after the patient has taken some hen and hen broth. Therefore, since all ailments derive from the fall of humor from the brain, evacuation229 should be done by other special ways, and not by the most common way of the purgative remedies, which is the mouth, because purgation by mouth has a very strong attractive force and will increase the damage and the cause of disease. So if necessary, a general evacuation should be administered per sedem, as already said, and right after that one might do a particular evacuation of the affected part, if it is already affected (in actu); if it is going to be affected (in fieri), that is, if the disease is just starting, the evacuation should be performed per aliam viam, “through some other way.” You should know that every fall or flux of the brain’s humor always brings some of these general and constant injuries: sadness, headache, pain in the stomach’s mouth, chills, pain in the shoulders, in the neck, in the legs, change in the color of the face, rings under the eyes, all of which are symptoms and signs of the beginning of the decrement, flux or fall of humor from the brain. Therefore from these signs you will see whether the flux is just about to start (in fieri), or whether it is in actu, namely, it has already happened, and the part is already damaged and the disease is taking its course. In the latter case, that is, in facto, 227. See Coloquio de auxilios, o remedios de la vera medicina, in Sabuco, Obras, 112–13. This is one of the dialogues in Nueva Filosofia: see Introduction, 6–7. 228. Via the anus: enema. 229. Evacuation: general term for all remedies aimed at discharging the peccant humor out of the body, by bloodletting, purgation, vomit, etc.

The True Medicine 171 when the disease has already started, you will perform evacuation or you will attract the humor per aliam viam, “by some other way,” for instance by diverting it so that it is discharged destillatione, as discharge from the nose, or per pallatum, as spit from the mouth, before it does more harm (since at the onset disease is easily cured); or by vomiting if the humor has already gone down to the stomach. But in all cases, whether the ailment is fieri, or facto, “about to begin or already advanced,” one should keep in mind the general cause of disease, and together with the more particular remedies one should always adopt the general remedy, which is comforting the brain with the remedies I have already indicated, so that that damage, if it is just starting, may stop altogether, and if it is in facto, “already happened”, it may not grow, or may recede with the cessation of the cause. The secondary general evacuation should be done by vomiting.230

Comparison and Refutation: On Hemorrhoids231 Hippocrates said: Ei qui sanatur ab aemorrhoidibus antiquis, nisi servetur una, periculum est hydropem fieri, aut pthisim (sic!): “When a patient has been cured of chronic hemorrhoids, unless one be kept, there is a danger lest dropsy or consumption supervene.”232 And Celsus said: Si ora venarum sanguinem solita fundere, subito supressa fuerint, aut aqua inter cutem, aut tabes sequitur: “If a customary bleeding from haemorrhoids is suddenly suppressed, dropsy or phthisis follows.”233 The reason and cause of this is that the hemorrhoids are a flux from the brain, by way of the skin, to the lower parts, where that liquid or watery humor searches for a way out, having turned red in passing through the skin’s principal veins. If this way out is closed, the humor stays inside the skin, in which case we have dropsy; or alter230. The primary general evacuation, as said above, was purgation per sedem, through the anus. 231. Cf. Valles, Controversiae, lib. 8, cap. 6: De curatione haemorrhoidarum, 167r–v. 232. Hippocrates, Aphorisms, VI. 12: trans. W. H. S. Jones (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978], Loeb Hippocrates 4.183 (also quoted by Valles, Controversiae, 167r). Pthisim should be phthisim. 233. Celsus, De medicina, II.7.18–19: trans. W. G. Spencer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), Loeb Celsus 1.125. Also quoted by Valles, Controversiae, 167r.

172 The True Medicine natively, the humor goes out by another way, in which case we have consumption,234 if the original source of the brain’s flux does not stop. So the cause of hemorrhoids is the humor falling from the brain, it is not the liver, because, as has already been said, the liver and the natural faculty therein cannot make mistakes. So also in the case of hemorroids the humor comes from the general source, as in all other diseases, by different routes. And consequently the treatment of hemorrhoids should deal with the general cause, which is the brain, and not with the affected part [i.e., the anus] or the liver. What should be suppressed and cut off is the source of the problem, not the hemorrhoids themselves. So one should first administer a general purgation per sedem, as said, [i.e., an enema] together with an emetic, since vomit also is a general purgation in the true medicine. Thereafter one should treat the affected part locally. When there is no danger of fever, as is usually the case in hemorrhoids, in the French disease and other illnesses that are not accompanied by a temperature, one can also administer purgation by mouth using benedict medicines.235 In conclusion, one should treat the general cause, which is the brain, with the purgation called general, plus the special one, and with the comforting remedies already mentioned, as well as by removing the cause that the physician will judge to be the prevailing one among the causes that make the humor fall little by little, as in consumption. It is certainly true that the hemorrhoids go by way of the skin, because they only rarely cause a temperature, and in that case they are very painful, and it is this pain that causes the internal flux.236 But usually, when the stomach is in good shape and its heat is strong, the humor is sent through the cranium and its commissures and it goes by way of the skin, in which case the disease is less dangerous.

234. Lit. Phthisis: consumption with spitting of blood: hence the idea that the hemorrhoids stopped in the anus might discharge from the mouth. 235. Medicinas benditas: “Benedict medicines” were mild laxatives (see OED, under “benedict,” with an example from Bacon’s Sylva: “Rhubarb and other Medicines that are benedict”). 236. Hence (from the internal flux) the temperature: see above 106–7, 117.

The True Medicine 173

Comparison: On Aliments Hippocrates said: Quodlibet alimentum habet quid biliosum, quid pituitosum, quid melancolicum, quid sanguineum, quod in epate remanet a chilo in masa sanguinaria. “Every aliment has a part of bile, a part of phlegm, a part of black bile, a part of blood, which is left from the chyle in the sanguineous mass in the liver.”237 He said well, but he should have said: quod remanet in radice (hoc est in cerebro) ipso ingressu: “which is left in the root (namely in the brain) at the very entrance” with the taste of the first digestion. And he should have added: Sunt alia alimenta, quae habent succum caducum non amicum formae, vel non nihil veneni secum, quae totum succum cerebri inficiunt, & totum caducum faciunt: “There are other aliments, which have an unsuitable juice, prone to fall, and even some poison in them, which aliments spoil all the juice of the brain and make it prone to fall.” All the wrong and harmful qualities of the aliments operate on the brain, and not on the liver.

Comparison: On Supervening Diseases238 Hippocrates said: Nam rigor continuam febrem cui supervenit aliquando solvit, & convulsionem tollit febris, & morbus regius septimo, aut nono, aut undecimo factus tollit febrem, & convulsio universalis non nunquam salubriter fit redundante per corpus sanguine crasso frigidoque, ut paralisis est boni exitum signum: “Rigor supervening on a continuous fever sometimes effects a cure, and fever in turn cures a convulsion. Jaundice supervening on the seventh day, or on the ninth or on the eleventh cures fever, and a general convulsion always brings health, when there is excess of thick and cold blood in the body, just as paralysis is a sign

237. I have not been able to identify the source of this sentence in the Hippocratic Corpus. 238. Morbos supervenientes. Cf. Valles, Controversiae, lib. 8, cap. 10, “An liceat morbum morbo curare,” 170r–171v. Supervening diseases were called those that came on top of another disease, and that were believed, in some cases, to bring about the recovery from the first illness. Waithe, Vintró, and Zorita translate morbos supervenientes inaccurately as “major illnesses” (New Philosophy of Human Nature, 220).

174 The True Medicine of good outcome.”239 He also said: Ei qui convulsione, aut tetano tenetur superveniens febris solvit morbum: “Fever supervening on a patient’s suffering from convulsion or tetanus removes the disease.”240 In order to understand the reason why these supervening diseases are a good sign and ultimately conducive to health, one should recall and keep in mind what has been said so far, namely, that the brain feeds on the raw juice extracted from food in the mouth (by pressing and grinding the food with the teeth as in a wine press) and on the cooked juice sent up by its servants in the kitchen; that the brain turns them both into the white juice, and then sends this white juice through the membranes and nerves and the other ways appointed for the body’s health. Most of this juice is sent up through the cranium, its pores and commissures; from there, it runs and spreads by way of the skin to the branches of this inverted tree, which is man. This upward surge of the juice is due to the three general pillars of health—cheerfulness, good hope, and the well-balanced heat of the stomach (the second harmony). The stomach’s heat makes the juice go up in the same way in which the flame of a candle, with its own natural upward movement, turns a wheel placed above it, as we mentioned earlier. Similarly if you put a piece of paper or another light thing over a flame, the heat of the flame makes it rise up in the air, and likewise gunpowder when fired rises up in the air, forming a shape like a castle. Therefore, when the white juice turns bad and unsuitable but there is still strength and vigor in the three pillars of health to send it upwards, as they used to do with the good juice, what happens is that the bad juice spreads by way of the skin, the face turns the same color as the falling, unwholesome humor, and this leads to

239. Several Hippocratic aphorisms are fused in a sentence here: cf. Aphorisms, IV.58 (Loeb 4.151): “A sufferer from ardent fever is cured by the supervening of a rigor”; ibidem, IV. 64, p. 153: “In fevers, when jaundice supervenes on the seventh day, on the ninth, on the eleventh or on the fourteenth, it is a good sign, unless the right hypochondrium become hard. Otherwise it is not a good sign.” Sabuco is quoting from Valles, lib. 8, cap. 10, 170r, who cites the aphorisms one after another exactly in the same order Sabuco gives. In ancient and early modern medicine, “rigor” usually indicated the chill, accompanied with fits of shivering, which immediately precedes certain fevers and inflammations (several examples in OED s.v.) 240. Cf. Aphorisms, IV.57 (Loeb 4.151). Also quoted by Valles, 170r.

The True Medicine 175 jaundice, dropsy, tympanites,241 anasarca,242 the French disease without fever, or some kind of leprosy. When the humor falls externally, only by way of the skin and not through the interior parts and ways of the spinal marrow, there is no fever, a true fever being caused by the fall of the cold spirits to the heart. By falling through the skin, the spirits give rise to tympanites. The choler, falling to the liver, causes apparent but not true fever by heating the liver; if instead the choler goes through the skin, it causes jaundice. The phlegm, a watery humor, damages the stomach and the spleen, cooling and dispersing their heat; the same phlegm, if it goes by way of the skin, causes anasarca. But when the bad humor falls internally through the nerves of the anterior and posterior parts, because one of the three pillars of health is failing, it does serious damage, and the damage varies according to which cell of the brain is affected with catarrh, which ways the humor goes and which body parts it settles in. I say that the worst damage is when the catarrh is in the middle and in the posterior cells of the brain, for in that case reason is lost, and insanity ensues. Insanity is the specific consequence of damage to the middle cell, where ratiotinatio,243 ratiocination, is located. Through the nerves that derive from it, this cell is connected to the heart, diaphragm, and membranes, and if the actions of these parts are impaired, it is most serious, and it leads to insanity. In vexation, anger, and grief (which may bring instantaneous death) the middle cell of the brain is affected with catarrh, which happens when ratiotinatio, the rational faculty there, apprehends the damage caused by the “species” generating these feelings. The “species” of the object that provoked vexation, anger, or grief enters initially the first cell of the brain (the seat of common sense). So this part of the brain is the first to perceive the object, but it does so without ratiotinatio, “a rational comprehension” of the damage to follow, so the brain does not reject the “species” until apprehending it also with reason and conjecture [located in the middle 241. Timpanites. Tympanites was the name of a variety of dropsy: a disease “engendered by great wind resolved of cold matter, and fallen into the hollowness of the womb” (Lanfranc. Cirurg. 282, c. 1400, cited in OED). It was named after tympanus, a musical instrument: the belly being swollen and its skin stretched so tight that, if hit, it sounded like a timbrel or tambourine. 242. Anasarca. Also a variety of dropsy. 243. Ratiotinatio = ratiocinatio. Sabuco constantly uses this spelling.

176 The True Medicine cell] and seeing the damage brought by that “species.” And speaking of ratiotinatio, “ratiocination,” Mr. Doctor, if you only understood what happens in that part of the brain at that moment! Doctor: What happens? Go on, tell me. Your words do not bother me, indeed I like to listen to them. Antonio: As soon as reason sees the harm brought by that “species”—the image of a detested object, an object that one wishes would disappear from the world—immediately the brain casts off the species with such vehemence that it also casts off with it all the good juice provided for its aliment and office. At that point, first the spirits, then the juice fall down, and all the juice turns bad and unwholesome, because its route has been changed, and it is prevented from reaching the peak of its perfection and transformation. It is as when someone is drinking a cup of water and a spider drops into it: the person immediately stops drinking and, because of the spider, throws away the water in the cup, plus the water that was already in his mouth, and, if he has a delicate stomach, he even throws up the water that was already in his stomach—water that would have been a good aliment if the spider had not dropped into it. In just the same way, the juice of the brain is thrown away together with the loathed “species.” If you’d like another simile, Mr. Doctor, here it is: let’s say you are sleeping under yonder poplar tree, and you wake up to find a scorpion (or a centipede or a lizard) on your hand. Immediately, in becoming aware of it and of the harm it can do, you shake it off from you with such vehemence and force that, believe me, Mr. Doctor, if your hand were made of soft and tender matter you would be left with no hand, because the hand would go with the scorpion; and the more tender and watery the hand’s substance, the less force and the less cause would be needed for that to happen. If the hand were made of more tender matter, it would be shaken off even with lesser cause—if it had been, say, a centipede or a lizard instead of a scorpion. In just the same way do reason and intellect shake off the loathed “species,” and together with it they shake off their own juice, which is tender and easily separable from the brain. The more the brain’s juice is tender, watery, and fluid, the more easily it can be shaken off and fall: such is the case with children, the young, the fat, and idle and rich people, who all have much juice from eating food that is watery, of many different flavors or of a bad quality, easily

The True Medicine 177 spoiled and of a quality not amica formae, “suitable to take form.” In much the same way, Mr. Doctor, if you burn your finger or are bitten by something, you also shake your hand many times as if trying to shake off that pain; and likewise the cat, when it burns a paw in the fire, kicks about a good deal trying to shake off that pain. In the same way, the brain and the soul, perceiving the bad “species” that is hurting them, shake it away, and shake off with it their own juice, in which the “species” had settled. In falling, the juice destroys one of the three pillars of health, the heat of the stomach. And the sadness brought by the flux caused by the loathed “species” knocks down cheerfulness, another pillar of health, and with these two pillars down, if there is no good hope to mitigate the harm, all the three pillars of health are gone, and the rest of the juice keeps falling internally, bringing disease or death, depending on the quantity of the flux. So it will now be clear that when the three pillars do not have sufficient strength to send the juice up by way of the skin, the juice falls down inwards because of the said cause, that is, because of reason’s apprehension of the loathed object. Clearly this internal fall will be reduced in apoplexy, when it is accompanied by convulsion or paralysis, because in such a case there is no room in the arteries and nerves for the passage of the spirits—so the flux will be less than when there is room and the spirits can move around.244 As to rigor, it is less harmful than continuous fever, because rigor is a sign that the three pillars of health have the strength to send up the humor by way of the skin, so that the cold and moist spirit, together with the watery phlegm, being able to go by way of the skin, will quit the internal path to the heart, and the cold will run mainly through the skin. Convulsion is more harmful than fever, because fever is fuga caloris cordis, “a flight of the heart’s heat,” and so in a fever the heart’s spirits have room for fleeing. In convulsion, by contrast, there is no room for the heat to escape, spread around, and bring about a temperature. Convulsion without a temperature is the proximate and smaller daughter245 of lethal apoplexy without convulsion and without temperature. In lethal apoplexy there is a more vehement and massive 244. This explains, according to Sabuco, why convulsion and paralysis can sometimes have a positive or healing effect, as stated in the Hippocratic aphorism cited at the opening of the section. 245. Meaning presumably a less serious form of apoplexy.

178 The True Medicine fall of the humor, which totally smothers and annihilates the heart’s heat, thus preventing its flight (which is the temperature). A fever also helps in the case of tetanus for another reason, because with the heart’s heat spreading to the entire body, the affected part also is warmed up and rarefit obstructio, “the obstruction loosens up”; this is how febris, fever, is helpful.

Comparison: On the Way the Aliment Enters the Body246 Galen said: Quandoquidem nutriri necesse est animalis particulas, ingressus vero cibarijs in corpus unus est per os: “Seeing that it is necessary that the parts of the animal be fed, there is one entrance for food in the body, and it is the mouth.” He also said: Unus namque omnibus cibus introitus per os est: “The only way of entrance for all kinds of food is the mouth.”247 On the contrary Hippocrates said: Forinsecus alimentum ab extima superficie ad intima pervenit: “From without, nutriment travels from the outermost surface to the innermost parts.”248 Many hold the opinion that without the decoction of food performed by the stomach and its elaboration [into blood] performed by the liver, no part of the body would receive nourishment. I will tell you the truth, Mr. Doctor, which is the following: aliments can enter the body by other ways besides the mouth, such as per sedem,249 through the navel, through all the skin (as for instance when it is bathed with mutton broth or wine), as well as by comforting the stomach with fresh air, breathing, and good smell; all these are very good, beneficial, and they give nourishment. These forms of nourishment are especially good in case of illness, when the brain should not take juice from food because it would only produce more falling humor and thus worsen 246. Cf. Valles, Controversiae, lib. 8, cap. 3: An possint aegrotantes refici alia via quam per os, 159v–160v (Controversias, 395–400). 247. See Galen, De usu partium, lib. 4, cap. 1 (Opera, 3.266–67); De naturalibus facultatibus, lib. 1, cap. 10 (Opera, 2.23). Both quotations come from Valles, lib. 8, cap. 3, 159v–160r (Controversias, 396). 248. See Nutriment, XXII, trans. W. H. S. Jones (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972), Loeb Hippocrates 1.349. Sabuco quotes from Valles, Controversiae, 160v (cf. Controversias, 399). 249. Through the anus.

The True Medicine 179 the disease. And for this reason it was well said: Quanto magis nutris magis laedis: “The more you feed the more you damage.” Therefore I say that until the disease reaches its peak and subsides, it is better to feed the sick in these other ways rather than by mouth. And the nourishment given per sedem should be clysters with aromatic white wine, hen broth, egg yolks, etc. Via the navel one should give roasted mutton sprayed with aromatic tonics and sprinkled with vinegar, freshly baked or hot toasted bread sprinkled with good wine and powdered cinnamon, etc. To feed through all the skin, one should sponge the skin, starting from the top of the head, with juice or broth of mutton or of fowl, and then with wine. You should know this truth, Mr. Doctor, that when food enters the mouth and is chewed, it immediately gives nourishment to the brain, and when food enters the stomach, likewise the brain’s attractive virtue immediately sucks and draws it up. All the body is nourished by the white juice that the brain swallows and sucks up from the mouth and stomach. The brain takes its fill of the juice that it gets by pressing the food in the mouth, without having to wait a long time for the food to be processed by the liver. And when the brain has had its fill of this juice, it does not send it to the stomach any longer, having reached satiety—and, from that moment on, the brain sends a portion of this juice to all the parts of the body by way of the nerves, both anterior and posterior, which branch out from the trunk, that is, from the spinal marrow. In this way all the body soon gets its portion of nourishment. It is ridiculous to say that a man, when hungry, should wait and feel hungry until the stomach will have made the chyle, completing the decoction of food, and the chyle will have reached the liver by the meseraic veins,250 and the liver will have processed the chyle turning it into blood, and this blood will have gone to nourish all the body parts.251 If it were so, one would have

250. Venas myseraicas. 251. This is how nutrition was supposed to work in Galenic doctrine: food, turned into chyle in the stomach by a process of concoction, passed through the intestines where the veins of the mesentery (or middle intestine) called the “meseraic veins,” carried it to the liver. The liver received the chyle and turned it into blood, sending it out to the veins, which ramified up and down to carry nourishment to all parts of the body. On the meseraic veins see also below, n348.

180 The True Medicine to stay hungry for many hours.252 But it is not so; the thing goes as we have said. So the liver right away and immediately takes its portion of juice through the nerves that reach it and the membranes of the nape of the neck (which is the brain’s trunk). Then the liver processes it and turns it red and sends it in irrigating streams253 to warm, moisten, and irrorate all the body, and to serve as second matter to the other white juice, as has been said. So I say, Mr. Doctor, that at the onset and during the high point of disease young people should be given light food and old people food that is a little richer. Fasting is always beneficial in order to reduce the flux, but it should be accompanied with restorative remedies to comfort the brain, and with the three pillars of health, because hunger, if it is immoderate and excessive, also makes the humor fall, in which case the humor falling to the stomach takes away the appetite, and the brain feeds again on it, as has been said of the animals that hibernate in the winter and do not store food in their hideouts.254 Referring to Hippocrates’s saying: Labor, cibus, somnus, venus, omnia mediocria (“Exercise, food, sleep, sexual intercourse, all should be taken in moderation”), Galen says that the order of the things is in the order of the words.255 Thus exercise comes first, next comes food, after that sleep, and after sleep Venus, and all of them should be taken in moderation and not in excess. Hippocrates was right, and so was Galen, about the order of these things, and this order 252. Sabuco’s main argument against the traditional theory of nutrition (according to which the main agent of nutrition is blood, elaborated by the liver from the chyle concocted in the stomach) is the empirical one that people feel satiated right after eating, without waiting for the chyle to be processed by the stomach and then turned by the liver into blood, a process that would take at least several hours. 253. Acequias = azequias: a metaphor to indicate the blood vessels. 254. While hibernating, these animals do not need any food because they feed on the juice from the brain. 255. Again Sabuco quotes from Valles’ Controversiae, lib. VI, cap. 9, 132r: “Galenus siquidem libr. 2 de tuenda valetudine enarrans sententiam Hippocratis, referensque ex illo haec verba Labor cibus somnus venus omnia mediocria. Ipsorum verborum ordine, ordinem rerum dicit contineri.” Cf. Galen, De sanitate tuenda, in Opera, 6. 84: “Mihi sane videtur id, quod ab Hippocrate traditum est tum in Aphorismis, quum ait: Labores cibos praecedant, tum in popularium morborum sexto volumine, ubi ita ad verbum praecipit: Labores, cibi, potus, somni, venus, omnia mediocria […] et tempus docuit ipso sermonis ordine.”

The True Medicine 181 should be complied with, together with the precept of moderation, because excessive fatigue, for instance, is like a pain, which makes much juice fall from the brain, and on the other hand too much sleep, like lack of exercise, makes the brain’s juice watery and runny, and apt to fall. As to Venus, sola voluptate nocet providendo: “it is the only thing that harms while giving pleasure and providing” for the species. Venus makes the humor fall fast and furious from all the three cells of the brain, through the anterior and posterior passageways, because Venus and time are the two natural adversities that consume the radical moisture and bring to an end the ascending part of the ladder of life, whenever the accidental adversities256 don’t put an end to life by accidental death. Since it makes the humor fall fast and furious, Venus causes many harms, which are the following, as listed by Aetius:257 It takes away the forces, it makes crudities,258 it dulls the senses, it causes loss of memory, tremor, pain in the joints, damage to the kidneys and to the bladder, bad breath, toothache, quinsy, inflammation of the gullet,259 spitting of blood. He should have added: sadness, damage to the mouth of the stomach, and sometimes fever and even death, as in the case of those people of which Pliny reports, qui in venere mortui sunt, “who died while having sexual intercourse.”260 In all this, it is clear that these harms are due to the flux from the brain, since the ancient authors themselves attributed responsibility for most of these harms to the flux from the brain, and indeed such is the case for all of them, because the cold moisture, which hurts the stomach and causes the other things that the ancients ignored, is due to our general cause, which is the flux from the brain. The flux from 256. Los violentos: these are the adversities mentioned above, n28. 257. Quot. from Valles, Controversiae, lib. 6, cap. 9, “De hora veneri idonea”, 132r: “Sunt hae [noxae quas Venus solet parere] quas Aetius uno capite tertii libri collegit, virium exolutio, cruditates, sensuum hebetudo, oblivio, tremor, articulorum dolor, renum & vesicae morbi, oris graveolentia, dentium dolor, gurgulionis inflammatio, sanguinis sputum.” Cf. Aetius of Amida, Contractae ex veteribus medicinae Tetrabiblos, trans. Janus Cornarius (Lyons: ex officina G. et M. Beringorum fratrum, 1549), I, sermo III, cap. VII: De re venerea, 129–30. 258. Crudities: in Galenic medicine the term indicated imperfectly digested food or humors, due to imperfect concoction. 259. gurgulion: lat. gurgulio: gullet, windpipe. 260. See Pliny, NH, VII.liii.184: the translation is mine. The Loeb translation has the rather bowdlerized: “died while with women” (Loeb, 2.629).

182 The True Medicine the brain destroys the second harmony261 and it generates more or less damage, according to its quantity and the part to which it goes, and it can thus cause the sudden deaths reported by Pliny,262 since the brain, filled with much watery juice, can easily make a great defluxion, or catarrh, in the intrinsic natural decrement of Venus, or in the major decrement of the radical moisture brought about by age263— the two decrements reinforcing each other. During these two decrements, it has happened that many people died of trivial causes, such as stumbling over something or the prick of a needle, because of this aptitude of the brain to make a great defluxion, as has just been said. Excess also cuts short the course of the radical moisture, just as a vine that has not been pruned soon turns old for having sent out too many growing points.

Comparison: On Crudities264 Hippocrates said: Ructus accidus qui non ante apparebat in longis laevitatibus intestinorum bonum. “In cases of chronic lientery, acid eructations, supervening when there were none before, is a good sign.”265 It is so quia (interprete Galeno) significat calorem iam aggredi concoctionem: “because, according to Galen’s interpretation [of this Hippocratic saying], such belching indicates that heat is setting about to perform concoction.”266 The entire doctrine of crudities will now be very clear, because crudity, or corruption, is caused by the cooling of the heat of the stomach, due to the cold juice fallen from the 261. That is, the heat of the stomach. 262. See above, n260. 263. The climacteric. 264. Crudezas. Cf. Valles, Controversiae, Lib. 6, cap. 8: De cruditatum speciebus et causis, 131v–132r. “Crudities” indicated the imperfectly concocted humors in the body, not just undigested food. 265. Hippocrates, Aphorisms, VI.1, Loeb 4.181. Lientery: a form of diarrhea associated with indigestion: also trans. lubricity of the bowels: Lloyd, Treas. Health, 1585: “ye lubricitie of ye bowelles when the meate cometh furth undigested” (OED). 266. Sabuco quotes from Valles, Controversiae, 131v–132r, who, in turn, summarized Galen’s argument in his commentary on Hippocrates’s Aphorisms (cf. Galen, Hippocratis Aphorismi et Galeni in eos commentarii, in Opera, 18b.1–9).

The True Medicine 183 brain—juice that fell down because of all those things that make man live and die, things we mentioned in the preceding Coloquio.267 These things are the antecedent cause of the general internal cause, which is the fall or defluxion of humor from the brain. You should know, Mr. Doctor, that tepidus calor, est corruptelae causa, “a lukewarm heat is the cause of corruption,” and if it lasts putredinis, “of putrefaction,” and on the contrary magnus calor est causa conservationis concoctione, & separatione eterogeneorum, “strong heat is the cause of preservation, thanks to the concoction and separation of heterogeneous things.” A constant harmful consequence of the flux is the cooling and damaging of the mouth of the stomach, and of all the stomach, if the juice falls in greater quantity; and once the stomach’s heat is cooled and weakened, crudities, corruption, and putrefaction follow. Crudities are also caused by too strenuous intellectual work after a meal, because the brain—the main root—stops taking and sucking up the juice from the stomach, or second cavity—the stomach being the second root that the brain itself generates and drives into the soil.268 The natural faculty stops functioning because of the too strenuous action of the soul. And you should know, Mr. Doctor, that the main operation of digestion consists in this sucking and extracting of the juice from food, which is done by the attractive power of the brain. It is this that transforms the aliment by extracting and taking from food the watery and airy parts, which are the truly nourishing parts, and discarding the earthy component which cannot be assimilated. So the main operation of digestion is performed by the brain and not by the vital and benevolent heat of the sun, which never goes beyond lukewarm.269 Crudities are cured with sweets, hen broth, and by not eating supper.

267. See Coloquio del conocimiento, passim. 268. The soil here is, metaphorically, the food and drink, which are for man what the soil is to plants. 269. In other words, digestion is performed primarily by the brain and not by the innate heat, which partakes of the nature of the sun’s heat.

184 The True Medicine

Comparison: On Drink and Food270 Hippocrates said: Mulsa quam aqua multo potentior est, sola epota: “Hydromel is much more nutritive, when drunk alone, than water is.”271 And Aristotle said: Cur mutationem aquarum gravem, aeris vero non gravem esse affirment? An quod aqua corporibus alimentum est? Aer autem nullum exhibet alimentum? “Why do they say that a change of waters has serious consequences, but that a change of air has not? Because water is nourishment for the bodies? And because air instead gives no nourishment?”272 And Galen said on the contrary: Aqua omnium quae offeruntur minimum alimentum praebet: “Of all things that are given, water is the least nourishing.”273 And he concludes, like everyone else, that water gives no nourishment, but that it is vehiculum nutrimenti, “a vehicle of nourishment.”274 I’d like to tell you my opinion on this subject matter, Mr. Doctor, which is that not only does cold and moist water nourish the brain (similitudine: “by similarity,” the brain also being cold and humid), but also the air we breathe nourishes the brain, the air being nothing but rarefied water. Water and air are both the milk of the moon, mother and wet nurse; so water and air are the chyle that nourishes the world, especially when mixed 270. Cf. Valles, Controversiae, lib. 6 cap. 6, “De aqua an sit cibus, an tantum potus,” 130r-v. and cap. 7, “De coena et prandio,” 130v–131v. 271. Hippocrates, Regimen in acute diseases, LVI, trans. W. H. S. Jones (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), Loeb Hippocrates, 2.111). Hydromel = Honey with water (see Laguna, Dioscorides, lib. 5, cap. 23, p. 517). This quotation from Hippocrates, as well as the following quotations from Aristotle and Galen, are from Valles, Controversiae, 130r–v. Waithe, Vintró, and Zorita translate arbitrarily: “When a liquid is stronger than water, drink it unmixed” (New Philosophy of Human Nature, 225). 272. Translation is mine. Sabuco quotes secondhand from Valles, Controversiae, 130r, who quotes from Aristotle, Problems, I, 13 (cf. trans. W. S. Hett [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000], Loeb Aristotle, 15.11–12, where however the text is slightly different: “Why do they say that change of water produces disease, but that change of air does not? Is it because water is a form of sustenance, and men take and enjoy water and then have done with it, but they never have done with the air?” 273. Valles, Controversiae, 130r (from which Sabuco draws this quotation) gives it as cap. 24 de pulsibus ad tyrones: see Galen, De pulsibus libellus ad tirones, in Opera, 8.470, where, however, the Latin text is: “Aqua minimam omnium ciborum et potuum mutationem inducit, quamquam perinde ut cibi et haec mutet.” 274. Galen, De usu partium, lib.4 cap.5 (Opera, 3.272) (Sabuco quotes from Valles 130r).

The True Medicine 185 with good smells. My opinion is also that one should not restrain the sick from drinking water, boiled with what is convenient, and cooled down, except at the beginning of the disease. I also think that the valetudinarians and those who have little heat should put up with thirst after meals, waiting to drink until the decoction275 is done. Hippocrates said: Mane potione utendum, vespere ad cibum confugere: “One must administer gruel in the morning, but in the evening one can give solid food.”276 As to Galen: Docet extenuatis lautius esse coenandum quam prandendum, dicens studendum enim semper observare quod suassimus cum vesperi censuimus valentius alimentum tribuendum, etc.: “[he] teaches that those who are weakened by disease should eat more at supper than at dinner, saying that one should always try to follow the rule we recommended when we argued that in the evening more nutritious food should be given.”277 On which, Mr. Doctor, I’d like to give you my opinion, which is the following: Those who need the help of the true medicine (because their brain tends easily to make flux, as is the case with invalids, or those with little heat in their stomach, and the old) but even those who are healthy, in order not to need medical help, should eat more in prandio,“at dinner,” than at supper, because at supper two things combine to make the meal’s juice watery and prone to fall, namely, rest and sleep. If there is a lot of juice, the flux is also great, even if the triggering occasion may be small, and therefore suppers may be very harmful, so that it is best at supper, if one has an appetite, to eat just a little food, of good quality, and not to gorge oneself. Old people should eat a little food, of moist quality, such as good goat-milk, or almond-milk, new-laid eggs drunk raw, and similia, “similar things,” and at the end of the waning moon they should cut down on their food, as does the bird Ibis. 275. That is, the digestion of food. 276. Translation is mine. Sabuco quotes from Valles, Controversiae, lib. 6, cap. 7, 130v. Cf. Hippocrates, Regimen in acute diseases, XIII: “You must administer gruel in the morning, but you may change to solid food in the evening” (Loeb, 2.73). 277. Sabuco quotes from Valles, Controversiae, 130v: “[Galenus] docens extenuatis esse coenandum lautius quam prandendum.” Valles is summarizing Galen’s view in De methodo medendi, lib.7, cap. 6, (Opera, 10.489) and correctly reports Galen words as “studendum enim semper observare, quod in superioribus suasimus, cum vesperi censuimus valentius alimentum tribuendum.”

186 The True Medicine Doctor: How should they cut down on their food? Antonio: By adopting the said diet, plus herbs and olive oil. As a rule, what is more easily digestible should be eaten first, followed by what is harder to digest, and at the end of the meal one should have what they call the seal of the stomach, such as a morsel of quince, or some quince jelly, or two olives, or a pippin apple, etc. As to drink, if one can get used to it, it is better to drink just once after the major part of the meal, and immediately after to finish the rest of the meal. Old people should drink two or three times during the meal, and no more, because with a lot of drink the chyle turns watery, and so does the brain. This is why it is wonderfully beneficial to put up with thirst after eating.

Comparison: On Anger278 Hippocrates and Galen argued that nobody could die of anger, Galen saying: Ab ira nemo interijt, utpote nequè calore perfrigerato, nec robore soluto: “Nobody ever died of anger, neither from the chilling of the heat nor from the debilitation of the bodily strength.”279 And Hippocrates said: Excandecentia atrahit, & cor, & pulmonem, in se ipsa, & in caput calidum, & humidum: “Irascibility, in itself, contracts heart and lungs and attracts heat and moisture to the head.”280 He also said: Danda est opera, ut ira excitetur, & caloris, & succi recuperandi gratia: “One should act so as to excite anger, for the sake of restoring heat and moisture.”281 And Galen said: Tristitiae anxietates, & irae eo modo laedunt, quo multae vigiliae quod vires resolvunt, & mille alia: “Grief, anxiety, and anger hurt in the same way as a protracted lack 278. Cf. Valles, Controversiae, lib.5, cap.8: De ira et an possit aliquem interimere, 103v– 104r. 279. All the quotations in this section are taken from Valles, Controversiae, lib. 5, cap. 8, 103v–104r: “De ira et an possit aliquem interimere” (On wrath and whether it can kill anybody), who, differently from Sabuco, quotes directly from the sources. See Galen, De causis symptomatum, lib. 2 (Opera, 7.193: “At iratus nemo interiit, quod neque calor perfrigeretur, neque robur solvatur” (cited by Valles, 103v). The translation is mine, as also for the other Latin quotations in this section. 280. Quoted from Valles, Controversiae, 103v, who quotes Hippocrates, 6 Epidemics, comment. 5. 281. Quoted from Valles, Controversiae 103v, who quotes Hippocrates, 2 Epidemics.

The True Medicine 187 of sleep, because they weaken the strength of the body, and [cause] a thousand other things.”282 And Aristotle said: Ira est appetentia ultionis cum dolore: “Anger is a longing for revenge, accompanied by pain.”283 On the contrary, Galen said: Appetentiam ultionis esse accidens irae, non essentiam: “The desire for vengeance is only an accidental part of wrath, not its essence.”284 I am amazed, Mr. Doctor, at the varying and contradictory opinions of such learned men, and at the way in which, when dealing with the topic of self-knowledge and of the nature of man, they overlooked man’s feelings, health and disease, life and death. Not by chance was this part of philosophy, which is the best and most useful to man, left untouched by them all. Plato indeed tackled it many times, and he said that man is nothing else but the divine soul; hence we are bid to know the soul by him who gave the precept: Know thyself. But Plato did not go beyond this point. As to Hippocrates, on human nature he did not go beyond saying that man is composed of the four elements. Very properly, the saying of Chilon of Sparta, “Know thyself,” was written in golden letters on the temple, just to remind men of this subject matter, without giving any doctrine or clear exposition of it, because it is certainly a very lofty thing for man to understand himself. Man is like work done by an artisan: only the maker can understand it, and the artefact cannot understand itself. Even in trying to explain small things, such as why a finger hurts or why man laughs, there are a thousand varying and contradictory opinions. But to go back to our purpose, I say that all these varying and contradictory statements of the ancient scholars can be set right now, if you recall what has been said on the feelings and motions of the soul, and what we said about anger. Anger is the feeling of 282. Quoted from Valles, Controversiae 103v, who quotes Galen, Methodus medendi, lib.12, cap. 5 (Opera, 10. 841). 283. Sabuco quotes from Valles, Controversiae, 103v: Cf. Aristotle, Rhetoric, II. 2: trans. John Henry Freese (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975), Loeb Aristotle 22.173: “Let us then define anger as longing, accompanied by pain, for a real or apparent revenge for a real or apparent slight, affecting a man himself or one of his friends, when such a slight is undeserved.” 284. Quoted from Valles, Controversiae, 103v, who quotes Galen, De sanitate tuenda lib. 2: “Accidens quoddam ira est, non ejus substantia, ultionis appetentia” (Opera, 6.138).

188 The True Medicine having been injured unfairly by somebody and hoping for revenge. Vexation, or grief, occurs when the injury was not due to the unfair action of somebody, and one cannot revenge oneself. Vexation and grief do damage as anger does, in the same way it has been already described. Anger does not kill if there is hope of revenge; but if that hope is gone, then anger does indeed kill. As to the heat excited by anger, I would never wish for that help in order to recover heat and moisture! The ancients only looked at the outside of things, at what appears externally. The heat they called fervor sanguinis, “a boiling of blood,” is caused by damage done by the brain’s flux, exactly like the heat of fever. You will recall that fever is a flight of the innate heat of the heart, which runs away from its opposite, the moist and cold spirits falling from the brain. This heat spreads around through the skin and the head, and in thus moving around it heats up, like the sunray when it flees the cloud.285 Fever occurs when the heart’s heat has room and time for fleeing; if there is no room or time for the heat to flee, death comes instantly. The ancients spoke of fervor sanguinis,286 a “boiling of the blood,” also because the humor that falls as a result of the feeling of anger is the yellow or green choler, which is hot, and per se, by itself, can set the body on fire. This hot humor is the predominant cause and peccant matter287 in hot diseases, whereas the phlegm is predominant in cold diseases. One can often see this yellow or green choler coming out of the nose in filaments. It is also discharged from the eyes, as can be seen from the fact that many tears or rheum from the eyes scorch the face. The urge to revenge is the desire to retaliate for the injury received. 285. The analogy is with lightning. 286. Sabuco quotes again from Valles, Controversiae, 103v: “Ira est fervor sanguinis in corde, motus timori contrarius, dicentibus Aristotele septima sectione proble. 17 et Galeno li. De causis morborum primo” (“Anger is a boiling of blood in the heart, a motion opposite to the motion of fear, according to Aristotle in the seventh section of Problemata 17 and Galen in the first chapter of the book de causis morborum”). See Aristole, Problems, VIII.20–21, Loeb 14.19 and Galen, De causis morborum, in Opera, 7.4: “Sic et ira quae fervor quidam est caloris cor obsidentis ob motum immoderatum, qui per totum corpum diffusus febrem accendit.” 287. Peca mas. In early modern medicine, “peccant matter” commonly referred to corrupt humors causing disease. But Sabuco here may simply be saying that the choler is the main “sinner” in the genesis of hot diseases.

The True Medicine 189

Comparison: On Sweat288 Galen reports: Dioclem sensisse sudorem esse praeter naturam, “Diocles thought that sweat is something outside the ordinary course of nature.”289 And speaking of the skin pores he says: Quippe per omnem cutem diflatur semper aliquid à calido, quod secum etiam interim humoris non parum aufert: “Clearly the heat constantly vents out some air through all the skin, which also carries off some humor with itself.”290 He said: Ergo tenuissimum hoc excrementum facile sane eijcitur partim in speciem halitus ab insito calore solutum, partim violento motu confertim errumpens appellant vero, quod ita excernitur sudorem: “Therefore this very thin excrement is easily discharged, partly in the form of steam rarefied by the inner heat, partly it bursts out in thicker form when one does energetic movement; what is thus discharged is called sweat.”291 He also said: Nisi homini essent nasi, & emunctoria apoplecticis morbis corripi saepe periclitaretur: “If man had no nose and nostrils,292 he would often be in danger of apoplectic diseases.”293 The way all this happens in man is now made clear by what has already been said. Most of the vegetative faculty, whose matter is the white juice sent by the brain and the pia mater to the crown of the head through the cranium and its commissures, goes by way of the skin and spreads down through the branches. When the three pillars of health are strong and support the increment of health, they send the white juice of the brain by the salutary way—the skin—for the increase and growth of the branches. This same way through the skin is also the more indirect and safer route for the un288. Cf. Valles, Controversiae, lib. 5, cap. 2: De sudore an sit evacuatio naturalis, 96r–v. 289. Quoted from Valles, Controversiae, 96r, who quotes Galen, Hippocratis aphorismi et Galeni in eos commentarii, I.15 (Opera, 17a.421). 290. Quoted from Valles, Controversiae, 96v, who quotes Galen, De temperamentis, II.5 (Opera, 1.614). 291. Quoted from Valles, Controversiae, 96v, who quotes Galen, De sanitate tuenda, I.12 (Opera, 6.66). Translation mine. 292. Emunctoria: literally “snuffers.” OED has “snuffers” as obsolete for “the nostrils” (with a seventeenth-century example). 293. Quoted from Valles, 96v, who paraphrases an argument from Galen, De instrumento odoratus (Opera, 2.883–86).

190 The True Medicine wholesome humor—safer than the inner path to the stomach and heart, where the unwholesome humor would be much more harmful. So when the unwholesome humor is sent upwards, even if it causes skin diseases, these diseases are not dangerous, and they come without fever, as long as the humor doesn’t go by the internal way. Such diseases are gout, hemorrhoids, dropsy, jaundice, erysipelas, smallpox, the French disease, scabies, leprosy, lice, abscesses, dry pustules, glandulae,294 wens, cancers of the breast, goiter. The latter are all receptacles provided by nature for the humor to go the external way, which is comparatively safer, in order to avoid worse harm and the onset of fever. Similarly, nature provided the skin with pores, as an outlet for the sweat. Healthy people sweat because in them the three pillars of health are stronger, and nature sends out the humor that way whenever the heat relaxes, loosens, and opens the skin pores. Thus we see that the first parts of the body that start sweating are the head and the forehead, and they sweat more profusely than the limbs, and even in people full with food, sweat does not come out from the limbs, but from the head and from the forehead. Clearly, if it were not so—if, instead, sweat came out of the veins—it would be partly red like blood. Nature also provided other salutary discharges, such as mucus from the nose and tears from the eyes, in order to avoid, as Galen said, apoplectic diseases, which would ensue if the humor went by the harmful and lethal internal way. Mucus and tears, as one can easily see, are discharged much more plentifully in children and boys than in grown-ups, and are discharged much less or not at all in shriveled old people. This is because the brain of the young has more moisture that can fall. So we can say that old people are comparatively safer from disease, because they have very little moisture that can fall, since their brain and their radical moisture have already dried up. For this reason the old and the melancholic are safe from the plague, at least from dying of it. When the great catarrh and the tabardillo295 were running around, the old did not die. 294. landres: see above, n69. 295. Tabardillo. A disease today identified with exanthematic typhus: from the Spanish word Tabardo, meaning a colored cloak, to designate the mantle-like spotted rash caused by the disease (OED, s.v.). Sabuco seems to say that during recent outbreaks of epidemic diseases, old people did not die in such high numbers as the young. This is because the

The True Medicine 191

Comparison: On Idiopathy, Sympathy, and Consent296 I’d like to tell you a few words, Mr. Doctor, on idiopathy and sympathy. Galen said: “Membrum aliquod trahi in alterius simpathiam duobus modis; aut transmisso in illud quod non trasmitti oportebat, aut impedito influxu quo indigebat, etc.”: “A certain organ of the body is drawn into sympathy with another organ in two ways: either if something is transmitted to it which should not have been transmitted to it, or if it is deprived of an inflow that it needed.”297 And all the authors state that: Nullum membrum posse trahi in alterius simpathiam, nisi re aliqua privetur, aut aliquid praeter naturam, ad se venire patiatur: “No organ can be drawn into sympathy with another unless it is deprived of something, or suffers from receiving something out of the ordinary course of nature.”298 This is reasonable because, as Aristotle says, omne agens agit quodam tactu: “all that acts, acts by some contact.”299 But on the other hand they encounter dried up state of their brain protected them from the main cause of death, which is the fall of moisture from the brain. 296. Cf. Valles, Controversiae, lib.4, cap. 6: De sympathia, & idiopathia, protopathia, & antipathia & consensu, 91r–95r (Controversias, 277–91). Idiopathy, sympathy, and consent were terms common in sixteenth-and seventeenth-century medicine. Idiopathy referred to a morbid condition originating in the affected part, and not consequent to the diseased condition of another body part—in other words, a primary, not a derivative disease. Sympathy referred to a relation between two bodily parts such that when the one is affected the other is affected correspondingly. See for instance the examples in OED: Cole, Barthol. Anatomy, 1688: I. xvii. 47: “The Sympathy between the Kidneys and the Stomach, or when persons diseased in their Kidneys are troubled in their Stomach.” Consent (consensus in medical Latin) was used as a synonym for sympathy. For instance Crooke, Body of Man, 253: “Above all other Consents is that sympathy between the womb and the breasts” (OED). 297. Quoted from Valles, Controversiae, 93r, who paraphrases and summarizes in one phrase several sentences from Galen, De locis affectis, III.3 (Opera, 8.139–40). 298. Valles, Controversiae, 93r (Controversias, 282), who gives it as the opinion not only of Galen, but of “alii omnes,” all the authors. 299. Quoted from Valles, Controversiae, 93r, as “that very true axiom by Aristotle,” without reference to the Aristotelian source. But see Aristotle, De generatione et corruptione, I.6.323a (trans. E. S. Forster, On Sophistical Refutations, On Coming-to-be and Passing away, On the Cosmos [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1965], 223–27) and Physicorum, VIII.7.260b (trans. Francis M. Cornford, Physics, II [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968], 357–59.

192 The True Medicine a difficulty, which is that inflamato septo transverso cerebrum delirat, and laborante ore ventriculi deficit cor: “when the midriff is inflamed the brain is delirious, and when the mouth of the stomach is suffering the heart fails;” whereas it should be the other way around by the direct way of sympathy.300 They patch up this difficulty by saying that this happens because of some occult cause or property, which has no intelligible reason, and that one does not understand.301 By “occult cause,” or “analogy,”302 they mean something that can be grasped only by experience, without any knowledge of the essential cause. Of other things also they often say: ignoro causam: “I ignore the cause;” and of others: “nulla evidens ratio est praeter experimentum”: “there is no evident reason for this: it is merely known empirically.”303 In other cases they look for an internal cause (which is the necessary cause, without which the disease cannot be): for instance in the case of fever occurring in a healthy man à precissione digiti, “from the cutting off of a finger,” they argue that it was necessarily brought about by an internal cause, since the severing of a finger is not enough to 300. This difficulty is raised by Valles, Controversiae, 93r: “Sunt multae sympathiae quae non videntur fieri transmissione rei alicuius, aut privatione, sed potius occulta quapiam causa, aut proprietate, sive utcumque aliter lubet appellare. Nam inflamato septo transverso cerebrum statim delirat, laborante ore ventriculi deficit cor.” (“There are many cases where sympathy does not seem to occur either by transmission of something, or by privation, but because of some hidden cause or property, whatever one may want to call it. So for instance when the midriff is inflamed the brain is immediately delirious, and when the mouth of the stomach is suffering the heart fails”). Valles argues that explaining the condition of the brain by saying that it is caused by the vapors (fuligines) rising from the inflamed midriff, does not make sense, because the path from the stomach to the brain is much more direct and wide than the one from the midriff to the brain; so it is the stomach, and not the brain, that should be affected. The meaning here seems to be that, given the position of these organs, the sympathy should be between midriff and heart, and between stomach and brain, rather than between, respectively, midriff and brain, stomach and heart. 301. Sabuco is referring here to Valles, who uses the notion of causa occulta in this case (see above, n300). For the significance of the notion of “occult cause” in Renaissance medicine see L. Deer Richardson, “The Generation of disease: occult causes and diseases of the total substance,” in The Medical Renaissance of the Sixteenth Century, ed. Andrew Wear, Roger K. French, and I. M. Lonie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 175–94. 302. Analogia. But since the reference is to occult causes, Sabuco may mean here “anagogy,” the figural interpretation of a hidden meaning. 303. See above, n158 on the meaning of experimentum in this context.

The True Medicine 193 cause a fever.304 And so multoties alucinantur:305 “they often rave” and have delusive notions in this way, covering up their ignorance with sundry other fictions, for instance by saying that the cause of the fever in the case of the man whose finger was cut off, is the pain felt in the finger, or the alteration due to the distress and aching. But everything, Mr. Doctor, is explained now that we know the general cause. The difficulty about the midriff, for instance, is clearly explained by what has already been said, viz., that the unwholesome humor falls to the midriff from the middle cell of the brain, the seat of judgment, by way of the nape of the neck. This cell goes delirious sua propria passione, “with its own ailment,” which is a flux of hot, watery and choleric humor, and this flux runs to the midriff per caulem, “by way of the neck” and of the nerves that branch out from the neck and reach the midriff, and it is felt there and gives false testimony that it is a cause of the condition, when it is actually an effect. In the case of syncope,306 laborante ore ventriculi, “when the mouth of the stomach is affected,”307 what happens is that the flux comes from the first cell of the brain, the seat of common sense, and it goes by way of the wide and straight channel where the food also goes (namely the esophagus) as well as of the filaments that are part of it, where the humor used to go up in health. This viscous and cold humor is felt in the mouth of the stomach, which is one of the damages it always does. So syncope, or deliquium animae, “a swooning of the soul,” is a specific ailment of the first cell of the brain: it makes the senses fail and eyesight cease, so that people neither see nor hear any more, and have a fainting fit. So syncope is not passio cordi or deliquium, “an ailment or failing of the heart,” but an ailment and failing of the first cell of the brain when it is affected by the flux. So one should speak of idiopathia cerebri anterioris and sympathia oris ventriculi, “a specific ailment of the anterior cell of the brain, which 304. This example of the cut-off finger is given by Valles, Controversiae, 82v, in discussing the causes of disease. 305. Alucinantur = hallucinantur. 306. Sincopa. Syncope: a failing of the heart. 307. Waithe, Vintró, and Zorita translate laborante ore ventriculi as “ventricular fibrillation at the mouth [of the heart]”(New Philosophy of Human Nature, 229). But Sabuco is referring here to the ventricle of the stomach.

194 The True Medicine draws into sympathy the mouth of the stomach.” The ailment of the brain is the cause, the condition of the stomach is the effect. When the fall of humor is less heavy, people are affected by what is called a dizzy spell: they are prone to fall and go temporarily blind. Very often, moreover, as happens also in other diseases, this condition is accompanied by a buzzing in the ears, like the sound of running water, which is caused by the movement of the falling humor and spirit, which makes the same sound as running water. Now it is also clear why some people catch a disease and others do not, and why sometimes one gets a different disease from that which is going around. All is clear now: the person who caught the disease (which is a disposition of the humor to fall) is the one who had less resistance in the three pillars of health, because vires fortes omnia contemnunt,308 that is to say, “strong forces hold everything at bay.” That person’s brain caught the flux from the breath of the sick or from the surrounding air, and the person goes out and comes back home happily without realizing the ill he is carrying around, because, as we have said, the flux is not felt until it reaches a fleshy or nervous part. If the flux reaches the same place as in the other sick person, the same disease ensues; if for some reason it reaches another place, the effect is different, though the cause is all the same, and a different disease ensues, more or less serious depending on the age of the person infected and the quantity of moisture he had in his brain. We see for instance that somebody who took care of a sick person dies, while the sick instead recovers and leaves his bed; and the reason is that the first person had more moisture, which fell down from his brain and killed him. Hippocrates rightly said: Habitus summe boni Athletarum si in extremo fuerint periculosi,309 which means, the habit, health and disposition of athletes, if extremely good, is dangerous.310 But he 308. This saying is attributed to Galen by Valles, Controversiae, 112v, but with no reference to the Galenic source. Waithe, Vintró, and Zorita translate erroneously “For valiant men despise everything” (New Philosophy of Human Nature, 229). But the text has vires (forces) not viri (men). 309. Also cited by Valles, Controversiae, 94v. 310. Cf. Aphorisms, I.3, as trans. in Loeb, 4.99: “in athletes, a perfect condition that is at its highest pitch is treacherous.”

The True Medicine 195 should have also said the reason why, and the cause thereof, which is the following: such athletes have more juice in their brain, and consequently the flux in them can be greater, as in the example of the pond that we mentioned earlier.311 One can see the same thing also in children, when by breathing or by sight they catch the flux from a sick person affected with catarrh: the more they are blooming, plump, and ruddy, the more seriously they are taken ill and die, because they have more moisture that can fall. It is now clear that their disease and death are not due to an ametry of the humors, nor to putrefaction, as is the case in apoplexy, because ametry and putrefaction cannot take place in such a short time. The cause is evident and recognized by all, and the remedies deriving from the doctrine of consent312 are of no avail, because omnia agunt tactu, all things act by contact. Indeed I say, Mr. Doctor, that there is no consensus or sympathy except by contact. If Hippocrates said that Habitus summe boni Athletarum periculosi, “the habit, health and disposition of athletes, if extremely good, is dangerous,” it is because it was observed through experience that those athletes got sick or died because they were more prone to the flux and decrement of the brain, precisely because they were stout and strong and in great increment, which is all one and the same thing. Thus these athletes got sick and died because of exercise and exertion more than those who were not strong and stout and in great increment, as has been said in the Coloquio.313 So from observing this, though they did not understand the cause, they came to the right conclusion, but with no knowledge and clear understanding of the cause. Doctor: A new Asclepiades has been born to us! Pliny314 tells that Asclepiades, who was an orator by profession, turned himself into a physician in no time, giving a new medicine and new health rules to mankind; he drew huge crowds and almost all people put much trust 311. See Coloquio del conocimiento, 69: “When a pond or a dammed water reservoir is full, and it starts to empty out, the water runs away with more impetus and it is more difficult to contain [than when the water level is low].” Similarly the flux of humor from the brain of people who are in good health is bound to be more plentiful and faster than in weaker people, who have less humor in their brain. 312. On the medical concept of consent see above, n296. 313. See Coloquio del conocimiento, 69–70. 314. Marginal note: Lib. 26. c. 3.

196 The True Medicine in him, and made him welcome as if he had been sent from Heaven.315 But Asclepiades was, at least, a Roman orator, and I don’t marvel at him, because he had a brilliant mind. But I do marvel at you, a mere shepherd and goatherd, daring to speak such words. Antonio: Look here, Mr. Doctor, Asclepiades with his great mind discovered new things, though pretty easy to discover; and in many things he was right, and thanks to him ancient medicine was improved, even if just a little. But he did it for his own gain and interest, and you well know that I do not do it for that reason. In my life I’ve never made a penny from this practice nor do I intend to make it. Doctor: Why do you do it then? Antonio: Because for many years now I have felt a wish to improve the world, seeing in what a bad shape it is, and how many wrongs and errors there are in it. I also wish to serve the great Philip, our king and lord, to whom we all owe this general and natural debt. I can see that medicine and lawsuits are the main reasons for the ruin of his kingdom, which seems to be coming to an end, both for the shortage of people and for the poverty that afflicts them. If you want evidence of this, look around in the streets, and see how many houses have fallen down. In my own neighborhood alone there are seven or eight of them, and others that are deserted. And all over the city you’ll see people living in shacks, and you’ll see more than two hundred dilapidated houses that nobody fixes up. You surely remember how thirty years ago there was no house in ruins, and if a house fell down it would soon be repaired. Doctor: I’ll tell you why this is happening. In my opinion, this shortage of population and the people’s poverty come from the fact that the trading merchants and all the people who sell have doubled the price of every item with shameful greed. This causes a great scarcity, which leads to poverty, from which derives the shortage of people, because, as you rightly say, the hardships, troubles, fears, and the lack of the necessities of life, with the sadness they bring, kill the people more than does the ametry of the humors.

315. See Pliny, NH, XXVI.vii.12–14 (Loeb, 7.273–74). Pliny relates that Asclepiades had been an unsuccessful teacher of rhetoric before turning his hand to medicine. On Asclepiades of Bithynia see Vivian Nutton, Ancient Medicine (New York: Routledge, 2004), 167–70.

The True Medicine 197 Antonio: You are right: I do believe that this is the cause. So great is the hunger and famine that people cannot eat their fill even of herbs. I fear that for this reason even Spanish valor will decline. But I have great trust in the king’s excellent judgment and rare wisdom, and I am confident that this bad state of things will end shortly and that the king, with his great prudence, will remedy this condition of his kingdom and take away this hardship, poverty, and misery from the living and leave it to the dead, who don’t feel anything, and that he will again put his world to rights in these two ways. I will tell you what I have noticed in the beehive of my neighbor Revulgo: when there are many bees and they are healthy and happy, they make so much honey that there is some honey left over for the owner of the apiary, besides the portion he leaves to the bees for the winter. But when the owner takes away all the honey at once, he loses more than he gains, because from then on he has neither honey nor bees.

Comparison: On Apoplexy and Epilepsy All the mistaken and confused things that have been written on these two diseases will be clarified now. Apoplexy is such a great fall of the moist and unwholesome juice from the brain that it blocks the openings of the nerves in such a way that the spirits cannot go through. And since the spirits give motion, the sick person is stricken motionless and senseless. Epilepsy is the same thing, only the juice in this case does not completely block the passage of the nerves, and the spirits can go through, but they do so in a disorderly and excessive way, so that fit convulsio membrorum, “a convulsive movement of the limbs ensues.” In epilepsy the spirits go to the heart and alter the pulse. This disease affects children most commonly, because their brains are more moist and watery, and consequently a lot of juice can fall therefrom (which is the cause of this disease). This condition often disappears with age, since age dries up the brain’s moisture, or it goes away because the moisture is released alia via amica naturae, “by another way friendly to nature,” such as coitus and menstruation. In apoplexy death is instantaneous when the quantity of the falling spirits is so great that, in reaching the heart, they quench and smother the heart’s innate heat, without giving it a chance to escape. When the falling

198 The True Medicine spirits are fewer and it is possible for the hot spirits of the heart to run away, death is not so rapid, and fever ensues. If the cause persists, death does not occur sufocatione, “by suffocation” of the heart’s heat,316 but fuga caloris, “because of the heat’s flight” to the other body parts with the fever; or death can occur fine caloris, “because of the total extinction of the heat” or, if the heat is not totally extinguished, putredine causata à tepido calore, “because of putrefaction caused by the weak heat.” Omnia tactu non consensu, “all happens by contact not by consent,” nor sympathy, between the parts.317 This is why fever is a good sign, because it means that the condition can be cured. The instantaneous death brought about by apoplexy is analogous to what happens when a bullet fired from a harquebus hits a standing board and goes through it without knocking it down, or even moving it, though the same board would collapse if touched by a bird. Likewise in the case of apoplexy, death comes in an instant without fever and without any movement, or flight, of the heart’s hot spirits. Doctor: Upon your life, Mr. Antonio, explain to me such a great contradiction to common sense: the bullet, hitting the board with great force, does not bring it down, while a bird, or yourself with a finger’s touch, would bring it down. Antonio: The reason, Mr. Doctor, is the following: since all movement happens in time and in proportion to the moving force, to the shape of the thing moved, and to the density of the surrounding medium, the broad board needs more time to move than the bullet does. Gratia exempli, “for the sake of the example,” the movement of the board takes two instants, while that of the bullet, which is round and light, takes just one instant, or half the board’s time. Since the movement of the bullet is completed in an instant, whereas the board needs two instants to move, when the board reacts, the movens (“moving”) force has already passed, and the board stays put in its place without moving, which it wouldn’t do if the bullet’s movement carried less force and lasted longer. In the same way the spirits, which are the first to fall, carry so much impetus and speed that they do not give a chance to their opposite, the spirits of the heart, 316. Suffocation of the innate heat was the conventional explanation of these diseases as discussed by Valles, Controversiae, 112r. 317. See above, n299.

The True Medicine 199 to move and run away, as the latter would do if the falling spirits had less force. And since the heat cannot run away, it is consumed in an instant, and the cold comes in, followed by death. But from the point of view of healing, it may be beneficial not to leave to the heart’s spirits any place for flight, so that they cannot spread around and cause fever and death.318 Galen said: Caeterum si in ipso lapso corpore sanguis bonus exiguus sit crudi autem succi plurimi, neque sanguinem mittendum, neque expurgandum, neque exercitatione utendum, neque omnino motu, neque balneo: “Moreover, if in the same weakened body there is scarcity of good blood and instead abundance of raw juices, one should avoid bloodletting or purgation, take no exercise, and stay away altogether from movement and bathing.”319 In the true medicine, applying cupping-glasses to the head and rubbing the body vigorously are not employed; rather, one should do the opposite, by gently massaging with a fine-toothed comb first the top of the head, then the forehead and so forth, all the way down to the back of the neck, where one will apply the cupping-glasses until the flux lasts. The best way of bathing is to sponge the skin all over the body with good and pure white wine: this is like renewing and moisturizing the skin, and it is rejuvenating. It is also good to wash the head with it, removing dandruff, and to wash the feet after cutting the nails and removing calluses.

318. See the section on supervening diseases, 177 above, where Sabuco says that the flux will be reduced in apoplexy “when it is accompanied by convulsion, or paralysis, because in such case there is no room in the arteries and nerves for the passage of the spirits—so the flux will be less than when there is room and the spirits can move around.” 319. See Galen, De sanitate tuenda, IV.5 (Opera, 6.263): “At si in eodem homine reliqua eadem sint, caeterum in lasso corpore sanguis bonus exiguus sit, crudi humores plurimi, huic nec sanguine mittendus, nec alvi dejectio, aut exercitatio, aut omnino motus, aut balneum adhibendum.”

200 The True Medicine

Comparison: On Diverting Disease to Another Place320 Pliny said: Si iaceat uva à vertice morsu alterius suspendi:321 “If the uvula is relaxed, it does good to hold the person suspended by the top of the head with another’s teeth.”322 He also said: Contra lipitudines retro aures fricare prodest. In cervicis dolore poplites fricare, aut cerbicem in poplitum: “For ophthalmia it is good to rub behind the ears. If there is pain in the neck, it is good to rub the back of the knees, and to rub the neck for pain in the back of the knees.”323 This and many other similar things said by Pliny seem to convey some clue and hint of the general cause of diseases, namely, the flux or catarrh. So when uva iacet, “the uvula is relaxed,” it is good to take hold of the cowlick with the teeth, and to keep it suspended, which is like applying there a cupping-glass to draw out towards the external way the humor that is going by the internal path, which is more harmful. I believe that cupping, as well as strong rubbing, is contrary to the true medicine if it is applied to the shoulders or other parts that draw from the head; but it will be very good if applied in vertice capitis, “on the top of the head,” by letting blood with a small incision or with leeches, in order to draw the flux to the skin, where it is less harmful than if it goes internally. After the small incision, experience will show this more clearly. Doctor: It would be even better to cut off the head altogether, so that it does not send the catarrh to the body, and to get rid of the cause once and for all. Antonio: I surely believe you would do it. Stupidities as big as this can be found printed in books, though not so openly stated. 320. Divertir la enfermedad a otro lugar. Diverting disease, or to use diversion (also called revulsion, or derivation) consisted in turning the course of the humors from one part of the body to another, by means of medicinal applications, most commonly bloodletting but also blistering, cupping, etc. Waithe, Vintró, and Zorita translate incorrectly “Avoiding illness in other areas” (New Philosophy of Human Nature, 232). 321. Marginal note: Lib. 27. cap. 6. 322. See Pliny, NH, XXVIII. xvii. 60 (Loeb, 8.43–45). The Loeb text has the reading “verticem” (instead of “à vertice” and the corresponding translation: “If the uvula is relaxed, (it does good for another person) to hold up the top of the head with his teeth.” The translation for the variant “à vertice” is given ibidem in note a, 44. 323. Cerbicem = cervicem. See Pliny, NH, XXVIII, xvii.64 (Loeb, 8.47).

The True Medicine 201 Doctor: Go away, Mr. Antonio: all these are fantastic and chimeric notions. Antonio: Take care, Mr. Doctor, not to let these things slip through your fingers324 because your intellect does not understand them. If you won’t believe me, then believe experience, which does not lie. All I ask, in fairness, is that this is put to the test and tried through experience: periculo credatur,325 “let one believe in experiment.” Take care, because this is no chimeric notion. Indeed, quid mirum hoc crede vatem dixisse: “you should heed what makes you wonder as if it were said by a prophet.” Mr. Doctor, in order to avoid accidental death it will be very useful to find the right path by which to divert the disease, thus sending the disease to a different place by another way, so that it does not reach the heart or the liver by way of their nerves and membranes that stem from the spinal marrow. It will be good, for that purpose, to divert the disease to the arms (in the same way in which one uses a diversion to protect the eyes, by jumping and putting an obstacle in front of them) so that the humor does not pass through the vertebrae that generate the nerves of the arms. This can be done by applying a poultice on the spinal marrow in the said place, together with astringent and carminative remedies, that is, remedies that favor the expulsion of ventosity, such as egg-white, mastic, dragon’s blood,326 aniseed, cumin seed, fennel etc. Where to apply such remedies will be clear once we know the true anatomy of the origin of the nerves. I presume that the nerves intrinsic to the substance of the brain are born in the anterior cell [of the brain], and that those that form the membranes are born in the posterior 324. No se os vayan estas cosas por alto: Covarrubias, Tesoro, says that the expression andar por lo alto originated in the ball game, to indicate when the ball flies so high above the head of the player that he can’t catch it. 325. Periculum: experiment. This strong empiricist statement must be qualified, however, by keeping in mind that what Sabuco means by experiment is daily experience, accessible to everybody, as in the Aristotelian Scholastic notion of experience (see above, n158). 326. Mastic (almaciga): a gum or resin that exudes from the bark of Pistacia Lentiscus and some other trees, used for medicinal purposes. Dragon’s blood, or cinnabar: a bright red gum or resin exuding from the fruit of a palm, Calamus Draco (also the Dracaena Draco, etc.) used for medicinal purposes. Often used together: see H. Lloyd, Treasury of Health (London 1558). Oiij: “Take…of Masticke, Dragon’s Blood, bole Amonicke…” (OED). On Dragon’s blood, or cinabrio, see Laguna, Dioscorides, lib. 5, cap. 68, 539–40.

202 The True Medicine cell (namely, the spinal marrow)—knowledge of which, Mr. Doctor, you could achieve by industrious anatomical inquiry. I can only tell you things from the viewpoint of theoretical understanding, it is your task to find them out through anatomical work.327 I also surmise that it will be good to block the passage of the humor in the neck by frequently applying, next to the left and right ear, towels soaked in white vinegar mixed with rosewater (this should be very cold, taken from a cellar in the summer) or cold and astringent poultices, such as dragagant,328 rosewater and egg-white, and vinegar, so that the humor goes up to the skin and not to the nerves and to the two large veins and arteries at each side of the neck. It could also be helpful to apply such remedies in the armpits or over the left shoulder, adding more astringent remedies such as mastic, dragon’s blood, bole armeniac,329 ithiocola,330 cumin seed, anise seed, fennel, caraway, licorice, which all diflant & dissipant spiritus cadentes, “blow away and disperse the falling spirits.” So accidental death will be avoided by blocking its passage, if one manages to divert the humor from the heart and liver to the arms or to the skin, or to draw it to the mouth and nose with remedies that favor the discharging of mucus (as has been said in the Dialogue on the Remedies).331 The best of these remedies is to apply cupping-glasses or leeches on the crown of the head after shaving it: the cupping-glasses can be made of wood or of calabashes.

327. Sabuco suggests here that it is for the medical doctors to corroborate the new medicine through a specific program of research on the anatomy of the nerves. 328. Alquitira (or alquitara): Richard Perceval’s A Dictionary in Spanish and English (London: John Haviland for George Latham, 1623) has Dragagant for Alquitira. OED has modern spelling as Traganth: a gum obtained from several species of Astragalus, used for medicinal purposes (other spelling: adragant). Lat. Diagranthum. See Laguna, Dioscorides, lib. 3 cap. 21, 278, who calls it Tragacanta, and describes it as an astringent and cold remedy. 329. Bole armeniac: Lat. Bolus armenicus, a clay used in pill form for medical purposes. Covarrubias, Tesoro, describes it as an astringent medication. See also Laguna, Dioscorides, lib. 5, cap. 70, 542. 330. Ithiocola: also spelled ictiocola, an astringent remedy: see María del Carmen Francés Causapé, “Miguel Sabuco Álvarez y la farmacia,” Al-Basit 13 (Dec. 1987), 105–10, reference on 107. Fontecha, Diccionario médico, has the entry ichticolla: “el vientre de un pez, o el cozimiento que se haze en agua, de las escamas deste pez, o el caço donde se haze.” 331. See Coloquio de Auxilios, o remedios de la vera medicina, in Sabuco, Obras, 208, 212–13.

The True Medicine 203

Comparison: On Temperaments and Actions332 In his Libellus artis medicinalis,333 Galen argued that the body which received from nature the best temperament is the healthiest and the most resilient, and the one that performs its actions best. Arguing that the best actions depend on the temperament,334 he also said: Convenit autem homini, ut sit sapientissimus. Cani, ut sit mitissimus pariter, et fortissimus, leoni ut tantum fortissimus, etc.: “It is fitting for man to be very wise. It is fitting for a dog to be very obedient and very strong, for a lion only to be very strong, etc.”335 So Galen thinks that the man with the better temperament will also, by the same measure, be the wiser. Galen also said, in chapter 6 of de tuenda valetudine: Qui maximè sunt humidi ij maximè sunt longevi: “those that are most humid live the longest.”336 On this subject, Mr. Doctor, I’d like to tell you what I think is the truth, which is the following. The actions that derive from the vegetative faculty, such as physical strength and work, will be best performed by a man or animal with the best temperament—to use Galen’s expression—or to use my own words, by the man or animal who is in increment and in which the root best performs its office, namely, 332. In Galenic medicine “temperament” was the combination and proportion of the four qualities (hot and cold, moist and dry) and of the four humors in the composition of the individual body, which determined the person’s complexion (i.e., choleric, phlegmatic, sanguine, or melancholic). The man with the best temperament, in these terms, would therefore be the one in whose composition the four qualities and humors were in perfect balance or equal proportion. Valles devoted several chapters of his Controversiae to this issue (lib. 1, capp. 6–11). See especially cap. 11, De temperatissimo corpore, & an habeat omnes operationes perfectissimas, & omnibus causis resistat maxime, sitque maxime longevus, 15v–17r, which Sabuco used as a source for his argument and quotations in this section. 333. Sabuco is quoting secondhand from Valles, whose words he or she translates literally here: “Galenus libello Artis medicinalis, corpus quod ab ipso naturae ortu bonam habet temperationem…salubre ut semper, & saluberrimum appellavit quare (…) si saluberrimum est, omnibus resistit maxime” (Valles, Controversiae, 16r). See Galen, Ars medicinalis (Opera, 1.310). 334. Marginal note: Galeno libro 1. de temperam. Capitulo ult. (Galen, On temperaments, book one, last chapter). 335. See Galen, De temperamentis, I.9 (Opera, 1.565). Sabuco quotes from Valles, 16r. 336. See Galen, De sanitate tuenda, VI.3 (Opera, 6.400), quoted in Valles, 17r. In the 1587 edition of Sabuco, the sentence is reported erroneously as “Qui maximi sunt humidi ij maximi sunt longevi” (288r).

204 The True Medicine the office of taking and giving the greatest possible stream of wholesome humor. But the actions deriving from the intellective faculty and the rational soul will be better performed in a man of worse temperament, because you should know, Mr. Doctor, that Galen was wrong in saying that the man with the better temperament is the wiser. Actually wisdom and intellect reach their perfection with dryness, and when the brain is drier the soul performs its actions more easily and freely than when the brain is moister and therefore better tempered, as one can see in children and strong boys, who have a good balance of heat and moisture in their brain but no wisdom. On the contrary, in their case, the soul is tied in chains, as it were, whereas in old age, close to death, when the brain is very dry, there is great wisdom and understanding. The actions that derive from the sensitive faculty vary in this way: the senses of smell and hearing improve and are at their best with dryness, while the other ones become dull and sluggish. Thus taste, touch, and sight get weaker and duller with dryness, and improve with humidity; the reason being that they work by passing through moist pores, and with humidity they do this better, with the exception of the sense of touch relative to hot things—be they either external objects or hot food and drink taken inside the body—which improves with dryness. This happens especially with choleric and melancholic people. The sense of vision gets better with suitable, airy, and transparent humidity, and it gets worse with harmful humidity, which brings about the cataract.337 By reason of these varying conditions of the five senses, it is possible that some animals have better sight and smell than men. The actions of memory vary in this way: in childhood the “species,” or images of things, are easily imprinted but not retained, like the impression of a seal soon disappears when stamped on very soft and watery mud, but memory improves up to the reaching of maturity. In the dryness of old age, the “species” cannot get imprinted, as happens in mud that is too dry; and consequently there is loss of memory. In maturity, or man’s estate, memory is receptive and 337. Las cataratas. The Greek word catarractes (Lat. cataracta) meant waterfall. It was used in medical language to indicate a condition of the eye characterized by a “web in the eye” obstructing vision (see OED, with sixteenth-and seventeenth-century examples). For Sabuco the cataract is a perfect example of his/her theory of disease as caused by a downpour of humor from the brain.

The True Medicine 205 retentive, like mud that is ready to receive the imprints of shapes and to retain them for a long time, and from then on until natural death, memory loses its power because of increasing dryness. As to Galen’s saying that temperatissimus (“the man with the best temperament”) has more resistance to diseases and lives longer, the truth is clear, thanks to what has already been said, and there is no need to repeat it once again. When Galen said that the people who are moister live longer, he certainly said a great truth but, on the other hand, these people are more at risk of accidental decrements, because, like children, they have more humor that can fall from their brain. However, if they are not affected by accidental decrements, they will live a long time, and for them the course of the natural and principal increment and decrement—that of age—will be longer. As we said earlier, this natural increment and decrement of age is the movement up and down the ladder or mountain of life, which corresponds to the duration of the radical moisture, with its own intrinsic movement and its two adverse forces, the passing of time and the emission of semen, which slowly exhaust it, bringing about natural death. The truth is that the man with the best temperament, in Galen’s language, or, in my own language, the man whose vegetative faculty is going through an increment of the wholesome humor, takes longer to reach the great decrement of age,338 and he better resists the small accidental decrements. But when the great decrement of age comes upon him, or if accidental decrements overwhelm him, that man is in much greater danger, and his disease will be longer, as has been said. This is the case of those who die of their first disease, and of those who usually die suddenly when they reach the great decrement of age, or when they are affected by the most powerful among the accidental decrements, such as those brought about by the feelings of the soul.

338. The climacteric.

206 The True Medicine

Comparison: On the Four Moistures Discovered by Avicenna339 Avicenna said that besides the four humors, there are four others, which he called second moistures, and to which he gave the following names: ros, cambium, gluten, humor in extremitatibus.340 He defined them thus: Ros est humor per omnia transiens membra qui in nutrimentum converti est aptus. Cambium est, quod parum ante congelatum est, etc.: “Dew (ros) is that humor that goes through all the body parts and is apt to be turned into aliment. Cambium is that humor that some little time formerly was solid, etc.”341 These moistures, Mr. Doctor, are no other than the substance I discovered and speak of, namely, the white juice, or chyle or liquor or white blood, sent by the brain to nourish all the parts of the body. Avicenna raved and spoke in a groping manner, like one feeling his way in the dark, since he did not know and understand that the brain is the root that draws this white blood and sends it through the nerves, membranes, veins, and arteries, nor did he know that the pia mater sends it upwards through 339. See Valles, Controversiae, lib. 2, cap. 22: De secundis humiditatibus quas invenit Avicenna, (On the second moistures discovered by Avicenna), 24v–25v. As one can see, Sabuco deals with this issue under exactly the same title that Valles gave to this chapter of the Controversiae. Sabuco’s argument, however, is very different from Valles’s. Valles was interested most in arguing that Avicenna had not actually “discovered” the four moistures, but had inferred their existence from Galen’s doctrine. Moreover, he does not seem interested in discussing their role in nutrition, which is, in contrast, what interests Sabuco most. Valles had discussed the issue of the “nutritive juices” (nutrientes succi) in the body in lib. 1, cap. 14, 20r–v, refuting Aristotle’s view that the blood is the only aliment of all body parts, and upholding what he saw as the Hippocratic and Galenic correct view, according to which the blood was the best and the primary nutritive element, but shared this nutritive function with some other humors. In contrast, Sabuco argues that blood has only a secondary role in nutrition, the main role being played by the white juice of the brain. Thus Avicenna’s “discovery” of the four alimentary moistures had much more significance for Sabuco than for Valles. Though Sabuco claims that Avicenna did not understand the full implications of his “discovery,” it is clear, however, that she (or he) considers it an important precedent of her (his) own theory about the nutritive role of the brain’s white juice. 340. See Avicenna, Liber Canonis, Lib. 1, Fen 1, Doctrina 4, cap. 1 (facsimile of 1507 Venice edition; Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1964), 4v. 341. See above, n168. Cf. Valles, 24v. Cambium was a term still used in seventeenth-century medicine. See OED, s.v.

The True Medicine 207 the skull and its commissures to the crown of the head, where the skin originates. This white juice is active, apt to take shape and to solidify. It is served by the blood as second matter, and it nourishes all the body and its parts. Thanks to this juice, the brain performs its function of root, which is taking and giving this juice to the entire body. This same juice generates teeth and jawbones, and all the body parts that can be cut,342 as well as the new skin in man, animals and fish. Running through the nerves, this white juice carries the power of sensation and motion; it also has the power of generation and the power of growth. The “dew” (ros) that can be found in the pericardium343 is the portion that the brain sends to the heart through those nerves that turn into membranes.344 The heart receives it as its own nourishment and turns it into red blood, sending it to the arteries. It is ridiculous to say that this dew is produced by evaporation, as in an alembic. Evaporation is done only by the brain’s coldness during sleep. The brain draws the chyle from the stomach in two ways: by attraction, by means of the filaments and the texture of the esophagus (in the same way a piece of felt soaks up a liquid), and by evaporation, done by the brain’s coldness, as in an alembic. Thus the “dew” of the heartstrings345 is the chyle that the brain sends to the heart for nutrition. This nutrition through the membranes is a form of nutrition by inflow,346 different from the nutrition through the nerves, which is substantial, since the nerves enter the heart’s substance. These two forms of nutrition, ambient and substantial, belong to all the things that are enveloped or covered with membranes, such as almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts, onions, oranges. Likewise, the earth and the plants are nourished by the ambient water contained in the clouds and in the air, as well as by the substantial water contained in springs, rivers, and seas. What we have said of the heart is true also of the liver and spleen: heart, liver and spleen, the three organs that 342. Such as hair and nails. 343. Membranous sac enveloping the heart. 344. Telas. Presumably telas del corazon, “heartstrings,” as above, 114 and n62. 345. telas del corazon. 346. Nutricion influente: in the sense of nutrition absorbed from a surrounding medium. See above, n17.

208 The True Medicine are like live coals, transform the juice they receive from the brain, turning it into red blood. I do not deny that there is an interior, refocillating nutrition by means of the blood.347 But I deny that the chyle is carried from the stomach to the liver by the meseraic veins of the intestines.348 The blood made by the heart is more airy and full of spirits, the blood made by the spleen is earthier and darker, the blood made by the liver is in between the two.

347. Refocilatoria: refocillating in the sense of giving heat and strength. Sabuco does not deny that blood also nourishes the body, but only in a secondary way, subsidiary to the principal agent of nutrition, which is the white juice. Cf. Valles, lib. 1, cap. 14 : De nutrientibus succis, 20r–v, who argues the more conventional view that blood is the principal agent of nutrition. This was a basic tenet of Galenist orthodoxy throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth century. 348. This is a very important point, where Sabuco touches on one of the most debated aspects of Galenic physiology in the late Renaissance. in fact, one of the issues that would eventually lead to the demise of Galenic physiology in the seventeenth century. Sabuco gave even more emphasis to this view in Vera Philosophia de natura mistorum, 395, with something like a pun: “Ubi sunt, qui per miseraicas misero ingenio, omnia perturbarunt?” (“Where are those who, with their miserable intellect, confused everything for the sake of the meseraic veins?”). The alliteration of misero ingenio and meseraicas is somewhat lost in translation. In Galenic physiology, the liver was seen as the seat of the natural function of nutrition, and the root and origin of the vessels carrying the nourishing fluid: the veins. As mentioned above (n251), this is how nutrition was imagined to work: food, turned into chyle in the stomach by a process of concoction, passed through the intestines where the veins of the mesentery (or middle intestine) called the “meseraic veins,” carried it to the liver. The liver received the chyle and turned it into blood, sending it out to the veins, which ramified up and down carrying nourishment to all the body parts. But this transit of the chyle to the liver through the meseraic vessels was a matter of increasing doubt and controversy among sixteenth-century anatomists. In the seventeenth century, after Aselli’s discovery of the lacteals, the role of the liver as the source of blood was convincingly denied by Thomas Bartholin. Significantly, it was the denial of the transit of the chyle to the liver by the meseraic vessels that Stephen Bredwell picked up from Sabuco, and it was on account of this unorthodox view that the London College of Physicians reprimanded him for spreading Sabuco’s “paradoxes” (see Introduction, 78–80). Doubting the nutritive function of blood was serious heresy from a Galenist viewpoint.

The True Medicine 209

Comparison: On Semen349 Now all the varying and contradictory opinions of philosophers and physicians on human semen will be rectified. Aristotle350 discussed the controversial issue of whether semen comes from all the parts of the body or just from one part specifically devoted to this function.351 Hippocrates, and many others with him, believed that semen comes from all parts of the body.352 The truth, Mr. Doctor, is that semen originates in, and derives from, the root (which is the brain), and it goes through the trunk (which is the spinal marrow), and sends out fruit and seed in the shoots (which are the seminal vessels), as happens in plants. The same white juice of the root that increases the body bulk in man, and makes leaves and branches in plants, also turns into seed and fruit in the shoots. Providential and wise nature looks far ahead, and stops the growth of the individual to provide for the species: thus the stalk of the plant stops growing so that the fruit and seed can grow. Similarly, plants also provide for the branches and stalks that are more distant from the root, as one can see in vines and tall trees, which first send out buds and growing points in their more distant branches. Thus, the same white juice of the root (which is also the matter of which the root is made) makes the branches and leaves grow in plants, and the body parts grow in man. This very same juice is the matter of which fruit and seed are made (fruit and seed being one and the same thing), as we can see in plants: if one prunes the branches and stems that carry no fruit, the fruit on the plant will grow bigger. Likewise, if one cuts the leaves of the eggplant, the plant will bear more and bigger fruit. All the other plants, if pruned, make more seed out of what was going to be stem or leaves, whereas the plants that are not pruned, though they also cast seed, lose vigor and live for a shorter time. Just as blood serves the white juice as second 349. Cf. Valles, Controversiae, lib.1, cap.7: An ex omnibus membris semen decidatur, an ex solis vasis seminaris, 31v.–33v. 350. Marginal note: 1. de Generatione animalium. 351. See Aristotle, Generation of animals, I.17–18, trans. A. L. Peck (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979), Loeb Aristotle, 13.49–89 (quoted also in Valles, 31v). 352. Quot. from Valles, Controversiae, 31v, who refers to the Hippocratic treatises De genitura and De aere locis et aquis.

210 The True Medicine matter for the growth of the fleshy parts, in the same way the woman’s menstruum serves the white juice as second matter in the uterus for the propagation of the species. The purpose of this white juice of the root is the growth of the individual up to the point of maturity, and once that point is reached, its purpose becomes to provide for the increase of the species. So this very same juice, if discharged from the seminal vessels in coitus, begets its own kind and is apt to turn into all body parts, just as the juice from a plant’s root is apt to turn into leaf, stem and fruit. If not discharged in coitus, this juice fattens the body parts of the individual, and it adds to the white fatty tissues that cover the kidneys (this is what Avicenna called cambium, which is like the layer of fat in the skin). Thus this very same chyle of the root is the matter both of the growth of the individual and of the generation of the individual. It is ridiculous to say that milk and semen are blood, which is turned white by the vessels.353 Young women feel very clearly when milk comes to their breasts (it even hurts them); they feel it coming down to the breasts through the skin of the shoulders and of the armpits, and with any emotion, disturbance, or discontent of the soul they lose their milk.

Comparison: On the Causes of Diseases354 Galen in de causis morborum lists five causes of hot diseases: motus, putredo, vicinia rei calidae, constrictio, cibus potusque calidior; “motion, putrefaction, proximity to a hot part, compression, food and drink that are too hot.”355 Then he lists the causes of cold diseases: obturatio, otium, etc.: “obstruction, lack of exercise,” etc. On this subject matter, Mr. Doctor, I believe you already understand my view and the 353. See above, 147 and n169. Both Aristotle and Galen held the so-called “haematogenous” theory of semen, the theory, namely, that semen is derived from blood (see Introduction, 44). According to Galen, blood is transformed into semen thanks to a process of concoction performed partly by the blood vessels running to the testicles (the seminal vessels), and partly by the testicles themselves. For Aristotle, instead, semen was formed exclusively in the blood vessels: the testicles had nothing to do with it. Both Galen and Aristotle argued that blood starts to turn white in the blood vessels, even before reaching the testicles. It is this view that Sabuco is calling “ridiculous” here. 354. Cf. Valles, Controversiae, lib.4, cap.3: De causis morborum, 81v–87v. 355. See Galen, De causis morborum, in Opera, 7.20.

The True Medicine 211 truth, which is the following: The causes of man’s death mentioned by Galen and all the other ones that I, though not knowledgeable of medicine, did list in the Coloquio, are antecedent causes, that is, triggering circumstances that move the general internal cause, which is the flux or decrement of the brain. This, and no other, is the conjunct or direct and immediate cause of all the internal diseases of man.356 I do not call a severed finger a disease;357 I call it rather mutilatio membri, “the maiming of a body part,” which, by causing pain, sets in motion the general internal cause. Therefore the latter, though second in time, will be the true causa morbi, the true “cause of the disease.” This is equally the cause of hot and cold diseases, depending on whether the humors and the falling spirits will be hot or cold, as has been said. If the doctors’ logic tells them that the brain cannot generate hot humor, since the brain is humid and cold, they and their logic are wrong, because their rules do not understand nature, nor can they force nature to be what nature is not.

Comparison: On Fevers358 Hippocrates said: Febris essentiam in calore cum siccitate consistere:359 “The essence of fever consists in heat with dryness.”360 He advised that people with fever be given moist food. Galen in his commentary adds: 356. Antecedent and conjunct causes were contrasted in Scholastic natural philosophy, roughly in the sense expressed here of the “antecedent” cause being the triggering circumstance (which could vary) and the conjunct cause being the one truly necessary (always present) for the effect to happen. See above, nn18, 177. 357. As does Valles, Controversiae, 82v, in discussing the causes of disease. 358. Cf. Valles, Controversiae, lib.5, cap.18: de febris essentia, 113r.–114r. (Controversias, 332–37). 359. Marginal note: 1. aphor. 16. 360. This sentence does not correspond to Aphorisms, I.16, as quoted in Sabuco’s marginal note (see above, n359). The content of Aphorisms I.16 is the following: “A sloppy diet is beneficial to all fevers, especially in the case of children and of those used to such as diet.” (Loeb, 4.107). Sabuco is in fact quoting from Valles, 113r, who is not quoting Aphorisms I.16 but Galen’s commentary on it (see Galen, Hippocratis aphorimi et Galeni in eos commentarii, XVI, Opera, 17b.426). From Hippocrates’s prescription of a liquid diet to people affected with fever—Valles writes—Galen infers that fever’s essence consists in heat and dryness. Sabuco mistakenly attributes the saying to Hippocrates.

212 The True Medicine Febri (sic) enim quoniam calida, & sicca passio est, est enim conversio caloris nativi in igneum.361 “Fever is a hot and dry condition: it is the conversion of innate heat to fire-like heat.” He also recommends moist food. Galen also said: Febris est calor totius corporis praeter naturam: “Fever is a heat of the whole body outside the ordinary course of nature.”362 There are on this topic a thousand different and confused opinions by numberless authors, Plato among them, who said that fever is humor that goes out of the veins, starts to putrefy causing a chilling sensation, and once putrefied it burns, causing the rise of temperature. It would be tiresome, Mr. Doctor, to refute with specific arguments all that has been said on this subject. I believe, however, that you have already understood what fever is, thanks to what has been said above, namely, that it is fuga caloris à suo loco nativo, “the flight of the heat from its native place”—the heat running away from its opposite. The cold, shivery sensation that accompanies fever is tactus spiritus, & humoris frigidi, cadentis à cerebro per cutem, & nervos interiores: that is to say, “the contact of the spirits and of the cold humor, which fall from the brain through the skin and the interior nerves.” This cold is the cause of the rising temperature, because it disperses the heat and drives it away from its native place, where it used to perform its salubrious action, as is the case with the heat of both heart and liver. This is the plain and clear truth, Mr. Doctor; this truth will prevail over these barbarous and confused notions. The truth is that fever is passio sicca in cerebro, “a dry condition of the brain,” due to the fall of the brain’s moisture, and this is why one gets thirsty in a fever. Fever is also passio frigida, “a cold and moist condition” of the stomach (the second harmony), because of the humor fallen there, whereas it is passio calida, “a hot condition,” in the other parts of the body, because the heat, running away from its opposite, the cold spirit and humor, is dispersed from its native places and scattered over the other body parts. Exactly the same thing also happens in the macrocosm: when the cold air comes, the heat runs away from its place, withdrawing into wells and caves in the depths of the earth, and the parts of the earth that 361. Febri should be Febris. See Galen, Hippocratis aphorimi et Galeni in eos commentarii, XVI (Opera, 17b.426), quoted from Valles, Controversiae, 113r. 362. Quoted from Valles, Controversiae, 113v. See Galen, Hippocratis Epid. VI et Galeni in illum commentarius I, XXIX (Opera, 17a.872).

The True Medicine 213 used to be cold become warm, while the parts that used to be hot turn cold. The same happens in the microcosm, which is man. The falling humor cools the body parts by contact, just like the rain cools the earth, and this cold lasts longer and is always accompanied by cold air. My opinion is that the falling spirits, or ventosity, do as much harm in the body, by causing fevers, pains and swellings, as the wind does in the macrocosm. It is the wind that makes good and bad weather; the wind with its extremes makes the world cold or hot; it kills animals and plants, or gives them life. The wind gives the ambient nutrition,363 and with it life, or it can stop not only the ambient nutrition but also the substantial nutrition from the roots. In man, the ventosity kills by affecting the body with catarrh, or the humor fallen from above, and not by reconcentration of the heat, as said by Aristotle and Galen (cuncta errore plena: “all these things are full of mistakes”). The truth is that when the hot humor (that is, the two kinds of choler) reaches the heart, by way of the arteries, and the liver, by way of the veins,364 this extraneous heat increases the natural heat, causing fever without the sensation of coldness, dispersing and destroying the innate heat, just like the great heat of the sun extinguishes a flame. But there is no need to repeat the rest of this matter, since it has already been said. Doctor: I’d be a drunken sot if I took to your new-fangled notions, abandoning the ancient beliefs. Antonio: Consider, Mr. Doctor, that these are not newfangled notions; they are new truths. It stands to reason that wine improves with age, but error does not. I know very well that you are not a drunken sot. But you know that one can be drunk with too much food, too much nutrition, and too great a stream of increment, which hinders the subtle actions of the soul, as happens in children.365

363. Nutricion influente. On ambient and substantial nutrition see above, 207. 364. The heart was supposed to be the source of the arteries, the liver of the veins. Sabuco shares this conventional view. 365. This notation graphically describes the Doctor to the reader as fat in his body as well as slow of comprehension in his mind, providing an instance of Sabuco’s argument about the working of the intellectual faculty, which is incapacitated in fat people by the excessive moisture in their brains.

214 The True Medicine Doctor: You have said things so consistent with the truth, Mr. Antonio, that you have made me doubt. If you will prove your novelty, I will believe it, even to my chagrin. Antonio: By God, I wish I had my shepherd’s knapsack full of logic in order to prove it! However, I’ll prove it with these reasons, simply with my rustic Minerva, without arguments drawn from logic, or sophisms. In the first place, you have to understand the following truths.

All that Has Been Said is Proved with Evident Reasons First, heart, liver, spleen, and their humor do not have the animal part of the soul, nor are they capable of perceiving and understanding the intelligible “species,” the images of things, for the reason that they are fleshy members, unsuitable for the imprinting of the “species.” This is why the will is not located in the heart. Heart, liver, and spleen have only the vital and natural faculties, and the sense of touch. Second, the animal part of the soul is located in the marrow of the brain, because there is the seat and abode of the divine and eternal soul, which performs its actions366 by means of the “species” that enter through the soul’s five doors.367 The “species” settle in the juicy and soft marrow of the major and minor brain.368 Only the brain is the appropriate organ for receiving and retaining the “species.” The brain perceives all sensible things, though it does not perceive itself, as the surgeons know from the circumstance that even if they cut away part of the brain’s marrow from a wounded man, he does not feel it, as stated by Fernel.369 Similarly the brain does not perceive its own madness or insanity, nor does it feel its own increment and decrement, though it is always growing, in health, and diminishing, in sickness.

366. anima divina, y eterna, que hace sus acciones. These words were censored by the Inquisition (see Sabuco, Obras, 341, where the words are in italics). 367. That is, the five senses. 368. Presumably, the cerebrum and the cerebellum. 369. See above, n110.

The True Medicine 215 Third, intellect, reason, and will, which together are the divine370 soul, have their seat only in the brain and not in any fleshy organ, in order to perform their actions with the “species,” the images of things that enter the brain through the five doors of the five senses. Fourth, the soul perceives the incorporeal “species” (with which it has more affinity, being itself incorporeal) better than corporeal things, such as for instance the juice of food, which enters the fleshy part of the brain, which is the marrow. Like the animal, the brain takes this juice since the moment that the food gets into the mouth and is tasted. Fifth, like every root, man’s brain grows and shrinks with the moon, as do the things in nature that grow and shrink with the waxing and waning of the moon. Surgeons see this very clearly in open wounds of the head, where they notice that in convalescence the marrow grows so much with the full moon that it sticks out of the skull,371 as said by Avicenna and as one can see for himself with one’s own eyes every day. Sixth, every movement and action originates, derives and proceeds from the brain—the intellect ruling over the will. Every member receives motion and sensation from the brain by means of the nerves and of the spirits. In the brain reside the irascible and concupiscible parts of the soul, as well as the natural faculty as will be said later, since these cannot exist without the “species,” the images of things. The same is true for all feelings, all motion, sensation, hunger, and thirst: they are all located in the brain. Seventh, different causes will produce different effects, and the same cause will produce always the same effect (& è contra: and vice versa). Consequently four different causes will produce four different effects. Eighth, everything that moves is moved by something else (except for the first cause) and every natural agent operates by contact as the extrinsic or antecedent372 cause, which necessarily moves the 370. The word divina was censored by the Inquisition (see Sabuco, Obras, 342, where the word is in italics). 371. See above, n120. 372. Procatartica: see above, n177.

216 The True Medicine internal cause, whether the natural agent moves itself or acts by contact or impact, in the said manner.373 Is not this all true, Mr. Doctor? Doctor: It cannot be denied that it is all true in good philosophy. Antonio: Now then, once you concede these premises and foundations, I prove it in this way: First, I prove it by the similarity with the root and the vegetative faculty of trees. It is clear that the root feeds the tree and makes it grow, and that the root is the door and entry or, in other words, the part that first takes in the juice or chyle from food. The vegetative faculty and health both consist in the good functioning of the root, which is taking and giving—that is, taking suitable juice from the earth and giving it to the branches by way of the bark and the interior nerves. This is precisely what the brain does: it takes the juice from food with the mouth’s fibers, pores and suckers, or rejects it, depending on whether it likes the food’s tastes and flavors. If the brain likes the food and accepts it, it takes it immediately in its first cavity, the mouth, and it stores part of it in its second cavity, the stomach, as do the apes, the dog-headed apes, and the ourang-outangs,374 as well as the pelican bird, which all store food in some recesses of their mouths in order to eat it later.375 Thus the brain stores some part of food in the stomach so that it may always have something to eat, in 373. Todo agente natural hace, por tacto, la causa estrinseca, o procatartica, necessario ha de mover causa interna, que haga por tacto, o afecto en tal manera, o mueva. This sentence is rather obscure. Waithe, Vintró, and Zorita translate as “Every natural agent through contact [with something else] produces the intrinsic cause or catharsis needed to cause internal motions; i. e., contact affects [the thing contacted] in such a way as to cause it to move.” (New Philosophy of Human Nature, 240). But the text speaks of causa estrinseca, not intrinsic, and procatartica has nothing to do with “catharsis.” In Galenic and Renaissance medical language, causa procatartica indicated the antecedent cause of disease, as explained above, n177. 374. Marginal note: Pliny, lib. 10, c. 47. 375. Cf. Pliny, NH, X. xciii. 199 (Loeb, 3.419): “the class of dog-headed apes and ourangoutangs store food in the recesses of the jaw-bones and they gradually take it out from there with their hands to chew it.” On the Onocrotalus, the pelican, cf. Pliny, NH, X. lxvi.131 (Loeb, 3.377): “They have a kind of second stomach in their actual throats. Into this the insatiable creature stows everything, so that its capacity is marvelous. Afterwards when it has done plundering it gradually returns the things from this pouch into its mouth and passes them into the true stomach like a ruminant animal.”

The True Medicine 217 order to better perform its vegetative function of root, which is taking juice from the food (like a plant takes nutriment from the soil) and giving it to the branches. It is clear that the brain is the door and entry or, in other words, the part that first takes the juice, because it is the brain that distinguishes the food’s various tastes and flavors—and consequently the brain is the root of man. As such, the brain is the part that makes the tree vegetate and grow, and that distributes the juice taken from its cavities, where the food is stored—food being to man and animals what the soil is to plants. Health or sickness, growth or decline, increment or decrement, depend on whether this juice is wholesome, or unwholesome, as it is when the brain reverses its office of taking and giving suitable juice. I prove it with the argument of what the authors call analogy,376 or “unknown cause.” As has been said, the brain feels all the rest of the body but does not feel itself. Galen and all the others saw that if one removes part of the marrow from a wounded man, he does not feel anything; but they made a big mistake in this respect, attributing sensation to the instruments by saying: cerebrum non sentit, vim tamen praestat sentiendi: “the brain has no sensation, but it gives the power of sensation,” and so they attributed sight to the eye, taste to the palate and tongue, etc. Also, because the origin of all damages is in the brain, and because these damages start to be felt only after they have wandered away from the brain and have reached a fleshy or nervous part, the ancients surmised that the damage was born and originated in the part where it was felt. And since they did not know the cause and origin of the damage, they called it praeter naturam, “out of the ordinary course of nature,” speaking at other times of causa incognita, “unknown cause.” This is what made them misunderstand the foundations of medicine, and ignore the function of the brain as the root and source of the vegetative faculty, and the source also of health and increment as well as of diseases, catarrhs, and decrements. Now, it is obvious that not knowing something implies to a certain extent some knowledge of the thing: for instance, when we say we do not know God, it means that we understand that he is infinite and beyond the reach of our intellect. In this case, also, whenever they did not know the reason or cause, they had recourse to the notions of 376. Analogia. See above, n302.

218 The True Medicine causa incognita and praeter naturam (whose meaning is vague). It is clear, therefore, that the cause will be in the part that is not felt, which is the brain, since all the other parts of the body are felt, and the brain is the only one that is not. So in the brain will be the causa incognita and the praeter naturam, being the part that they did not feel, nor can it be felt, for the reasons given, whereas all the rest of the body can be felt. Consequently, not feeling the brain leads us to understand that the brain is the part that is not felt, and that it is the origin and source of all damages and diseases. We understand that the brain is the original cause, precisely because it is the only part that we cannot understand, while we can understand all the other parts. So, because they ignored this root and its office and juice (the juice being the white chyle of nutrition, as has been said) the ancient authors mistakenly attributed this office and the natural or vegetative faculty to the liver, falling into a series of additional errors regarding semen, milk, and the transit of chyle from the intestines to the liver through the meseraic veins—errors that are all related to each other. I prove it by the argument of sudden deaths caused by the effect of a repulsive “species.”377 When that “species” reaches the common sense and is recognized by the soul, the pia mater shakes it off with such vehemence that it shakes off with it all the brain’s juice, which smothers the heat of both heart and stomach, leading to instantaneous death. It is clear that in this case the sudden death cannot be due either to ametry [of the humors] or to putredo, “putrefaction,” because the repulsive object is not perceived by the humor, and moreover, ametry or putredo cannot develop in such a short time, the person being in good health when he perceived the repulsive object. This applies, for the same reason, also to sudden death that occurs when there is is no perception of a repulsive object, the person being in good health at the time.378 The same is true of death caused by foul smells, for instance when people die while cleaning sewers or latrines, in which case also it is clear that death cannot be due to ametry or to putredo (“putrefaction”), 377. Especie aborrecida. Waithe, Vintró, and Zorita translate “the evil beast” adding in a note: “variously called anger, rage, wrath” (New Philosophy of Human Nature, 241 and 252, n201). But in several points in the text Sabuco explains that sudden death can be due to various kinds of strong emotions, not only anger. 378. Meaning that also in this case death cannot be due to ametry or putrefaction.

The True Medicine 219 or to exinaninatio triplicis substantiae (“the exhaustion of the triple substance”),379 or to an increase of excrements, none of which can take place in such a short time. It is clear, instead, that the cause of death is the smothering of the heart’s innate heat, as has been said. I prove it by the argument of the kings’ diet. If it were as Hippocrates said, namely, that the aliments leave in the whole mass of blood some part of choler, phlegm, and black bile380 (which is not so, because the natural faculty in the liver cannot err), then kings should be very healthy, because they eat healthy food, containing less, or none at all, of those humors. And yet we see that kings are actually more prone to sickness and death, and tend more often to be valetudinarians and to get sick. It is clear, therefore, that there is another cause of disease more important than food, and it is the flux or catarrh of the cold and humid juice from the brain. When the viscous juice falls (in the varieties already mentioned), it turns unwholesome, even if originally it had been the best in the world and had come from the best food. There must therefore be another cause that makes it turn unwholesome by agitating and shaking it violently. This cause is, in children, the adverse conditions already mentioned381 and, in adults, the passions of the soul. Kings are more susceptible to these passions, because they are more sensitive, and their souls, as shown by our philosophy, are more refined and have more power and influence over the body. In fact, with the greater power of the peculiar nature they received from God, what was described by Plato happens to kings: Quando enim anima corpore potentior est, exultat, & effertur, totumque ipsum intrinsecus quatiens languoribus implet:382 “When the soul is stronger than the body, it rejoices and is uplifted, and shaking up the whole body from within, it fills it with ailments.”383 Therefore, I 379. Triplicis substantiae: “the triple substance” usually referred to the three components of the body, solid, fleshy, and spirituous. See for instance Fernel, Physiologia (cited above, n110), lib 4., cap. 5, 273 ff. 380. See above, 173. 381. As Antonio has mentioned several times already, in children the brain’s juice is more prone to fall because their brains are more moist, watery, and tender. 382. Marginal note: In Timeo. 383. Translation is mine. Cf. Plato, Timaeus, 88A, Loeb, 239: “Whenever the soul within is stronger than the body and is in a very passionate state, it shakes up the whole body from

220 The True Medicine say that kings stand more in need of my philosophy, because for this reason they have more diseases, whose cause is in the brain, where the soul reacts to the “species” of repulsive and loathed objects. The cause is neither in the liver, nor in the humor, nor in the heart, none of which is able to perceive the “species.” I prove it by the argument of the unique and peculiar necessity of this root. The physicians think that the root that feeds the body is the stomach, and Plato called it “the manger of the whole body,”384 but such is not the case. The principal root that feeds the whole body and makes it grow is the brain. The stomach is only a second root or cavity, made by the brain in order to store the food, just as some apes, the dog-headed apes and the ourang-outangs, store food first in the recesses of their jaws in order to eat it later, and the pelican stores it in its pouch, as has been said. The reason is that this tree (namely, man) has to move from place to place, so it had to be of such capacious shape as to be able to carry along water and earth (namely, food and drink), in order to be constantly feeding and performing its office of growth. So man had to be framed in such a way as to be always sucking from this second root (the stomach) by means of filaments and suckers sent into what is for him what the soil is for plants, namely, food. And that the brain is the major and principal root from which derive the second ones, mouth and stomach, is proved by these reasons: mouth and stomach are never found without the brain, as one can see clearly in every animal that eats, as well as in many-headed serpents, where every head has its own mouth and stomach, the mouth for the sake of taking the juice from food by pressing, and the stomach for the reason already stated. Birds have no teeth with which to squeeze and grind food, because it was more necessary for them to have a beak made of sharp horn with which to break and cut through the air in flying. So nature provided them with two cavities, or stomachs, to make up for their inability to press food in the mouth, and nature placed one cavity—the crop or food bag—in the neck, close to the brain, and the second one inside the belly. Other animals take the juice from food twice: some press it in the mouth twice, without spitting it out, as do ruminants, while others throw it up and eat it again, pressing it in the within and it fills it with maladies.” 384. Plato, Timaeus, 70E, Loeb, 183.

The True Medicine 221 mouth a second time, as do frogs, some kinds of venomous toads,385 vipers, snakes, and geckoes,386 all of which come back to eat their own vomit, not for the reason given by Pliny, but for the reason given by Theophrastus.387 The dog also does the same thing, coming back to eat its own vomit in order to humidify the dryness of its brain. So its main root—the brain—takes the juice twice, by pressing it twice in the first cavity, or second root, which is the mouth. Consequently, these two second, or minor, roots (mouth and stomach) can never exist without the main and first root, the brain, from which they derive. Indeed, one can find the first root by itself without the two minor ones; some animals live only with the brain, without having mouth or stomach, because in the brain is the root of the vegetative faculty, and of the power to feel and breathe. The people named Astomi,388 said to be without mouth (as indeed they have no mouth, and do not eat), have only the nose and are nourished by the smell of flowers and plants, of apples and other fruit, without eating them. It is clear that such people live with the sole root of the brain, without the two minor ones, mouth and stomach, that serve the first. The chameleon lives with the sole root of the brain, without the two second ones, because it has no stomach, and one cannot find any organ inside it except for the lung, which is there for the sake of bringing air in and letting it out, cooling and nourishing the first root, the seat of life, growth, and all sense perception. No animal, be it ever so small, which is endowed with the sensitive part of the soul, can exist without the brain, on penalty of being just a plant and not an animal. There are small birds that are nourished and live by the fragrance of the cinnamon trees, and die if they are taken away from

385. Rubetas: ranas de zarzal, Lat. rubeta: a kind of venomous toads living among bramblebushes. I have not found an English equivalent. 386. Esteliones: Lat. stelliones. 387. See Pliny, NH , VIII. xlv.111 (Loeb, 3.79–81): “The seal also resembles the beaver both in its amphibious habits and in its nature. It gets rid of its gall, which is useful for many drugs, by vomiting it up, and also its rennet, a cure for epileptic attacks; it does this because it knows that it is hunted for the sake of these products. Theophrastus states that geckoes also slough off their old skin, as a snake does, and similarly swallow the slough at once.” 388. See above, n122.

222 The True Medicine the place where these trees grow. The salamander and the pyrausta389 breathe fire, and away from fire soon die. In all these cases, it is clear that these animals have only the brain, and live thanks to it. Pliny states that all animals breathe, be they ever so small, and even if they have no lungs: that is, they cool and feed with respiration the main root (the brain) that they all have—the root where life and the power of growth reside. He also says, like Aristotle, that no animal, be it ever so imperfect, can lack the two senses of touch and taste. This is tantamount to saying that no animal can live without the principal root of the brain, where the sense of taste and the power of growth reside, and where the sense of touch terminates, though an animal may lack the second root, i.e., the stomach. Take for instance the wine-gnats, which are bred and fed by the wine vapors. Until their metamorphosis, as long as they are in their larval state, they cling to a humid wall in cellars and caves, and grow without eating, feeding only on the nourishment their brains received from the moisture of the surrounding air; then they change their nature, turning into gnats, and fly out, and go to eat. All of this is seen more clearly in those fish, birds and animals, like the she-bear and the crocodile,390 that stay hidden for four winter months in their dens, without feeding on soil or anything else but the juice stored in their brain and the ambient moisture they get from the surrounding air in their caves, since throughout this time they do not put anything in their stomachs.391 Other examples are the shellfish called purples,392 which survive for fifty days once taken out of the water, thanks to the slime that falls from their brain;393 and the vipers that, Pliny says, can live for a year without eating.394 All these animals395 grow and are fed through this root, the brain, by the 389. A fabulous animal, Latin Pyrausta: a small butterfly that the ancients thought lived in fire and would die if taken away from it. 390. Marginal note: Plin. lib. 8 c. 25. 391. Cf. Pliny, NH, VIII.xxxviii. 94 (Loeb, 3.69) (on the crocodile); IX,.xxiv. 57 (Loeb, 3.201) (on hibernating fish). 392. Marginal note: Plin. lib. 9, c. 36. 393. Pliny, NH, IX. lx. 125 (Loeb, 3.249): “when caught they live as much as seven weeks on their own slime.” 394. Marginal note: Lib. 8 c. 39. 395. Pliny, NH, VIII. lix. 139 (Loeb, 3.99).

The True Medicine 223 surrounding water or air, which is nothing but the milk of the moon, mother and wetnurse. All of which makes clear that the root of life, and the requisite vegetative faculty, is the brain and not the stomach, since the brain can be found even in the absence of the mouth and stomach. Indeed some animals live only with the brain, while many others live only with the brain in the wintertime, when they make no use of the stomach at all. From all these examples it can be clearly gathered that the brain gives growth, nutrition and health to the body by means of wholesome juice, while with unwholesome juice it gives the body diseases. It can be gathered also that the primary aliment intended for the brain is the air of respiration. I prove it by the argument of sleep, which is the primary aliment the brain gives to the whole body. This argument shows clearly that the brain is the root of growth, since in sleep the soul’s actions stop, the “species” being covered by the fog of the humor going up through the skull and its commissures for the growth of the skin. It was necessary for this root that time be divided, so that the animal faculty can perform its divine actions by day and the natural or vegetative faculty can perform its actions by night. I prove it by this reason: if the cause of diseases were the ametry, namely, the imbalance either of the four humors or of their four qualities, then clearly these qualities should manifest their effects in disease. But usually we do not see either a dry condition arising from dryness or a moist condition arising from moisture; we only see a rise of temperature and the cold, shivering sensation, and these two always in the same sequence, the cold sensation preceding the temperature. Therefore, it is clear that the cause of diseases is not the ametry or immoderatio, “the imbalance or excess” of the humors. The cause, instead, is what we said above about fever and the shivering cold sensation that precedes it.396 The ametry of the humors is the effect of this general cause. That the attractive faculty, and not the heat, is the agent of digestion, I prove by the argument of cooking, namely, by the circumstance that food keeps its shape even if we cook it over fire for a long time: the meat stays meat in the pot. In the body, instead, though the heat is just lukewarm, the food does change shape. The 396. See 106–7 above.

224 The True Medicine cause thereof is the attractive virtue, which extracts from food the airy and watery component, leaving the earthy component unchanged. This is done by the brain, the root whose office is to take and give these components of food to the trunk and the branches, by means of its power of attraction. Thus the brain’s attractive virtue draws up and raises the chyle so that it is always on top of the food in the stomach. This view of digestion solves a thousand difficulties,397 such as the problem of the dregs of food being heavier than chyle, and that of the long time it takes to appease hunger. I prove it by the argument of the fibers and hair-like barbs found in the roots of plants, which branch off and spread out in the ground in many directions to absorb the juice of the earth: the same are the villi398 that one can clearly observe in the stomach, the rete mirabile399 in the brain,400 the pores and suckers in the tongue and palate, and the holes in the upper part of the mouth. 397. Difficulties raised by the Galenic doctrine of digestion as “concoction,” according to which the primary agent of digestion was the innate heat of the stomach. Sabuco argues instead that the primary agent of digestion is the brain’s attractive virtue. 398. Vilos (also spelled villos): from the Latin vilus, the term was used in anatomical language to indicate the minute and absorbing filaments in the lining membrane of the stomach. OED has villus, plur. villi. 399. Rete mirabile (marvelous network) was called by Galen an intricate network of blood vessels that he had observed in the intracranial part of the internal carotid artery of some animals, and that he claimed existed also in man. According to Galen, the rete mirabile had the function of developing the brain’s animal spirits from the heart’s vital spirits. In Sabuco’s view, by contrast, its function, like that of the villi in the stomach and of the pores in the tongue, is to allow the brain to suck up the alimentary juice from the stomach and the rest of the body. See also Vera philosophia de natura mistorum, 429: “Arteriae, & venae assimilantur hederis sequacibus, quae alienum succum album nervorum, & radicis sibi appetunt, vasa enim alba sunt, nec rubeo succo alentur, ob hoc, alibi nascentes adhaerent nervis, & cuti, & sese diffundentes minutim, constituunt rete mirabile, ut undique trahant succum album radicis.” Renaissance anatomists questioned the existence of the rete mirabile in man, asserting that Galen had mistakenly extended to humans the findings from his dissections of animals. Sabuco does not seem to be aware of this issue. On the history of the rete mirabile, see John M. Forrester, “The marvelous network and the history of inquiry into its function,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 57 (2002), 198–217. 400. Waithe, Vintró, and Zorita erroneously translate: “the villi that are in the stomach are called the rete mirabile” (New Philosophy of Human Nature, 243). The text is: “y estas son los vilos eminentes del estomago, y en la raiz el rete mirabile,” and for Sabuco, of course, the raiz (root) is the brain. In the sixteenth century, any person knowledgeable of medicine, as

The True Medicine 225 I prove it by the argument of dream: dreaming a repulsive object wakes up the person who sleeps, by shaking off and throwing around the brain’s juice that was formerly going up to the skin and to the top of the head, through the skull and its commissures. This is harmful, and so is the interruption of sleep, because the brain throws around its juice when it is prevented from doing what it needs to do, [that is, to sleep]. I prove that hunger and thirst are located in the brain by the argument that hunger stops already while eating as well as during sleep. This is because the vapor rising to the brain during sleep feeds the brain; one can see that a hungry man does not feel the pangs of hunger while he is asleep. That the main growth is that of the skin I prove by the argument à figura vesicae, “from the shape of the bladder.”401 The bladder, though it has no duct,402 serves the purpose of collecting the urine from the entire body, which urine is the excrement of the skin’s growth. I also prove it by the argument provided by the growth of the bark in plants, and by the circumstance that both skin and bark receive nourishment from the surrounding air. Urine is the excrementitious and earthy part of chyle. While most of the chyle goes to the top of the head and to the skin, its excrement percolates downwards through the membranes of the loins and the thin parts of the lower belly, as we have said, thus reaching the bladder. This penetrating and subtle excrement enters and passes through the bladder, which is whole and with no duct for the ureters. I thus say that most of the urine is the excrement of the skin’s growth. This is the reason why, in humid weather, when the skin absorbs the inflowing moisture from the humid air surrounding it (which is Sabuco certainly was, would have known that the rete mirabile was located at the base of the brain. 401. Waithe, Vintró, and Zorita inexplicably translate: “through physics” (New Philosophy of Human Nature, 243). I am at loss to understand how “a figura vesicae” may have become “through physics” in their minds. 402. See Valles, 66r, for a discussion of the notion that the bladder has no orifice, except in its neck (“nullum vesica praeterquam in cervice videtur osculum habere”). Sabuco seems to make from this that there is no opening for the urine to get inside the bladder: therefore, the urine must get inside the bladder by percolating through the bladder’s membranes. See also above, n197.

226 The True Medicine what I called the ambient nutrition403), man drinks less and urinates more. Also for this reason, moisturizing the skin with wine makes one feel like urinating. I prove it by the argument of the white chyle of women who breastfeed, that is, milk, which comes to them immediately after eating and drinking, and as soon as it comes, comes out white;404 and with any perturbation of the soul the milk goes away. I prove it by the argument of the heaviness of the dregs of food, whereas the chyle floats, as one can see clearly in vomit, and in the practical evidence of heavy things. I prove it moreover: With the argument of children crying for little sorrow. With the argument of sweat, which breaks out first on the head and forehead. With the argument of the point of origin of the skin, which is the crown of the head, and the ladder of nature which is seen there405 and in no other part of the body. That disease and death are due to the brain’s decrement and not to the humors’ ametry I prove by the argument of death, whose timing is often in keeping with the ebbing of the sea and the falling of the night. I also prove it by the argument of the improvement one notices in sick people in the morning and every time the sun and moon are in increment, while they get worse when the moon and sun are in decrement. I prove it by the argument of the increment and decrement of all marrow and all vegetable root, whose growing and shrinking follow, and keep with, the moon’s waxing and waning, which is health and illness. That life and death are in the brain I prove by the argument of lethal poison, which kills quickly after it is eaten, without waiting for

403. On the ambient nutrition see above, 207. 404. The traditional view was that milk derived from blood, which was “concocted” and turned white in the breast vessels. Sabuco believed that milk derives from the white chyle, or juice of the brain. See Introduction, 44. 405. The cowlick (remolino): see above, n26.

The True Medicine 227 the roundabout ways you imagine the food takes in the intestines and the alleged processing of blood by the liver.406 I prove it by the argument of theriac,407 which works quickly and gives health almost instantaneously, without waiting to be processed by the liver and go through your roundabout ways. That the brain is the root of the good or bad juice that feeds the branches, I prove by the argument of taste, the cause of nutrition, and with the argument of ruminating animals, which taste and take food by pressing it in the mouth twice; and because it is more, for this root, to draw and suck up the solid food again than just to draw and absorb only the juice of food. I prove it by the argument of the many excrements produced by this root, such as hair, mucus, rheum from the eyes, bristle,408 big ears, crests, and horns. That the pia mater descends [to form the mouth and the esophagus] is proved by the argument of the mouth twisting in great pain or sorrow, and the lips opening wide in laughter and pleasure: Risus enim est titilatio, vel motio piae matris facta animae gaudio: “Laughter is in fact when the pia mater is tickled or moved by the joy of the soul.”409

406. The allusion is to the Galenic theory of digestion, according to which the body is nourished by blood, formed in the liver from the chyle concocted in the stomach. If anything ingested has to go through this long, roundabout process, Sabuco points out, why is it that some poisons kill instantly? 407. Atriaca. Theriac was the most celebrated medicament of Galenic pharmacopoeia, supposedly effective on a wide range of diseases and as an antidote to many poisons. In early modern Europe it was prepared by apothecaries under the supervision of physicians, and was in wide use. See Gilbert Watson, Theriac and Mithridatium. A Study in Therapeutics (London: Wellcome Historical Medical Library, 1966). Waithe, Vintró, and Zorita translate Atriaca as “attraction” (New Philosophy of Human Nature, 244), which is definitely wrong. 408. Cerro: Latin cirrus: tuft of hair, bristle, or peluria. 409. As Sabuco stated at the beginning of the text (see above, 109), the membranes of the stomach and of the esophagus originate in the skin of the mouth, which in turn originates in the pia and dura mater. The argument here is that this direct connection of the mouth to the pia mater is shown by the movements of the mouth (twisting in pain, opening wide in pleasure) that follow the movements of the pia mater, which rises with pleasure and falls with pain.

228 The True Medicine One can see this clearly in the tears and the coughing that often accompany laughter, which are due to some of the juice falling when the pia mater is moved or tickled. It is evidently so, because the “species” of the object causing pleasure or pain cannot be in the esophagus or in the stomach. That the brain is the root, and that the main active force [in the body] is the brain’s attractive virtue and not the heat, and that the membranes called pia and dura mater extend downwards, I prove by the argument of the first stomach of birds, which is called the crop, where you can see that the skin of the mouth extends and expands to form a kind of stomach. This kind of stomach is not surrounded by the three live coals—heart, liver, and spleen—for the purpose of keeping it warm. So in this case the brain extracts the juice from the food in the crop only by means of its attractive virtue.410 There are many other reasons that I leave out, not to be tiresome. I only want to add one final argument, autoritate, taken from the ancient authors. Doctor: This is ridiculous. Was there ever a serious author who spoke against Hippocrates and Galen? Antonio: Yes, there was one. Doctor: Who is he? Antonio: Plato in Timaeus, where he thinks as I think on the passions of the soul, and concludes: Valetudinem esse communem corporis animique concordiam. “Health is the mutual agreement of body and soul.” And he says: Quando enim anima corpore potentior est, exultat, & effertur totumque ipsum intrinsecus quatiens languoribus implet, nonnumquam distillationes fluxusque commovens, medicorum plurimos decipit, cogitque illos contrarias causas indicare. “Whenever the soul is stronger than the body, it rejoices and is uplifted, and shaking up the whole body from within, it fills it with ailments, inducing often catarrhs and fluxes, and it deceives most physicians, making them ascribe these fluxes to the wrong causes”411 And he says 410. In this case, the juice can be extracted from the food only by the brain’s power of attraction, and not by being “cooked” by the stomach, since these birds do not have the three hot organs (heart, liver, and spleen), which keep the stomach hot. 411. Translation is mine. Cf. Timaeus, 88A, (Loeb, 239). Sabuco’s quotation combines sentences that are not consecutive in the original text. Cf. Loeb’s translation: “Whenever the

The True Medicine 229 further below: Porro ad bonam, & malam valetudinem, ad virtutes, & vitia nulla moderatio, vel immoderatio maioris momenti est quam animae ad ipsum corpus: “For with respect to health and disease, virtue and vice, there is no symmetry or want of symmetry greater than that which exists between the soul itself and the body itself.”412 From these words you can see very clearly that Plato belongs to my sect in medical matters. From these words you can also deduce that every sensation, motion, perturbation, or feeling is in the brain and not in the instruments. So also thought Plato when he said: Caput membrum divinissimum reliquorum membrorum princeps cui totum corpus Dij parere iusserunt, motuum omnium compos fore excogitaverunt, & ultra sensatio fit transfundendo in sequentes partes quousque ad prudentiae sedem perveniatur, & per hos quasi nuntios noscitur: “The head is the most divine member of the body, the prince of all other parts. The gods appointed the whole body to obey the brain, and they designed it to be the master of all the motions. Sensation happens by transferring to the adjoining parts whatever reaches the seat of wisdom, and so it is known through these parts as if they were messengers.”413 If it were otherwise, the people who sleep with their eyes open, as do the hares,414 would see and recognize things while they are asleep just as when they are awake,415 and the mouth’s sense of taste would judge the flavors of food, since, as some of the ancients thought, sight would belong to the eye and taste to the palate and tongue. On the basis of all these reasons and proofs, I believe that you are now persuaded of this truth. Doctor: No, I would not say that, because not even the whole world would suffice to persuade me to stop following my teachers and their authority. soul within is stronger than the body and is in a very passionate state, it shakes up the whole body from within and it fills it with maladies (…) it makes the body inflamed and it shakes it to pieces, and induces catarrhs; and thereby it deceives the majority of so-called physicians and makes them ascribe the malady to the wrong cause.” 412. Timaeus, 87C–D (Loeb, 237). 413. Translation is mine. Cf. Timaeus, 44D-E (Loeb, 99). The sentence that starts “ultra sensatio fit” does not seem to be present in the Loeb text. 414. Marginal note: Plin. lib. 11, c. 37. 415. Cf. Pliny, NH. XI.liv. 147 (Loeb, 3.525).

230 The True Medicine Antonio: By God, yes; I think that even if I were to tell you that tomorrow the sun will rise, you would not believe it. Therefore go with God, and leave me alone. Doctor: First put together for me some brief sayings, that I may carry them in my memory.416

416. Here follows a text titled Brief Sayings on the Nature of Man, The Foundation of Medicine, which is mainly a Latin summary, in aphoristic form, of what is expounded in the Dialogue on the True Medicine.

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Index

Abano, Peter of, 52n141, 100n17 Acosta, Cristóbal de, 23, 23n60, 24, 24nn61–63, 25, 25n64, 26, 26n71, 27, 27nn72–74, 28–29, 39, 62 Acron , 97 Aesculapius, 96 Aetius of Amida, 164, 164n215, 181, 181n257 Agrimi, Jole, 38n100, 143n158 Agrippa, Henricus Cornelius, 27n75, 60, 60nn162–164 Aichinger, Wolfram, 28n76 Akakia, Martinus, 57n153 Albertus Magnus, Saint, 48 Alcman, 154, 154n184 Alfarach, 9, 9n19 Alibert, Jean-Louis, 69, 69n190 Alonso Hernández, César, 27n75 Alonso, Martin, 113n58 Alvaro de Luna, Don, 27n75 Anne, Saint, 8n18 Antiochus, 97, 154 Antonio (interlocutor), 3–7, 34, 38–39, 39n104, 41, 43–45, 48–49, 49n131, 53, 62, 91–230, 105n29, 219n381 Antonio, Nicolás, 9n20 Aquinas, Thomas, Saint, 40 Argenterio, Giovanni, 52n141 Aristotle, 5n6, 6, 26, 31–32, 35, 40–41, 41n110, 42, 44, 46, 47n123, 49, 49n129,

49n131, 50n135, 54, 54nn145–146, 55–57, 57nn154–155, 58–59, 59n160, 60, 61, 61n169, 62–63, 63n174, 72–73, 73nn198–199, 77, 87, 96, 100n18, 101n19, 110, 110n50, 134, 134n123, 135n125, 135n130, 142, 142n153, 147n169, 155n189, 184, 184nn271– 272, 187, 187n283, 188n286, 191, 191n299, 201n325, 206n339, 209, 209n351, 210n353, 213, 222 Arnald of Villanova, 48, 48n125 Arnulphus, 154 Arquiola, Elvira, 55n149 Artola, J. M., 33n86 Asclepiades, 97, 195–96, 196n315 Aselli, Gaspare, 73, 83, 83n229, 208n348 Ataide, Luiz de, 24 Athenaeus, 47n123 Augenot, Marc, 59n161, 60nn164– 165, 61n166, 61n168 Augustus, 97 Averroes, 31, 110, 164, 164n215 Avicenna, 7, 31, 35, 45, 45nn118–120, 46–47, 47n124, 52n140, 60, 60n164, 81n224, 95, 110,

255

256 Index

142–143, 143n160, 145, 145n167, 146n168, 164, 164n215, 206, 206nn339– 340, 210, 215 Bacon, Francis, 38, 69, 69n189, 70n192, 81n225, 82, 113n59, 172n235 Bacon, Roger, 48n126 Banister, John, 79n217 Baranda Leturio, Nieves, 22n58 Baron, H. T., 52n141 Barona, Josep Lluís, 15n36, 32n84, 48n127 Barrera, Barbara, 10 Bartholin, Thomas, 208n348 Basson, Sébastien, 72, 73n198 Bataillon, Marcel, 22n57, 29n79 Bellucci, Novella, 61n167 Beltrán, Marta, 28n76 Benton, John, 15n37 Betts, John, 77n212 Bianchi, Massimo, 105n31 Bichat, Xavier, 69, 69n190 Bidwell-Steiner, Marlen, 28n76, 88 Biggs, Noah, 161n204 Billon, François de, 60n165 Blanco Pérez, José Ignacio, 32n83 Bock, Gisela, 59n161 Boerhaave, Herman, 70n193 Boix y Moliner, Miguel Marcelino, 65, 65nn179– 180, 66n181 Bono, James J., 81n224, 105n31 Boodt, Anselme Boece de, 50n135

Borelli, Giovanni Alfonso, 65n180 Borsetto, Luciana, 29n79 Bösch, Judith, 28n76 Bouchet, Jean, 60 Bourdon, Louis, 23n59 Bourgeois, Louise, 31, 31n80 Boyer, Augustín, 27n75 Boylan, Michael, 59n160 Boyle, Robert, 82, 82n227 Bredwell, Stephen (the elder), 79n217 Bredwell, Stephen (the younger), 44n115, 78–79, 79n217, 80, 208n348 Buedo, Acacio de, 10, 14, 14n34, 18 Buedo, Alonso de, 20n53 Buedo, Luisa de, 21, 21n55 Bullón, Eloy, 69n189, 70n192 Burgundio da Pisa, 43n112 Bury, R. G., 109n43 Bylebyl, Jerome J., 74n201 Bynum, W. F., 108n38 Caballero, Carmen, 28n76 Cabré, Montserrat, 28n76 Calero, Francisco, 36n92, 100n18 Callisthenes of Olynthus, 154, 154n184 Caluori, Damian, 33n86 Calvo, Florencia, 16n38 Campanella, Tommaso, 72, 73n198 Cañigral, Luis de, 20n51 Cañizares-Esguerra, Jorge, 81n225 Cano Valero, José, 20n51 Cardano, Girolamo, 50n135, 134n123, 148n173 Carlino, Andrea, 82n227

Index 257

Castro, Rodrigo de, 57n153 Cato, Marcus Porcius, 88, 98 Celestina, 9, 22 Celsus, 171, 171n233 Cerrada Jiménez, Ana Isabel, 24n61 Cesalpino, Andrea, 52n141 Cescutti, Eva, 28n76 Charles V, 98n14 Charleton, Walter, 65, 65n180, 67, 73–74, 76–77, 77n211, 77n214 Charmis, 88, 97 Chilon of Sparta, 187 Chinchilla, Anastasio, 12n28, 70nn192–193 Chirino, Alonso, 33n85 Chrysippus, 88, 96 Cicero, Marcus Tullius, 32 Clark, George, 76n209, 79n217 Clarke, Edwin, 78n216 Clave, Étienne de, 50n135, 72, 73, 73n198, 134n123 Clucas, Stephen, 31n80 Cole, Abdiah, 191n296 Cole, William, 65n180 Colie, Rosalie, 61n168, 84n231 Collado, Luis, 32 Columbus, Christopher, 26, 98 Connell, Sophia, 59n160 Conrad, Lawrence I., 142n152 Cornarius, Janus, 181n257 Cornelio, Tommaso, 83n229 Cornelius, see Gemma, Cornelius Cornetti, Giacomo, 23n60, 24n63 Cornford, Francis M., 191n299 Cortese, Isabella, 30

Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastian, 201n324, 202n329 Crenne, Hélisenne de, 27 Crinas, 97 Crisciani, Chiara, 38n100, 48n125, 143n158 Crooke, Helkiah, 57n154, 191n296 Cruz del Pozo, María Victoria, 65n179, 67n183 Cuartero, Octavio, 1n1, 21, 21n54, 85 Cubié, Juan Bautista, 9n20 Damiani, Bruno M., 9n19, 28n78, 29n79 Dardano, Luigi, 26n71 Debus, Allen G., 79n217 Deitz, Luc, 54n146 Descartes, René, 69, 69n189, 70n192 Di Capua, Leonardo, 81–82, 82nn226–227, 83, 83n229 Díaz-Plaja, Guillermo, 32n84 Diocles, 189 Dioscorides, 101n20, 132n119, 184n271, 201n326, 202nn328–329 Doctor (interlocutor), 7, 34–35, 39, 39nn103–104, 41, 49, 91–230, 213n365 Domenichi, Ludovico, 29n79 Don Quixote, 9, 22 Dowd, Michelle, 31n80 Du Laurens, André, 57, 57n154, 58, 58n156–157 Durling, Richard J., 43n112

258 Index

Eckerle, Julie, 31n80 Edsman, Carl-Martin, 11n27 Enriquez, Maria, 8n18 Ent, George, 67–68, 68n186, 69n191, 73–75, 75n206, 76, 76nn207–209, 77–78, 80–81, 81nn223–224, 121n86 Erasistratus, 96–7 Erasmus, Desiderius, 41n108 Espinosa, Juan de, 28, 28n77 Estienne, Charles, 61, 61n166 61n168 Ettmueller, Michael, 77n214 Faber, Johannes, 71, 71n196, 72n197 Fairclough, H. Rushton, 140n147, 165n216 Falloppio, Gabriele, 133n120 Fattori, Marta, 105n31 Fé, Ricardo, 1n1, 5n9, 85 Feijóo Montenegro, Fray Benito Jerónimo, 9n20, 67–68, 68n186, 68n188, 69n189, 82 Ferdinand II, 98 Feretrina, Queen of Barcelona, 154 Fernández Sánchez, José, 11n25, 66n182 Fernel, Jean, 32, 52n141, 129, 129n110, 156n192, 164, 164n215, 214, 219n379 Ferrari, Giovanna, 48n125 Feyens, Thomas, 41n108 Field, Catherine, 31n80

Fontecha, Juan Alonso de, 114n61, 202n330 Forrester, John M., 129n110, 224n399 Forster, E. S., 191n299 Fowler, Harold North, 135n129 Fracastoro, Girolamo, 148n173 Francés Causapé, María del Carmen, 19n49, 25n67, 202n330 Frank, Robert J., 73n200 Freedberg, David, 72n197 Freese, John Henry, 187n283 French, Roger K., 26n69, 76n207, 80n222, 192n301 Freudenthal, Gad, 47n123 Friedenwald, Harry, 24n63 Froes Perym, Damião de, 9n20 Furley, D. J., 135n125 Gadebusch Bondio, Mariacarla, 43n112 Galassi, Matteo, 71n196 Galen, 7, 15n36, 31–33, 35–39, 40n105, 41, 41n110, 42–43, 43n112, 44–46, 47n123, 48n127, 52n141, 56–57, 57n154, 58, 58n156, 59, 59n160, 60, 60n164, 62–63, 63nn173–174, 64, 64n178, 65nn179–180, 66, 74, 74n201, 75, 75n204, 77n215, 80, 82–84, 87, 91n1, 95, 99nn15–16, 100n18, 101n19, 105n31, 108n38, 110, 113n59, 116, 116n66, 117, 117n72, 118,

Index 259

119, 130n112, 138n142, 142, 142n152, 143n157, 144n165, 147n169, 148n173, 151n177, 164, 164n215, 165, 168, 168n223, 168n225, 178, 178n247, 179n251, 180, 180n255, 181n258, 182, 182n266, 184, 184n271, 184nn273–274, 185, 185n277, 186, 186n279, 187, 187n282, 187n284, 188n286, 189, 189nn289– 291, 189n293, 190–191, 191nn297–298, 194n308, 199, 199n319, 203, 203nn332–336, 204, 205, 206n339, 208nn347–348, 210, 210n353, 210n355, 211, 211n360, 212, 212nn361–362, 213, 216n373, 217, 224n397, 224n399, 227nn406–407, 228 Galerstein, Carolyn L., 16n38 García Ballester, Luis, 40n105, 45n120 García Gómez, Mercedes Caridad, 11n25, 15n36, 18n43, 33n85, 38n97, 40nn106–107, 41n108, 69n190 García Rubio, Samuel, 37n95, 91n2 Gassendi, Pierre, 65n179, 67n183, 72, 73n198 Gemma, Cornelius, 38n101

Gilderman, Martin, S. 27n75 Gillespie, Charles Coulston, 24n63, 43n112, 106n35 Giuntini, Francesco, 38n101 Glick, Thomas F., 68n186 Glisson, Francis, 65, 65n180, 73– 75, 75n203, 75nn205–206, 76, 76nn207–208, 77, 83 Goliath, 119 Goltz, Dietlinde, 77, 77n213, 78n216 Gómez Pereira, 32, 32n84, 52n141, 116n66 González Bueno, Antonio, 25n64 González Manjarrés, M. Á., 32n83 González, Ricardo, 22n56 Grafton, Anthony, 35n89, 148n173 Granjel Sánchez, Luis, 12n28, 15n36, 32n83, 33, 33n87, 38, 38n99, 69n191 Green, Monica H., 15n37 Greenway, Frank , 26n69 Grey, Elizabeth, Countess of Kent, 30 Guardia, J. M., 69n191 Guerra, Francisco, 24n63 Guevara, Antonio de, 41n108 Guy de Chauliac (Cauliac), 116n67 Guy, Alain, 69n190 Habert, François, 60n165 Hajal, Fady, 40n105 Hall, Thomas S., 46n122, 48nn125–127, 81n224

260 Index

Haller, Albrecht von, 11, 11n27, 64n177, 78n216 Hankinson, R. J., 151n177 Harris, Charles R. S., 41n110, 47n123 Harvey, William, 48, 48n125, 73, 73n200, 74, 76, 76n207, 78, 80, 80nn221–222, 81, 81n224, 83, 83n229 Helmont, Jan Baptist van, 48, 48n125, 83 Henares, Domingo, 13n32, 15n36, 17nn41–42, 18n43, 18nn45–46, 20n53, 22n56, 26n68, 38, 38n98, 49n130 Henry, John, 129n110 Heredia, Alonso de, 10, 10n22, 14, 19 Hernández, Francisco, 72n197 Hernández Morejón, Antonio, 24n63, 70nn192–193 Herophilus, 97 Herrera, María Teresa, 33n85 Hespanha, A. M., 6n10 Hett, W. S., 184n272 Hildegard of Bingen, 15n37, 30 Hillman, David, 58n159 Hippocrates, 7, 31, 33, 35–38, 46, 57, 57n155, 59n160, 60, 65nn179–180, 66, 95–96, 100n18, 110–111, 119, 138, 138n142, 148n173, 164, 164n215, 165, 168n225, 171, 171n232, 173, 173n237, 174n239, 177n244, 178, 178n248, 180, 180n255,

182, 182nn265–266, 184, 184n271, 185, 185n276, 186, 186nn280–281, 187, 189n289, 194, 195, 206n339, 209, 209n352, 211, 211n360, 212nn361– 362, 219, 228 Hirai, Hiroshi, 73n198 Hofmann, Caspar, 52n141 Huarte de San Juan, Juan, 32, 33n85, 55n149, 113n59 Hunter, Lynette, 31n80 Hutton, Sarah, 31n80 Ingegno, Alfonso, 50n135, 134n123 Iuntinus, see Giuntini, Francesco Jacquart, Danielle, 43n112 Janni, Pietro, 38n100, 143n158 Jaumann, Herbert, 72n197 Jiménez Girona, José, 116n66 Johnson, T., 145n167 Jones, W. H. S., 171n232, 178n248, 184n271 Jordan, Constance, 59n161 Justina (picara), 8, 9n19, 22, 22n57, 28, 28n78, 29n79, 62 Kahn, Didier, 50n135, 73n198, 134n123 Kelley, Donald R., 113n59 Keynes, Geoffrey, 80nn221–222 King, Helen, 57n155, 58n156 Kloosterman, G. J., 31n80 Kühn, C. G., 43n112, 47n123, 58n156, 63n173

Index 261

L’Écluse, Charles de, 25n64 Laguna, Andrés, 32, 32n83, 101n20, 132n119, 184n271, 201n326, 202nn328–329 Lancaster, John, 82n227 Landheer, R., 61n168 Lando, Ortensio, 61, 61nn167–169 Lanfranc of Milan, 116n69, 175n241 Langwedel, Bernhard, 71n195 Laqueur, Thomas, 58n156 Larsen, Anne R., 61n168 Lazarillo de Tormes, 9 Lepois, Charles, 69n191, 70, 70n193, 71, 71nn194–195 Lesky, Erna, 59n160, 63n174, 75n204, 77n215 Lewalski, Barbara K., 61n168 Liceti, Fortunio, 41n108 Limbrick, Elaine, 33n86 Linden, Jan Antonides van der, 11, 11n26, 64n177 Lindenius, see Linden, Jan Antonides van der Lipenius, Martinus, 11, 11n26, 37n94, 64n177 Lloyd, Humphry, 182n265, 201n326 Lobo Baram D’Albito, Dom Joam, 10n24 Lonie, Iain M., 108n38, 116n66, 192n301 López de Úbeda, Francisco, 22n57, 28–29, 29n79 López de Villalobos, Francisco, 32

López Piñero, José María, 25nn66–67, 36n92, 100n18 López Romero, José, 28n77 López Terrada, M. L., 25n67 Lorenzo Arribas, Josemi, 24n61 Luna, Lola, 8n18 Lüthy, Christoph, 73n198 Maclean, Ian, 55n147, 55n149, 56, 56n151, 57n153, 58n156, 58n158, 63, 63n175 Macrobio (Rodonio’s father), 3 Magis, Carlos H., 8n18 Mainardi, Giovanni, 148n173 Marañón, Gregorio, 15n36, 32n84, 68n186 Marco Hidalgo, José, 10n22, 12, 12nn29–31, 13, 13nn32– 33, 14, 14nn34–35, 15, 15n36, 17n42, 18nn43–44, 20, 20n53, 30 Marcos, Benjamín, 15n36, 18n45, 19n50 Marguerite de Navarre, 27 Marland, Hilary, 31n80 Marsili, Luigi Ferdinando, 83, 83n230 Martialis, Marcus Valerius, 88 Martín, de Córdoba, Fray, 27n75 Martín Ferreira, Ana Isabel, 32n83, 36n91 Martínez, Martín, 10, 12n28, 65, 65n179, 66, 66nn181–182, 67, 67nn183–185, 68, 68nn186–187, 82

262 Index

Martínez Tomé, Atilano, 16n39 Martínez Vidal, Álvaro, 16n39, 64n178, 65nn–179–180, 66nn181–182, 67nn184– 185, 68n187, 69n191, 78n216 Mary of Portugal , 23 Matthiessen, W., 48n127 Maximianus, 154 May, Margaret Tallmadge, 58n156 Maynes, Mary Jo, 63n174 Mazzini, Innocenzo, 38n100, 143n158 Mazzio, Carla, 58n159 McVaugh, Michael, 46n122, 47n124 Mejía, Pedro, 33, 33n85, 33n87 Mendelsohn, Everett I, 47n123 Menéndez y Pelayo, Marcelino, 8n18, 69n190 Mercado, Luis, 32, 56, 56n152, 57n153, 108n38, 116n70 Mercado, Pedro, 33n85 Mercklinus, Georg Abraham, 11n26 Mercuriale, Girolamo, 56, 57n153 Messala Corvinus, 113 Minerva , 214 Monardes, Nicolás, 25, 25n66, 39 Monte, Giovanni Battista da, 52n141 Montero Cartelle, E., 32n83 Mosacula, Juan, 69n190 Mucius, 154, 154n184 Multhauf, R. P., 78n216

Muñoz y Ferron, J. M., 10n21 Musa, Antonius, 97 Muzio, Girolamo , 29n79 Nantes, Bernardina de, 10 Nemesius of Emesa, 113n59 Neve, Michael, 142n152 Newman, William R., 148n173 Niebyl, Peter H., 46n122 Nogarola, Isotta, 27 Nutton, Vivian, 108n38, 142n152, 196n315 Ogilvie, Brian W. , 26n69 Oñate, María del Pilar, 28n76 Ornstein, Jacob, 28n76 Otero-Torres, Dámaris M., 16n38 Pagel, Walter, 81n224 Palau y Dulcet, Antonio, 71n195 Paracelsus, 41n108, 48n127, 50n135, 52n141, 73n198, 79n217, 134n123 Pardo Tomás, José, 64n178, 126n105 Paré, Ambroise, 145n167 Parigiano, Emilio, 76, 76n207 Park, Katherine, 58n157, 58n159, 101n19 Patrizi, Francesco, 54n146, 72, 73n198 Peach, Trevor, 61n166 Peck, A. L., 209n351 Pelling, Margaret , 79n217 Perarnau, Josep, 48n125 Perceval, Richard, 202n328

Index 263

Perez, M. F., 33n86 Pérez de Moya, Juan, 28, 28n77 Pérez de Pareja, Estevan, 10n21, 68 n186 Pérez Ibañez, Maria Jesús, 32n83 Perkins, Wendy, 31n80 Perrin, Bernadotte, 154n184 Pherecydes of Syria, 154, 154n184, 154n186 Philip II, 1, 23n59, 67, 67n184, 92n3, 93, 108n38, 196 Piccolomini, Arcangelo, 58n156 Pinelo, Valentina de, 8n18 Pizan, Christine de, 27 Plato, 4, 32, 35, 40, 40n106, 77, 102n21, 108, 109, 109n43, 109n46, 129n110, 135nn128–129, 154, 163, 164n213, 187, 212, 219, 219n383, 220, 220n384, 228, 229 Pliny, 7–8, 25–26, 26nn68–69, 33, 35, 37, 38–39, 88, 96, 96n7, 97nn9–10, 98, 98nn12–13, 111, 119, 119nn77–80, 120n81, 121n88, 129, 129n106, 132nn118– 119, 133nn121–122, 137nn134–136, 137n138, 138n139, 142, 142n153, 142n155, 154, 154n184, 154n186, 155, 155n188, 161, 161nn205–206, 162, 162nn208–209, 162n211, 167n221, 168n222, 181, 181n260, 182, 195,

196n315, 200, 200nn322– 323, 216nn374–375, 221, 221n387, 222, 222nn390–393, 222n395, 229nn414–415 Plutarch, 154nn183–184 Pomata, Gianna, 31n80, 63n174 Popkin, Richard H., 113n59 Porter, Roy, 142n152 Pretel Marín, Aurelio, 17n42, 18, 18n46, 19nn47–50, 20n51, 20n53 Preus, Anthony, 59n160 Prodicus, 88, 96 Ptolemy, 97 Quondam, Amedeo, 61n167 Rabade, S., 33n86 Rabil, Albert, 27n75, 60n164 Rackham, H., 97n9 Rada, Inés, 23n59 Redondo, Augustin, 23n59, 28n76 Revulgo (character), 197 Ribera, Pedro Pablo de, 9n20 Richardson, Linda Deer, 192n301 Rico, Francisco, 49n129 Riera, Juan, 32n83, 108n38 Rivera Garretas, MaríaMilagros, 16n38, 28n76 Rodonio (interlocutor), 3, 7, 95, 105n29 Rodriguez de la Cámara, Juan, 27, 27n75, 60n164

264 Index

Rodríguez de la Torre, Fernando, 9n20, 13n32, 16n39, 17n41, 20n53, 38n101, 64n177, 135n130 Rodríguez del Padrón, Juan, see Rodriguez de la Cámara, Juan Rodríguez Nozal, Raúl, 25n64 Romanos, Melchora, 16n38 Romero Pérez, Rosalía, 88 Romieu, Marie de, 61n168 Rumeu de Armas, Antonio, 29n79 Sabuco de Nantes y Barrera, Oliva, 1, 1n1, 2, 2n2, 4nn3–4, 5, 5nn5–9, 6, 6nn11–12, 7–8, 8nn16–18, 9, 9nn20, 10, 10nn21–22, 10n24, 11, 11nn25–26, 12, 12nn28–31, 13, 13nn32– 33, 14, 14nn34–35, 15, 15n36, 16, 16nn38–39, 17, 17n42, 18, 18n44, 19, 20, 20nn52–53, 21, 21nn54– 55, 22, 22nn56–57, 23–24, 24n61, 25, 25nn65–66, 26, 26n70, 27–28, 28n78, 29–31, 31n80, 32, 32n81, 32n84, 33, 35, 35n90, 36–37, 37n95, 38, 38n96, 38n101, 39, 39nn103–104, 40, 40n106, 41, 41n109, 42, 42n111, 43, 43nn112– 114, 44, 44nn115–117, 45, 45n118, 46, 48, 48n127, 49, 49nn129–131,

50, 50n132–135, 51, 51nn136–138, 52, 52n139, 53, 53nn143–144, 54, 54n146, 55, 55n150, 56, 62, 62n171, 63, 63n176, 64, 64n177, 65, 65nn179– 180, 66, 66nn181–182, 67, 67nn184–185, 68, 68nn186–188, 69, 69nn189–191, 70, 70n193, 71, 71nn195–196, 72, 72n197, 73, 73nn198–199, 78, 79, 79nn217– 219, 80, 80nn221–222, 81, 81nn223–224, 82, 83, 83n230, 84, 85–89, 91, 91nn1–2, 92, 92n3, 96n7, 97n9, 100nn117–118, 101n119, 102nn22–24, 103n26, 105n29, 106nn33–35, 108n38, 112n54, 113nn58–59, 114n61, 115n65, 117n72, 118n73, 118n76, 119n77, 121nn85–86, 122n90, 126nn104–105, 129n110, 130nn111–112, 133n120, 134n123, 135n125, 135nn129–130, 136n131, 138n142, 141n150, 142n152, 142n155, 143n157, 144n165, 147n169, 149n175, 151n177, 152n178, 154n186, 155n189, 156n192, 158n196, 160n201,

Index 265

161n206, 164nn213–215, 166n217, 168n223, 168n225, 170n227, 174n239, 175n243, 177n244, 178n248, 180n252, 180n255, 182n266, 184nn272–274, 185nn276–277, 186n279, 187n283, 188nn286–287, 190n295, 192nn301–302, 193n307, 199n318, 201n325, 202n327, 202n331, 203nn332–333, 203nn335–336, 204n337, 206n339, 208nn347–348, 210n353, 211n360, 213nn364–365, 214n366, 215n370, 218n377, 224n397, 224n399–400, 225n402, 226n404, 227n406, 227n409, 228n411 Sabuco, Alonso, 12, 17n42, 18–19 Sabuco, Miguel, 9n20, 10, 10n23, 11n25, 12–13, 13n33, 14, 15, 15n36, 16n39, 17, 17nn41–42, 18, 18n43, 18n45, 19, 19nn49–50, 20, 20nn51–53, 21, 21n55, 22nn56–57, 25n67, 26, 29–30, 33n85, 34n88, 36, 36n91, 38n97, 38n99, 40nn106–107, 41n108, 48n127, 49n130, 64n177, 66n182, 69n190, 79, 84, 100n18, 202n330

Saffrey, H. D., 49n129 Sánchez, Francisco, 33, 33n86 Santamaría Hernández, Maria Teresa, 32n83 Sauvage, Odette, 23n59 Schacher, P. F., 31n80 Schiebinger, Londa, 58n156 Schleiner, Winfried, 58n156 Schmidt, J. H., 31n80 Schmitt, Charles B., 101n19 Schoppe, Kaspar, 71, 71n196, 72, 72n197 Schott, Andreas, 71n196 Schrader, Catharina, 31, 31n80 Schurig, Martin, 77n214 Seidel Menchi, Silvana, 61n167 Selig, Karl Ludwig, 68n188 Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, 32 Serrano y Sanz, Manuel, 18n43, 22n58 Serrapica, Salvatore, 82n227 Sforza, Isabel, 8n18, 27 Siegemund, Justine, 31, 31n80 Sigea, Luisa, 23, 23n59 Simón Abril, Pedro, 19, 20n51 Singer, P. N., 40n105 Siraisi, Nancy G., 45n120, 50n135, 134n123, 148n173 Smith, P. J., 61n168 Socrates, 110, 135n129 Soland, Brigitte, 63n174 Solomon, 92 Sotomayor, Juan de, 1n1, 23 Southey, Robert, 68, 68n188 Spencer, W. G., 171n233 Stahl, Georg Ernst, 69, 69n190

266 Index

Stephens, Joanna, 31n80 Stevenson, L. G., 78n216 Stolberg, Michael, 52n140, 58n156 Strasser, Ulrike, 63n174 Sudhoff, Karl, 48n127 Sulla, Lucius Cornelius, 154n184 Surtz, Ronald E., 22n58 Tate Lanning, John, 19n49 Tatlock, Lynne, 31n80 Telesio, Bernardino, 52n141 Temkin, Owsei, 78n216, 105n31 Themison, 97 Themistius, 110, 110n50 Theophrastus, 221, 221n387 Thessalus, 97 Thiemann, Susanne, 23n59 Thomasen, Anne-Liese, 56n151 Thomson, D. F. S., 33n86 Todd, Richard B., 110n50 Tonelli Olivieri, Grazia, 113n59 Topsell, Edward, 160n199 Torquemada, Antonio de, 33n87 Tredennick, H., 100n18 Trotula, 15n37 Turner, William, 95n4 Ulloa, Alfonso de, 29n79 Valera, Diego de, 27n75 Valleriola, François, 52n141 Valles, Francisco, 32, 35, 35n90, 36, 36n91–92, 37, 43n113, 45, 45n119–120, 46, 46n121, 52n141, 100n18, 129n110, 138n142,

143n157, 143n160, 151n177, 159n197, 166n217, 167n218, 167n220, 168n223–224, 168n225, 171n231–233, 173n 238, 174n239–240, 178n246–248, 180n255, 181n257, 182n264, 182n266, 184n270–274, 185n276–277, 186n278– 281, 187n282–284, 188n286, 189n288–291, 189n293, 191n296–299, 192n300–301, 193n304, 194n308–309, 198n316, 203n332–333, 203n335– 336, 206n339, 206n341, 208n347, 209n349, 209n351–352, 210n354, 211n357–358, 211n360, 212n361–362, 225n402 Valverde, Juan, 32 Van Lieburg, M. J., 31n80 Varanda, Jean de, 57n153 Vargas Martínez, Ana, 24n61, 28n76 Varolio, Costanzo, 43n112, 106n35 Vega, Garcilaso de la, 31, 32n81 Vega, Lope de, 8, 8n18 Venus, 180, 180n255, 181, 181n257, 182 Veronio (interlocutor), 3–4, 6–7, 95 Vesalius, Andreas, 64, 64n178 Vettius, 97 Vicary, Thomas, 102n25

Index 267

Vigier, Françoise, 28n76 Villarreal (notary), 13, 13nn32– 33 Villon, Antoine, de, 50n135, 73n198, 134n123 Vintró, Maria Elena, 1n1, 13n32, 17, 20, 20nn52–53, 21, 21n55, 22, 22n56, 35n90, 43n114, 71n195, 73n199, 86, 88, 91n1, 97n10, 117n72, 129n107, 133n120, 142n152, 144n162, 145n166, 158n196, 173n238, 184n271, 193n307, 194n308, 200n320, 216n373, 218n377, 224n400, 225n401, 227n407 Virgil, 140, 165n216 Vives, Juan Luis, 41n108 Vosters, Simon A., 8n18 Waithe, Mary Ellen, 1n1, 13n32, 16n38, 17, 20, 20nn52–53, 21, 21n55, 22, 22n56, 35n90, 43n114, 71n195, 73n199, 86, 88, 91n1, 97n10, 117n72, 129n107, 133n120, 142n152, 144n162, 145n166, 158n196, 173n238, 184n271, 193n307, 194n308, 200n320, 216n373, 218n377, 224n400, 225n401, 227n407

Watson, Gilbert, 227n407 Wear, Andrew, 142n152, 192n301 Webster, Charles, 76n209 Wharton, Thomas, 65, 73–75, 75n206, 76, 76n210, 77 Whitteridge, Gweneth, 81n224 Willis, Thomas, 65, 69n191, 73– 74, 74n202, 77, 77n212, 83 Wolf, Hans Kaspar, 57n155 Wunder, Heide, 53n142 Zapata de Cisneros, Francisco, Count of Barajas, 7n14, 92, 92n3 Zavala, Iris M., 16n38 Zimmermann, Margarete, 59n161 Zinsser, Judith P., 31n80 Zorita, C. Angel, 1n1, 35n90, 43n114, 71n195, 73n199, 86, 88, 91n1, 97n10, 117n72, 129n107, 133n120, 142n152, 144n162, 145n166, 158n196, 173n238, 184n271, 193n307, 194n308, 200n320, 216n373, 218n377, 224n400, 225n401, 227n407