Tag: Descartes
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The wayward Paracelsus
JMS PearceEast Yorks, England Alterius non sit qui suus esse potestLet no man be another’s who can be himself Paracelsus 1552 Paracelsus was the most original, controversial character of the Renaissance,1 who brazenly questioned and condemned the dictates of Galen and other ancient physicians. In an age of mysticism and alchemy, this solitary figure laid…
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Human heart in Descartes’s De Homine
The famous philosopher René Descartes had an interest in physiology. But although he is known to have carried out dissections and even vivisections, he was a theoretician and not an experimentalist. In 1643 he wrote that having read William Harvey’s 1628 De Moto Cordis he agreed with the theory that the blood circulated through the…
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Cranium: The symbolic powers of the skull
F. Gonzalez-CrussiChicago, Illinois, USA Of all bodily parts, the head has traditionally enjoyed the greatest prestige. The Platonic Timaeus tells us that secondary gods (themselves created by the Demiurge) copied the round form of the universe to make the head, divinest part of our anatomy. In order to avoid its rolling on the ground like…