Santorio, Regius, and Descartes: The Quantification and Mechanization of the Passions in Seventeenth-Century Medicine

Baldassarri, Fabrizio

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-79587-0_6

Fabrizio Baldassarri⁵

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Medicine ((PSMEMM))

206 Accesses

Abstract

Following the diffusion of a neo-Stoic movement, a new attention to passions or emotions proliferates in early modern Europe as an essential topic in moral reflection. While an innumerable series of texts testify to the intensity of the debates over passions, a more innovative approach to them stemmed out of the medical field. In this sense, the struggle to measuring passions entailed the possibility to tame and provide a remedy to treat them. Within this medical line, Santorio’s quantification and Descartes’ mechanization of the body innovatively engaged with passions. In this chapter, I deal with these interpretations, which difficultly communicated between them. An attempt to bridge these two figures is Regius, a former student of Santorio and a main proponent of Cartesianism, who provided a treatise on passions as he tried to amend Descartes’ philosophy thanks to his medical training. In sum, despite the absence of a clear relation between Descartes and Santorio, their innovative interpretations of passions promote two crucial, and somehow connectable, segments of early modern medicine.

Research for this chapter has been carried out with the support of the Land Niedersachsen Herzog August Bibliothek fellowship and by a grant of the Romanian National Authority for Scientific Research and Innovation (CNCS—UEFISCDI), project number PN-III-P1-1.1-PD-2016-1496, “The Overlooked History of Vegetal Life. From the Vegetative Soul to Metabolism in Early Modern Philosophy and Biomedicine,” and from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodovska-Curie Grant Agreement n.890770, “VegSciLif.” I would like to thank the organizers, Jonathan Barry and Fabrizio Bigotti, and the attendees of the conference “Humours, Mixtures, Corpuscles. A Medical Path to Corpuscularism in the Seventeenth Century” for their valuable comments on a previous version of this chapter, as well as Teresa Hollerbach, who read and provided me with some precious remarks on the section on Santorio’s passions.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Chapter: USD 29.95; Price excludes VAT (USA)

eBook: USD 99.00; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Softcover Book: USD 129.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Hardcover Book: USD 129.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

1.
Leibniz to Hermann Conring, 24 August 1677, in Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe, Philosophischer Briefwechsel: 1663–1685, Reihe 2. Bd. 1 vol. 12 (Hannover, Academie Verlang, 2006), 563: “Quanquam enim multa elegantia detexerint Anatomici, pleraque tamen curiosa magis quam utilia videntur, et morborum origines non tam manibus quam accurata ratiocinandi methodo assequi licet. Quam si Sanctorium ex prioribus, Cartesium ex novissimis eximas, in paucis scriptoribus agnosco.” On Leibniz, see Andreas Blank in this volume.
2.
On the passions in the early modern time see Walther W. Riese, La théorie des passions à la lumière de la pensée médicale du XVIIe siècle (Basel: Karger, 1965); Stephen Gaukroger, The Soft Underbelly of Reason: The Passions in the Seventeenth Century (London: Routledge, 1998); Vincent Aucante, “La démesure apprivoisée des passions,” Dix-septième siècle 213, no. 1 (2001): 613–30; Gail K. Paster, Katherine Rowe, and Mary Floyd-Wilson, eds., Reading the Early Modern Passions: Essays in the Cultural History of Emotion (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); Gábor Boros, “The Passions,” in Philosophy in Early Modern Europe, edited by Desmond M. Clarke and Catherine Wilson, 182–200 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Martin Pickavé and Lisa Shapiro, eds., Emotion and Cognitive Life in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Freya Sierhuis and Brian Cummings, eds., Passions and Subjectivity in Early Modern Culture (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013); Carlo Borghero and Antonella Del Prete, ed., L’uomo, il filosofo, le passioni (Florence: Le Lettere, 2017); Paola Giacomoni, “The Light of the Emotions: Passions and Emotions in Seventeenth-Century French Culture,” Nuncius, 33, 1 (2018): 56–87; Domink Perler, Feelings Transformed: Philosophical Theories of the Emotions, 1270–1670 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018); Denis Kambouchner, “Descartes and the Passions,” in Oxford Handbook of Descartes and Cartesianism, edited by Steven Nadler, Tad M. Schmaltz and Delphine Antoine-Mahut, 193–208 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019); Giulia Belgioioso and Vincent Carraud, eds., Les Passions de l’âme et leur réception philosophique (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), especially Annie Bitbol-Hespériès, “De toute la nature de l’homme: de L’Homme à la Description du corps humain, la physiologie des Passions de l’âme et ses antécédents médicaux”, 67–100.
3.
Theo Verbeek, “Regius and Descartes on the Passions,” in Descartes et Cartesianism: Essays in Honour of Desmond Clarke, edited by Stephen Gaukroger and Catherine Wilson, 164–76 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). A French translation of this paper with an original section on Cartesianism has been published as, Theo Verbeek, “Une réaction peu connue aux Passions de l’âme: Regius et Descartes,” in Les Passions de l’âme et leur réception, pp. 335–52. Cf. Horst B. Hohn, “De affectibus animi” 1650: Die Affektlehre des Arztes Henricus Regius (1598–1679) und sein Verhältnis zu zeitgenössischen Philosophen (Cologne: Forschungsstelle des Instituts für Geschichte der Medizin der Universität zu Köln, 1990).
4.
Descartes, Les passions de l’âme, [PA] Seconde response, in Œuvres Complètes, edited by Charles Adam, Paul Tannery (Paris, Vrin, 1964–1974) [hereafter AT], vol. XI, 326: “[M]on dessein n’a pas esté d’expliquer les Passions en Orateur, ny même en Philosophe morale, mais seulement en Physicien.” The English translation is taken from The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, edited by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984–91 [hereafter CSM]).
5.
Richard Hassing has recently claimed Descartes “explains the passions ‘only [partly] as a Physician’,” Cartesian Psychophysics and the Whole Nature of Man: On Descartes’s Passions of the Soul (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2015). See also Fabrizio Bigotti, Physiology of the Soul. Mind, Body, and Matter in the Galenic Tradition of Late Renaissance (1550–1630), chapter 6 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019).
6.
Karl E. Rothschuh, “Henricus Regius und Descartes. Neue Einblicke in die frühe Physiologie (1640–1641) des Regius,” Archives internationales d’histoire des sciences, 21 (1968): 39–66 at 62, n. 151.
7.
The others were Franciscus Bonardus and Ioannes Colle. Cf. Catalogus Germanorum Theologorum Artistarum et Medicorum … in Patavina Universitate Lauream suscepere (Fondo: Archivio Antico dell’Università di Padova, 274), 106–7.
8.
Aristotle, Physica, 184a, 16–20: ‘Innata autem ex notioribus nobis via, et certioribus in certiora naturae, et notiora. Non enim eadem nobis nota, et simpliciter. Unde quidem necesse secundum modum hunc procedere ex incertioribus naturae nobis autem certioribus in certiora naturae, et notiora.’ For the reference, see note 7.
9.
For the reference on the question, see note 7. Santorio Santori, Commentaria in primam sectionem Aphorismorum Hippocratis (Venice: M. A. Brogiolo, 1629), 408: ‘Ad extremos morbos, exacte extremae curationes optimae sunt.’
10.
Regius to Descartes, 18 August 1638, AT II, 305–6; Erik-Jan Bos (ed.), The Correspondence between Descartes and Henricus Regius (Utrecht, Zeno, 2002), 3–4.
11.
Note that in 1633, Descartes received the invitation to fill the chair in theoretical medicine at the University of Bologna, see Gideon Manning, “Descartes and the Bologna affair,” British Journal for the History of Science, 47, no. 1 (2014): 1–13.
12.
See, for example, Regius’ disputation Pro sanguinis circulatione (20 June 1640): Bos (ed.), Correspondence, 45–8.
13.
Cf. Andrea Strazzoni, “How Did Regius Become Regius? The Early Doctrinal Evolution of a Heterodox Cartesian,” Early Science and Medicine, 23 (2018): 362–412.
14.
Rothschuh, “Henricus Regius,” 51–2; Paolo Farina, “Sulla formazione scientifica di Henricus Regius: Santorio Santorio e il De statica medicina,” Rivista critica di storia della filosofia, XXX (1975): 363–99.
15.
Note that this was a very pervasive metaphor in early seventeenth century; see Otto Mayr, Authority, Liberty, and Automatic Machinery in Early Modern Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986). On the relationship between mechanics and medicine, see Raphaële Andrault, La raison des corps: Mécanisme et science médicale (Paris: Vrin, 2016); Fabio Zampieri, Il metodo anatomo-clinico fra meccanicismo ed empirismo. Marcello Malpighi, Antonio Maria Valsalva e Giovanni Battista Morgagni (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2016).
16.
Descartes, Discours II, AT VI, 19–20.
17.
On Regius’ experimentation, see Delphine Antoine-Kolesnik, “Le rôle des expériences dans la physiologie d’Henricus Regius: les «pierres lydiennes» du cartésianisme,” Journal of Early Modern Studies, 2 (2013): 125–45. On Descartes’ experimentation, see Discours V, AT VI, 50: “ce mouvement [du coeur] suit necessairement de la seule disposition des organes qu’on peut voir à l’oeil dans le coeur, et de la chaleur qu’on y peut sentir avec les doigts, et de la nature du sang qu’on peut connoistre par experience, que fait celui d’un horloge, de la force, de la situation, et de la figure de ses contrepois et de ses roues.”
18.
Fabrizio Baldassarri, “«[P]er experientiam scilicet vel deductionem.» Descartes’ Early 1630s Battle for Scientia,” Historia Philosophica, 15 (2017): 115–33; id., “Descartes, René”, in Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy, edited by Marco Sgarbi (Cham: Springer, 2020).
19.
See Andrea Strazzoni, “The Medical Cartesianism of Henricus Regius. Disciplinary Partitions, Mechanical Reductionism and Methodological Aspects,” Galileiana, XV (2018): 181–220.
20.
Descartes to Vorstius, 19 June 1643, AT III, 686.
21.
On this direct experience on the heart, see Fabrizio Baldassarri, Il metodo al tavolo anatomico. Descartes e la medicina, Rome: Aracne, 2021, pp. 59–100.
22.
Descartes to Regius, 24 May 1640, AT III, 68; Bos (ed.), Correspondence, 42.
23.
Descartes to Vorstius, 19 June 1643, AT III, 688, CSM 3, 226. Vorstius studied medicine at Padua, where he graduated under Adriaan van den Spiegel on 20 August 1622
24.
Descartes to Newcastle, 19 April 1645, AT IV, 191; Descartes to Newcastle, October 1645, AT IV, 328.
25.
Descartes, Primae cogitationes circa generationem animalium, AT XI, 536: “Tenues et laeves faciunt ephemeram febrim, retentae et putrescentes in extremitatibus vasorum ob defectum insensibilis transpirationis.”
26.
Descartes, Excerpta anatomica, IV, AT XI, 598: “Inter acres numero spiritus omnes qui per insensilem transpirationem egrediuntur.” Ibid., AT XI, 633: “Sudor non differt ab ea materia quæ exhalat e corpore per insensibiles transpirationes, nisi copia, cruditate, et salsedine: quia, cum magis laxentur meatus cutis, fit aqua quod alioqui esset aër.” Cf. Vincent Aucante, La philosophie médicale de Descartes (Paris: PUF, 2006), 95.
27.
Catalogus variorum ac rarissimorum librorum … D. Henrici Reneri, (Utrecht: A. Roman, 1639). Cf. Robin O. Buning, “Henricus Reneri (1593–1639): Descartes’ Quartermaster in Aristotelian Territory” (PhD diss., University of Utrecht, 2013); id., “Henricus Reneri and the Earliest Teaching of Cartesian Philosophy at Utrecht University,” in Les Pas-Bas aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. Nouveaux regards, edited by D. Antoine-Mahut and C. Secretan, 65–78 (Paris: Champion, 2015). See also, Baldassarri, Il metodo, pp. 53–56.
28.
Cf. Huygens to Mersenne, 12 September 1646, in Marin Mersenne, Correspondance du P. Marin Mersenne, edited by Cornelis de Waard and Armand Beaulieu (Paris: CNRS, 1932–88), vol. 14, 450. Descartes claims Fundamenta physices to be authentically Cartesian as he accuses Regius of plagiarism: see Delphine Antoine-Mahut, “The Story of L’Homme,” in Descartes’ Treatise on Man and its Reception edited by Delphine Antoine-Mahut and Stephen Gaukroger, 1–29 (Cham: Springer, 2016), 6–7.
29.
Henricus Regius, Fundamenta physices (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1646), 205.
30.
See Fabrizio Bigotti’s chapter in this volume.
31.
See Bigotti, Physiology of the Soul, 236.
32.
See Gideon Manning, “Descartes’ Healthy Machines and the Human Exception”, in The Mechanization of Natural Philosophy, edited by Sophie Roux and Daniel Garber, 237–62 (New York: Springer, 2013); Fabrizio Baldassarri, “Seeking Intellectual Evidence in Sciences: The Role of Botany in Descartes’ Therapeutics,” in Evidence in the Age of the New Sciences, edited by James A.T. Lancaster and Richard Raiswell, 47–75 (Boston: Springer, 2018).
33.
Cf. Strazzoni, “Medical Cartesianism,” 203.
34.
Descartes to Regius, November 1641, AT III, 443: “Sed sane multa sunt in Thesibus tuis, quæ fateor me ignorare, ac multa etiam, de quibus si forte quid sciam, longe aliter explicarem quam ibi explicueris. Quod tamen non miror; longe enim difficilius est, de omnibus quæ ad rem medicam pertinent suam sententiam exponere, quod docentis officium est, quam cognitu faciliora seligere, ac de reliquis prorsus tacere, quod ego in omnibus scientiis facere consuevi.” Cf. Epistola ad P. Dinet, AT VII, 582–3.
35.
Catherine Wilson, “Descartes and the Corporeal Mind: Some Implications of the Regius Affair,” in Descartes’ Natural Philosophy, edited by Stephen Gaukroger, John Schuster and John Sutton, 659–79 (London: Routledge, 2000); Desmond Clarke, “The Physics and Metaphysics of the Mind: Descartes and Regius,” in Mind, Method, and Morality: Essays in Honour of Anthony Kenny, edited by John Cottingham and Peter Hacker, 187–207 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Delphine Bellis, “Empiricism Without Metaphysics: Regius’ Cartesian Natural Philosophy,” in Cartesian Empiricism, edited by Mihnea Dobre and Tammy Nyden, 151–84 (Dordrecht, Springer, 2013); Eri-Jan Bos, “Henricus Regius et les limites de la philosophie cartésienne,” in Qu’est-ce qu’être cartésien?, edited by Delphine Kolesnik-Antoine, 53–68 (Lyon: ENS Edition, 2013).
36.
Descartes to Regius, early and late May 1641, AT III, 369–72; Bos (ed.), Correspondence, 63–9.
37.
Descartes to Regius, December 1641, AT III, 460; Bos (ed.), Correspondence, 90. Cf. Martin Schook, Admiranda methodus (Utrecht: J. van Waesberge, 1643); Theo Verbeek, La Querelle d’Utrecht (Paris: Les Impressions Nouvelles, 1988); id., “’Ens per accidens’: le origini della querelle di Utrecht,” Giornale critico della filosofia italiana, 12 (1992): 276–88; Han van Ruler, The Crisis of Causality: Voetius and Descartes on God, Nature and Change (Leiden: Brill, 1995).
38.
Descartes to Regius, July 1645, AT IV, 249–50; Bos (ed.), Correspondence 187–8.
39.
Colin F. Fowler, Descartes on the Human Soul: Philosophy and the Demands of Christian Doctrine (Boston: Springer, 1999); Vlad Alexandrescu, “Regius and Gassendi on the Human Soul,” Intellectual History Review, 23 (2013): 433–52.
40.
Regius to Descartes, 23 July 1645, AT IV, 255. See Caspar Barlaeus to Constantijn Huygens, 7 August 1642, in Constantjin Huygens, De Briefwisseling van Constantijn Huygens 1608–1697, edited by Jacob A. Worp, vol. 3 (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1911), vol. 3, 328: “Promittit probationes eas, quibus ab humano ingenio proficisci solidiores non possunt […] Promittit geometricam evidentiam, et Cimmerijs nos tenebris ac Pharia caligine involvit.” Cf. Fowler, Descartes, 350; Bos, “Henricus Regius,” 190; Tad M. Schmaltz, “The Early Dutch Reception of L’Homme,” in Descartes’ Treatise on Man and its Reception edited by Delphine Antoine-Mahut and Stephen Gaukroger, 71–90 (Cham: Springer, 2016), 73–4.
41.
Bellis, “Empiricism,” 172. Cf. Theo Verbeek, “The Invention of Nature: Descartes and Regius,” in Descartes’ Natural Philosophy, edited by Stephen Gaukroger, John Schuster and John Sutton, 149–67 (London: Routledge, 2000), 157.
42.
Regius, Fundamenta, 246; Henricus Regius, Philosophia naturalis (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1654), 342–3. Cf. Bellis, “Empiricism,” 161.
43.
For a reconstruction on this topic, see Guido Giglioni, “Medicine of the Mind in Early Modern Philosophy,” in The Routledge Handbook on the Stoic Tradition, edited by John Sellars, 189–203 (London: Routledge, 2016).
44.
Descartes discussed the part of the passions in his correspondence with Regius, see Descartes to Regius, early May 1641, AT III, 373; Bos (ed.), Correspondence, 66.
45.
Elisabeth to Descartes, 6 May 1643, AT III, 660–1; Lisa Shapiro (ed.), Correspondence between Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and René Descartes (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2007). Cf. Peter McLaughlin, “Descartes on Mind-Body Interaction and the Conservation of Motion,” Philosophical Review, 12 (1993): 155–82.
46.
Descartes to Elisabeth, 21 May 1643, AT III, 664; Shapiro (ed.), Correspondence, 63–5.
47.
Descartes to Elisabeth, 21 May 1643, AT III, 665; Shapiro (ed.), Correspondence, 65.
48.
See Franco Aurelio Meschini, “Un texte stratifié: l’influence d’Elisabeth,” in Les passions de l’âme, pp. 101–36. On Descartes and passions, see Denis Kambouchner, L’homme des passions: Commentaires sur Descartes. 2 vols (Paris: Albin Michel, 1995); Carole Talon-Hugon, Descartes ou les passions rêvées par la raison. Essai sur la théorie des passions de Descartes et de quelques-uns de ses contemporains (Paris: Vrin, 2002).
49.
Cf. Gianluca Mori, “Descartes Incognito: la “Préface” des Passions de l’Âme,” Dix-septième siècle, 277, no. 4 (2017): 685–700. See also Baldassarri, Il metodo.
50.
Descartes believed that madness depended on the excessive presence of bad humours in the brain, see Meditationes de prima philosophia, I, AT VII, 18–19: “insanibus, quorum cerebella tam contumax vapor ex atra bile labefactat…” Cf. La Recherche de la vérité, AT X, 500.
51.
Note article 31, on the movements of muscles, which is in open contrast with Regius’ interpretation of muscles. On this opposition, see Schmaltz, “Early Dutch Reception”.
52.
Descartes, Les passions de l’âme, I, art. 27, AT XI, 349; CSM I, 338–9.
53.
Ibid., II, arts 53–68, AT XI, 373–9.
54.
Descartes to Elisabeth, May 1646, AT IV, 407; Shapiro (ed.), Correspondence, 135. Cf. PA, II, art. 96, AT XI, 400.
55.
Descartes, Les passions de l’âme, II, art. 52, AT XI, 372; CSM I, 349.
56.
Ibid., II, art. 96, AT XI, 401; CSM I, 362–3: the cause of passions “is located also in the heart, the spleen, the liver and all the other parts of the body, in so far as they help to produce the blood and hence the spirits.”
57.
Ibid., art. 71, AT XI, 381; CSM I, 353: “we do not find it accompanied by any change in the heart or in the blood, such as occurs in the case of other passions […]. It has no relation with the heart and blood.”
58.
Ibid., art. 99, AT XI, 403; CSM I, 363.
59.
On the cause of pulse variation, see Descartes, Discours de la méthode, V, AT VI, 52.
60.
Descartes, Les passions de l’âme, art. 97, AT XI, 402; CSM I, 363. Ibid., art. 104, AT XI, 406; CSM I, 365.
61.
Ibid., art. 104, AT XI, 405; CSM I, 365.
62.
Ibid., art. 102, AT XI, 404; CSM I, 364.
63.
Ibid., art. 98, AT XI, 402; CSM I, 363.
64.
Ibid., art. 105, AT XI, 406; CSM I, 365.
65.
Ibid., art. 100, AT XI, 403; CSM I, 363.
66.
Ibid., art. 98, AT XI, 402; CSM I, 363.
67.
Ibid., art. 100, AT XI, 403; CSM I, 363.
68.
Ibid., art. 103, AT XI, 405; CSM I, 364.
69.
Ibid., art. 107–111, AT XI, 407–11.
70.
Ibid., art. 117, AT XI, 414–5; CSM I, 369.
71.
Ibid., art. 118, AT XI, 416; CSM I 369.
72.
Descartes to the Marquis of Newcastle, April 1645, AT IV, 190–1. For a therapeutics, see Excerpta anatomica, AT XI, 606; Remedia et vires medicamentorum, AT XI, 641–4. On Descartes’ interpretation of leeches in healing maladies, see Elisabeth to Descartes, 23 August 1648, AT V, 226–7; Shapiro (ed.), Correspondence, 174. I discuss this in Baldassarri, “Seeking Intellectual Evidence”; id., Il metodo, 130–50.
73.
Descartes to Elisabeth, November 1646, AT IV, 529; Simone D’Agostino, Esercizi spirituali e filosofia moderna: Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza (Pisa: ETS, 2017).
74.
For a more detailed analysis of this text, see Verbeek, “Regius”.
75.
Henricus Regius, De affectibus animi dissertatio (Utrecht: Th. van Ackersdijck, 1650), IV: “Animi affectum esse cogitationem, cum vehementiore spiritum Animalum, in ventriculis cerebri existentium, motu conjunctam, quo Animus sive mens, cum corpore, vehementius afficitur.”
76.
Ibid., “quia judicium nostrum pervertunt, et in magnas molestias, morbosque, et alia mala nos praecipitant.”
77.
Descartes has a very different view, see Descartes, Les passions de l’âme, I, art. 2, AT XI, 328; CSM I, 328: “what is a passion in the soul is usually an action in the body.”
78.
Regius, Fundamenta, V, 95: “Quatenus in ea insensibiles partes adaptantur, vocantur temperamentum; quatenus sensibiles, conformatio.” Cf. VIII, 145: “Corpora viva sunt, quorum partes ita sunt temperatae et conformatae … secundum temperiem et partium conformationem.”
79.
Ibid., X, 159: “Sanitatis partes duae sunt: bona temperies, et apta partium conformatione.”
80.
Ibid., XII, 247: “Correcta enim per aetates et sanationes temperie nostri corporis, corriguntur cogitationes; ea vero per senectutem et morbos depravata, depravantur etiam mentis operationes; ea denique per morbo omnino corrupta, mox etiam cessat omnis nostra cogitatio, sive cogitandi actio, et homo tandem moritur.”
81.
Ibid., 249: “ex vario corporis temperamento, varii in homine soleant esse mores et cogitationes, cum inde varii in corpore fiant motus.”
82.
Regius, Philosophia, V, cap. XII, 433.
83.
Aucante, Philosophie, 383–6. Cf. Kambouchner, L’homme, vol. I, 67 et. seq.; Deborah J. Brown, Descartes and the Passionate Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 39: “Descartes’ terminology of ‘animal spirits’ is, however, divorced from the broader theory of temperaments that defines medieval Galenism.”
84.
Elisabeth to Descartes, 24 May 1645, AT IV, 208.
85.
Descartes to Elisabeth, May or June 1645, AT IV, 220. Cf. Descartes to Elisabeth, 1 September 1645, AT IV, 282.
86.
Descartes to Elisabeth, May or June 1645, AT IV, 219–20. Shapiro (ed.), Correspondence, 92: “I do not doubt that this [i.e., turn her imagination from sources of displeasure] alone would be capable of bringing her back to health, even though her spleen and lungs were already ill disposed.”
87.
Descartes, Les passions de l’âme, II, art. 51, AT XI, 371–2.
88.
Ibid., art. 148, AT XI, 441–2.
89.
Verbeek, “Regius,” 171. Discours, IV, AT VI, 62; CSM I, 143. See Étienne Gilson, René Descartes. Discours de la Méthode, texte et commentaire (Paris: Vrin, 1987), 447.
90.
Santorio Santori, Ars de statica medicina (Venice: M. A. Brogiolo, 1634), VII, Aph. I, “Inter affctus animi, ira et pericharia corpora efficiunt leviora, timor et maestitia graviora: caeteri vero affectus ut his participantes operantur.”
91.
Ibid., Aph. XXIII, “Si quis sine causa sentiat se hilarem, id a magis aperta perspiratione fit, et eius corpus die sequenti minoris ponderis invenitur.”
92.
Ibid., Aph. XXVII, “Laetitia et ira auferunt e corpore quod ponderat et levitat; maestita et timor solum quod levitat, quod ponderat vero relinquitus.”
93.
Ibid., Aph. II, “Maerore et timore perspirant levius, ponderosius vero relinquitur: laetitia et ira utrumque.”
94.
Ibid., Aph. III, “Hinc timentes et maerentes facile obstructiones, partium duritiem et affectus hypochondriacos patiuntur.”
95.
Ibid., Aph. IV: “Qui ira vel laetitia afficiuntur, nullam in itinere defatigationem persentiuntur; eorum enim corpora facile crassum perspirabile exhalant, quod non accidit dum maerore, vel timore vexantur.”
96.
Ibid., Aph. V: “Perspirabile ponderosum plus iusto retentum ad maestitiam et timorem, leve vero ad laetitiam vel iram disponit.”
97.
Ibid., Aph. VI, “Nihil magis reddit liberam perspirationem, quam animi consolatio.”
98.
Ibid., Aph. XI, “Acrimonia perspirabilis retenti ob maestitiam commode aufertur a percharia; funduntur enim humores suaves, et deinde a corpore pondus et acrimonia tolluntur.”
99.
Ibid., Aph. XII, “Ira et spes auferunt timorem […]; passio enim animi non medicinis, sed alia passione contraria superatur.”
100.
Ibid., Aph. XXII, “Timor et maestitia, ut ex staticis colligitur, per evacuationem excrementorum crassorum perspirabilium, ira et pericharia per tenuium auferuntur.”
101.
Ibid., Aph. XXI, “omnes alii immoderati animi affectus per aliquam evacuationem perspirabilium possunt diminui et auferri.”
102.
Ibid., Aph. IX: “Maestitia, si diu duret, carnes frigida facit: impedit enim ne perspirabilium crassa et frigida portio exhalet.”
103.
Ibid., Aph. X, “Hinc febris […] sudores frigidos et ut plurimim laetales molitur.”
104.
Ibid., Aph. XXV, “Moderata iuvat coctrices facultates: natura enim non gravata superfluo longe melius suorum officiorum munera explet.”
105.
Ibid., Aph. XXIV, “Laetitia moderata insensibiliter evacuat solum superfluum, immoderata superfluum et utile.”
106.
Ibid., Aph. XXVI, “Improvisum gaudium magis nocet […] non enim solum movet exhalatinem excrementorum tertiae coctionis, verum etiam spirituum vitalium.”
107.
Ibid., Aph. XXVIII, “Laetitia perseverans per multos dies somnum impedit, et vires dissolvit.”
108.
Ibid., Aph. XXX, “Edulia, quae aperiunt, gaudium, quae impediunt perspirationem, maestitiam movent.” Aph. XXXI, “Selinum, et caetera aperientia, gaudium: legumina, carnes pingues, et caetera incrassantia …”
109.
Ibid., Aph. XXXV, “Corpus quiescens magis perspirat et minoris ponderis fit, si animo vehementer agitetur, quam si celerrime corpus moveatur, animo permanente otioso.”
110.
Ibid., Aph. XXXIX, “Magis nocet nimius animi affectus quam nimius corporis motus.”
111.
Ibid., Aph. XLI, “Motus vehemens animi differt a motu vehementi corporis; hic quiete et somno, ille nec quiete nec somno cessat.”
112.
Ibid., Aph. XLVI, “perennis tristitia bonam cordis constitutionem evertit, et excessus laetitiae somnum impedit; omne enim nimium naturae inimicum.”
113.
Ibid., Aph. XLVII, “Nunc hilares, nunc maesti, nunc iracundi, nunc timidi perspirationem magis salutarem habent.”
114.
Ibid., Aph. XLVIII, “Laetitia diastolem et systolem efficit faciliores, maeror et maestitia difficiliores.”
115.
On Reneri, see note 26, and also Fabrizio Baldassarri, “Elements of Descartes’ Medical Scientia: Books, Medical Schools, and Collaborations”, in Scientiae in the History of Medicine, edited by Fabrizio Baldassarri and Fabio Zampieri, 155–168 (Rome: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2021). On the one hand, Santorio’s work was widespread in Europe, and every physician knew it, or discussed some of its topics, yet no presence of any of this is to be found in Descartes’ correspondence, as he never discussed Santorio (nor quantification of the living body) with Mersenne or Beeckman.
116.
See, for example, the cases of Heidentryk Overkamp, Theodor Craanen, Cornelis Bontekoe, Steven Blankaart, Johannes Muys, Janusz Abraham Gehem, and others; cf. Anette Henriette Munt, “The Impact of Dutch Cartesian Medical Reformers in Early Enlightenment German Culture (1680–1720)” (PhD diss., University of London, 2004).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Venice, Italy
Fabrizio Baldassarri

Authors

Fabrizio Baldassarri
View author publications
You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Fabrizio Baldassarri .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Centre for Medical History, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK
Jonathan Barry
Institute for the History of Medicine, Julius Maximilian University, Würzburg, Germany
Fabrizio Bigotti

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Baldassarri, F. (2022). Santorio, Regius, and Descartes: The Quantification and Mechanization of the Passions in Seventeenth-Century Medicine. In: Barry, J., Bigotti, F. (eds) Santorio Santori and the Emergence of Quantified Medicine, 1614-1790. Palgrave Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Medicine. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79587-0_6

Download citation

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79587-0_6
Published: 18 March 2022
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-79586-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-79587-0
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics